If you put weapons classified as "Strike" on your afflictors (preferably some anti-armor ones), they will more reliably try to manouver to a weakpoint in the enemy shields. Even when they have good coverage omni shields. Pirate Afflictors are awesome to tie down Remnant fleets since they'll be phasing and dodging a lot of incoming fire, effectively avoidance tanking them. So your murderball of capitals can go to town on smaller groups of Remnants. With Phase tuning skill on your character, Combat Endurance on your officer pilots and Hardened Subsystems hullmod, your Afflictors can even out-endurance the enemy ships, meaning you can cripple and kill a fleet without risking much at all. I've found Steady and Cautious officers to work great in that role, since when you see an opening and give them an order to eliminate a ship that has broken off from the herd, they act with just as much aggression as an aggressive or reckless one
I have a soft spot in my heart for the XIVth Legion variant for personal control. Beyond the nostalgia value of being the capital I ran in my first campaign, having the 2 large missile mounts with 4 fighter wings and the bulkyness of the whole thing, it's really a joy to captain. Goes toe to toe with just about the heaviest ships in the sector and can tank with the best of them and have flux to spare. I haven't even tried it now that it (and my beloved ciclone reaper launchers) has been buffed, but I assume they're *even* more of a comfy ride.
I remember getting a mission to scan a derelect ship really into a playthrough that sent me nearly out to the outer rim, at the heart of the system, within nearly within the event horizon of a black hole was a xiv legion carrier. I won the dice roll, and it was restored. It's moments of RNJesus like that that tell stories... I was ambushed by independent bounty hunters upon leaving the system for neglecting to deliver 800 food like, several months ago, and couldnt outrun them thanks to the legion being slow as a fucking stone. Softlocked for life.
@@aisir3725 IIRC there's a few spawns guaranteed for the XIV Legion per sector, which is why it shows up much more often than other capitals if you survey the entire sector.
I got a Paragon about 30 minutes into buying the game from a random spawn derelict. It had three Tach Lances, a Graviton, and like 5 Tactical Lasers. Absolutely ruined my ability to play ship combat from there on out. I still haven't recovered.
Does anybody else always get a 13th battle group Legion as the first capital ship you found floating about I've had one every single time I start a new game
Pirate Afflictors are so underated Low deployment cost, easy to manage logistics, and the AI does a surprising great job piloting it even without officers. Easily the best ship if you want to make a phase wolf pack fleet. It is not so good at the hands of the player, yes, but it being cheap + easy to find in black market planets with high populations makes them really amazing at any stage of the game. I personally use a harbinger with adaptive phase coils as my flagship to make the job afflictors and the achors of my fleet easier
Legions honestly feel like the Jupiter class battlestar’s from battlestar Galactica especially if you fit them with flak but their role is nearly identical being low tech heavy warships that can carry a large amount of fighters and can meme any missile based ships (cylons). This also means that my XIV legions tend to be named after Jupiter battlestars and the high tech equivalent from HTE the Spire named after later Mercury class battlestars which fits being much more high tech and heavily armed tho technically would be more accurate to be midline at most given neither ship uses energy weapons or even shields just stupid thicc armor and heavy ballistic guns but yeah I just love this idea a lot lol
Thank you for showing me the power of light needlers with ballistic rangefinger. I just tried using 3 light needlers with 2 hellbore cannons and pilums on dominator and it works like a charm.
loving the new(?) ambient music that played during when you were talking about the ship builds, that's either new or i just never hear it since i have music off. loved the interesting composition you brought to the table and your chill voice. thanks!
if ai officer(and modded in this instance) ive found 2 needlers, 2 two rarog atomic emitters(or similar) and burst pd laser in the turret works pretty good. with among other advanced optics hullmod, all weapons landed at ~700 range, avoiding most of the brawling and large ship/station explosions. if you run the ship in a little wolfpack, its well protected and the debuff and damage output is great
I wish you did more the videos where you talk about the loadouts and stuff. For me, there is no better feeling like the one, when one learns about something cool and very enjoyable after a day of hard work
This is a real treat! My favorite flagship getting a video all to itself! Really like the new loadouts for it as well- I've been going around with the loadout you made back in your unedited rambling vid.
I've never thought Afflictor would be that good in Ordo fights, especially the pirate one. You know, 'Pirate' tag often refers to something more inferior, cheap and negative... not only in starsector but also in most of other games too lol Thanks for showing some good fight and nice video of them (+about Legion too) Yeah, as you mentioned when talking about Ballistic Rangefinder, I also think regular Legion is actually more suitable with long range build since it can get full bonus of ballistic rangefinder and can only focus on ballistic weapons without missiles, unlike XIV. The issue is unlike conquests Legion can't change frontline fluidly so if AI misbehave, enemy fleet somehow decide to focus on single ship at the side or frontline get disrupted by any reason there is a high chance of losing the fight, since once overwhelmed long-range builds doesn't have a DPS and Flux efficiency to fend them off before other ships get there to support it. Actually the moment when 2 Novas targeted a Legion at the start of fight it was quite dangerous, if player didn't manage to manually kill them all they might focus together on single ship and start to kill one by one. Most of major loss happen in Ordo fight caused because of it, and it is really difficult to avoid in only hands of AI without player controlled ship.
I loved Afflictors for such a long time. They have been relegated to AI support ships for a while for me. My next phase ship I have Have been diving into is the Harbinger destroyer. It's special ability is to overload an enemy ship for just a moment (literally a second or less). Sounds crap, HOWEVER that means ZERO shields and guns/PD for the enemy in the moment you unphase and strike. I have been having fun in two directions with this. One is just like your afflictor You put strike weapons and/or anti-armor (armor stripping) weapons on it because all you are hitting is armor or a long cooldown, high damage Phase Lance or AMB, because you are only peaking out to strike for a moment. This is HIGHLY compounded if you wait to strike until just after an afflictor kiss. Paragons HATE this one simple trick. The other really funny build is better suited to fleet support, but it's fun. You load it up with Ion weapons of your preferred flavor (I find Pulsers to be the best). Overload them, then Ion the crap out of them. They come back online a second later and put their shields up, sure, but NONE of their guns work and their engines are usually down...if they dont have 360 shields then they are done moving for the fight if you personally stay on their tail with the Ions, or have an AI ship with ions (they seem to like the butt). I am still messing with it. Do I go big damage, do I armor-strip with mining or REDACTED and then use HE weapons like the autolance, do I ONLY armorstrip and use the Harby as a pure defense-nullification ship while my fleet does the heavy lifting (makes HE fighters and bombers CRAZY effective btw), are heavyblasters better than AMB for longer fights? It is fun and I kinda want to force it to work....I have to get off the DOOM/afflictor when I run phase fleets, off the Odyssey/Paragon in hightech, etc etc, and mix it up with ships I dont see as often. Great vid, M8. Frigate wolfpacks need the love and attention in this game.
reminder that pirate aflictor has 2 less universal mounts and 15 less ordenance point for a 4dp reduction, meaning pirate version bad for damage, good if you spam them and good if you only care about the system
to be fair, its also nice to have less slots if you dont want it spending the flux too aggressively, 15op can only do so much with 2 weapons and the flux to fire them (of course you could just out low op missiles there to ignore those downsides completely)
@@cookies23z i mean you could just, not use the slots , also i find the ordenance more useful since it means the system which works from the reference frame of the source ship(wiki)its active for longer, the assassin 360 no scope build its cool not gonna lie, but it cant possibly match the firepower of a dedicated ship or a capital (or a modded ship) and the ai cant usually manage, i mostly run 1 token point defense and 1 short range gun so it gets closer and activates the system, and a bunch of useful mods/smods.the only upside of pirate is that you can just put whatever and then spam them, but they last less and you really really want that +50% damage on enemy capitals
Could you make a video about fleet size, battle size, and deployment points for the purposes of minmaxing combat? I think I finally wrapped my head around it but there's probably stuff I'm missing.
Im always surprised how theres always people who play this game that have some insane combat tactics. Recently i found you can fight almost every enemy with a paragon alone.
id worry about getting swarmed by stuff with a single paragon, but most pirate fleets would lose to it depending on build so yeah its a solid baseline. If you really want to just use paragon, pair it with an omen or two and be (Almost) really invincible as the omens can keep your ass safe and nuke fighters and missiles for you, keeping your flux down and letting you skimp on some pd.
When Industrial Evo will get 0.96 update (old versions crash when you try to salvage mining/research/any other station) I wanted to start as Tri-Tachyon and create perfect frigate+carrier swarm, hovewer this whole Legion buff makes me want to become IRS with Hegemony and Iron Shell XIV battlegroup. But personally i dont like low-tech, high-tech best tech (some midline modded ships are OK, especially LCR industries.
As you started to put out more videos lately, I sincerely hope there comes a competitor Starsector channel called "Small Brain Energy". And of course they'd only be giving bad advice out.
You should really be using the XIVth Legion and the point defence focused build in this fleet (nothing really beats 1000 range Heavy Machine Guns with your choice of finishers). As for the fighters they are more of a personal flavor but I like the Lux Heavy Fighters (no crew losses and flares are easier to manage).
Have you tested this trick with the elite air defense skill and the Integrated Point Defense AI module? Your Small Needlers gain 200 range. I don’t know how this fits with a ballistic rangefinder. But the built-in Integrated Point Defense AI accurately increases the range of all small guns with elite air defense skill.
A question: Kinda got to wonder why you have Pilums. EMP is already covered by Claws. If you wanted missiles, you could have remove a few vulcans for actual missiles. If you didn't want missiles, you could remove the Pilums and put it into more caps or hull mods.
Claws are good but they are often not targeting the same thing as the legion itself. On top of that you're getting loitering munitions that distract enemy pd, no missile racks or flux needed. Plus 500 fragmentation damage is nothing to sneeze at (5:25). For 7 op they pull their weight.
The all three S-mods reminds me of my absolute NEED to get all my ships up to 100% CR fleetwide, and thus installing S-mods when I can just for that juicy extra CR. Yeah I play high-tech, how can you tell?
I cheat with the console mod all the time just to experiment with ship loadouts, whether it be actual loadouts that can be obtained in vanilla starsector or completely busted shit with missile autoforge and targeting supercomputer edit: thoughts on hyperion? it's my favorite frigate but you didn't mention it while talking about good frigates edit 2: 12:42 earlier today i was wondering why my autopulse lasers were shooting at a corpse, and eventually found out there was a terminator drone stuck inside of it :p edit 3: got another opinion question for you, thanks for speading awareness of smodded ARU, but do you think smodded expanded mags is also pretty strong? I love combining it with autopulse/ionpulse/mining blaster spam
This is really interesting following NB7979’s video, you both clearly have the same information but you have taken it in entirely different directions, your tactics are much more aggressive.
Hey can you do a video on the new syndic ditka ships. I got one from a quest and I'm not doing so hot with it. So how do I outfit it and all that good jazz
@@bigbrainenergyguy As is apparently the developers' intent with these ships, LG variants are comically ineffective when compared to their standard variants. Ignoring the executor for a moment, every other LG variant includes not only the built in D-mods, but also the built-in solar shielding AT COST, which even fucking luddic path safety overrides don't do. This means that, for regular variants, LG ships are exclusively worse on all stats, come with default D-mods regardless of ship quality and have way less OP due to the solar shielding. Their sole advantage compared to regular variants is that you can technically use 1+ story point to build-in the solar shielding for free*, which isn't nearly as good as to make the whole sacrifice worth it. In the executor's case, they also swapped the thing that makes the pegasus good (fast missile racks and large missile mounts) with something entirely unfit for it (large energy mounts and energy focus). With the pegasus' sub-par flux stats, and general loadout, the substitution of flux-free missiles for flux hungry energy weapons gravely fucks up its' general viability, beyond the already bad default characteristics of LG variants. It really makes you wonder how the diktat ever managed to fight off the Heg if they're so comically inept in technical matters to the point of being worse than luddite terrorists.
Do you think that Armored Weapon Mounts S mod bonus on Tahyon pargaon is worth it? It is only 10%, but at the end of the day 4 lances is almost all you're gonna shoot and shoot it you will.
What is good about needlers? I compare them to light autocannons and they seem incredibly similar but much more expensive in ordnance points, what is it that makes needlers worth the cost?
Forgot to add this in my initial comment, but what are some tips to keep in mind when putting together Phase ships? I really like the idea of building a fleet based around the various abilities phase ships get, but I have no idea where to start, or if it would be functional in any way.
Well the first thing to know is there are not a lot of Phase Ships unless you've got that one mod that makes a whole fuckin' bunch. Still, theyre typified by being far more vulnerable, but phenominally more mobile than shield based ships. They work MUCH better when they have shield based ships to compliment them (if you really must, consider taking various phase SKIMMERS like the Wolf and Medua, and it's worth mentioning the Scarab possesses a unique ability that allows it to 'slow' time in a similar fashion as phase systems do. "only phase" is a fun play style, the Revenant is a pretty decent multipurpose logistics ship so don't be afraid to pick it up. One of the boons of the fleet is, if everything's a phase ship, your sensor profile is nill. You're effectively invisible, and if you build for speed, your unlikely to ever be in a situation you can't run from.
The afflictor is one of the few ships I simply do not trust AI to pilot without specifically designing it to be a disposable piece of crap that can give me ONE good opening. There's plenty of phase ships where the AI is better than me at flying them, Doom comes to mind, when I fly a Doom I stick a bunch of missiles on the front, launch a volley of decoys, phase, make a minefield, then fly around back and pump torps into the butt of any shit trying to guard from all sides. The AI is a lot more sophisticated than that and I can rely on it to make smart choices with that ship. Not the afflictor. Sure, the timing with the entropy tool is *LITERALLY* them cheating, they read the imput window like theyre a fighting game computer. But the AI doesnt have the brains to do with the Afflictor what they'll do with the Doom, or phase skimmers like the wolf and medusa -- it takes AGES for them to say "oh wait I can enter the no-clip dimension and swing behind this ship and kill it with these missiles instantly". They'll do the "phase ship shuffle" where they'll just strafe, in phase, doing dick all. As for the legion, it's an Astral but with lower deployment value, more reliable personal offense, and survivability. You can run that thing with 2 xyphos and 2 trident, deploy 4 of them on an ordo or two and watch them clean house. All carrier ships work very well with the afflictor though, since they cover for it's major weakness in that it's made of papermache. With a screen of fighters, and a massive offensive threat to try and defend from most ships arent equipped to target everything so the afflictor can swing in, do its dirty, then swing out.
Giving Afflictors to a reckless officer who doesnt have Field Modulation elited for faster phase cloak cooldown is a recipe for disaster as they will suicide into enemy fleets with their cloak on cd and pants down A non-reckless officer with: Combat Endurance (if you elite this, and have a Cautious officer your Afflictors will have excellent surviving power as they can phase away when hurt and repair hull) Field Modulation - Elited, a really good skill for most setups in the game Target Analysis - great skill on any officer to have Gunnery Implants - preferably elited for the huge ECM bonus, the range helps them to be effective at ranges where they can still dodge Helmsmanship - for that juicy, juicy manouverability boost so the Afflictors can turn on a dime and dodge nearly all incoming fire has a good core to be fitted into an Afflictor fleet, the other skills make it even better but the Afflictor thrives on these 5. Which are generic enough that you can take those officers and stick them into just about most ships to have them do well. Having instant hit Strike weapons is what i've found work best on the Afflictors, this makes the AI behave in the perfect way to make the ship shine.
Hi, rescently I tried one mission from one good mod. Yes, mod. The mission was in killing a supercapital from that mod. And I lost. Two times a row. So, how would you kill a supercapital? Without officers and s-mods. And with a 200 (there is actually 150dp limit, but this is impossible) dp fleet out of random ships. Oh, and I am talking about Solvernia from UAF if you actually want to answer me.
Is there a reason you took armored weapon mounts over resistant flux conduits? with impact mitigation and resistant flux conduits, wont that make your weapons immune to EMP entirely? I'm pretty new to Starsector so sorry if I'm missing something obvious here. Also, would it be worth squeezing on ECCM package instead by dropping the vulcans to normal machine guns and dropping a point of capacitors? Are the Pilums worth buffing that way?
I can walk you through why I built it this way, and clear up a couple game mechanics while I’m at it: Damage reduction doesn’t work like that, you can’t get immunity to anything. If you reduce 100 damage by 50% it becomes 50, then 50% again it becomes 25. AWM provides better protection for the weapons because normal damage can disable them when armour is stripped off. There are good reasons to take RFC over AWM, but in this case I want the 10% extra armour and reduced recoil (shot spread). For ECCM it’s decent with pilums but not as cheap as you think. Hullmods get more expensive on larger ships. For the legion it’s 20 points, not just 5. If I had 5 pilums it’d be more worth it but that’s not the direction I went.
@@bigbrainenergyguy Ah I see. Makes sense why the AWM then. I knew the ECCM was 20, I meant if it was worth replacing AWM then dropping 5 OP for ECCM but I realize that is not worth it at all so nvm. Thanks for responding.
Against about 2 Ordos around 900 total DP, XIV will work well without worrying of running out of missiles if you choose both EMR and officer missile skill. (If you use Reaper, you only need one of them since Cyclone Reaper has far more total reserved damage than Hurricane or Hammer). More than +3 large Ordos (+1300 total DP ships), you need very special fleet composition and tactic though. Not only missiles, but CR and accumulated damage on armor and hull becomes problematic at such long and consuming fight.
does advanced turret gyros really work like that ? it says "5% more dmg to SMALLER SHIPS, per size CLASS of difference" this means to me in terms of the legion (because i CANNOT read any other way to read that tooltip), 0% against capitals (legion is a capital class ship), 5% against cruisers, 10% against destroyers, 15% against frigates, this is the only way for me for it to make sense
@@bigbrainenergyguy Crutch? I just burn drive to point blank and shoot reapers kamikaze style haha. It feels like shooting a pump action shotgun in FPS games lol
biggest of brains what are your takes on fighters, the forums are scarce for them and broadswords flux dissipation makes me convinced its overrated trash
![High-tech and Low-tech set aside their differences and delete some [Redacted]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/tmIZX63peyY/mqdefault.jpg)
The fact that you didn't put legions in the first row feels utterly wrong
If you put weapons classified as "Strike" on your afflictors (preferably some anti-armor ones), they will more reliably try to manouver to a weakpoint in the enemy shields. Even when they have good coverage omni shields. Pirate Afflictors are awesome to tie down Remnant fleets since they'll be phasing and dodging a lot of incoming fire, effectively avoidance tanking them. So your murderball of capitals can go to town on smaller groups of Remnants. With Phase tuning skill on your character, Combat Endurance on your officer pilots and Hardened Subsystems hullmod, your Afflictors can even out-endurance the enemy ships, meaning you can cripple and kill a fleet without risking much at all. I've found Steady and Cautious officers to work great in that role, since when you see an opening and give them an order to eliminate a ship that has broken off from the herd, they act with just as much aggression as an aggressive or reckless one
Seeing hellbores make armour hits shot after shot is so satisfying
Is good to see pillums being use, thats the kind of lowteach brick wall that I love to see... the mix of phase ships makes this build pretty unique
I have a soft spot in my heart for the XIVth Legion variant for personal control. Beyond the nostalgia value of being the capital I ran in my first campaign, having the 2 large missile mounts with 4 fighter wings and the bulkyness of the whole thing, it's really a joy to captain. Goes toe to toe with just about the heaviest ships in the sector and can tank with the best of them and have flux to spare.
I haven't even tried it now that it (and my beloved ciclone reaper launchers) has been buffed, but I assume they're *even* more of a comfy ride.
I remember getting a mission to scan a derelect ship really into a playthrough that sent me nearly out to the outer rim, at the heart of the system, within nearly within the event horizon of a black hole was a xiv legion carrier. I won the dice roll, and it was restored. It's moments of RNJesus like that that tell stories...
I was ambushed by independent bounty hunters upon leaving the system for neglecting to deliver 800 food like, several months ago, and couldnt outrun them thanks to the legion being slow as a fucking stone. Softlocked for life.
Is 14th legion the most common capital class derelict to spawn? It very much feels like it, i find one early on in every my playthrough
@@aisir3725 IIRC there's a few spawns guaranteed for the XIV Legion per sector, which is why it shows up much more often than other capitals if you survey the entire sector.
I got a Paragon about 30 minutes into buying the game from a random spawn derelict. It had three Tach Lances, a Graviton, and like 5 Tactical Lasers.
Absolutely ruined my ability to play ship combat from there on out. I still haven't recovered.
Loving this channel.
The Legion has always been a fave of mine and to see them do well is great.
Does anybody else always get a 13th battle group Legion as the first capital ship you found floating about I've had one every single time I start a new game
i've hit a dry spell, but borrowing hegemony legions is pretty cheap, those inspection fleets weren't using them anyhow
Their is about 4 14th battle group legions scattered around the sector during the start of your game!
Got two on this run... And a endeavor...
@@genericname6167 I have sadly been taking a break for starsector I did about 3 campaigns in a row to make up with the years of just watching it 😭
Pirate Afflictors are so underated
Low deployment cost, easy to manage logistics, and the AI does a surprising great job piloting it even without officers. Easily the best ship if you want to make a phase wolf pack fleet. It is not so good at the hands of the player, yes, but it being cheap + easy to find in black market planets with high populations makes them really amazing at any stage of the game. I personally use a harbinger with adaptive phase coils as my flagship to make the job afflictors and the achors of my fleet easier
Legions honestly feel like the Jupiter class battlestar’s from battlestar Galactica especially if you fit them with flak but their role is nearly identical being low tech heavy warships that can carry a large amount of fighters and can meme any missile based ships (cylons). This also means that my XIV legions tend to be named after Jupiter battlestars and the high tech equivalent from HTE the Spire named after later Mercury class battlestars which fits being much more high tech and heavily armed tho technically would be more accurate to be midline at most given neither ship uses energy weapons or even shields just stupid thicc armor and heavy ballistic guns but yeah I just love this idea a lot lol
Thank you for showing me the power of light needlers with ballistic rangefinger. I just tried using 3 light needlers with 2 hellbore cannons and pilums on dominator and it works like a charm.
loving the new(?) ambient music that played during when you were talking about the ship builds, that's either new or i just never hear it since i have music off. loved the interesting composition you brought to the table and your chill voice. thanks!
Man, as a low-tech enthusiast, I've never even given the Afflictor (or most phase ships) a real look. I'm going to have to change that next run!
if ai officer(and modded in this instance) ive found 2 needlers, 2 two rarog atomic emitters(or similar) and burst pd laser in the turret works pretty good. with among other advanced optics hullmod, all weapons landed at ~700 range, avoiding most of the brawling and large ship/station explosions. if you run the ship in a little wolfpack, its well protected and the debuff and damage output is great
I wish you did more the videos where you talk about the loadouts and stuff. For me, there is no better feeling like the one, when one learns about something cool and very enjoyable after a day of hard work
This is a real treat! My favorite flagship getting a video all to itself! Really like the new loadouts for it as well- I've been going around with the loadout you made back in your unedited rambling vid.
XIV Legion was my first capitol in unmodded, think they had a bunch of needlers, hammer barrage, and cobras (and some PD too). There was much boom.
I've never thought Afflictor would be that good in Ordo fights, especially the pirate one. You know, 'Pirate' tag often refers to something more inferior, cheap and negative... not only in starsector but also in most of other games too lol Thanks for showing some good fight and nice video of them (+about Legion too)
Yeah, as you mentioned when talking about Ballistic Rangefinder, I also think regular Legion is actually more suitable with long range build since it can get full bonus of ballistic rangefinder and can only focus on ballistic weapons without missiles, unlike XIV. The issue is unlike conquests Legion can't change frontline fluidly so if AI misbehave, enemy fleet somehow decide to focus on single ship at the side or frontline get disrupted by any reason there is a high chance of losing the fight, since once overwhelmed long-range builds doesn't have a DPS and Flux efficiency to fend them off before other ships get there to support it. Actually the moment when 2 Novas targeted a Legion at the start of fight it was quite dangerous, if player didn't manage to manually kill them all they might focus together on single ship and start to kill one by one. Most of major loss happen in Ordo fight caused because of it, and it is really difficult to avoid in only hands of AI without player controlled ship.
idk pirate falcon is pretty dented
@@kermitthefrog1176 ah, I love my falcon(p) even if it isnt "that good"
@@cookies23z it is literally one of the best cruisers, its up there with base eradicator, aurora and champion
I remember that I used to shun pirate and luddic path ships until somebody introduced me to the glory which is (LP) Lasher and I've never looked back.
I also love flying my little afflictor. It is just fun being an unhittable glas cannon ^^
I loved Afflictors for such a long time. They have been relegated to AI support ships for a while for me. My next phase ship I have Have been diving into is the Harbinger destroyer. It's special ability is to overload an enemy ship for just a moment (literally a second or less). Sounds crap, HOWEVER that means ZERO shields and guns/PD for the enemy in the moment you unphase and strike. I have been having fun in two directions with this. One is just like your afflictor
You put strike weapons and/or anti-armor (armor stripping) weapons on it because all you are hitting is armor or a long cooldown, high damage Phase Lance or AMB, because you are only peaking out to strike for a moment. This is HIGHLY compounded if you wait to strike until just after an afflictor kiss. Paragons HATE this one simple trick.
The other really funny build is better suited to fleet support, but it's fun. You load it up with Ion weapons of your preferred flavor (I find Pulsers to be the best). Overload them, then Ion the crap out of them. They come back online a second later and put their shields up, sure, but NONE of their guns work and their engines are usually down...if they dont have 360 shields then they are done moving for the fight if you personally stay on their tail with the Ions, or have an AI ship with ions (they seem to like the butt).
I am still messing with it. Do I go big damage, do I armor-strip with mining or REDACTED and then use HE weapons like the autolance, do I ONLY armorstrip and use the Harby as a pure defense-nullification ship while my fleet does the heavy lifting (makes HE fighters and bombers CRAZY effective btw), are heavyblasters better than AMB for longer fights? It is fun and I kinda want to force it to work....I have to get off the DOOM/afflictor when I run phase fleets, off the Odyssey/Paragon in hightech, etc etc, and mix it up with ships I dont see as often.
Great vid, M8. Frigate wolfpacks need the love and attention in this game.
reminder that pirate aflictor has 2 less universal mounts and 15 less ordenance point for a 4dp reduction, meaning pirate version bad for damage, good if you spam them and good if you only care about the system
to be fair, its also nice to have less slots if you dont want it spending the flux too aggressively, 15op can only do so much with 2 weapons and the flux to fire them (of course you could just out low op missiles there to ignore those downsides completely)
@@cookies23z i mean you could just, not use the slots , also i find the ordenance more useful since it means the system which works from the reference frame of the source ship(wiki)its active for longer, the assassin 360 no scope build its cool not gonna lie, but it cant possibly match the firepower of a dedicated ship or a capital (or a modded ship) and the ai cant usually manage, i mostly run 1 token point defense and 1 short range gun so it gets closer and activates the system, and a bunch of useful mods/smods.the only upside of pirate is that you can just put whatever and then spam them, but they last less and you really really want that +50% damage on enemy capitals
Could you make a video about fleet size, battle size, and deployment points for the purposes of minmaxing combat? I think I finally wrapped my head around it but there's probably stuff I'm missing.
This looks like a Scientific Research, not a vid "Ha ha look at my good fleet and piloting skills!". Good job!
Im always surprised how theres always people who play this game that have some insane combat tactics. Recently i found you can fight almost every enemy with a paragon alone.
id worry about getting swarmed by stuff with a single paragon, but most pirate fleets would lose to it depending on build so yeah its a solid baseline. If you really want to just use paragon, pair it with an omen or two and be (Almost) really invincible as the omens can keep your ass safe and nuke fighters and missiles for you, keeping your flux down and letting you skimp on some pd.
GG homie. I really appreciate this setup 🤝
When Industrial Evo will get 0.96 update (old versions crash when you try to salvage mining/research/any other station) I wanted to start as Tri-Tachyon and create perfect frigate+carrier swarm, hovewer this whole Legion buff makes me want to become IRS with Hegemony and Iron Shell XIV battlegroup. But personally i dont like low-tech, high-tech best tech (some midline modded ships are OK, especially LCR industries.
"Legions and... afflictors? Does not compute!" - AI, probably.
As you started to put out more videos lately, I sincerely hope there comes a competitor Starsector channel called "Small Brain Energy". And of course they'd only be giving bad advice out.
You should really be using the XIVth Legion and the point defence focused build in this fleet (nothing really beats 1000 range Heavy Machine Guns with your choice of finishers). As for the fighters they are more of a personal flavor but I like the Lux Heavy Fighters (no crew losses and flares are easier to manage).
Yknow, I never thought of Ordos as like bossfights.
Have you tested this trick with the elite air defense skill and the Integrated Point Defense AI module?
Your Small Needlers gain 200 range. I don’t know how this fits with a ballistic rangefinder.
But the built-in Integrated Point Defense AI accurately increases the range of all small guns with elite air defense skill.
Nice if you bring the max fleet size up I bet adding one Astral running a full set of tridents would just send waves of death with the recall device.
This is an appreciable set up for mid game while colonies are growing and finances aren't exactly large to support a large fleet.
Two ordos with a single radiant and not that many Cruisers either is like, 1.1 ordos 😂
Still, very good afflictor use!
A question: Kinda got to wonder why you have Pilums. EMP is already covered by Claws. If you wanted missiles, you could have remove a few vulcans for actual missiles. If you didn't want missiles, you could remove the Pilums and put it into more caps or hull mods.
Claws are good but they are often not targeting the same thing as the legion itself. On top of that you're getting loitering munitions that distract enemy pd, no missile racks or flux needed. Plus 500 fragmentation damage is nothing to sneeze at (5:25). For 7 op they pull their weight.
Cool builds!
Big leg energy
The all three S-mods reminds me of my absolute NEED to get all my ships up to 100% CR fleetwide, and thus installing S-mods when I can just for that juicy extra CR. Yeah I play high-tech, how can you tell?
The Nova melts if you focus fighters on it. The AI is perfectly able to exploit the nova's weaknesses without the player piloting any ship.
I cheat with the console mod all the time just to experiment with ship loadouts, whether it be actual loadouts that can be obtained in vanilla starsector or completely busted shit with missile autoforge and targeting supercomputer
edit: thoughts on hyperion? it's my favorite frigate but you didn't mention it while talking about good frigates
edit 2: 12:42 earlier today i was wondering why my autopulse lasers were shooting at a corpse, and eventually found out there was a terminator drone stuck inside of it :p
edit 3: got another opinion question for you, thanks for speading awareness of smodded ARU, but do you think smodded expanded mags is also pretty strong? I love combining it with autopulse/ionpulse/mining blaster spam
This is really interesting following NB7979’s video, you both clearly have the same information but you have taken it in entirely different directions, your tactics are much more aggressive.
You definatly need make video about hyperion.
Things that you can do when piloting it is crazy, an AI good at it too, but yeah, it ain't cheap
Hey can you do a video on the new syndic ditka ships. I got one from a quest and I'm not doing so hot with it. So how do I outfit it and all that good jazz
I’ll probably include it in a future video. I haven’t quite found something I’m happy with for the executor.
@@bigbrainenergyguy As is apparently the developers' intent with these ships, LG variants are comically ineffective when compared to their standard variants. Ignoring the executor for a moment, every other LG variant includes not only the built in D-mods, but also the built-in solar shielding AT COST, which even fucking luddic path safety overrides don't do.
This means that, for regular variants, LG ships are exclusively worse on all stats, come with default D-mods regardless of ship quality and have way less OP due to the solar shielding. Their sole advantage compared to regular variants is that you can technically use 1+ story point to build-in the solar shielding for free*, which isn't nearly as good as to make the whole sacrifice worth it.
In the executor's case, they also swapped the thing that makes the pegasus good (fast missile racks and large missile mounts) with something entirely unfit for it (large energy mounts and energy focus). With the pegasus' sub-par flux stats, and general loadout, the substitution of flux-free missiles for flux hungry energy weapons gravely fucks up its' general viability, beyond the already bad default characteristics of LG variants.
It really makes you wonder how the diktat ever managed to fight off the Heg if they're so comically inept in technical matters to the point of being worse than luddite terrorists.
at 11:39 would it be a good idea to swap into a legion and destroy the nova corpse? to clear out sightlines?
Do you think that Armored Weapon Mounts S mod bonus on Tahyon pargaon is worth it?
It is only 10%, but at the end of the day 4 lances is almost all you're gonna shoot and shoot it you will.
What is good about needlers? I compare them to light autocannons and they seem incredibly similar but much more expensive in ordnance points, what is it that makes needlers worth the cost?
Burst damage so you can overload shields, and with the legion and afflictor it's a case of having the ordinance points but not enough hard points.
PLEASE BE LOUDER. TURN UP MIC GAIN OR SOMETHING
Anything to drown out that obnoxious keyboard!
next video is about Roman Empire 😆👍
Forgot to add this in my initial comment, but what are some tips to keep in mind when putting together Phase ships? I really like the idea of building a fleet based around the various abilities phase ships get, but I have no idea where to start, or if it would be functional in any way.
Well the first thing to know is there are not a lot of Phase Ships unless you've got that one mod that makes a whole fuckin' bunch. Still, theyre typified by being far more vulnerable, but phenominally more mobile than shield based ships. They work MUCH better when they have shield based ships to compliment them (if you really must, consider taking various phase SKIMMERS like the Wolf and Medua, and it's worth mentioning the Scarab possesses a unique ability that allows it to 'slow' time in a similar fashion as phase systems do.
"only phase" is a fun play style, the Revenant is a pretty decent multipurpose logistics ship so don't be afraid to pick it up. One of the boons of the fleet is, if everything's a phase ship, your sensor profile is nill. You're effectively invisible, and if you build for speed, your unlikely to ever be in a situation you can't run from.
@@nananamamana3591 I'll keep that in mind! Any good ones to use for a flagship?
@@drysocks4412doom can solo literally anything despite multiple nerfs
The afflictor is one of the few ships I simply do not trust AI to pilot without specifically designing it to be a disposable piece of crap that can give me ONE good opening.
There's plenty of phase ships where the AI is better than me at flying them, Doom comes to mind, when I fly a Doom I stick a bunch of missiles on the front, launch a volley of decoys, phase, make a minefield, then fly around back and pump torps into the butt of any shit trying to guard from all sides. The AI is a lot more sophisticated than that and I can rely on it to make smart choices with that ship.
Not the afflictor. Sure, the timing with the entropy tool is *LITERALLY* them cheating, they read the imput window like theyre a fighting game computer. But the AI doesnt have the brains to do with the Afflictor what they'll do with the Doom, or phase skimmers like the wolf and medusa -- it takes AGES for them to say "oh wait I can enter the no-clip dimension and swing behind this ship and kill it with these missiles instantly". They'll do the "phase ship shuffle" where they'll just strafe, in phase, doing dick all.
As for the legion, it's an Astral but with lower deployment value, more reliable personal offense, and survivability. You can run that thing with 2 xyphos and 2 trident, deploy 4 of them on an ordo or two and watch them clean house. All carrier ships work very well with the afflictor though, since they cover for it's major weakness in that it's made of papermache. With a screen of fighters, and a massive offensive threat to try and defend from most ships arent equipped to target everything so the afflictor can swing in, do its dirty, then swing out.
Giving Afflictors to a reckless officer who doesnt have Field Modulation elited for faster phase cloak cooldown is a recipe for disaster as they will suicide into enemy fleets with their cloak on cd and pants down
A non-reckless officer with:
Combat Endurance (if you elite this, and have a Cautious officer your Afflictors will have excellent surviving power as they can phase away when hurt and repair hull)
Field Modulation - Elited, a really good skill for most setups in the game
Target Analysis - great skill on any officer to have
Gunnery Implants - preferably elited for the huge ECM bonus, the range helps them to be effective at ranges where they can still dodge
Helmsmanship - for that juicy, juicy manouverability boost so the Afflictors can turn on a dime and dodge nearly all incoming fire
has a good core to be fitted into an Afflictor fleet, the other skills make it even better but the Afflictor thrives on these 5. Which are generic enough that you can take those officers and stick them into just about most ships to have them do well.
Having instant hit Strike weapons is what i've found work best on the Afflictors, this makes the AI behave in the perfect way to make the ship shine.
Hi, rescently I tried one mission from one good mod. Yes, mod. The mission was in killing a supercapital from that mod. And I lost. Two times a row. So, how would you kill a supercapital? Without officers and s-mods. And with a 200 (there is actually 150dp limit, but this is impossible) dp fleet out of random ships. Oh, and I am talking about Solvernia from UAF if you actually want to answer me.
That does sound like an interesting mission. I know the UAF mod but I haven’t tried any of the missions for it, maybe I’ll have a look.
If it is only solvernia then harbinger, i think 3 will be enough
The Solvernia is actually insane, I have no idea how you’d win that.
While it is an interesting fleet composition, I feel like afflictor is praised enough as it is.
How do you guarantee salvaging your lost afflictors without the skill or reinforced bulkheads?
Your ships are guaranteed recoverable if you put at least one s-mod on them.
Is there a reason you took armored weapon mounts over resistant flux conduits? with impact mitigation and resistant flux conduits, wont that make your weapons immune to EMP entirely? I'm pretty new to Starsector so sorry if I'm missing something obvious here. Also, would it be worth squeezing on ECCM package instead by dropping the vulcans to normal machine guns and dropping a point of capacitors? Are the Pilums worth buffing that way?
I can walk you through why I built it this way, and clear up a couple game mechanics while I’m at it:
Damage reduction doesn’t work like that, you can’t get immunity to anything. If you reduce 100 damage by 50% it becomes 50, then 50% again it becomes 25. AWM provides better protection for the weapons because normal damage can disable them when armour is stripped off. There are good reasons to take RFC over AWM, but in this case I want the 10% extra armour and reduced recoil (shot spread).
For ECCM it’s decent with pilums but not as cheap as you think. Hullmods get more expensive on larger ships. For the legion it’s 20 points, not just 5. If I had 5 pilums it’d be more worth it but that’s not the direction I went.
@@bigbrainenergyguy Ah I see. Makes sense why the AWM then. I knew the ECCM was 20, I meant if it was worth replacing AWM then dropping 5 OP for ECCM but I realize that is not worth it at all so nvm. Thanks for responding.
Would XIV Legions work better or will those missiles just end up running out?
Against about 2 Ordos around 900 total DP, XIV will work well without worrying of running out of missiles if you choose both EMR and officer missile skill. (If you use Reaper, you only need one of them since Cyclone Reaper has far more total reserved damage than Hurricane or Hammer). More than +3 large Ordos (+1300 total DP ships), you need very special fleet composition and tactic though. Not only missiles, but CR and accumulated damage on armor and hull becomes problematic at such long and consuming fight.
I might be forgetting something but, I thought phase ships couldnt vent soft flux when phased
Soft flux dissipates whether shielded or phased. Phase builds up hard flux that cannot be dissipated.
hey what is the equivalent build of this standard legion to the 14th one ?
does advanced turret gyros really work like that ? it says "5% more dmg to SMALLER SHIPS, per size CLASS of difference"
this means to me in terms of the legion (because i CANNOT read any other way to read that tooltip), 0% against capitals (legion is a capital class ship), 5% against cruisers, 10% against destroyers, 15% against frigates, this is the only way for me for it to make sense
Yes, you got it right. The damage bonus is bigger against smaller ships.
I'm telling mom.
crazy good game
Are you Aussie by any chance mate? Great video BTW.
I'm Canadian. Glad you liked it.
Truly legion
Next up is XIV Legion
very ebic
WE ARE LEGION
Btw why no XIV Legion? You don't like the large missiles?
I do like large missiles but it’s easy to use them as a crutch.
@@bigbrainenergyguy Crutch? I just burn drive to point blank and shoot reapers kamikaze style haha. It feels like shooting a pump action shotgun in FPS games lol
he back
Its crazy to me that you play without mouse aim. Guess it would make sense, if one is using omni shields without the AI-Shield function (mod?!).
big brain emergy what r ur pc specs
legion
s.
WOW this afflector looks like a cheating!
hmmm
Lejons are eipc
no hardend shields is a fail
Not really impressive with the tiny battle size.
biggest of brains what are your takes on fighters, the forums are scarce for them and broadswords flux dissipation makes me convinced its overrated trash