I've always been a fairly mediocre pilot so I decided to grind on the missions to build up some proficiency in basic combat skills. After reaching a level of competency in attack vectors, orders, mobility and weapon choice, decided to have a go at capital ship flux management and weapons timings. I had so much fun with forlorn hope!
Taking up the role of a Tri-tachyon admiral I got my face repeatedly smashed with a Hegemony brick for about four hours. Changing up the weapon loads were all met with varying degrees of success and failure, the main problem was the Hegemony capital ship. With the default loadup even if I could take out all of the frigates and cruisers before reinforcements arrived, in a 1vs1 duel against the onslaught I just couldn't get enough sustained hard flux to keep up with their extremely energy-efficient cannons.
Switching up to anti-shield beams or cannons didn't do too much good either. The one time I managed to force the onslaught to retreat by overloading its shields & getting it down to a quarter hull strength, I still got absolutely mobbed by cruisers, frigates and toperdo bombers. Trying again with a more energy efficient loadup swapping tachyon lances for paladin PD dealt with the bombers, but sucked up way too much energy to be able to sustain attack by 5 frigates & Eagle class cruisers, let alone two heavy cruisers.
So I slept on a night of failure, and when I woke up had a neat idea.
-Two hull-mounted plasma cannons
-Two plasma blasters to help them
-Two tachyon lances
-Two flak cannons
-Three rear-mounted PD lasers
-Two rear-mounted medium combat lasers
-Max capacitors
-Max vents
-Flux coil distributor/adjunct
-Resistant flux conduits
-Advanced optics
The Hegemony always fielded their Capital, two hound frigates, a heavy cruiser and an eagle light cruiser first. This gave a short window of opportunity to kill the support ships and then duel the onslaught before their reinforcements arrived and overwhelmed you.
Turning my onslaught on its port side, I began reversing to leave a juicy target for their first frigate. It took the bait; the first lance disabled its engines, the second destroyed it.
The eagle cruiser and second hound attacked together. Tachyon lances & plasma blasters took it out while the hound was sorted out with the rear lasers. The heavy cruiser made its way in close just in time to eat several plasma cannon rounds to the bow; it turned to try and get away just in time for tachyon lances to eat it all up.
This left the onslaught which was now boosting straight at me while I was full on soft-flux. Shields up, backed away two quadrants until I was far enough away to vent flux. Unfortunately this allowed time for the hegemony to bring reinforcements, and now I was in the corner with no space to retreat.
With the onslaught in front of me, two carriers, missile support ships, two frigates and a heavy cruiser approaching to my port side, I dived straight in at the onslaught while I still had time to deal with the capital alone. My flak cannons go into overdrive shooting missiles and fighter-bombers out of the void while a hound frigate pesters my rear; I disable the plasma cannons and tachyon lances as I sustain plasma cannon rounds on the onslaught's shields. With enough soft-flux vented I open my tachyon lances every time its shields go down, causing massive EMP damage and stripping away those shields, alternating constantly between tachyon lances and plasma cannon rounds.
Eventually I reach the limit of even my souped-up Odyssey and when I see the onslaught's hard flux near-maxed, I vent. They vent. Only one of us has resistant flux conduits; I get a two second head-start as all of its allies open up on me with cannons, torpedoes and missiles. Two seconds of plasma cannon rounds and blasters tear through the Onslaught's hull, but it's not enough. It raises its shields and begins to turn them to bear against me, in a split second reaction I take manual control of my plasma lances and shoot just behind the angle of the shield - doing just enough damage to make the whole damn thing explode.
With just 2,500 hull left my Odyssey turned off almost all of its guns and retreated back into its corner with shields up, forcing the small frigates to maneauvre in front of my tachyon lances. Carefully dueling the arriving heavy cruiser with my plasma cannons, I managed to clear enough space so I only had to deal with the bombers. I ate the first wave with my shields, but after that had enough calm to vent flux and begin unloading tachyon lances on the bomber-waves.
After that it became a matter of hunting down the remaining hegemony ships. The missile support cruisers and carriers were too fast to catch, but as long as I had my shields up and down at the right times they were not too dangerous. The heavy cruisers left were fairly threatening but I managed to overload their shields before the bomber waves attacked. The frigates were the most threatening when five of them managed to surround me, but fortunately my rear-mounted point defence managed to intercept all of their reaper torpedoes.
In the end I only had to chase down the carrier and two missile cruisers. Caught the carrier but the light cruisers retreated after their CR dropped to the 10s. You can see in the bottom left I had 2349 hull left!
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Topic: Starsector [TopDown Sandbox RPG on Space] (Read 370125 times)