@Uran92 Aurora is indeed easy S tier. Probably one of the top 5 strongest player piloted ships of any size. BigBrain demos it brawling down a Dominator in one of his fitting vids, it's Grumpy's favorite ship, and mine as well. Here's a demo of just how strong it is: ua-cam.com/video/ItoOQxtOqTA/v-deo.htmlsi=6DXI1WKtZ_7Zp6pp
Yep, but Aurora requires A LOT of skill to use on this level and that's it's biggest issue. Also AI just can't pull anything even remotely close to that. So it's only an S tier in hands of a really skilled player, otherwise it's a lot of wasted DP on a ship your captains can't utilize properly. Meanwhile ships like Eradicator do really well both in player and AI hands due to having a really simple game plan: get close, turn on accelerated ammo feeder, overload the shields and kill the ship. AI can pull that off rather easily, same reason Hammerhead also does well in the hands of AI for example. In fact Eradicator has been consistently the best performing ship in the AI's hands as far as cruisers go in my games. Every single engagement it contributes the most damage and kills. It's just a perfect fit for how AI pilots ships, especially if you put an aggressive captain on it and give it a rambo loadout (chainguns and machine guns). Thing can 1v1 any other cruiser and dish out the kind of damage you'd expect from an onslaught, and that's all in the hands of an AI. In the player's hands it's even deadlier and significantly easier to utilize to it's fullest potential. A fleet of SO Eradicators was one of the funniest things I've ever done in this game and way more effective than it had any right to be. Go into battle, immediately turn on full assault, and watch things explode on both sides, mostly enemy side. Get the perks that decrease effects of dmods and maintenance costs for ships with them and you'll have the most cost-effective fleet you've ever seen with ships that refuse to die no matter how many times they are blown up in combat.
What I feel this video is missing is looking at the ships from perspective different than 1v1 performance in combat simulator when driven by a player. You can only pilot a single ship, and 1v1 scenarios are very rare past the very early game. Ships behave VERY differently when they are fighting with and against multiple other ships. Different qualities start to matter a lot more in those situations. AI isn't very good at using some ship systems, that is a big factor too. Then there are also other, simpler things: how expensive the ship is to acquire, how cost-effective it is DP wise (you touch on that a bit but not enough). And you seem to ignore completely the fact that ships can do a lot more things in combat than just shooting things. I'll give you some tangible examples of what you've completely overlooked because you focus so much on this very narrow grading method: - You put Atlas Mk.II at the very bottom. Probably because whenever you see it it's easy to kill and you haven't used it much yourself. But you severely underestimate this ship. For starters, it costs as much DP as a cruiser, for a capital ship that's mad. For 24 DP you get 2 L Ballistic slots, 2 L Missile slots, plus smaller mounts. One of these ships has the same firepower as A CONQUEST, and it costs almost half as much DP to deploy. And it comes with accelerated ammo feeder which can make it really scary for a few moments. Plus it's dirt cheap to buy, not that you have to buy it, you'll recover them all the time from pirates. Atlas Mk.II is not a ship you duel things 1v1. Atlas Mk.II is a dirt cheap fire support platform that allows you to bring overwhelming long range firepower for very little DP cost. Put Gauss Guns and long range kinetic missiles on it and it will be extremely effective at both keeping enemy ships away and spiking the flux of anything that comes near. - You seem to be unaware of the power of some of the small ships. Monitors for example. They don't kill anything, because that's not their job. Their job is to be annoying, and to have the opposing fleet chase them down. They are like a tank in a raid, they are there to draw aggro. You pay 6DP to divert multiple enemy ships in the other direction and keep them there, so you can fight a smaller enemy force and have an advantage. That alone breaks the whole combat system of vanilla starsector. Other ships can pull this off too, I had 2 omens in one of my fleets and I always sent them ahead to attract some enemy ships away from the main force, then I just park them in the corner and tell them to defend a far away point or just empty space. Sometimes I managed to divert something like 8 enhemy ships with just two cheap frigates that zoom around and refuse to die because they are fast and extremely hard to kill (great shield efficiency and good hull mods). - Ships with burn drives are generally really risky to give to AI pilots, because they love to use that system and put themselves in extremely poor situations. Dominators are a chief example of this. Dominator as a ship is designed to be this scary brick wall that sits there on the frontlines without moving much and just shoots other big things with superior firepower, while tanking damage back. But then the AI just burns into the enemy, breaks formation, and gets surrounded. I've had a modded version of a dominator from a mod that came with another ship system instead (I think it was manouvering jets?) and oh my god did it make that ships so much better in hands of the AI. - Another ship that consistently underperforms in hands of the AI is Sunder. When flown by a player it's a good destroyer for sure, it punches way above it's class. But in the hands of AI it's god awful for a few reasons. Reason 1: the AI doesn't use the ship system well at all, the timing is too tight for it. Reason 2: Being a destroyer with a large energy weapon it will build up it's own flux really fast, the AI is generally really bad in those situations and will consistently put itself in situations where it shoots up it's flux, then gets killed because it can't shield the damage. Reason 3: ABYSSMAL shield efficiency. 1.4 on a high tech destroyer, are you kidding me? Combine this with what I said already and it makes flux management even worse. Plus the ship itself is very squishy, all leading to AI dying it it all the time without actually doing much in terms of damage support. And the final nail in the coffin is that there already exists another destroyer that can also do a lot of damage for it's weight class, but does not suffer from Sunder's issues: Hammerhead. It has a lot of damage thanks to ballistic weapons (they generally outperform energy weapons for S and M slots) and high burst from accelerated ammo feeder that lasts longer and is easier to use for the AI. More flux efficient thanks to medium ballistic weapons and way better shields. I really recommend you experiment more, there are some really cool and crazy things you can do with a little bit of creativity!
Good Write up! Atlas II is my favourite Early Game flagship for reasons you listed and the Monitor had to be nerfed twice because it tanked capitals. I love to use the Sunder, despite agreeing with all your points, because with Advanced beam and Integrated Targeting it reaches 1440 units of range and that thing pairs well with a hammerhead as a buddy. i drop the Sunders in the late game since Capitals become ubiquitous and its sole "defence" range is countered.
@@brilobox2 That's another point: You can only pilot a single ship in your entire fleet at a time. Whether a ship is good or not in player's hands should only be a small consideration for it's overall placement in a general list like this. If it was a "ranking of flagships" then that would be a different story, but since we're just reviewing ships in general, considering that majority of the time it will be AI flying them, that should be the primary metric by which you grade them. I touched on that when I talked about Sunder. In player's hands it's a really strong early game flagship, not the best but definitely strong. But in any other situation it's a free kill for either side. AI just doesn't know how to use it well and constantly gets itself killed.
I completely agree with what you are saying about the Atlas Mk.II - I used to look down on this ship but now I love this thing with 2x Hephaestus Assault Guns and 2x Squalls - with a good AI pilot with gunnery implants, ballistics and helmsmanship it can keep up with your fleet and provide a core of heavy firepower at a cheap price of 28 DP. I just tested out mine with an L6 officer in sim and solo'ed a sim Onslaught in about 130 seconds.
I love the scene, the intro clip of Uran (allegedly) just being a regular fn person editing his vids in his downtime while maybe a few beers in (house noises in the background) drinking water responsibly with girl in the background(?) slotting up the next channel review to Business Uran, one of this game's best strategists, who takes the mic with absolute virulence to inform the eager public u a real one Uran
Hyperion deserves S tier. Have you EVER seen a frigate take down a capital before?! Slap on SO, built-in expanded magazines, triple ION pulsars = DEATH! Very fun!
the Hyperion is effectively a Frigate with Cruiser flux stats and tht alone is insane(and justifies its DP cost). as fo build personally i combo 3 weapon, Heavy MG, Heavy blaster and Ion pulser, Slap on SO(you kinda have to in order to make the Teleport usable) and try to extend peak time as long as possible with an officer and you basically have a frigate that can legitimately threaten cruisers/capitals
Personally I use a mining blaster in the center hardpoint to deal with heavy armor, otherwise my preferred build is the same (although I do tend to swap the mining blaster out for a cryoblaster or flamer when I get one). Though the triple ion pulsar build is absolute murder on anything with less than armor than a Venture, so if you aren't planning to fight a lot of heg or luddic fleets (or derelicts) it might work better.
Well I sure saw 6 hyperions suicide charge into the front of a dominator refusing to fight it from the back, the direction they came from to attack it might I add and kept fighting over each other to eat a facefull of lead Like a lot of the frigates and destroyers to be honest
@@simplysmiley4670 dependin on your game version, the Hyperion requires Safety overrides this is because its system in prior version only works if the ship is in its " zero flux" status which this hull mod forces
Having Alot of fun with Furys and Auroras backed by Medusas and pretty much any large ship with long-range missiles/carriers :d Shields go down - missiles/bombers go BRRR Also: Please upload some more long-form! Love the content, want more!
yeah, I will have to play with aurora and medusa more. Next time I will play vanilla I will give them more of a go :D Will look into some longer content :)
3:36 Uran, you are describing the pirate variant of the ship wich is quite different from the base one. The actual one cost 20 point to deploy but possess the same special ability as the hammerhead which increase fire rate of ballistic weapons.
The difference is like night and day. The pirate variant is "just" good. The normal variant is extremely powerful, possibly the strongest ship in the game if we're talking cost-efficiency (especially in the hands of AI pilots). Not counting Ziggurat of course, that ship is a whole can of worms that needs it's own tier.
@@Kingofdragons117 As of the latest update (or maybe the next to the last? I legit can't remember). Incidentally, that same update also reduced the pirate version to 18dp (they previously were both 20). Pirate Eradicator is still good as a fast strike cruiser if you stack kinetic damage in the ballistic slots and reapers in the missile slots, especially with the deployment cost reduction.
Yea I have been pestering Alex to drop the Fury down to 18 ever since the put it to 20. It was crazy at 15, but it is only an oversized shrike. It needs to go down.
Scarab and Medusa feeling left out seems like a travesty. You should try a playthrough with them. I've had a campaign where my fleet was 10 officered Meds and 20 support doctrine Scars, and they even did the doritos dirty.
@@ericmyrs 2 Ion Pulsers for the M slots, 2 Ion Cannons/Light Needlers/Railguns on the front (depending on what are you feeling the ships best at; Disabling, Fast Assault, or Sustained pressure) and the rest is your flavor of PD, 5 PD or LRPD. The reason for filling up the slots is because the most important skill for the ship is Ordnance Expertise. Other skills in order of importance: Field Modulation (E), Systems Expertise, Energy Weapon Mastery, Target Analysis, Helmsmanship. Your skill build Leadership - Coordinated Maneuvers, Wolfpack Tactics, Officer Training, Officer Management, Support Doctrine Technology - Navigation, Sensors, Electronic Warfare, Flux Regulation, Automated Ships Industry - Bulk Transport, Field Repairs, Containment Procedures, Makeshift Equipment, Hull Restoration This is planned for a 10 Medusa, 20 Scarab, 8-12 Glimmer fleet, that does battle without you. You do not need to pilot, and TBH, none of the ships are easy to pilot well in my opinion, while the AI is very decent with them, apart from some sheaningans with the Scarabs. The fleet should all be within deployment point limits as 10 Medusas are 120 points, and 20 Scarabs are also 120 due to Support Doctrine reducing the unofficered ship deployment cost. Glimmers should be 120 points; Gamma core glimmers cost 10 points, Beta core 15 - up to you. I only use gammas, they are good as savage assaulters and they disable fast while putting in damage, and leave space for the Scarabs which will be on the field for a long time. Obvious note - you need to expand your fleet ship limit to 50, as the dev seemingly didn't realize the numbers a frigate swarm player can put on deployment within their skill system.
this is personal preference but i find the medusa to be overpriced for its role when it's effectively the Wolf with upgraded flux stats and bulk. it works well as an harasser, but it cna only shine truly if it has a custom tailored officer...but if you are gonig thru that trouble, you may aswell try toget yourself an Hyperion for said officer
@@Teixas666 Although the Hyperion looks way more busted because their hull/armor stats are close to the Medusa, and its flux cap is 25% more, but that flux pool difference is getting eaten up by a 180flux/second higer shield upkeep, which ends up causing a 180 flux/sec dissipation worse than the Medusa. You can still say that the Hyperion is faster and smaller, so it equals out where it would be weaker. That means I could go for the Hyperion for the better damage buff from wolf pack, but alas, I will NOT be able to get the same power output if I try to fill the fleet with them insted as their deployment cost is higher, so I end up being able to put out 8 of them instead of 10, or if I put out 10 of them then I have less ships on the wings to support. Additionally, their upkeep cost is 250% higher, so I will straight up burn supplies with a full fleet. And I still didnt mention the peak performance time, and ordnance point difference, where Medusa fully takes the house.
28 scarabs will take anything down. SO with the usual hull mods. 2 anti matter blasters and 1 ion Cannon. With their Temporal she'll they actually are moving 3x faster then real time. So fast they can get around Omni shields if a capital doesn't have 360 shields the Scarab instantly disables it with the anti matter. I've been able to do 2 fleets of full remnants over 200% bonus exp. If you are a great pilot you can probably take 3 fleets. It's just there CR runs out cause it counts 3x sped up time while everything else counts real time. People talk about brawler LP but I think the scarabs put them to shame.
I remember running the Tempest Frigate a lot when I did frigate heavy fleet runs, I'd put EMP pulse guns and rapidly rush a target to EMP the crap out of it so the rest of the AI ships would swarm. Definitely a glass cannon frigate. But that does put it in a "good in the player's hands" category.
@@christopherschneider2968 Yeah, I think that might have been one of the AI builds since the AI is pretty good at harrassing. The EMP pulse was specifically my player build for high aggression pushes to break stalemates.
Tempest (the last little ship you throw in the idk section) is expensive but I love it 2 medium energy, 1 small missile, and a pair of defense drones. It’s fast and can 1v1 any frigate A tier (unless your broke)
Quite agree on the missiles, pre 0.97a they were much more impactful. Now I completely avoid missiles like the plague, since even the ordnance points are better spend elsewhere.
The invictus, in player hands, can wipe entire maps as long as it has a cruiser or two and some omens supporting it. But you either completely commit your build to the invictus with full skills to make it an unkillable brick with damage control, polarized armor and ordinance expertise or you dont use it. There is 0 middle ground. The invictus NEEDS those 3 S mods and it NEEDS all your elite skills. But when it has them, there is literally no capital ship in the game that can kill it. The most they can do is run away and survive long enough to either vent while you kill their escort or retreat. I've killed massive AI fleets with the invictus and my next playthrough is going to be an invictus with progressive S Mods just so see how hilariously overpowered I can make it.
4:41, issue with the falcon imho is the type of slot it gets dont mesh with hte OP you have available and dont offer enough in specialization in any path. however the Pirate Variant of the Falcon is an amazing ship because its medium slots become missile/composite slots, missile have less of a OP debt and because the Falcon P can get 4 laubchers this free up OP that would go inot flux...and one of the bettthings you can add this this fast attackcruiser with that OP is a support fighter bay.
"If something is less than 10 dp I don't use it". Well I like my 18 brawler lps with 3 pegasi to stomp on redacted ordos nonstop (along with d-mod repair and officerless skills)
Definitely agree with the eagly. 2x HVD or 2x HAC (lower flux cost now), Mauler, 3x IRAL, 3x LRPD, 2x PD, AWM if HAC, ITU and some other S-Modded junk like Expanded Mags for the IRAL make this really strong. IRAL melt fighters any anything else at 1400 range with ITU. This kills fighter screens and the IRAL is a HIL in a medium slot for 8 OP vs. hull. Mauler and HVD take care of armor. I always use breaches to deal with tough armor like Onslaughts. This is a fun ship for IRAL spam because it can bring three of them. HVD deals enough EMP.
As a phase -addict- specialist I would like to say that the Doom is not just S tier but it's also very easy to use by you or the AI. All you need is 4 light needlers, 2 reapers launcher, 2 Ion pulsers (ion pulsers and needlers must be in the same group to force the AI to use the ioms more), phase anchor and (S)M. racks. You use it like a Zigurat, phase in and out to shoot the needlers and ions, when shields and weapons are out, you pop some mines to force an overloud then boom boom the reapers and voila. And for the Ai, an aggressive officer should do the trick (reckless at lvl 5 if you want).
AI is in general extremely good at using phase ships. The only one I'd say is a waste to give it to AI is Harbinger, and it's because it's ship system requires precise timing to be worth anything. But all the others the AI can just just fine.
Suggestion: Try Random Assorted Thing's Abyssal depths--basically a miniature dungeon with its own enemy faction and can be conquered mostly through sneaking (also gives you an extra skill point once you dive deep enough!) or you could just stack 10 capitals and steamroll the poor bastards, I guess. (it is classified as mid-game content after all, and even its final boss, the 'singularity', can be beaten with 2-3 capital ships (although the fleet in question has a glimmer flagship which...is basically on the same scale of broken as ziggy imo, maybe slightly less) Nex (the 4X conversion mod) also allows you to employ an increasingly large array of administrators as your empire grows (alongside AI cores) that allow you to role play as manifest destiny of the domain of man and restore Persian sector to its former glory (by colonizing every single system?) Industrial Revolution adds an incredible amount of colony building/industries like solar arrays (the ones on eventide, yes) alongside encounters (f**k those artillery emplacements, seriously) and loot Unknown skies adds a lot of new planet types & conditions (mostly reskins, but flavor is good, doesn't change the ratio of good to bad planets by a lot), alongside four sector-unique planet conditions (only 1 per sector, adds production for volatiles[funny purple gas giant], drugs[mushroom!], heavy armaments[rampant militarized virus] and organs [cryo-sanctum 4 u])
High tech frigates are great at distracting bigger ships and dueling other frigates while staying alive, that's their purpose. Low tech frigates on the other hand are better at dealing damage to exposed big ships due to being able to use ballistic weapons, which as we all know are what you want for S and M slots.
A word on a Gryphon and other missile ships... I actually had some decent success with Pilum spam. Now that Pilum has a large variant, it became a surprisingly viable and I just slam medium and large pilums wherever I can. And the benefit is... AI can safely go stupid with them, as they just don't run out. It is not going to be your main weapon, but it is getting the job done, providing constant pressure on the enemy and surprisingly decent damage output when it actually lands. As for the small ships. Lashers are fine as far as frigates go. Monitors are an S tier meme ships - these things just never die and soak up stupid amounts of damage. Centurions are basically very hard to kill PD boats - they don't kill much, but protect other ships from fighters and missiles well, and they themselves basically never die. Hyperion is fantastic in the vacuum, but just too expensive in my opinion. Omens are stupid good, so are the Tempests. Scarab is a hilarious ship because of its temporal field or whatever it is called - basically, turns whatever weapons it has into miniguns, while also moving stupidly fast. Medusa is like a bigger Wolf. It is good, especially if you slap a couple of needlers onto it, or pack it with ion weaponry.
the issue that folks seem ot miss with the Gyphon is that its not meant ot be a frontliner and it has an excess of OP that can be abused. you'd want ot slap on long range munitions , or missiles meant for sieges and because missiles in general have less of an OP tax, you have free room ot include trinkets like a fighhter bay(that could have something like a Xyphos wing in order to abuse ion beams)
Double hammer XIV Legion, my beloved. Even foregoing the defensive bomber cheese for other setups, it's such a menace. I've run that setup even before the hurricane nerf because I believe it was always the superior choice.
While I can agree to disagree on the ships rankings, putting variants into their own category and saying refer to the original ships is just a crime. Eradicator and Eradicator (P), Falcon and Falcon (P), Brawler and Bralwer (LP) are completely different ships, they just share the same name and general layout but should be judged differently. What's interesting is that you did it for Legion (XIV) but not for other ships. Still love your content, you got me into Starsector back in the day!
Pirate Lasher is not vanilla, install WhichMod right now please. Also the Coyote from BigBeans is the superior modded missile frigate. 12 Reapers or 24 Harpoons *and* 12 Sabots for 6 DP without losing a main weapon or PD *and* a phase skimmer.
Good list. I absolutely love flying the Doom and eventually upgrading to the final story ship. But for most of the game I'll use the Doom and with the right officer stats, it does amazing in the hands of AI. But you just can't beat a fully built up Ziggy. In a test, I nearly managed to destroy the main Hegemony space station and two entire fleets alone with my beloved Ziggy all alone.
These are always fun and always spark a heated discussion in the comments. My favorite part is the discussion on the variants that differ substantially, like the bit on the Legion & Legion (XIV) here. There are plenty more, though! How about the fact that the Eradicator (P) has Burn Drive, but the standard variant as Accelerated Ammo Feeder and goes up to 22 DP. Still worth it? The Manticore (LP) has a large missile slot instead of a large ballistic slot, so presumably based on the rest of the video, that's not a good thing to you. I agree the Eagle and Eagle (XIV) are fantastic ships these days, but does the Eagle (LG)'s two hybrid mounts + Energy Bolt Coherer change anything? Falcon (P)'s play completely differently than the other Falcons and make a pretty solid missile boat, and honestly I've had better luck with them than with Gryphons. My favorite ship to pilot is the Afflictor with 4 AM Blasters, but IMO strangely the Afflictor (P) is better off with Light Needlers. There are so many interesting ships/variants and ship builds that I've been playing for about a year and I still haven't ventured outside of vanilla ships.
pits gryphon 1v1 vs onslaught, says it doesn't work, and then immediately stans heron. why don't ya pit heron 1v1 vs onslaught? oh because it's a SUPPORT ship? epic smooth brain on that one.
7/21/24 and uran doesns't know half the ships. doesn't use new missiles in combat, says dragonfire gets shot down 90% of time (FALSE). try using them in active combats instead of 1v1 vs onslaught lol. i love ur vids uran but c'mon. if you're not playing a game then why do this.
The retribution has recently taken my top spot as flagship from the Atlas Mk II. YEAH THAT'S RIGHT I SAID ATLAS MK II, WHATCHU GONNA DO ABOUT IT?! "D-tier" my ass. Two mjolnirs become FOUR mjolnirs when I fly that beast; I face onslaughts in an atlas Mk II on the regular and come out on top. Also, no mention for the Falcon(P) variant? Four medium missiles on a cruiser may not be impressive right now, but that can be a LOT of spam for the deployment points. Also also, seeing builds without maximum vents hurts my soul.
I feel like you're judging the Gryphon unfairly. It's not made for dueling and face tanking. It's fantastic for swatting small craft and pressuring medium and large ships, while you send in the assassins. The autoforge is glorious for sustain when fighting outnumbered. You also absolutely need to try high tech frigates. Get wolf pack tactics and 8 aggressive officers. Stick them in Hyperions, Scarabs and Omens. In my last engagement, I had a Scarab and two omens piloted by the AI take out a Mora and an Eradicator, with almost no direction.
I always play the game the same way. One paragon supported by 10 eradicators equip with hypervelocity drivers. It's a little bore, but at least I know I'll always win lol.
i had not long ago learnt to manage my builds according to the ships shield damage ratio and overall speed, if its a fast ship over 110 speed and has good shield like under 0.7 load it with hardened shields and send it to fight in the front and leave in the back slow ships with bad shields, then according to their wapon slots you either arm then for long range energy or ballistic weapons, and if they have missile perks and slots leave them be with resistant flux conduicts. ( most ranged have low flux dissipation) overall a quick beginners tip
15:10 Heavy armor on Invictus, no armored weapon installed that increases armor by 1000 points. Simply amazing, the best demonstration of competence and emotional subjectivity. The main thing is to have a gaming chair.
If you can look at 14:27 i have 11500 armor meaning I have armored weapons mounts (you can scroll down the hullmods if you have a bunch)... 15:10 I swapped it fast so I can show you that it is good idea to find a place to put repair unit. But these days it is hard to pay attention am I right ? :) BTW recommend buying the gaming chair this one was not that expensive and is decently comfy
@@Uran92 For a narcissist like you, I wouldn't be surprised if you edited the video after the fact. But the main thing is that I don't care if I'm already wrong and rationalize my failure, it's emotional, and therefore very respectable. Built-in doors, yeah bro.
I put a bunch of defensive upgrades on a legion 14 during mostly vanilla run but with the Auroran mod. That thing shrugged off 4 catgirl nukes. I think the invictus could probably shrug off 6 at least.
Monitor is s tier... defence. affixation ...attack....Omen...mix... Smaller ships are more powerful but late game just don't have the punch but the three can do the role very very well. All very good with the right AI builds in each role. End game when out numbered, I can't use the just small ships and have to move to larger, line fighting. Which is less fun .....if you have any pointers let me know.
Monitors can really break the combat in this game if you know how. You can build them in a way where they can spend ages with their fortress shields up and survive literally minutes of combat with multiple other ships. What this means in practice is that for a mere cost of 6 DP you can tie down multiple enemy ships in combat and lead them away from your main force. Suddenly it's no longer an even fight between two fleets with 200DP, your 194DP fleet is now fighting 150DP worth of enemy ships, and the other 50 DP is chasing down that stupid little frigate that refuses to die. You suddenly have a massive advantage. Omens are capable of the same thing as long as their commander is cautious and they don't have a freak accident. That's what I feel this video is missing. It doesn't talk at all about what the ships can do it fleet combat. But to be fair, I see so many people rate ships based on their 1v1 performance in a combat simulator, which is not an accurate metric. Easy trap to fall into.
Don't underestimate the kite. You can put reapers on them and put those reapers exactly where you want them. If you want them to be really interesting, you can up the maximum fleet capacity so you can have multiple waves of ships, hit and run tactics. Have a wave of reaper kites swoop in and destroy key ships in the enemy fleet and then retreat when they are out of ammo. Then call in your main battle fleet.
sounds like it's time for good old uran to do a wolfpack playthrough and get to know the frigates better. Omen is easy S tier. Lasher LP can do some stuff you wouldnt belive.
Is there a place I can see the names of the A list ships and some of the load outs ? I'm not familiar enough with the game to recognize the ships or weapons.
I would say that to get a better match up, you should pair 3 ships against 3 ships instead of 1v1 when comparing missiles ships. They have high burst but low sustain so you need enough mass power to do permanent damage in order to see their effect. 1 dragon fire torpedo damages shields. 3 dragon fire torpedos blow up the ship and then you have a 2v3. I usually give the griffon a squall and use it in a support role. It's job isn't to kill but to keep the enemy off and add to the pressure of the ship in front of it. Given all of this, PD is still a little too much right now.
I'm fairly new, but imo: Tempest deserves S-Tier (Not controversial I don't think) Shade deserves A-Tier. I would personally put it above the omen. I have no clue why everybody throws shade on the Shade(hah). It performs the same as the Omen for what everyone uses it for (glorified 6 Deploy Point point defense), but you can ALSO actually put weapons on it without the AI having an aneurysm, give it an attack command, and it'll prema-EMP or outright kill things above it's weight class. Maybe I just don't have enough late game experience yet or something, but so far in my playthrough this thing has not failed me and actively outperformed the omen from my experience. I feel like 2 extra deploy points is not a lot to ask for that value
dont, this guy has no idea what he is talking about. hes very very narrowminded and this list is absolutely terrible and completely wrong. read the comments of this video instead, learn from the people telling him why he is so wrong
There's a weird AI piloted variant of the Kite in the Tahlan Shipworks mod. They cost like 10 points to deploy and seem to believe they are frigate sized cruisers or something when picking fights. When they turn out to be more survivable than the rest of the fleet (including the flagship), I started stress testing them and eventually only died when surrounded in a fight against some redacted that's full of Alpha cores and was rated to give 100% extra XP. Turns out the answer to stupid shit YOLOing are another bunch of stupid shit YOLOing.
Pegasus and Gryphon are easily S+ Tier, Missiles are still uber meta even after all the nerfs 1 ai Pegasus can beat 2 onslaughts in simulation it's crazy, and gryphon can punch up like 20 DP
Dominator was my second ship i found in deep space. Had to restore the hull (20% less hull health) but I think I dont have to worry about dinky pirates saying hi
I think you're wrong about the griffin. they allow you to do absolutely crazy spam with torpedoes. They are not ships of the first league. because they simply cannot withstand a lot of damage. But as battleship support ships, they are great
Speaking about Persean League missile boats, I once died horribly (repeatedly) to this one Pegasus that had 2 Dragonfire and 2 Hydra large launchers. I had to somehow kill its escorts from standoff range using a waypoint before succeeding. This thing could single handedly kill off both my Conquests if they were occupied. A single large launcher is shit. 2 Large launchers are kinda okay. 4 Large launchers and you be like: Lets see your point defense do this load.
It would have been nice if you had at least tried out some more of the ships you don't normally use or done some research around in the community. It would be nice to know if there might be a gem hidden in there.
Much prefer the Eradicator over Eagle. Also cmon the Aurora with the types of weapons available is clearly S-Tier. But hey, I think Aurora makes more sense playing modded.
Eagle is a bread and butter. One of the best ships for a new player. Fury is super good also. Maybe 20 points cost is a bit much, but it is still very playable both for self and for officer. I d put it on the same level as Eagle and Aurora (tho, Aurora needs too much DP, so, it is probably the lowest A) Heron is not A tier. It is gAy tier. Just my opinion... Ziggurat is typical anime boss. Strong when you fight him, kinda okay when you have him in your team. Odyssey is the best ship in the game (for its cost), idk what to discuss here. Ok, one of two best ships. Paragon is also good, yeah. Tho Paragon was hurt much by skill reworks (lost speed). Medusa, Tempest and Monitor are actually very good ships.
Eagles are safe and consistent and can be built for different purposes, that's why they are so good. You can make them into long range fire supports that will never die in combat and just kill the opponent's shields from a distance, while keeping out of range with their manouvering jets. You can also build them for more of an assault role, quickly swoop in with the jets and kill something in close combat with efficient weapons like chain guns, and they have just enough flux and tankiness to pull that off. And while they are not the best at any of those roles, they are good enough at all of them. I think you underestimate Ziggurat a lot too. It is the single best ship in the game, and there's not even a competition. It's honestly so powerful it gets boring to use after a while. Let's put it this way: If Ziggurat didn't have it's ship system I would still consider it to be one of the best ships in the game, a phase capital ship with this kind of firepower and surprising levels of durability is ridiculously strong. Also if there was a ship in the game that did nothing else but use Ziggurat's ship system, and it cost 25DP to deploy, I would use it in every fight because that ship system is broken beyond belief. And the actual Ziggurat is BOTH OF THOSE THINGS at the same time, it's absurd. If you use this ship well you can keep two enemy ships almost permanently disabled, unable to move and shoot almost any of it's weapons, while yourself staying out of any danger and probably killing them from behind in the middle of all of it. Not that you even have to resort to any tricks like these, if you want you can literally duel any other ship in the game, frontally without any manouvering. Yes, even a paragon, and you will win every single time. Without using your ship system if you want to! I did this numerous times, I kept one ship disabled, and then I killed the other one myself from the front. 2 Tahyon lances and needlers is all you need to outduel any ship in the game, the phase cloak will ensure you will always be able to fire your weapons more often than your enemy, dodge whatever they fire back at you, and vent soft flux faster due to time dilation.
@@RiskOfBaer I dont underestimate it, i just keep in mind its DP cost. Scale Odyssey stats to 75 DP, and they will be at least equal. At most Odyssey will be better.
Herons are something that's best used with fighters, and can be effective in dealing with frigates when properly leveraged. Mora and Legion, if they are expected to engage other ships with other weapons, can get away with mostly bombers with homing weapons or torpedoes at close range and saturate with their own missile mounts. Talons are something to not underestimate as they can be dangerous to poorly shielded frigates given swarmer missiles are buffed to use HE damage instead of Frag. At that same time excessive use would hurt the fighter replenishment if the bays are constantly active replacing them.
Ranking odyssey and base eradicator below S is very dishonorable. Odyssey is aurora if it grew up in america. Big stupid dildo going at mach 10 on its way to spontaneously combust the closest enemy. Ody against battleships:🗿 Ody against fast ships:🗿 Ody against remnant:🗿 If you cant outdakka the enemy you are for sure faster than it. And if they are faster(wich they wont be for long) you can light them up. Base eradicator is basically tf2 heavy. Stupid firepower, stupid tank and its fairly spammable. Yet to meet a foe who can outsmart bullet. Couple it with eagle and you have a very mobile wall that will obliterate basically everything. High tech yolo? The eagle shield soaks up dmg like a sponge. Low tech junkfest? Parry the hvd mauler combo you filthy pirate. Midline missile spam? 2 words: vulcan cannon. Hell i sometimes give up missiles and use wasp on my ai eradicators since they are cheap, provide pd, fighter cover and they dont use crew
What, buff them? No need for a mod to do that, just go into the files and play around with the values until you feel they are where you want them to be. It's all quite literally in plan text.
Honestly if you can only make your fleets work at 1000 DP, your fleets suck. Your perspective on what normal Starsector is has been skewed. Nothing about 1000DP even resembles vanilla, so this isn't a vanilla tier list. This is a modded tier list with vanilla ships, not a vanilla ship tier list.
Man, get OVER the Hurricane. If you want something like it use a Hydra. It has the added benefit of being semi independently maneuverable and it ignores most point defence, plus it splits shield focus. Sorry that all your builds are broken because one weapon is nerfed. Maybe try better builds.
Funny, i think Champion is one of the worst ships in the game. A brick profile with size comparable to capitals, low-tech flux and shield but high tech armor and system. After Hurricane nerf(at this point all it does is tax AI ships with OP while doing nothing) that large misile slot will be empty most of the time. Eagle can snipe and put pressure, dom can shield shunt and pew-pew with 2 mjornirs + 3 reaper in case something big came close, aurora can get SO stuff. Champ can poke some lonely shuttle with HIL but that it.
Try a long range build, Squall, HIL, Graviton beams, tac lasers (or LRPD for lower flux) add Integrated Targeting and Advanced Optics and watch this thing delete frigates, destroyers and cruisers from long range. With some support they can also help take down caps and stations too.
seeing the tempest just trown into "not used" made me feel pain. Everyone has his own playstyle, i will not judge.
Aurora is an easy S tier for me, one of the strongest ships in the game. Overdriven, it can destroy capitals
Yeah I have seen some UA-camrs do very well in them, how to do more of my own research and playing :D
@Uran92 Aurora is indeed easy S tier. Probably one of the top 5 strongest player piloted ships of any size. BigBrain demos it brawling down a Dominator in one of his fitting vids, it's Grumpy's favorite ship, and mine as well. Here's a demo of just how strong it is: ua-cam.com/video/ItoOQxtOqTA/v-deo.htmlsi=6DXI1WKtZ_7Zp6pp
overdriven dominator is also very boss. fast, beefy, and doesnt give a fugg
Yep, but Aurora requires A LOT of skill to use on this level and that's it's biggest issue. Also AI just can't pull anything even remotely close to that. So it's only an S tier in hands of a really skilled player, otherwise it's a lot of wasted DP on a ship your captains can't utilize properly.
Meanwhile ships like Eradicator do really well both in player and AI hands due to having a really simple game plan: get close, turn on accelerated ammo feeder, overload the shields and kill the ship. AI can pull that off rather easily, same reason Hammerhead also does well in the hands of AI for example. In fact Eradicator has been consistently the best performing ship in the AI's hands as far as cruisers go in my games. Every single engagement it contributes the most damage and kills. It's just a perfect fit for how AI pilots ships, especially if you put an aggressive captain on it and give it a rambo loadout (chainguns and machine guns). Thing can 1v1 any other cruiser and dish out the kind of damage you'd expect from an onslaught, and that's all in the hands of an AI. In the player's hands it's even deadlier and significantly easier to utilize to it's fullest potential.
A fleet of SO Eradicators was one of the funniest things I've ever done in this game and way more effective than it had any right to be. Go into battle, immediately turn on full assault, and watch things explode on both sides, mostly enemy side. Get the perks that decrease effects of dmods and maintenance costs for ships with them and you'll have the most cost-effective fleet you've ever seen with ships that refuse to die no matter how many times they are blown up in combat.
Yeah low tech ships generally have a lower skill floor, the aurora has both a high floor, and high ceiling.
A Lasher with 5 light autocannons and a pair of breach launchers is actually pretty terrifying, especially with officer skills,
Especially when there's 10 of them. Just have to be careful about not getting insta-melted when going against large ships as with all frigates.
I keep slapping 3 assault guns and 2 Vulcans on them and getting mediocre results. Will have to try this loadout
What I feel this video is missing is looking at the ships from perspective different than 1v1 performance in combat simulator when driven by a player. You can only pilot a single ship, and 1v1 scenarios are very rare past the very early game. Ships behave VERY differently when they are fighting with and against multiple other ships. Different qualities start to matter a lot more in those situations. AI isn't very good at using some ship systems, that is a big factor too. Then there are also other, simpler things: how expensive the ship is to acquire, how cost-effective it is DP wise (you touch on that a bit but not enough). And you seem to ignore completely the fact that ships can do a lot more things in combat than just shooting things. I'll give you some tangible examples of what you've completely overlooked because you focus so much on this very narrow grading method:
- You put Atlas Mk.II at the very bottom. Probably because whenever you see it it's easy to kill and you haven't used it much yourself. But you severely underestimate this ship. For starters, it costs as much DP as a cruiser, for a capital ship that's mad. For 24 DP you get 2 L Ballistic slots, 2 L Missile slots, plus smaller mounts. One of these ships has the same firepower as A CONQUEST, and it costs almost half as much DP to deploy. And it comes with accelerated ammo feeder which can make it really scary for a few moments. Plus it's dirt cheap to buy, not that you have to buy it, you'll recover them all the time from pirates. Atlas Mk.II is not a ship you duel things 1v1. Atlas Mk.II is a dirt cheap fire support platform that allows you to bring overwhelming long range firepower for very little DP cost. Put Gauss Guns and long range kinetic missiles on it and it will be extremely effective at both keeping enemy ships away and spiking the flux of anything that comes near.
- You seem to be unaware of the power of some of the small ships. Monitors for example. They don't kill anything, because that's not their job. Their job is to be annoying, and to have the opposing fleet chase them down. They are like a tank in a raid, they are there to draw aggro. You pay 6DP to divert multiple enemy ships in the other direction and keep them there, so you can fight a smaller enemy force and have an advantage. That alone breaks the whole combat system of vanilla starsector. Other ships can pull this off too, I had 2 omens in one of my fleets and I always sent them ahead to attract some enemy ships away from the main force, then I just park them in the corner and tell them to defend a far away point or just empty space. Sometimes I managed to divert something like 8 enhemy ships with just two cheap frigates that zoom around and refuse to die because they are fast and extremely hard to kill (great shield efficiency and good hull mods).
- Ships with burn drives are generally really risky to give to AI pilots, because they love to use that system and put themselves in extremely poor situations. Dominators are a chief example of this. Dominator as a ship is designed to be this scary brick wall that sits there on the frontlines without moving much and just shoots other big things with superior firepower, while tanking damage back. But then the AI just burns into the enemy, breaks formation, and gets surrounded. I've had a modded version of a dominator from a mod that came with another ship system instead (I think it was manouvering jets?) and oh my god did it make that ships so much better in hands of the AI.
- Another ship that consistently underperforms in hands of the AI is Sunder. When flown by a player it's a good destroyer for sure, it punches way above it's class. But in the hands of AI it's god awful for a few reasons. Reason 1: the AI doesn't use the ship system well at all, the timing is too tight for it. Reason 2: Being a destroyer with a large energy weapon it will build up it's own flux really fast, the AI is generally really bad in those situations and will consistently put itself in situations where it shoots up it's flux, then gets killed because it can't shield the damage. Reason 3: ABYSSMAL shield efficiency. 1.4 on a high tech destroyer, are you kidding me? Combine this with what I said already and it makes flux management even worse. Plus the ship itself is very squishy, all leading to AI dying it it all the time without actually doing much in terms of damage support. And the final nail in the coffin is that there already exists another destroyer that can also do a lot of damage for it's weight class, but does not suffer from Sunder's issues: Hammerhead. It has a lot of damage thanks to ballistic weapons (they generally outperform energy weapons for S and M slots) and high burst from accelerated ammo feeder that lasts longer and is easier to use for the AI. More flux efficient thanks to medium ballistic weapons and way better shields.
I really recommend you experiment more, there are some really cool and crazy things you can do with a little bit of creativity!
Good Write up! Atlas II is my favourite Early Game flagship for reasons you listed and the Monitor had to be nerfed twice because it tanked capitals. I love to use the Sunder, despite agreeing with all your points, because with Advanced beam and Integrated Targeting it reaches 1440 units of range and that thing pairs well with a hammerhead as a buddy. i drop the Sunders in the late game since Capitals become ubiquitous and its sole "defence" range is countered.
Its missing that too. Odyssey obliterates entire fleets in player hands.
@@brilobox2 That's another point: You can only pilot a single ship in your entire fleet at a time. Whether a ship is good or not in player's hands should only be a small consideration for it's overall placement in a general list like this. If it was a "ranking of flagships" then that would be a different story, but since we're just reviewing ships in general, considering that majority of the time it will be AI flying them, that should be the primary metric by which you grade them. I touched on that when I talked about Sunder. In player's hands it's a really strong early game flagship, not the best but definitely strong. But in any other situation it's a free kill for either side. AI just doesn't know how to use it well and constantly gets itself killed.
I completely agree with what you are saying about the Atlas Mk.II - I used to look down on this ship but now I love this thing with 2x Hephaestus Assault Guns and 2x Squalls - with a good AI pilot with gunnery implants, ballistics and helmsmanship it can keep up with your fleet and provide a core of heavy firepower at a cheap price of 28 DP. I just tested out mine with an L6 officer in sim and solo'ed a sim Onslaught in about 130 seconds.
@@BobfromSydney Its even cheaper than that. Only 24 DP
I love the scene, the intro clip
of Uran (allegedly) just being a regular fn person editing his vids in his downtime while maybe a few beers in
(house noises in the background)
drinking water responsibly with girl in the background(?)
slotting up the next channel review to Business Uran, one of this game's best strategists,
who takes the mic with absolute virulence to inform the eager public
u a real one Uran
This has to be one of the best comments I have ever read :D Cheers !
Wow, that Legion XIV build is insane!
Hyperion deserves S tier. Have you EVER seen a frigate take down a capital before?! Slap on SO, built-in expanded magazines, triple ION pulsars = DEATH! Very fun!
the Hyperion is effectively a Frigate with Cruiser flux stats and tht alone is insane(and justifies its DP cost).
as fo build personally i combo 3 weapon, Heavy MG, Heavy blaster and Ion pulser, Slap on SO(you kinda have to in order to make the Teleport usable) and try to extend peak time as long as possible with an officer and you basically have a frigate that can legitimately threaten cruisers/capitals
Personally I use a mining blaster in the center hardpoint to deal with heavy armor, otherwise my preferred build is the same (although I do tend to swap the mining blaster out for a cryoblaster or flamer when I get one). Though the triple ion pulsar build is absolute murder on anything with less than armor than a Venture, so if you aren't planning to fight a lot of heg or luddic fleets (or derelicts) it might work better.
Well I sure saw 6 hyperions suicide charge into the front of a dominator refusing to fight it from the back, the direction they came from to attack it might I add and kept fighting over each other to eat a facefull of lead
Like a lot of the frigates and destroyers to be honest
@@simplysmiley4670 dependin on your game version, the Hyperion requires Safety overrides
this is because its system in prior version only works if the ship is in its " zero flux" status which this hull mod forces
@@Teixas666 It's less that and more that the frigate AI is suicidal.
Uran uploadeddd!!! i bet all my money Alex is updating to 0.98 atm
God tier Atlas mk2 😎
When Uran brings a Starsector video i just like it!
Having Alot of fun with Furys and Auroras backed by Medusas and pretty much any large ship with long-range missiles/carriers :d Shields go down - missiles/bombers go BRRR
Also: Please upload some more long-form! Love the content, want more!
yeah, I will have to play with aurora and medusa more. Next time I will play vanilla I will give them more of a go :D Will look into some longer content :)
3:36 Uran, you are describing the pirate variant of the ship wich is quite different from the base one. The actual one cost 20 point to deploy but possess the same special ability as the hammerhead which increase fire rate of ballistic weapons.
HOLY SHIT ... you are right ... well that was an oversite :D
The difference is like night and day. The pirate variant is "just" good. The normal variant is extremely powerful, possibly the strongest ship in the game if we're talking cost-efficiency (especially in the hands of AI pilots). Not counting Ziggurat of course, that ship is a whole can of worms that needs it's own tier.
@@Uran92 Yea it is straight up S tier for sure.
Actually it is 22 points.
@@Kingofdragons117 As of the latest update (or maybe the next to the last? I legit can't remember). Incidentally, that same update also reduced the pirate version to 18dp (they previously were both 20). Pirate Eradicator is still good as a fast strike cruiser if you stack kinetic damage in the ballistic slots and reapers in the missile slots, especially with the deployment cost reduction.
Yea I have been pestering Alex to drop the Fury down to 18 ever since the put it to 20. It was crazy at 15, but it is only an oversized shrike. It needs to go down.
Scarab and Medusa feeling left out seems like a travesty. You should try a playthrough with them. I've had a campaign where my fleet was 10 officered Meds and 20 support doctrine Scars, and they even did the doritos dirty.
I've not yet managed to get the Medusa to really be worth it. Care to share your build?
@@ericmyrs 2 Ion Pulsers for the M slots, 2 Ion Cannons/Light Needlers/Railguns on the front (depending on what are you feeling the ships best at; Disabling, Fast Assault, or Sustained pressure) and the rest is your flavor of PD, 5 PD or LRPD. The reason for filling up the slots is because the most important skill for the ship is Ordnance Expertise. Other skills in order of importance: Field Modulation (E), Systems Expertise, Energy Weapon Mastery, Target Analysis, Helmsmanship.
Your skill build
Leadership - Coordinated Maneuvers, Wolfpack Tactics, Officer Training, Officer Management, Support Doctrine
Technology - Navigation, Sensors, Electronic Warfare, Flux Regulation, Automated Ships
Industry - Bulk Transport, Field Repairs, Containment Procedures, Makeshift Equipment, Hull Restoration
This is planned for a 10 Medusa, 20 Scarab, 8-12 Glimmer fleet, that does battle without you. You do not need to pilot, and TBH, none of the ships are easy to pilot well in my opinion, while the AI is very decent with them, apart from some sheaningans with the Scarabs. The fleet should all be within deployment point limits as 10 Medusas are 120 points, and 20 Scarabs are also 120 due to Support Doctrine reducing the unofficered ship deployment cost. Glimmers should be 120 points; Gamma core glimmers cost 10 points, Beta core 15 - up to you. I only use gammas, they are good as savage assaulters and they disable fast while putting in damage, and leave space for the Scarabs which will be on the field for a long time.
Obvious note - you need to expand your fleet ship limit to 50, as the dev seemingly didn't realize the numbers a frigate swarm player can put on deployment within their skill system.
this is personal preference but i find the medusa to be overpriced for its role when it's effectively the Wolf with upgraded flux stats and bulk.
it works well as an harasser, but it cna only shine truly if it has a custom tailored officer...but if you are gonig thru that trouble, you may aswell try toget yourself an Hyperion for said officer
@@Teixas666 Although the Hyperion looks way more busted because their hull/armor stats are close to the Medusa, and its flux cap is 25% more, but that flux pool difference is getting eaten up by a 180flux/second higer shield upkeep, which ends up causing a 180 flux/sec dissipation worse than the Medusa. You can still say that the Hyperion is faster and smaller, so it equals out where it would be weaker. That means I could go for the Hyperion for the better damage buff from wolf pack, but alas, I will NOT be able to get the same power output if I try to fill the fleet with them insted as their deployment cost is higher, so I end up being able to put out 8 of them instead of 10, or if I put out 10 of them then I have less ships on the wings to support. Additionally, their upkeep cost is 250% higher, so I will straight up burn supplies with a full fleet.
And I still didnt mention the peak performance time, and ordnance point difference, where Medusa fully takes the house.
28 scarabs will take anything down. SO with the usual hull mods. 2 anti matter blasters and 1 ion Cannon. With their Temporal she'll they actually are moving 3x faster then real time. So fast they can get around Omni shields if a capital doesn't have 360 shields the Scarab instantly disables it with the anti matter.
I've been able to do 2 fleets of full remnants over 200% bonus exp. If you are a great pilot you can probably take 3 fleets.
It's just there CR runs out cause it counts 3x sped up time while everything else counts real time.
People talk about brawler LP but I think the scarabs put them to shame.
I remember running the Tempest Frigate a lot when I did frigate heavy fleet runs, I'd put EMP pulse guns and rapidly rush a target to EMP the crap out of it so the rest of the AI ships would swarm. Definitely a glass cannon frigate.
But that does put it in a "good in the player's hands" category.
Its also great as a Beam Frigate harraser since its tied with the hound as the fastest ship in the game.
@@christopherschneider2968 Yeah, I think that might have been one of the AI builds since the AI is pretty good at harrassing. The EMP pulse was specifically my player build for high aggression pushes to break stalemates.
Tempest (the last little ship you throw in the idk section) is expensive but I love it 2 medium energy, 1 small missile, and a pair of defense drones. It’s fast and can 1v1 any frigate A tier (unless your broke)
And most destroyers sometimes even cruisers
Quite agree on the missiles, pre 0.97a they were much more impactful.
Now I completely avoid missiles like the plague, since even the ordnance points are better spend elsewhere.
Wrong opinion is wrong.
Large missile slots have ot be used for puropose, but the Middle missile slots is still the strongest slot type in the game
The invictus, in player hands, can wipe entire maps as long as it has a cruiser or two and some omens supporting it. But you either completely commit your build to the invictus with full skills to make it an unkillable brick with damage control, polarized armor and ordinance expertise or you dont use it. There is 0 middle ground. The invictus NEEDS those 3 S mods and it NEEDS all your elite skills. But when it has them, there is literally no capital ship in the game that can kill it. The most they can do is run away and survive long enough to either vent while you kill their escort or retreat. I've killed massive AI fleets with the invictus and my next playthrough is going to be an invictus with progressive S Mods just so see how hilariously overpowered I can make it.
Can you please give me your whole Invictus build? I was looking for something fun to play with raised max lvl, this sounds like it!
4:41, issue with the falcon imho is the type of slot it gets dont mesh with hte OP you have available and dont offer enough in specialization in any path.
however the Pirate Variant of the Falcon is an amazing ship because its medium slots become missile/composite slots, missile have less of a OP debt and because the Falcon P can get 4 laubchers this free up OP that would go inot flux...and one of the bettthings you can add this this fast attackcruiser with that OP is a support fighter bay.
"If something is less than 10 dp I don't use it". Well I like my 18 brawler lps with 3 pegasi to stomp on redacted ordos nonstop (along with d-mod repair and officerless skills)
And I thought my ship tier list was bad 😅
Overall interesting picks, but I cannot stand the Eagle. Also the Aurora is an S class cruiser!
Definitely agree with the eagly. 2x HVD or 2x HAC (lower flux cost now), Mauler, 3x IRAL, 3x LRPD, 2x PD, AWM if HAC, ITU and some other S-Modded junk like Expanded Mags for the IRAL make this really strong. IRAL melt fighters any anything else at 1400 range with ITU. This kills fighter screens and the IRAL is a HIL in a medium slot for 8 OP vs. hull. Mauler and HVD take care of armor. I always use breaches to deal with tough armor like Onslaughts. This is a fun ship for IRAL spam because it can bring three of them. HVD deals enough EMP.
As a phase -addict- specialist I would like to say that the Doom is not just S tier but it's also very easy to use by you or the AI.
All you need is 4 light needlers, 2 reapers launcher, 2 Ion pulsers (ion pulsers and needlers must be in the same group to force the AI to use the ioms more), phase anchor and (S)M. racks.
You use it like a Zigurat, phase in and out to shoot the needlers and ions, when shields and weapons are out, you pop some mines to force an overloud then boom boom the reapers and voila.
And for the Ai, an aggressive officer should do the trick (reckless at lvl 5 if you want).
will try the build, I am looking forward to it because I got bit rusty with phase ships :)
AI is in general extremely good at using phase ships. The only one I'd say is a waste to give it to AI is Harbinger, and it's because it's ship system requires precise timing to be worth anything. But all the others the AI can just just fine.
Never tried the Eagle or the Legion, despite gathering several throughout my various playthroughs.. Will have to give them a shot!
Suggestion: Try Random Assorted Thing's Abyssal depths--basically a miniature dungeon with its own enemy faction and can be conquered mostly through sneaking (also gives you an extra skill point once you dive deep enough!) or you could just stack 10 capitals and steamroll the poor bastards, I guess. (it is classified as mid-game content after all, and even its final boss, the 'singularity', can be beaten with 2-3 capital ships (although the fleet in question has a glimmer flagship which...is basically on the same scale of broken as ziggy imo, maybe slightly less)
Nex (the 4X conversion mod) also allows you to employ an increasingly large array of administrators as your empire grows (alongside AI cores) that allow you to role play as manifest destiny of the domain of man and restore Persian sector to its former glory (by colonizing every single system?)
Industrial Revolution adds an incredible amount of colony building/industries like solar arrays (the ones on eventide, yes) alongside encounters (f**k those artillery emplacements, seriously) and loot
Unknown skies adds a lot of new planet types & conditions (mostly reskins, but flavor is good, doesn't change the ratio of good to bad planets by a lot), alongside four sector-unique planet conditions (only 1 per sector, adds production for volatiles[funny purple gas giant], drugs[mushroom!], heavy armaments[rampant militarized virus] and organs [cryo-sanctum 4 u])
Wow you should really take some time to play with the Tempest frigates. They are strong!
In my opinion, high tech has the best frigates. Scarab, Wolf, Tempest and Omen
High tech frigates are great at distracting bigger ships and dueling other frigates while staying alive, that's their purpose. Low tech frigates on the other hand are better at dealing damage to exposed big ships due to being able to use ballistic weapons, which as we all know are what you want for S and M slots.
A word on a Gryphon and other missile ships... I actually had some decent success with Pilum spam. Now that Pilum has a large variant, it became a surprisingly viable and I just slam medium and large pilums wherever I can. And the benefit is... AI can safely go stupid with them, as they just don't run out.
It is not going to be your main weapon, but it is getting the job done, providing constant pressure on the enemy and surprisingly decent damage output when it actually lands.
As for the small ships. Lashers are fine as far as frigates go. Monitors are an S tier meme ships - these things just never die and soak up stupid amounts of damage. Centurions are basically very hard to kill PD boats - they don't kill much, but protect other ships from fighters and missiles well, and they themselves basically never die. Hyperion is fantastic in the vacuum, but just too expensive in my opinion. Omens are stupid good, so are the Tempests.
Scarab is a hilarious ship because of its temporal field or whatever it is called - basically, turns whatever weapons it has into miniguns, while also moving stupidly fast.
Medusa is like a bigger Wolf. It is good, especially if you slap a couple of needlers onto it, or pack it with ion weaponry.
the issue that folks seem ot miss with the Gyphon is that its not meant ot be a frontliner and it has an excess of OP that can be abused.
you'd want ot slap on long range munitions , or missiles meant for sieges and because missiles in general have less of an OP tax, you have free room ot include trinkets like a fighhter bay(that could have something like a Xyphos wing in order to abuse ion beams)
The monitor is a baby paragon. It hasn't grown up to have weapons yet.
@@Teixas666 Yeah, I said in another post that griffon needs a buddy, even another griffon. It's tier goes up the more ship there are around it.
Scarab is one of the most slept on ships
Double hammer XIV Legion, my beloved. Even foregoing the defensive bomber cheese for other setups, it's such a menace. I've run that setup even before the hurricane nerf because I believe it was always the superior choice.
both legions slap hard. put shield conversion:omni on it, or shunt it and gg
Legion is amazing. Vanguard is amazing. Two ships to see you through before having to move to end game and great fun.
While I can agree to disagree on the ships rankings, putting variants into their own category and saying refer to the original ships is just a crime. Eradicator and Eradicator (P), Falcon and Falcon (P), Brawler and Bralwer (LP) are completely different ships, they just share the same name and general layout but should be judged differently. What's interesting is that you did it for Legion (XIV) but not for other ships. Still love your content, you got me into Starsector back in the day!
Pirate lasher w/ expanded missles. 8-10 reapers on a very mobile frigate is very fun
Pirate Lasher is not vanilla, install WhichMod right now please.
Also the Coyote from BigBeans is the superior modded missile frigate. 12 Reapers or 24 Harpoons *and* 12 Sabots for 6 DP without losing a main weapon or PD *and* a phase skimmer.
Thanks for the info bro!
Good list. I absolutely love flying the Doom and eventually upgrading to the final story ship. But for most of the game I'll use the Doom and with the right officer stats, it does amazing in the hands of AI. But you just can't beat a fully built up Ziggy. In a test, I nearly managed to destroy the main Hegemony space station and two entire fleets alone with my beloved Ziggy all alone.
Oh and the Hyperion is easy S tier when piloted well. Similar to your phase list being very skill dependent, it performs very well.
These are always fun and always spark a heated discussion in the comments.
My favorite part is the discussion on the variants that differ substantially, like the bit on the Legion & Legion (XIV) here. There are plenty more, though! How about the fact that the Eradicator (P) has Burn Drive, but the standard variant as Accelerated Ammo Feeder and goes up to 22 DP. Still worth it? The Manticore (LP) has a large missile slot instead of a large ballistic slot, so presumably based on the rest of the video, that's not a good thing to you. I agree the Eagle and Eagle (XIV) are fantastic ships these days, but does the Eagle (LG)'s two hybrid mounts + Energy Bolt Coherer change anything? Falcon (P)'s play completely differently than the other Falcons and make a pretty solid missile boat, and honestly I've had better luck with them than with Gryphons. My favorite ship to pilot is the Afflictor with 4 AM Blasters, but IMO strangely the Afflictor (P) is better off with Light Needlers.
There are so many interesting ships/variants and ship builds that I've been playing for about a year and I still haven't ventured outside of vanilla ships.
pits gryphon 1v1 vs onslaught, says it doesn't work, and then immediately stans heron. why don't ya pit heron 1v1 vs onslaught?
oh because it's a SUPPORT ship?
epic smooth brain on that one.
7/21/24 and uran doesns't know half the ships.
doesn't use new missiles in combat, says dragonfire gets shot down 90% of time (FALSE). try using them in active combats instead of 1v1 vs onslaught lol.
i love ur vids uran but c'mon. if you're not playing a game then why do this.
The retribution has recently taken my top spot as flagship from the Atlas Mk II. YEAH THAT'S RIGHT I SAID ATLAS MK II, WHATCHU GONNA DO ABOUT IT?! "D-tier" my ass. Two mjolnirs become FOUR mjolnirs when I fly that beast; I face onslaughts in an atlas Mk II on the regular and come out on top.
Also, no mention for the Falcon(P) variant? Four medium missiles on a cruiser may not be impressive right now, but that can be a LOT of spam for the deployment points.
Also also, seeing builds without maximum vents hurts my soul.
Claims "Put every ship tier list" and then goes and puts most of them in the "I don't know" category
Arguably, this is how 90% of players play the game.
I feel like you're judging the Gryphon unfairly. It's not made for dueling and face tanking. It's fantastic for swatting small craft and pressuring medium and large ships, while you send in the assassins. The autoforge is glorious for sustain when fighting outnumbered. You also absolutely need to try high tech frigates. Get wolf pack tactics and 8 aggressive officers. Stick them in Hyperions, Scarabs and Omens. In my last engagement, I had a Scarab and two omens piloted by the AI take out a Mora and an Eradicator, with almost no direction.
I always play the game the same way. One paragon supported by 10 eradicators equip with hypervelocity drivers.
It's a little bore, but at least I know I'll always win lol.
i had not long ago learnt to manage my builds according to the ships shield damage ratio and overall speed, if its a fast ship over 110 speed and has good shield like under 0.7 load it with hardened shields and send it to fight in the front and leave in the back slow ships with bad shields, then according to their wapon slots you either arm then for long range energy or ballistic weapons, and if they have missile perks and slots leave them be with resistant flux conduicts. ( most ranged have low flux dissipation)
overall a quick beginners tip
If you haven't given it a go build for junker vanguards with derilect ops, they are an amazing frigate swarm
How do you build your hammerheads? Wish you included more loadouts for these ships.
15:10 Heavy armor on Invictus, no armored weapon installed that increases armor by 1000 points.
Simply amazing, the best demonstration of competence and emotional subjectivity.
The main thing is to have a gaming chair.
If you can look at 14:27 i have 11500 armor meaning I have armored weapons mounts (you can scroll down the hullmods if you have a bunch)... 15:10 I swapped it fast so I can show you that it is good idea to find a place to put repair unit. But these days it is hard to pay attention am I right ? :) BTW recommend buying the gaming chair this one was not that expensive and is decently comfy
@@Uran92 For a narcissist like you, I wouldn't be surprised if you edited the video after the fact.
But the main thing is that I don't care if I'm already wrong and rationalize my failure, it's emotional, and therefore very respectable.
Built-in doors, yeah bro.
@@777CHEKIST777 😂
@@777CHEKIST777 Man you're steaming and it shows.
I put a bunch of defensive upgrades on a legion 14 during mostly vanilla run but with the Auroran mod. That thing shrugged off 4 catgirl nukes. I think the invictus could probably shrug off 6 at least.
Cool! Another oportunity to tell people online why their opinions are wrong!
xd
Monitor is s tier... defence. affixation ...attack....Omen...mix...
Smaller ships are more powerful but late game just don't have the punch but the three can do the role very very well. All very good with the right AI builds in each role.
End game when out numbered, I can't use the just small ships and have to move to larger, line fighting. Which is less fun
.....if you have any pointers let me know.
Monitors can really break the combat in this game if you know how. You can build them in a way where they can spend ages with their fortress shields up and survive literally minutes of combat with multiple other ships. What this means in practice is that for a mere cost of 6 DP you can tie down multiple enemy ships in combat and lead them away from your main force. Suddenly it's no longer an even fight between two fleets with 200DP, your 194DP fleet is now fighting 150DP worth of enemy ships, and the other 50 DP is chasing down that stupid little frigate that refuses to die. You suddenly have a massive advantage. Omens are capable of the same thing as long as their commander is cautious and they don't have a freak accident.
That's what I feel this video is missing. It doesn't talk at all about what the ships can do it fleet combat. But to be fair, I see so many people rate ships based on their 1v1 performance in a combat simulator, which is not an accurate metric. Easy trap to fall into.
YESSSSSS NEW VİDEO🎉
Gryphon is S tier no doubt. With harpoons and Squall + sabots it can easily overwhelm any PD setup except multiple Devastator or Guardians
Aurura is a fast brawler, if built correctly it can battle very wel in any situation - 1vs1, fleet vs fleet, 1vs many
Don't underestimate the kite. You can put reapers on them and put those reapers exactly where you want them. If you want them to be really interesting, you can up the maximum fleet capacity so you can have multiple waves of ships, hit and run tactics. Have a wave of reaper kites swoop in and destroy key ships in the enemy fleet and then retreat when they are out of ammo. Then call in your main battle fleet.
sounds like it's time for good old uran to do a wolfpack playthrough and get to know the frigates better. Omen is easy S tier. Lasher LP can do some stuff you wouldnt belive.
Is there a place I can see the names of the A list ships and some of the load outs ? I'm not familiar enough with the game to recognize the ships or weapons.
Doom and Conquest used to be Top Tier soloing whole enemy battle size when play correctly now it just pain to play
I would say that to get a better match up, you should pair 3 ships against 3 ships instead of 1v1 when comparing missiles ships. They have high burst but low sustain so you need enough mass power to do permanent damage in order to see their effect. 1 dragon fire torpedo damages shields. 3 dragon fire torpedos blow up the ship and then you have a 2v3. I usually give the griffon a squall and use it in a support role. It's job isn't to kill but to keep the enemy off and add to the pressure of the ship in front of it.
Given all of this, PD is still a little too much right now.
my favorite DAKKA is an excellent, in his majesty and in his afterbuner ... THE Enforcer!!!!!!!!!!!
Do a tierlist for the weapons
Will do :)
I'm fairly new, but imo:
Tempest deserves S-Tier (Not controversial I don't think)
Shade deserves A-Tier. I would personally put it above the omen.
I have no clue why everybody throws shade on the Shade(hah). It performs the same as the Omen for what everyone uses it for (glorified 6 Deploy Point point defense), but you can ALSO actually put weapons on it without the AI having an aneurysm, give it an attack command, and it'll prema-EMP or outright kill things above it's weight class. Maybe I just don't have enough late game experience yet or something, but so far in my playthrough this thing has not failed me and actively outperformed the omen from my experience. I feel like 2 extra deploy points is not a lot to ask for that value
good list! btw where is my s+ monitor tank?
To the notepad i go
dont, this guy has no idea what he is talking about. hes very very narrowminded and this list is absolutely terrible and completely wrong. read the comments of this video instead, learn from the people telling him why he is so wrong
There's a weird AI piloted variant of the Kite in the Tahlan Shipworks mod. They cost like 10 points to deploy and seem to believe they are frigate sized cruisers or something when picking fights. When they turn out to be more survivable than the rest of the fleet (including the flagship), I started stress testing them and eventually only died when surrounded in a fight against some redacted that's full of Alpha cores and was rated to give 100% extra XP. Turns out the answer to stupid shit YOLOing are another bunch of stupid shit YOLOing.
Pegasus and Gryphon are easily S+ Tier, Missiles are still uber meta even after all the nerfs
1 ai Pegasus can beat 2 onslaughts in simulation it's crazy, and gryphon can punch up like 20 DP
I'd like to see a tier list on the ships from ship and weapons pack
Dominator was my second ship i found in deep space. Had to restore the hull (20% less hull health) but I think I dont have to worry about dinky pirates saying hi
How big are the ships in star sector anyways? and how do they compare to ships in warhammer or starwars?
I think you're wrong about the griffin. they allow you to do absolutely crazy spam with torpedoes. They are not ships of the first league. because they simply cannot withstand a lot of damage. But as battleship support ships, they are great
Speaking about Persean League missile boats, I once died horribly (repeatedly) to this one Pegasus that had 2 Dragonfire and 2 Hydra large launchers. I had to somehow kill its escorts from standoff range using a waypoint before succeeding. This thing could single handedly kill off both my Conquests if they were occupied. A single large launcher is shit. 2 Large launchers are kinda okay. 4 Large launchers and you be like: Lets see your point defense do this load.
so you could do the legion strat with a heron also, its a fast ship so if you set defense targetting and give it 3 bombers then you are almost set (?
WTF! I didn't know that trick with the Legion!
I used phase ships for smuggling in the early game.
wish you talked about medusa it'a destroyer not frigate
I have not played with it that much so I did not have that strong opinion about it. But I decided that I will look into it more :)
This is a valid tier list if you are a B or C tier pilot.
What about the Grendel?
I hope you would make a deep dive into AI-piloted ships.
AI has their own shenanigans to deal with, I want to know how to use them to my advantage.
It would have been nice if you had at least tried out some more of the ships you don't normally use or done some research around in the community. It would be nice to know if there might be a gem hidden in there.
Much prefer the Eradicator over Eagle. Also cmon the Aurora with the types of weapons available is clearly S-Tier. But hey, I think Aurora makes more sense playing modded.
Eagle is a bread and butter. One of the best ships for a new player.
Fury is super good also. Maybe 20 points cost is a bit much, but it is still very playable both for self and for officer. I d put it on the same level as Eagle and Aurora (tho, Aurora needs too much DP, so, it is probably the lowest A)
Heron is not A tier. It is gAy tier. Just my opinion...
Ziggurat is typical anime boss. Strong when you fight him, kinda okay when you have him in your team.
Odyssey is the best ship in the game (for its cost), idk what to discuss here. Ok, one of two best ships. Paragon is also good, yeah. Tho Paragon was hurt much by skill reworks (lost speed).
Medusa, Tempest and Monitor are actually very good ships.
Eagles are safe and consistent and can be built for different purposes, that's why they are so good. You can make them into long range fire supports that will never die in combat and just kill the opponent's shields from a distance, while keeping out of range with their manouvering jets. You can also build them for more of an assault role, quickly swoop in with the jets and kill something in close combat with efficient weapons like chain guns, and they have just enough flux and tankiness to pull that off. And while they are not the best at any of those roles, they are good enough at all of them.
I think you underestimate Ziggurat a lot too. It is the single best ship in the game, and there's not even a competition. It's honestly so powerful it gets boring to use after a while. Let's put it this way: If Ziggurat didn't have it's ship system I would still consider it to be one of the best ships in the game, a phase capital ship with this kind of firepower and surprising levels of durability is ridiculously strong. Also if there was a ship in the game that did nothing else but use Ziggurat's ship system, and it cost 25DP to deploy, I would use it in every fight because that ship system is broken beyond belief. And the actual Ziggurat is BOTH OF THOSE THINGS at the same time, it's absurd. If you use this ship well you can keep two enemy ships almost permanently disabled, unable to move and shoot almost any of it's weapons, while yourself staying out of any danger and probably killing them from behind in the middle of all of it. Not that you even have to resort to any tricks like these, if you want you can literally duel any other ship in the game, frontally without any manouvering. Yes, even a paragon, and you will win every single time. Without using your ship system if you want to! I did this numerous times, I kept one ship disabled, and then I killed the other one myself from the front. 2 Tahyon lances and needlers is all you need to outduel any ship in the game, the phase cloak will ensure you will always be able to fire your weapons more often than your enemy, dodge whatever they fire back at you, and vent soft flux faster due to time dilation.
@@RiskOfBaer I dont underestimate it, i just keep in mind its DP cost. Scale Odyssey stats to 75 DP, and they will be at least equal. At most Odyssey will be better.
@@DenisLyametsIn a fleet, Odyssey is just an okay ship. I will take AI Ziggurat any time compared to Odyssey.
Herons are something that's best used with fighters, and can be effective in dealing with frigates when properly leveraged.
Mora and Legion, if they are expected to engage other ships with other weapons, can get away with mostly bombers with homing weapons or torpedoes at close range and saturate with their own missile mounts.
Talons are something to not underestimate as they can be dangerous to poorly shielded frigates given swarmer missiles are buffed to use HE damage instead of Frag. At that same time excessive use would hurt the fighter replenishment if the bays are constantly active replacing them.
God I miss the OG Pegasus when it first came out.
When it had .2 more shield efficiency and 15 more speed? Irrelevant changes that barely affected its missile power, ie its main thing.
Odyssey being anything less than A-tier ain’t it. Aurora is clearly S-tier.
thx bro gl hf pew pew message to increase video rating
🔥ATLAS MK.XIV 🔥
Blue Danube S tier
Ranking odyssey and base eradicator below S is very dishonorable. Odyssey is aurora if it grew up in america. Big stupid dildo going at mach 10 on its way to spontaneously combust the closest enemy.
Ody against battleships:🗿
Ody against fast ships:🗿
Ody against remnant:🗿
If you cant outdakka the enemy you are for sure faster than it. And if they are faster(wich they wont be for long) you can light them up.
Base eradicator is basically tf2 heavy. Stupid firepower, stupid tank and its fairly spammable. Yet to meet a foe who can outsmart bullet. Couple it with eagle and you have a very mobile wall that will obliterate basically everything. High tech yolo? The eagle shield soaks up dmg like a sponge. Low tech junkfest? Parry the hvd mauler combo you filthy pirate. Midline missile spam? 2 words: vulcan cannon. Hell i sometimes give up missiles and use wasp on my ai eradicators since they are cheap, provide pd, fighter cover and they dont use crew
Attlas MK.II this low? Never soloed a paragon with it I suppose?
astral still S tier change my mind lol
Odyssey is a better broadside ship than the Conquest in every way.
ziggy op
Can you suggest mods to unfuck missiles and carriers, U?
What, buff them? No need for a mod to do that, just go into the files and play around with the values until you feel they are where you want them to be. It's all quite literally in plan text.
@@RiskOfBaer Well, you need to start somewhere... Cheers!
AURORA S TIER
15:32 woaaa defensive targeting array looks cool!
Yeah when I first played with I thought: OH that is genius !
MGQ pfp spotted, based person detected.
Honestly if you can only make your fleets work at 1000 DP, your fleets suck. Your perspective on what normal Starsector is has been skewed. Nothing about 1000DP even resembles vanilla, so this isn't a vanilla tier list. This is a modded tier list with vanilla ships, not a vanilla ship tier list.
Noooo!!! look how he butcher my dearest Lasher and Medusa! B tier.
Man, get OVER the Hurricane. If you want something like it use a Hydra. It has the added benefit of being semi independently maneuverable and it ignores most point defence, plus it splits shield focus. Sorry that all your builds are broken because one weapon is nerfed. Maybe try better builds.
18:15 extended missile racks on the Paragon, instead of the missile autoloader. Yes, yes, a chair.
NAGATO!!!!!!11111
Oh
new player list lol
Funny, i think Champion is one of the worst ships in the game. A brick profile with size comparable to capitals, low-tech flux and shield but high tech armor and system. After Hurricane nerf(at this point all it does is tax AI ships with OP while doing nothing) that large misile slot will be empty most of the time. Eagle can snipe and put pressure, dom can shield shunt and pew-pew with 2 mjornirs + 3 reaper in case something big came close, aurora can get SO stuff. Champ can poke some lonely shuttle with HIL but that it.
Try a long range build, Squall, HIL, Graviton beams, tac lasers (or LRPD for lower flux) add Integrated Targeting and Advanced Optics and watch this thing delete frigates, destroyers and cruisers from long range. With some support they can also help take down caps and stations too.
@@BobfromSydney eagle just do it better and cheaper DP-wise. Also AI eagle manage to survive almost anything, something that champion struggle with.
@@ptirodaktill Fair point, the Eagle has been buffed a lot since 0.95 I guess I'm just holding on to some old prejudices.