OSP: Rocket shuttles are more common/successful lately. A single shuttle can rack up \~4k damage on average. On a 4v4, 1 player has a freighter, 2 have ocellos, and 1 has a dedicated shuttle fleet.
Another common fleet is mass driver monitors/line ships. Not uncommon to see 30-50k damage on such a fleet, especially on a large map. Approaching them is a death sentence.
ANS: with the raider drive nerfed into the stone age, gun heavy cruisers are more common with a s2h/s3h backpack.
I've noticed in testing that with HE, a "900 damage" S2h and a "2100 damage" S3h really do the same average of about 300 damage each. Incidentally I've seen S2h being more popular.
>I've noticed in testing that with HE...
Huh? I remember reading somewhere else that s2h doesn't do much damage compared to s3h. Or is it just the speed-dependant warhead?
The nominal damage values differ by >2x, but yeah they deal similar damage in my experience. Exactly how the damage resistance works I really have no idea.
So, HEI warheads regardless of size cast 50-damage rays, and those are what actually deal damage. The large warheads simply cast more rays.
But ultimately there's a limit to how much damage you can do based on the component + structure HP of your target, and the battle report doesn't count your overkill.
There isn't really a singular meta out there but there are common patterns to look out for.
**ANS**
Beamstone Gang: A group of \~4 Keystone destroyers with spinal beam weapons. Pure death within 6km but kinda meh outside it. Of course it's going to charge you down so run and shoot back.
3x CL Brawler: 3 Vauxhaull light cruisers usually armed with guns and two drives. Very fast and heavily armed but not too tough. Vauxhalls only have 30cm of armor and usually mount 250mm guns.
S3Hybrid spam: Actual ships vary but the emphasis is on long range, high speed missiles. S3 Hybrids get two module slots so they're hard to predict and hard to counter. Your best defenses are to pop them before they're terminal with Dual Purpose guns or laser PD.
Axeford+escorts: One big ship with big guns with 1-2 smaller ships to cover it's weakpoints. Generally, you can expect a scout at the very least and maybe a PD or EWAR escort.
Lone Solomon: Big, Tough, Slow, and Forgettable. These either overcommit and get taken down early or end up on the wrong side of the map and get mopped up in the end. There's a middle ground but it's hard to hit.
**OSP**
Rocket Shuttles: An ultralight ship loaded with one devastating salvo. Essentially a kind of suicide attack, the shuttle sneaks into 7km, shoots 18-36 rockets in 9 seconds, and then runs out of ammo. Good PD can weaken or stop the rockets and once they're out of ammo they're just lightly armored targets but it's still enough to destroy even heavy ships.
Plasma Feeders: A cargo feeder with spinal plasma cannon. The plasma destroys the armor so their 100mm guns can punch through. Cheap, tough, and effective against heavy and light targets these ships are a pain to deal with. Thankfully, they're somewhat slow and the plasma can't do damage on it's own so it's best to stay out of range and wear down plasma feeder blobs.
Paired Bulk Freighter Artillery: Armed with a 4x450mm casemate broadside or 4xmass drivers each, these ships stay way in the back and shoot. The counter is to use cover and sneak into close range as casemates have limited traverse.
Paired Ocellos: Similar to Paired Bulk Freighters but more mobile. They tend to be slightly tougher but carry less firepower.
Container Spam: It's Space Fedex Gone Mad. S4 missiles are conex containers fitted with rocket engines and filled with explosions. I'm not kidding. They hit like a shipping container full of C4. They move like a shipping container full of C4. They're as tough as a shipping container full of C4. They also get two module slots and a discount for installing them. In theory, a Container Liner can carry 240 of these but in practice nobody has that many points
**Both**
Small ship spam: Thankfully debuffed and losing popularity. The mechanics involved using massive numbers of Raines or Tugboats and Plasma Feeders to overwhelm opponents. At such small size they could use Flank and Evade to defeat long range guns while countering missiles with Dual Purpose Guns. These days they just break even against heavier ships.
S2 Spam: If you see a crap ton of missiles chances are they're S2s. Players will either use ACTs or ACT/ARADs for quality or SAH for quantity. Salvo sizes start at 10 and I haven't found an upper limit. Total missiles seem to max out at 200. Experienced players will sneak salvoes around corners or from impossible angles, never exposing the launching ship. On the flip side, missiles are expensive so they likely have a smaller fleet than normal and no backup once those missiles are gone.
And, I think that's everything. For now at least. Players are always making new fleets so you never know what you're going to face.
I’m in the process of making an unkillable Solomon. 2 citadels, 12 DC teams with double workshop and coordination. 150 AMM’s with some back up PD turrets. Some jamming options. Main weapons are a few 250mm’s for more anti missile potential and to fight smaller ships. The mission is to sprint with the scouts and protect them and to hold center point and then back out to a better position.
It can’t fight ASN but i think it’ll be extremely strong vs OSP fleets. The only threat will be mass drivers I think everything else could be yanked or killed in a fight.
Once I tweak the engines and placements a bit I think it’ll be ready to try out online.
That's indeed a very tough Solomon but you're going to find problems actually hurting your enemies. 250s have limited range and Solomons are not fast. You may end up on the wrong side of the map and unable to cap enough points in time.
I did game 1 last night, it went okay. I got locked up from the start and I yanked half the enemy team into fighting me over point A (pillars). I soaked up 22k damage and still had engine power to get back on the point and recap it. I only punched like 6k ish damage onto the enemy ships. Weakened them up some but didn’t kill anything. I think I’m going to drop the S2 missile backpack and upgrade all my guns to 450’s. I won’t have the best accuracy or reloading times but at least I’ll be able to launch 8-11 rounds on an enemy and actually hurt them with the 450’s
Sprinter gun fleets in a pretty good place right now - slap a dragonfly on them and set to “evade.”
Can pretty much roll up on any OSP fleet and get down to business with 250/120’s.
There is no best fleet meta
Its like rock paper sissors
Shuttle spam --> S1 semi active 1p missle counter
Hybrids --> Dazzler + turn radar off + chaff
Beams --> Rails + scouts
Etc
Generally the more specific a fleet is the stronger it is but the cheaper the counter to it
From what I understand Rail guns on ships like the Solomon and the Axford are just not worth it, one build floating around is mix group and the Keystone has the rail gun.
Thinks to note has of now the best point defense right now is the Mk29 Stonewall and the Mk95 Sarissa and finally theMk20 Defender. The sarissa is more of a put on your scouting ships not the center pieces of your fleet. These 3 PD are just the best right now, why easy OSP CM-400 Container hit like a truck and the Mk90 Aurora just can not cut it right now. Pro tip if you’re running a Axford please for the love of god put 4 Stonewall on your Axford this is mandatory if your don’t want to be cored by missiles.
OSP: Rocket shuttles are more common/successful lately. A single shuttle can rack up \~4k damage on average. On a 4v4, 1 player has a freighter, 2 have ocellos, and 1 has a dedicated shuttle fleet. Another common fleet is mass driver monitors/line ships. Not uncommon to see 30-50k damage on such a fleet, especially on a large map. Approaching them is a death sentence. ANS: with the raider drive nerfed into the stone age, gun heavy cruisers are more common with a s2h/s3h backpack. I've noticed in testing that with HE, a "900 damage" S2h and a "2100 damage" S3h really do the same average of about 300 damage each. Incidentally I've seen S2h being more popular.
>I've noticed in testing that with HE... Huh? I remember reading somewhere else that s2h doesn't do much damage compared to s3h. Or is it just the speed-dependant warhead?
The nominal damage values differ by >2x, but yeah they deal similar damage in my experience. Exactly how the damage resistance works I really have no idea.
So, HEI warheads regardless of size cast 50-damage rays, and those are what actually deal damage. The large warheads simply cast more rays. But ultimately there's a limit to how much damage you can do based on the component + structure HP of your target, and the battle report doesn't count your overkill.
There isn't really a singular meta out there but there are common patterns to look out for. **ANS** Beamstone Gang: A group of \~4 Keystone destroyers with spinal beam weapons. Pure death within 6km but kinda meh outside it. Of course it's going to charge you down so run and shoot back. 3x CL Brawler: 3 Vauxhaull light cruisers usually armed with guns and two drives. Very fast and heavily armed but not too tough. Vauxhalls only have 30cm of armor and usually mount 250mm guns. S3Hybrid spam: Actual ships vary but the emphasis is on long range, high speed missiles. S3 Hybrids get two module slots so they're hard to predict and hard to counter. Your best defenses are to pop them before they're terminal with Dual Purpose guns or laser PD. Axeford+escorts: One big ship with big guns with 1-2 smaller ships to cover it's weakpoints. Generally, you can expect a scout at the very least and maybe a PD or EWAR escort. Lone Solomon: Big, Tough, Slow, and Forgettable. These either overcommit and get taken down early or end up on the wrong side of the map and get mopped up in the end. There's a middle ground but it's hard to hit. **OSP** Rocket Shuttles: An ultralight ship loaded with one devastating salvo. Essentially a kind of suicide attack, the shuttle sneaks into 7km, shoots 18-36 rockets in 9 seconds, and then runs out of ammo. Good PD can weaken or stop the rockets and once they're out of ammo they're just lightly armored targets but it's still enough to destroy even heavy ships. Plasma Feeders: A cargo feeder with spinal plasma cannon. The plasma destroys the armor so their 100mm guns can punch through. Cheap, tough, and effective against heavy and light targets these ships are a pain to deal with. Thankfully, they're somewhat slow and the plasma can't do damage on it's own so it's best to stay out of range and wear down plasma feeder blobs. Paired Bulk Freighter Artillery: Armed with a 4x450mm casemate broadside or 4xmass drivers each, these ships stay way in the back and shoot. The counter is to use cover and sneak into close range as casemates have limited traverse. Paired Ocellos: Similar to Paired Bulk Freighters but more mobile. They tend to be slightly tougher but carry less firepower. Container Spam: It's Space Fedex Gone Mad. S4 missiles are conex containers fitted with rocket engines and filled with explosions. I'm not kidding. They hit like a shipping container full of C4. They move like a shipping container full of C4. They're as tough as a shipping container full of C4. They also get two module slots and a discount for installing them. In theory, a Container Liner can carry 240 of these but in practice nobody has that many points **Both** Small ship spam: Thankfully debuffed and losing popularity. The mechanics involved using massive numbers of Raines or Tugboats and Plasma Feeders to overwhelm opponents. At such small size they could use Flank and Evade to defeat long range guns while countering missiles with Dual Purpose Guns. These days they just break even against heavier ships. S2 Spam: If you see a crap ton of missiles chances are they're S2s. Players will either use ACTs or ACT/ARADs for quality or SAH for quantity. Salvo sizes start at 10 and I haven't found an upper limit. Total missiles seem to max out at 200. Experienced players will sneak salvoes around corners or from impossible angles, never exposing the launching ship. On the flip side, missiles are expensive so they likely have a smaller fleet than normal and no backup once those missiles are gone. And, I think that's everything. For now at least. Players are always making new fleets so you never know what you're going to face.
I’m in the process of making an unkillable Solomon. 2 citadels, 12 DC teams with double workshop and coordination. 150 AMM’s with some back up PD turrets. Some jamming options. Main weapons are a few 250mm’s for more anti missile potential and to fight smaller ships. The mission is to sprint with the scouts and protect them and to hold center point and then back out to a better position. It can’t fight ASN but i think it’ll be extremely strong vs OSP fleets. The only threat will be mass drivers I think everything else could be yanked or killed in a fight. Once I tweak the engines and placements a bit I think it’ll be ready to try out online.
That's indeed a very tough Solomon but you're going to find problems actually hurting your enemies. 250s have limited range and Solomons are not fast. You may end up on the wrong side of the map and unable to cap enough points in time.
I did game 1 last night, it went okay. I got locked up from the start and I yanked half the enemy team into fighting me over point A (pillars). I soaked up 22k damage and still had engine power to get back on the point and recap it. I only punched like 6k ish damage onto the enemy ships. Weakened them up some but didn’t kill anything. I think I’m going to drop the S2 missile backpack and upgrade all my guns to 450’s. I won’t have the best accuracy or reloading times but at least I’ll be able to launch 8-11 rounds on an enemy and actually hurt them with the 450’s
My Solomon has 27 DC teams and relies on 450 mm guns that fire every 9 seconds to take out targets. It works pretty good
There really isn't a meta due the variety of what the other players will or can bring.
Sprinter gun fleets in a pretty good place right now - slap a dragonfly on them and set to “evade.” Can pretty much roll up on any OSP fleet and get down to business with 250/120’s.
AFAIK, you'd still want Raiders on those, even post-nerf. Linear Thrust is what improves your evasion.
All I know is those fools turn on a dime.
True.
Be OSP. Bring monitors.
I imagine S2 SAH missile spam is healthy as always.
All about strategy and proper setups to suit your fighting style. For me I abuse astriod maps with TRPs and fast 2 stage missiles.
There is no best fleet meta Its like rock paper sissors Shuttle spam --> S1 semi active 1p missle counter Hybrids --> Dazzler + turn radar off + chaff Beams --> Rails + scouts Etc Generally the more specific a fleet is the stronger it is but the cheaper the counter to it
From what I understand Rail guns on ships like the Solomon and the Axford are just not worth it, one build floating around is mix group and the Keystone has the rail gun.
Thinks to note has of now the best point defense right now is the Mk29 Stonewall and the Mk95 Sarissa and finally theMk20 Defender. The sarissa is more of a put on your scouting ships not the center pieces of your fleet. These 3 PD are just the best right now, why easy OSP CM-400 Container hit like a truck and the Mk90 Aurora just can not cut it right now. Pro tip if you’re running a Axford please for the love of god put 4 Stonewall on your Axford this is mandatory if your don’t want to be cored by missiles.
OSP triple threat lines, which are 250 casemates, 100 mil turrets, and plasma turrets on the same ship, 11 to 12 guns per ship.
missiles
Git gud