I like the Advanced Gunnery Control mod as it allows you to assign weapons certain "no fire" conditions to prevent the phase lance shooting at fighters thing...
god i love ai cores but GOD DAMN FOR THE AI BEING SO DAMN ADVANCED HOW HAVE THEY REALLY NOT INVENTED A SUICIDE HELP LINE???????? LIKE IM SERIOUS IVE SEEN SHIT CUZ I LOVE MY HIGH HIGH TECH BUT IM SERIOUSLY CONSIDERING RUNNING MY DRONE SHIPS WITHOUT CORES
As a longtime (P) Afflictor enjoyer - there's this small discontinued mod called Vayra's ship pack that introduces lore friendly, thematic ships and weapons that are sometimes a sidegrade but dont dethrone vanilla ships and weapons. Just more options. One of them was a short range mining laser that dealt explosive beams with high cooldown (~8s). It was a Strike weapon and what i noticed when i used it, the Afflictors refused to fire it on shields. Probably because it was classified as a Strike so it would look for an opening. Maybe because neither its HE alpha hit, nor its sustained dps was ever big enough to deal with shields. But the end result was Afflictors that behaved... intelligently under AI command. The Afflictors would position themselves, circling the target like usual/dependent on its commanding officer. But when there was an opening in the shield cover, they would unphase and strike. Glorious sight to see.
Vayra's ship pack is actually still maintained with Vayra's permission by another modder. You can find versions that work on the current patch on the unofficial discord. Another way to get Afflictors to behave is the mod Advanced Gunnery Control, which allows you to set behaviour for every weapon on a ship independently (e.g target shields, avoid shields, avoid armor above specific thresholds, etc.) it completely changes the way ship building works and makes builds that would be completely unviable in vanilla very usable. Basically you could tell any weapon behave like that 'Strike' HE burst mining laser even if not HE or 'Strike', and you'd immediately see the same behaviour change in the ship as a whole. It's an extra layer of complexity and setting up ships this way usually makes them quite broken by vanilla standards because they just behave smarter, but it's good fun, and it's a good way to power up vanilla ships to mod ship levels when doing heavily modded runs.
Your videos actually helped me understand starsector combat finally and make a build that works as good as this with ships and weapons i like but community seems to dislike
@@ValenLock1 2 executors with 4 arbalests and 1 heavy needler, 4 phase lances and 2 gigacannons, 5 p lances 1 heavy needler lg eagles (4 of em), 2 herons centurions and monitors
Awesome video as always! Those midline heron's in the high tech fleet really bug me 😅 I would have replaced them with 2 astrals for consistency and aesthetics, even if they're objectively worse
on the 4 linked AM Blasters for the afflictor, I personally like to do 2 sets of 2 linked. I put the 2 "inner" ones linked on 1, and the 2 "outer" linked on 2 this lets you fire smaller bursts on smaller targets and not waste shots, or even slightly offset the burst for when that is relevant. Plus on some skinny/small ships firing all 4 can miss one or two of the shots
My favourite way of building pirate afflictors is just all speed hullmods and no weapons. The fastest ship at capturing points, allows you to deploy 3 Ziggurat-style supercaps.
Fact: It is impossible for Mr. Brain to build a fleet WITHOUT having at least a single high tech ship. Have you considered a fleet including the automated XIV ships from the PK cache?
It's good to see ships built to work in cooperation. I don't have the game but something I usually miss from playthroughs is this battlefield strategy phase. Many players lose tight battles because of that. They deploy, they do their job with their single piloted ship, and they sometimes complain about what a ship is doing. Hey! You can tell him what to do, player!
an afflictor, built like the one you have, is (from hours of personal experience) in my opinion the best player ship, no contest. it can solo entire 300k bounty fleets, bc the ai is a bit weird when you only deploy 10DP against it (tho how easily it can kill hegemony ships its a great lore fit), but i dont think fighters are actually detrimental to its playstyle, the afflictor wants to be supported by capitals that are such a threat to the ai that it will be forced to turn it shields, giving you exactly what you want, by contrast fighters tend to distract enemy ships too much to make them vulnerable consistently
For afflictor p its great to use needlers + tac laser + itu, all you need them for is to stay back and spam entropy amplifier anyway. Also idk about Harbinger ai is just so bad with it, maybe 2x scarabs instead? They are incredible
I love me a Quad-AMB Afflictor flagship! My usual opening move is literally just phasing straight through the middle of the enemy fleet; it throws them completely into disarray, and there's usually some weaker stuff at the back that I can pick off before the stronger stuff at the front can react. And then they do react, so my heavy hitters often have an opening before they turn around again. Granted this doesn't work quite as well against nimbler enemy fleets but it's still lots of fun! Interesting fleet though for sure. The carriers were a surprise since you have to also invest in those skills along with phase coil tuning and automated ships. Helmsmanship and Target Analysis might not be strictly necessary but they are quite nice in an Afflictor. I also like Gunnery Implants for a bit more range so I don't have to be quite so perfect with the timing...I've blown myself up being too close to my target more than I'd like to admit. 😅
Why not 2 astrals instead of 5 herons? >Complete the high tech larp >Fits the furball theme with two astrals escorting the paragon, flooding the battlefield with atropos >1 paragon, 8 glimmer, 5 pirate afflictors, 1 player piloted afflictor gives perfect 240 dp, with 40 dp of phase ships, with 8 officers >Did I mention the four squalls they bring >Oh right you can sit behind the paragon with your afflictor while you vent or repair, and debuff the enemy ship with entropy amplifier right as the atropos are about to hit them to get easy low risk contribution
Another great fleet showcase. Someone really have to make a mod that adds all your fleets as a bounty to test their might on but idk about the ai for the player ship though. What about a meme fleet full of civis? Someone in the forums said it can be done with ventures spam.
I actually ended up sort of doing this when salvaging a bunch of ventures one game. They're not too bad vs remnants, with a good ranged loadout and fighter support, but they'll still be in trouble if a radiant or the other large ship forces its way right into their faces. The good thing is that being civilian ships, the bonus experience for the fight is a lot higher.
This fleet is good in theory but on practice the lack of hard shield damage is really felt, especially against shield reliant [REDACTED], the pressure is just not there. I bet it would be much more effective against, for example, Hegemony. The Paragon mirrors this situation, even tho it's boring it's just better with needlers. I'm gonna steal your extended mags design, i like the idea.
Honestly the beam spam is pretty good. Other than that I agree that the lack of needlers is an issue... and I would like to clarify that the heavy armor paragon is more of an experiment that I do not recommend it. A better build would be something like this: i.imgur.com/n1wIf3Y.png
I'm always a fan of 2x reaper 2x AM blaster Smod expanded racks afflictors, great for taking out high priority targets in seconds of a fight starting. Probably worse on multi ordos tho
The fucking afflictor, oh my god. I basically landed on that build (4 AM blasters) with my Doom just for the bigger flux pool + ability to take some more shots + the bomb ability, but doing it on an Afflictor is ballsy.
Hyperion is my go to build, 8 Hyperions and 2 tanks paragons. If i'm being luxurious i'll ad Doom to the mix Hi Tech is so satisfying for me in Starsector, next would be Midlines. But Hi Tech playstyle is my drug
0:26 - kinda reminds of filling every slot on my ziggurat with nukes then having expanded missle racks + missle skill on MC and prosseding to obliterate a lot of ships. Very fun Also, what about putting antimatter blaster on the afflictor onto 2 seperate firing groups based on side - that would mean that you can wiggle and shoot this increasing overall hitrate
I suppose some inconsistency in carrier's behavior is to be expected when they have weapons for direct combat in the loadout instead of only missiles+pd. Also the lack of space from so many escort orders on one ship might've messed up their ai a bit.
i wonder if itd be worth it to just drop expanded magazines and carry around a second afflictor to swap to once ammo is out, though idk what the 3 ordnance points could be used for
I don't expect people to copy the fleet exactly, but you could decide you like one of the ships and add it to your own fleet. Or you could try my advice like combining an afflictor with bombers. Or you could try your own deathball fleet based on the tactics I used here but with different ships.
@@bigbrainenergyguy that's fair enough - I was getting that minecraft feeling of watching someone do a build tutorial, and wondering how the hell I'm going to get all the blocks actually playing the game. Will say in the 12 hours since I posted this question I've watched a bunch of your playthrough for this patch while babysitting, and got a much better idea of how I should be be trying to build my fleet!
Can you give me some tips on how to order ships in a fight at the beginning stages of the game, when you still have mixed fleet? For example, I have 3 light cruisers, some destroyers and lots of frigates, is it a good idea to make 3 groups of them escorting 3 different cruisers? I didn't see you use escort command in your videos yet.
Escorting works here because glimmers have 1000 range beams and there are carriers If you do an early game escort command with say a lasher it will just circle the ship barely doing anything
What I noticed is that you never use the "shift-movement" even when flying smaller ships Being able to independently fly and shoot in different directions is probably a great skill to have as the player character so do I have to just suck it up and learn it or can you give some tips?
I do actually use it when flying smaller ships. I fly without it most of the time, and then hold shift when I need more precise control. I use it pretty much every time I fire my AM blasters in this video.
AI controlled Harbinger unfortunately is a complete waste, not only it tries to cosplay an Afflictor, but more sad that it just mashes F button on cooldown, even when it has zero intention to attack, absolutely broken and miserable ship with 20DP that burdens Phase Mastery skill, limiting the rest of the phase ships in the fleet. Better to replace it with an Eagle if you want them Phase Lances (tho for an AI it maybe not that way better of a choice). Also Longbows behave abysmally when attacking actively resisting ship, if you look closely you will see, that all of them while almost constantly overloaded trying to circle their target which either results with their annihilation, or they shot they payload at very clumsy angles that leads to a total waste of missile. And the only time they were successful is striking already overloaded target, or unarmed one (mainly Scintillas). So maybe replacing them for Cobras will help carriers at least against heavier targets? Tho it will hinder the speed of the strike group... But at least shield damage isn't suffering that much in that case.
Luddcels be seething over Glimmerchads 😎
Ahw yeah, saw the video, instaclicked. It's big brain time
Same here
TECHNOLOGY! *confused screaming*
"dying is suboptimal" - Big Brain Energy, Beelzebub appreciator
As I roll through the sector with my High-tech fleet
I take a look at my ship and realised it's quite neat
I like the Advanced Gunnery Control mod as it allows you to assign weapons certain "no fire" conditions to prevent the phase lance shooting at fighters thing...
god i love ai cores but GOD DAMN FOR THE AI BEING SO DAMN ADVANCED HOW HAVE THEY REALLY NOT INVENTED A SUICIDE HELP LINE???????? LIKE IM SERIOUS IVE SEEN SHIT CUZ I LOVE MY HIGH HIGH TECH BUT IM SERIOUSLY CONSIDERING RUNNING MY DRONE SHIPS WITHOUT CORES
There's mods that allow for more fine control of the AI
As a longtime (P) Afflictor enjoyer - there's this small discontinued mod called Vayra's ship pack that introduces lore friendly, thematic ships and weapons that are sometimes a sidegrade but dont dethrone vanilla ships and weapons. Just more options. One of them was a short range mining laser that dealt explosive beams with high cooldown (~8s). It was a Strike weapon and what i noticed when i used it, the Afflictors refused to fire it on shields. Probably because it was classified as a Strike so it would look for an opening. Maybe because neither its HE alpha hit, nor its sustained dps was ever big enough to deal with shields. But the end result was Afflictors that behaved... intelligently under AI command.
The Afflictors would position themselves, circling the target like usual/dependent on its commanding officer. But when there was an opening in the shield cover, they would unphase and strike. Glorious sight to see.
Vayra's ship pack is actually still maintained with Vayra's permission by another modder. You can find versions that work on the current patch on the unofficial discord. Another way to get Afflictors to behave is the mod Advanced Gunnery Control, which allows you to set behaviour for every weapon on a ship independently (e.g target shields, avoid shields, avoid armor above specific thresholds, etc.) it completely changes the way ship building works and makes builds that would be completely unviable in vanilla very usable. Basically you could tell any weapon behave like that 'Strike' HE burst mining laser even if not HE or 'Strike', and you'd immediately see the same behaviour change in the ship as a whole. It's an extra layer of complexity and setting up ships this way usually makes them quite broken by vanilla standards because they just behave smarter, but it's good fun, and it's a good way to power up vanilla ships to mod ship levels when doing heavily modded runs.
Vayras is still around.
Vayra's is still good stuff if you can find the updated files.
Vayra's is peak, such a superb mod
Your videos actually helped me understand starsector combat finally and make a build that works as good as this with ships and weapons i like but community seems to dislike
What's your fleet?
@@ValenLock1 2 executors with 4 arbalests and 1 heavy needler, 4 phase lances and 2 gigacannons, 5 p lances 1 heavy needler lg eagles (4 of em), 2 herons centurions and monitors
Awesome video as always! Those midline heron's in the high tech fleet really bug me 😅 I would have replaced them with 2 astrals for consistency and aesthetics, even if they're objectively worse
Can you build a fleet around the derelict/exploration droneships that can kill remnant ordos? Would make for very funny and interesting content.
Hm... I dont think this video is about missiles either. Capitan small muscle mass is at it again
he minmaxxed
what u talk about, fighters had missiles :V
on the 4 linked AM Blasters for the afflictor, I personally like to do 2 sets of 2 linked. I put the 2 "inner" ones linked on 1, and the 2 "outer" linked on 2
this lets you fire smaller bursts on smaller targets and not waste shots, or even slightly offset the burst for when that is relevant. Plus on some skinny/small ships firing all 4 can miss one or two of the shots
I was actually running a fleet surprisingly similar to this but with a different idea - and now I can see how to do it even better lol
My favourite way of building pirate afflictors is just all speed hullmods and no weapons. The fastest ship at capturing points, allows you to deploy 3 Ziggurat-style supercaps.
Fact: It is impossible for Mr. Brain to build a fleet WITHOUT having at least a single high tech ship. Have you considered a fleet including the automated XIV ships from the PK cache?
It's good to see ships built to work in cooperation. I don't have the game but something I usually miss from playthroughs is this battlefield strategy phase.
Many players lose tight battles because of that. They deploy, they do their job with their single piloted ship, and they sometimes complain about what a ship is doing.
Hey! You can tell him what to do, player!
an afflictor, built like the one you have, is (from hours of personal experience) in my opinion the best player ship, no contest. it can solo entire 300k bounty fleets, bc the ai is a bit weird when you only deploy 10DP against it (tho how easily it can kill hegemony ships its a great lore fit), but i dont think fighters are actually detrimental to its playstyle, the afflictor wants to be supported by capitals that are such a threat to the ai that it will be forced to turn it shields, giving you exactly what you want, by contrast fighters tend to distract enemy ships too much to make them vulnerable consistently
Unmodded yes, I agree. But if you're fighting Hivers, it's a deathtrap.
IMHO Radiant is still the best player ship in vanilla.
Glimmers without SO? Now you got me intrigued.
Finally, the end of ludd!
For afflictor p its great to use needlers + tac laser + itu, all you need them for is to stay back and spam entropy amplifier anyway.
Also idk about Harbinger ai is just so bad with it, maybe 2x scarabs instead? They are incredible
Look at the lengths Tri-tac has to go to mimic a fraction of the power of heavy armor and gun
2:39 8 Beta core Radiants.
He's really hi-tech pilled.
big hype for the incoming fleet command powerpoint
I love me a Quad-AMB Afflictor flagship! My usual opening move is literally just phasing straight through the middle of the enemy fleet; it throws them completely into disarray, and there's usually some weaker stuff at the back that I can pick off before the stronger stuff at the front can react. And then they do react, so my heavy hitters often have an opening before they turn around again. Granted this doesn't work quite as well against nimbler enemy fleets but it's still lots of fun!
Interesting fleet though for sure. The carriers were a surprise since you have to also invest in those skills along with phase coil tuning and automated ships. Helmsmanship and Target Analysis might not be strictly necessary but they are quite nice in an Afflictor. I also like Gunnery Implants for a bit more range so I don't have to be quite so perfect with the timing...I've blown myself up being too close to my target more than I'd like to admit. 😅
Why not 2 astrals instead of 5 herons?
>Complete the high tech larp
>Fits the furball theme with two astrals escorting the paragon, flooding the battlefield with atropos
>1 paragon, 8 glimmer, 5 pirate afflictors, 1 player piloted afflictor gives perfect 240 dp, with 40 dp of phase ships, with 8 officers
>Did I mention the four squalls they bring
>Oh right you can sit behind the paragon with your afflictor while you vent or repair, and debuff the enemy ship with entropy amplifier right as the atropos are about to hit them to get easy low risk contribution
Those "close range" herons surprised me ngl. But i guess they do provide some kinetic pressure.
Another great fleet showcase. Someone really have to make a mod that adds all your fleets as a bounty to test their might on but idk about the ai for the player ship though. What about a meme fleet full of civis? Someone in the forums said it can be done with ventures spam.
I actually ended up sort of doing this when salvaging a bunch of ventures one game. They're not too bad vs remnants, with a good ranged loadout and fighter support, but they'll still be in trouble if a radiant or the other large ship forces its way right into their faces. The good thing is that being civilian ships, the bonus experience for the fight is a lot higher.
Elegant.
This fleet is good in theory but on practice the lack of hard shield damage is really felt, especially against shield reliant [REDACTED], the pressure is just not there. I bet it would be much more effective against, for example, Hegemony.
The Paragon mirrors this situation, even tho it's boring it's just better with needlers. I'm gonna steal your extended mags design, i like the idea.
Honestly the beam spam is pretty good. Other than that I agree that the lack of needlers is an issue... and I would like to clarify that the heavy armor paragon is more of an experiment that I do not recommend it. A better build would be something like this: i.imgur.com/n1wIf3Y.png
So is it any wonder pe-... LUDD is afraid of technology? TECHNOLOGY!!!
I love technology
I'm always a fan of 2x reaper 2x AM blaster Smod expanded racks afflictors, great for taking out high priority targets in seconds of a fight starting. Probably worse on multi ordos tho
The fucking afflictor, oh my god.
I basically landed on that build (4 AM blasters) with my Doom just for the bigger flux pool + ability to take some more shots + the bomb ability, but doing it on an Afflictor is ballsy.
Praise be to the [SUPER ULTRA OMEGA INDIGO REDACTED], it's a BEST TECH VIDEO
Brother Cotton and Ludd were wrong, THIS is what the song tells us to do!
phase ships. PHASE SHIPS?!?!? we dont NEED no STINKING PHASE SHIPS
Hyperion is my go to build, 8 Hyperions and 2 tanks paragons.
If i'm being luxurious i'll ad Doom to the mix
Hi Tech is so satisfying for me in Starsector, next would be Midlines.
But Hi Tech playstyle is my drug
0:26 - kinda reminds of filling every slot on my ziggurat with nukes then having expanded missle racks + missle skill on MC and prosseding to obliterate a lot of ships. Very fun
Also, what about putting antimatter blaster on the afflictor onto 2 seperate firing groups based on side - that would mean that you can wiggle and shoot this increasing overall hitrate
How dare you not show the loot after that battle! That’s the best part
The Hegemony in me is triggered by this video.
YT: "When hegemony meets tri tachyon again (starsector meme)"
I suppose some inconsistency in carrier's behavior is to be expected when they have weapons for direct combat in the loadout instead of only missiles+pd. Also the lack of space from so many escort orders on one ship might've messed up their ai a bit.
This vid is great. Id like to see a fleet optimized to kill a quad ordo
Trust the TECHNOLOGY!
Lock it, fill it, call it, find it, view it, code it, jam, unlock it
Surf it, scroll it, pause it, click it, cross it, crack it, switch, update it
Name it, read it, tune it, print it, scan it, send it, fax, rename it
Touch it, bring it, pay it, watch it, turn it, leave it, stop, format it
Technology
Technology
Technology
Technology
Mr. Small muscle mass, whats your favourite ship to abuse phase anchor?
i wonder if itd be worth it to just drop expanded magazines and carry around a second afflictor to swap to once ammo is out, though idk what the 3 ordnance points could be used for
Yipeee new upload 🎉
Best pooping vids 👌
blasphemy
how dare you
One thing I do have to ask about these fleet videos you post, are these advice - intended to be played with in a regular run?
I don't expect people to copy the fleet exactly, but you could decide you like one of the ships and add it to your own fleet. Or you could try my advice like combining an afflictor with bombers. Or you could try your own deathball fleet based on the tactics I used here but with different ships.
@@bigbrainenergyguy that's fair enough - I was getting that minecraft feeling of watching someone do a build tutorial, and wondering how the hell I'm going to get all the blocks actually playing the game.
Will say in the 12 hours since I posted this question I've watched a bunch of your playthrough for this patch while babysitting, and got a much better idea of how I should be be trying to build my fleet!
Not using phase anchor on a player controlled afflictor is a crime. I’ve never tried 4 ambs though I’ll have to mess around with that.
prank him john
so an afflictor is a better monitor of the battle than an actual monitor lolol
Could you rank remnant ships. I really like Apex for holding the flanks
High tech gaming.
What do the capture points do for combat? I’d love to see a full explanation of how combat works on the big scale along side command point explanation
Like where to put my carriers or how to make space with smaller ships
Been trying to make the shrike big frigate build work but they just die to cruiser fire 😔
Spawn of moluch
On the Glimmers, since they're charging in anyways, why not go for High Scatter Amplifier so they can actually deal with shields?
Can you give me some tips on how to order ships in a fight at the beginning stages of the game, when you still have mixed fleet? For example, I have 3 light cruisers, some destroyers and lots of frigates, is it a good idea to make 3 groups of them escorting 3 different cruisers? I didn't see you use escort command in your videos yet.
Escorting works here because glimmers have 1000 range beams and there are carriers
If you do an early game escort command with say a lasher it will just circle the ship barely doing anything
What I noticed is that you never use the "shift-movement" even when flying smaller ships
Being able to independently fly and shoot in different directions is probably a great skill to have as the player character so do I have to just suck it up and learn it or can you give some tips?
I do actually use it when flying smaller ships. I fly without it most of the time, and then hold shift when I need more precise control. I use it pretty much every time I fire my AM blasters in this video.
where radiant
why bother building a fleet when you have something so monstrous it can obliterate heggie inspections all by itself?
Hello Gamers
you think this playstyle would be possible without any AI or omega? just pure high tech ships?
All phase build with ziggy as the flagship when ?🙃
If by "all phase" you mean "ziggurat solo" then it might happen.
I wonder what is your best ziggy build, i like going 2 rift cascade emitters with 4 resonators.
AI controlled Harbinger unfortunately is a complete waste, not only it tries to cosplay an Afflictor, but more sad that it just mashes F button on cooldown, even when it has zero intention to attack, absolutely broken and miserable ship with 20DP that burdens Phase Mastery skill, limiting the rest of the phase ships in the fleet. Better to replace it with an Eagle if you want them Phase Lances (tho for an AI it maybe not that way better of a choice).
Also Longbows behave abysmally when attacking actively resisting ship, if you look closely you will see, that all of them while almost constantly overloaded trying to circle their target which either results with their annihilation, or they shot they payload at very clumsy angles that leads to a total waste of missile. And the only time they were successful is striking already overloaded target, or unarmed one (mainly Scintillas). So maybe replacing them for Cobras will help carriers at least against heavier targets? Tho it will hinder the speed of the strike group... But at least shield damage isn't suffering that much in that case.
Where is the missiles tie list
I want to know where you got all those story points
Can you write in a pinned comment or the description the officer traits each ship has?
High tech and no doom? Unsubscribe.
Didn’t show the loot
0/10 wouldn’t recommend