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Drakolich's Ship builds


Drakkolich

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For anyone curious on Shield penetration kills with slug I'll throw up those numbers for fun.

 

These are assuming a Slug Railgun with +10% extra damage and the target not using reinforced armor.

 

Scout = 46%

 

Gunship = 35%

 

Strike fighter = 30%

 

Bomber = 21%

 

So if you look at the targeting computer and see their hull at a lower value then these you should just full charge slug them cause that will kill them.

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Legion:

Aoe on seeker mine to Extra mine

Tactical crew from Salana Rok 5000m Communication/3500m to Scorpio 3000m Radius/3500m Focus

Copilot ability Wingman to Suppression

 

I'm more interested in the change to the mines. Are you having a lot of 1v1 situations and adjusted your build to that?

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I'm more interested in the change to the mines. Are you having a lot of 1v1 situations and adjusted your build to that?

 

We use the Legion to setup an Anti scout area in Deathmatch. When we do this most of the time players only attack it one at a time so the AoE doesn't ever help.

 

Because players seldom attack that area I have plenty of time to setup all 3 mines. If I plan to use a Legion in Domination I swap it to the AoE because the seekers with AoE are way better in Domination. I just don't ever play it there anymore, hence the change.

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So all the reasons you guys stated is exactly why i used the Crit chance for so long on my Slug.

 

However there is one very key aspect I had overlooked. Damage Overcharge.

 

I typically only play Gunship in Deathmatch. When I play Deathmatch I average around 5 Damage Overcharges per match. (honestly that number might be higher)

I am of the opinion that once you get Damage Overcharge I don't Ion anymore only Slug, because what I'm looking for are one and done shots. I scan for targets that don't quite have full health still. Fire one shot and because of Damage Overcharge I usually finish my target. In this situation you're not looking for a Crit at all you just want to make sure you can finish the target. The extra damage with Damage Overcharge lets me do this to higher health targets.

 

The other minor reason I swaped is that when I don't have Damage Overcharge I started using Ion a lot more and found that once you had the Ioned you didn't really need the Crit anymore.

 

Because of the swap my playstyle has changed a little to compensate, I now always open with Ion on any ship class (unless they are already low on health or I have Damage Overcharge).

 

 

Now for some fun math I've done that might explain it a bit better and/or help people. ^^

 

All the following number are assuming the player has taken 10% extra shield crew member and is not using reinforced armor. (I'm making these assumptions as this is the current meta in GSF)

 

Slug Railgun numbers with Damage Overcharge:

Crit talent: 3200 normal, 4800 crit

+10% damage talent: 3620 normal

 

Alright so here are some standard meta builds Shield + Health totals if you were firing a Slug at them.

 

Distortion field Sting 2380

Would get one shot no matter what so talents once you have Damage overcharge don't matter.

 

Distortion field Mangler/Jurgoran 3320

Here is the big one, without the 10% extra you would only one shot this target on a crit with Damage overcharge. In sniping war games having to do that 25% charge shot to finish another Gunship is a real pain especially a Distortion field one because now they have even more time to notice you firing at them and activate it meaning they get to retreat and you miss out on a kill.

 

Feedback Mangler/Jurgoran 3460

Even though this build is less popular I do see it quite a bit on Harbinger. This one also get's one shoted by the 10% extra damage shot once you have Damage Overcharge.

 

Directionals Jurgoran 91%

.

 

This is one of the many reasons I have used the directional shields Condor as my main ship for nearly a year now. Being able to face tank slugs due to tankiness and ions due to power dive is a huge bonus. And it's a lot more predictable than popping DF. I don't know if you've noticed, but I tend to throw myself at you wheneve I see you get a DO. It serves the purpose of wasting precious time so that you can't kill my team as fast, but it also makes you more vulnerable. If there were 2 condors that did this to you every time you got DO, there wouldn't be much that you could do but pray to the DF RNG gods :p

 

Based on your numbers i'm almost thinking that hydrospanner + directionals is a decent synergy here. It would be a great counter to DO because you could facetank slugs a lot more often. Instead of being caught at 91 or below, you could pretty much always be at 100 without spending countless seconds hovering near a repair drone. Giving up wingman is certainly a huge sacrifice against DF gs and moreso against DF scouts. But hydro may actually be viable. Hydro + directionals is certainly more synergy than Tsukiyomi's hydro+feedback.

 

Before I saw this post I was actually thinking it could be interesting to put a Comet Breaker on my bar with directional+hydro for those situations where scouts aren't a problem and the other team has map (and therefore DO) control. The only problem here is that ion is quite crippling since you have to give up power dive. I want a cartel condor plz

Edited by RickDagles
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  • 3 months later...
I may have screwed up something when writing this all out so if you see something that doesn't make sense like a certain ship has a component it can't possibly have please bring it to my attention so I can fix it.

 

Your Mangler use Salana Rok as Copilot and Malavi Quinn as Tactical, which off course does not work after both are in the Tactical Compartment.

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Your Mangler use Salana Rok as Copilot and Malavi Quinn as Tactical, which off course does not work after both are in the Tactical Compartment.

 

I think he changed it to Quinn because Quinn has the passive buff to Sensor Dampening and Salana doesn't.

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  • 1 year later...

I am curious and interested to know your reasoning for using Speed Thrusters in most of your builds instead of Regen. What is the velocity difference between the speed of a boosting Regen Thruster ship vs a non-boosting Speed Thruster version of the same ship?

 

Speed difference aside, I'm just thinking Regen would help make sure there's enough power left to use Engine maneuvers to break missile locks, or recover from an Ion hit.

Edited by HeatRacer
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I am curious and interested to know your reasoning for using Speed Thrusters in most of your builds instead of Regen. What is the velocity difference between the speed of a boosting Regen Thruster ship vs a non-boosting Speed Thruster version of the same ship?

 

Scouts got a buff to top speed when in F3 with 5.5, so they benefit a heckuva lot more from speed thrusters than any other ship. I'm guessing the extra speed helps create enough distance to minimize enemy locks on you. The point isn't about boosting endurance, which the strike is now good at, as much as it is about getting out of their lock range.

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I am curious and interested to know your reasoning for using Speed Thrusters in most of your builds instead of Regen. What is the velocity difference between the speed of a boosting Regen Thruster ship vs a non-boosting Speed Thruster version of the same ship?

 

Speed difference aside, I'm just thinking Regen would help make sure there's enough power left to use Engine maneuvers to break missile locks, or recover from an Ion hit.

 

Because of the additional speed boosts to F3 for Scouts and Strikes and the fact that Strikes have an extra whopping 33 engine power now in the tank you don't really need Regen anymore. Especially because with Speed you get from point A to point B faster and by using less Engine power. Running Double speed allows me to take advantage of the new +30% Speed in F3 even more because F3 modifies the ships upgrades as well.

 

The differences in speed on a T1 Strike fighter are as follows:

No speed upgrades: 806m/s in F4 1047m/s in F3

1 Speed upgrade: 886.6m/s in F4 1152.58 in F3

2 Speed upgrades: 967.2m/s in F4 1257.36m/s in F3

 

 

Alright so that explains what I'm getting out of taking them, next what do I use all that speed for?

 

So these double Speed builds are for Deathmatch only. Right now missiles are very important in the game so being able to dissengage combat is super important, if you're faster then your opponent then after you use your missile break there is no way for them to relock you. This is also why I'm using Barrel roll, once I use that break I need to LOS until it comes back up again before I can engage anyone so using Barrel + Max speed makes sure no one can follow me.

 

All this speed also has many other benefits, I can get to my teammates that are calling for help faster, I can get to Damage Overcharge must faster and I can also spend my "dissengaged time" while waiting for my cooldown to return to gather the other power ups. Many times I'm gathering as many blues and purples as possible to leave up Yellows for my team, as running out of ammo can be a problem for an all missile comp that isn't running repairs.

 

Now since you spend a lot of time Dissengaged now, you have plenty of time to recharge that huge tank the Strike fighter has which means you don't need Regen thrusters.

 

 

That's probably more detail then you were hoping for but I hope you got the answer you were looking for. :)

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For T2 scouts and T1 strikes, an alternate strategy is to use turning thrusters (and engine turning) to get into tight LoS areas to avoid missiles rather than run away. If anyone chases you into the LoS areas you melt them with BLC/pod/retro or HLC/RFL/cluster/retro. This works really well on Kuat Mesas but not so well on Lost Shipyards since the LoS is hard to guarantee. Edited by RickDagles
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Drak, would you mind sharing the five ships on your bar? Or, at least three you always put on your bar no matter what, be it solo-queuing or team or whatever.

 

This is actually changing quite often as I keep testing new options out. The ships I'm currently playing the most are the 3 Strikes fighters, T1 Gunship (Quarrel/Mangler), T1 Scout (Novadive/Blackbolt).

 

Right now I'm absolutely loving the way Strikes fly (I mean I always have they were my most played ship type before hand, I just couldn't play them in "tough" games) so I pretty always have all 3 Strikes on my bar.

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  • 2 weeks later...
This is actually changing quite often as I keep testing new options out. The ships I'm currently playing the most are the 3 Strikes fighters, T1 Gunship (Quarrel/Mangler), T1 Scout (Novadive/Blackbolt).

 

Right now I'm absolutely loving the way Strikes fly (I mean I always have they were my most played ship type before hand, I just couldn't play them in "tough" games) so I pretty always have all 3 Strikes on my bar.

 

Speaking of the Quarrel / Mangler I think you have the pre-patch burst laser cannon upgrades listet:

Primary: Burst Laser Cannon (Armor pen/Hull damage)

After Armor Pen is now the T3 upgrade.

 

Speaking about your bar would you elaborate if the set-up you mentoined is what you consider the new "best meta choice" or just personal preference like you said with the strikes? Let me explain why I ask this question. As we can see with thr voice chat veteran premade discussion, if we agree with them or not, you have a certain reputation in the community and people look what you do either what you write here or what you stream. If all people see from you in the stream is slinging Protorps and then read in the forum that you have all strikes in your bar someone might take that as a statement how strong Protorps and strike fighters are right now if that conclusion was correct or not. I remember that in one of your streams you mentoined that Domination still resolves around Hyperspace Beacon and Tensor field. This would be completly missed just looking on the ships that you mentoined are on your bar and some of the latter Protorps spam galore streams as of late. While I know people are still testing things while other still refused to adapt to the changes it would be interesting to see if you already updated you templates what the best combination of ship classes for domination and TDM is. And what ships you thing a single player or a team should have available to cover all situations. If the answer there would be have all 3 strikes on your bar then we should wonder if it is time to balance the balance patch becouse strikes were buffed to far.

 

To throw in my two cents:

-TDM 4 strike fightes, 2 gun ships and 2 scouts is possible the team set up ou want to have in TDM right now. While the strikes, like the line men in the NFL, clash in the center of the map, the gun ships stay "in the pocket" that the strike fighters created and pick off already wounded opponentens and execute them. The scouts flank the strike clash and either attack the gun ships or attack the opposing strikes that are already engaged with the friendly strikes to tip the scale of the strike fighter battle in favor of the own team.

 

While line and pocket might sound like a static engagement it is not. Especially gun ships does have to be much more carefull where are their teammates and where are the enemies and than look to keep their own team mates between them and the opponent than before. But if they can do that a gun ship can still lead its team in damage and kills, but if the line folds and the gun ships get over run than they do die much faster than before. The loser of this is clearly the bomber where I don't see any role for it in TDM right now. That is why I moved all my Legion / Warcarriers from Railgune Sentry drone to Interdiction Drone and I am surprised that you have not.

 

For Dom I really don't feal that much of an impact of the balance patch, it still feals if Domination is played like it was before the patch. Of course strike fighters are more effective then before but they are still the jack of all trade master of none kind of ship they where before and in domination I think that hurts them after the more specialised ships can do their job much better like you still want a bomber to defend a satellite. And that's why I think having a Razorwire / Rampart mark four and a Bloodmark / Spearpoint on your bar is still mandatory as long as you don't fly in a group where you know someone will fly that ship. I can also see the Interdiction Drone Legion / Warcarrier being used here because a team of a Razorwire / Rampart mark four and a Legion / Warcarrier on a satellite still requires some work to get ride off.

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Speaking about your bar would you elaborate if the set-up you mentoined is what you consider the new "best meta choice" or just personal preference like you said with the strikes?

 

You should specify whether you want that for solo queue, or for a somewhat organized group.

 

In the solo queue you have to cover all the essential utilities yourself.

 

In an organized group you can divide the load of utility ships among team members, and gain some more flexibility for selection of offensive ship options. This is the better option if possible, because there are now enough competitive utility builds that you can potentially get too low on DPS options by stuffing your hangar bar full of desirable utility ships.

 

 

 

 

In any case it's fairly easy to work out what the competitive bars look like.

 

In domination both tensor and beacon are mandatory if you're serious about winning, so that's the Spearpoint/Bloodmark and Rampart/Razorwire.

 

You also need anti-nest utility. This is more open now. You probably want Ion Railgun, which gives you a Quarrel/Mangler. You also want some sort of EMP effect. You can get it on the tensor scout you already have with EMP missile, but the Blackbolt/Novadive with EMP field, and the Imperium/Clarion with EMP missile are stronger options, and also more survivable in TDMs. You can also get it on a Pike/Quell, but that's a sub-par option if you're bringing the ship for utility, though in trade it retains more offensive power than most of the other EMP options.

 

Having a strong healing ship with ammo refill is also nice, the options there being Legion/Warcarrier, Spearpoint/Bloodmark, Imperium/Clarion in order of desirability for that utility.

 

Nest building ability is valuable, but mostly that just adds an extra plus to the benefits of bringing bombers for beacon and Repair Drones.

 

 

 

So that gives a line up of Spearpoint/Bloodmark (tensor), Rampart/Razorwire (hyperspace beacon), Quarrel/Mangler (Ion Railgun, DPS Railgun), Blackbolt/Novadive (EMP Field), and Legion/Warcarrier (Repair Drone, Railgun Drone).

 

The trouble is that aside from the Quarrel/Mangler, you've filled up your bar with all the utilities and sacrificed DPS/killing power.

 

In a team setting you'd definitely want to dump at least two, maybe even three (possibly four if a real ace on multiple DPS ships) of the utility ships for something like a Battlescout, Rycer/Starguard, Pike/Quell, or Condor/Jurgoran. Might even have cartel ships to run variant builds of the Battlescout or T1 gunship, or possibly TT-Pods builds of the T1 scout if you don't have the cartel Battlescout. Even in a solo hangar you might swap out one to two utility ships for more pure offensive options.

 

The key changes from pre 5.5 are that now there's strong team utility in EMP components, the Rycer/Starguard and Pike/Quell are meta level offensive ships, for some ships the specific builds that are meta have changed, and some of the utility ships are now halfway decent outside of the utility component that you bring them for.

 

 

These days I'm always bringing a Tensor scout, usually bringing a Beacon bomber, and the three strikes. Sometimes I'll swap a battlescout or EMP T1 scout for one of the strikes or the bomber (even though I know I shouldn't swap out the bomber). This is influenced strongly by my love of flying strikes. After the tensor and beacon positions are filled all of the strikes, the T1 and T3 gunships, the T1 and T2 scout, and the dronecarrier are all viable choices based on what the player likes to fly. The T2 gunship is not bad, but there's not much reason to want it over the other gunships, and the poor Sledgehammer/Decimus is the one ship that's really not in the meta.

 

The beautiful thing about the current version of the game is that there is a fair amount of flexibility in hangar bar. It's a good idea to bring at least one utility ship, and if solo queuing maybe even two. After that though, there's really no reason be embarrassed or feel like you're letting the team down if you fill the rest of the bar with whatever you like flying. If they're strong builds at any rate. Double missile Jurgorans aren't really something to bring to a serious meta type match, even if they are fun to fly.

 

I leave specific meta viable builds to the reader as an exercise, because there's now more flexibility there as well, and making an exhaustive list of every meta build would be exhausting.

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Overall meta questions are pretty hard to answer right now, since it's way too early to think I have a handle on what it is yet.

 

We're still figuring out stuff and the builds are changing. Right now I'm super focused on Strike fighters and figuring out what the best builds are with them. I've played very very little of anything else actually, I'm not even sure what the best builds are for the other ships. The ship builds I am using on the not Strikes ships are mostly recommended ones by teammates that I liked and have been trying out.

 

We've all loved Strikes for so long but just couldn't play them in competitive matches. For example even more 5.5 Strike fighter was my most played ship class.

 

 

What I can tell you is what I think are the components/ships currently driving the meta. In Domination EMP missile is a huge part of how you have to play, if your node has turrets you actually don't want to be anywhere near the damn satellite because you'll be a super easy AOE target. Once EMP gets fixed next week, I actually think we might see a shift from people using it so much and because of that we might see Bombers actually return. Because these EMP missiles AOE are so powerful currently they are taking the spots of Gunships on many teams, so with them being changed we might see Ion Gunships return as well.

 

Also in Domination is the ability to kill things while on the node is super powerful and because of that Burst laser and the T2 Scout are still super good in that mode. (I say this mostly from fighting them more then flying as them since I've mostly been in Strikes)

 

In Death Match, it's all about stacking the same kind of damage currently. For example if half your team is running heavy shield Piercing damage, you don't really want to be running a ship that's trying to strip all the shields away from a target since you're going to have to do all the heavy lifting yourself. Since so many players right now are loving the new Shield piercing missiles, we're seeing very little "high damage" builds. It's more about landing Protons, EMP missiles, Slug Rails and Heavy Lasers on players. However that doesn't mean a "high damage" comp couldn't work.

 

We've tested a few of these and they work wonderfully, the problem is because the other one is more popular right now you'll be doing all that damage alone while your teammates are trying to do the Shield piercing ones.

 

For example a Heavy Gunship comp escorted by T1 Strikes build to do high amounts of raw Damage with say Ion cannon/ Heavy or Quad lasers with a high damage missile like Concussion or Clusters works great.

 

 

So as for what you want your ship bar to be to be optimal I think you just want to hit a few points to cover stuff. For Domination you'd want a ship that can fight on the node and a second ship which can be off a node and AOE it like an Ion Gunship or something with EMP missile.

 

For Deathmatch you'd want something that can stack either Shield piercing stuff or Raw damage.

 

 

You also have to keep in mind Strikes right now are super versatile there are multiple builds for each one. You could have 2 Different Strikes on your bar one for each of these categories for a single map type. Right now I think it's more about having ships for specific uses then the actual ships. There are multiple ships that can do the same jobs right now, as we keep testing I'm sure we'll figure out which ones do them the best, but I know I'm nowhere near figuring that out.

 

Sorry I couldn't be more specific, this type of question is really hard to answer.

 

I hope that helped. :)

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Imperium/Clarion

Primary: Quad Laser Cannon (Firing Efficiency/Hull Damage)

Secondary: Proton Torpedo(Arc/Range)

System: Remote Slicing (Blaster maximum reduction/Engine lockout)

Shield: Directional Shields (Less Shield Delay)

Engine: Power Dive (Speed)

Sensor: Communication Sensor

Capacitor: Damage Capacitor

Reactor: Large Reactor

Armor: Lightweight Armor

Copilot Ability: Blizz/B-3G9 Hydrospanner

Crew: Empire: Offensive: Jaesa Willsam 6% Accuracy/2 Degrees arc Defensive: Vector 5% Evasion/10% Shield max Tactical: Salana Rok 5000m Communication/3500m Focus Engineering: Blizz 13% Engine efficiency/ 15% Engine Pool

Republic: Offensive: B-3G9 6% Accuracy/12% Secondary Cooldown Reduction Defensive: Nadia Grell 5% Evasion/10% Shield max Tactical: Akaavi Spar 2000m Dampening/5000m Communication Engineering: C2-N2 13% Engine efficiency/ 15% Engine Pool

 

That's an interesting build. I am currently running Remote Slicing with the Engine Power Reduction Ability. That has, in my opinion, a good synergy with Lockdown. However, I pretty much only run Clarion, when there is someone really annoying in the enemy team. Having someone locked down (-100 engine power combined) with nearly no engine power left makes him very easy to kill (or have him disengaged for quite some time, so he doesn't annoy me any further). That's also nice, if I am surprising a Gunship in TDM, that is hiding behind a mesa/asteroid. Having nearly no engine power dispossess him mostly of his chances to run away.

 

Another question: For what reason Light Armor? Are you going for Evasion here? The crew is also looking like that.

 

Oh, and can you eventually say something about a TDM-Pike/Quell-build?

Edited by Exocor
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That's an interesting build. I am currently running Remote Slicing with the Engine Power Reduction Ability. That has, in my opinion, a good synergy with Lockdown. However, I pretty much only run Clarion, when there is someone really annoying in the enemy team. Having someone locked down (-100 engine power combined) with nearly no engine power left makes him very easy to kill (or have him disengaged for quite some time, so he doesn't annoy me any further). That's also nice, if I am surprising a Gunship in TDM, that is hiding behind a mesa/asteroid. Having nearly no engine power dispossess him mostly of his chances to run away.

 

Another question: For what reason Light Armor? Are you going for Evasion here? The crew is also looking like that.

 

Oh, and can you eventually say something about a TDM-Pike/Quell-build?

 

Hey Exocor great questions!

 

Their really isn't any reason to run the Engine power reduction ability as what it does is lower the targets maximum engines by 20, this happens after they lose the 60 Engine power that Remote slicing removes by default.

 

To explain this a little better I'll use an example. Say your target has 100 Engine power at Max. If he is currently at 100 when you Remote Slicing him he will drop to 40 Engine power and then his maximum will be lowered to 80. So after all is said and done he will be at 40 of 80 Engine power and started at 100 of 100.

 

That's the reason I choose the Blaster maximum reduction if the target is at max blaster power when you use it they lose a little Blaster power this way, it's not a really great upgrade and probably won't ever really matter.

 

 

On to Lightweight armor, this ship is really only used in Deathmatch and what I've found is that because you're only really engaging with Protons on targets you're not exposed often to other missiles. You dive in Proton/Slice someone and then get the hell out of dodge to wait for your cooldowns to reset. Because of this I find most of my damage is coming from Railguns, Evasion is the best counter to them so I stacked it as hard as I could. This gives me 21.5% Evasion at all times which has really helped.

 

 

My Quell/Pike Deathmatch build is pretty easy actually just go to my Rycer/Starguard build and replace Rapids with EMP Missile and Turbo reactor with Lightweight armor. The other thing I might consider is taking +10% shield max crew passive over +15% regen/delay crew passive, but I think either could work just different playstyles.

 

To be completely honest I'd much rather run the Quell/Pike for Deathmatch I think it's a stronger ship then the Rycer/Starguard, however I can't have 2 of them and I also really like the Quell/Pike Domination build.

 

 

Thanks for the questions keep em coming! :)

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Another question: For what reason Light Armor? Are you going for Evasion here? The crew is also looking like that.

 

 

I think you can make a case for either reinforced armor or lightweight armor. Lightweight armor can be really strong against railguns if you stack it with the engine overcharge evasion. I personally like reinforced armor better because itgives you 1647 armor which is realistically 1955 HP after using hydrospanner. In 40 seconds you can use hydrospanner again which brings you to 2263 "usable" HP. This effectively lets you eat 2 proton missiles in 40 seconds without dying. I feel like it allows you to play more aggressive. If you are fighting against more gunships than protons then lightweight is probably better.

 

 

EDIT: I blacked out the incorrect math, thanks Dulfy :p

Edited by RickDagles
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I think you can make a case for either reinforced armor or lightweight armor. Lightweight armor can be really strong against railguns if you stack it with the engine overcharge evasion. I personally like reinforced armor better because it gives you 1647 armor which is realistically 1955 HP after using hydrospanner. In 40 seconds you can use hydrospanner again which brings you to 2263 "usable" HP. This effectively lets you eat 2 proton missiles in 40 seconds without dying. I feel like it allows you to play more aggressive. If you are fighting against more gunships than protons then lightweight is probably better.

 

Your math is a little off, and Reinforced is actually better then you're giving it credit for here. With Mastered Reinforced armor a Strikefighter has 1830 Hull not 1647. You likely used the Dulfy calculator to get your numbers and Reinforced is bugged on it so that it doesn't take any upgrades into account.

 

You are very correct that vs missiles Reinforced is much more useful then Lightweight I just find it very easy to avoid missiles currently and find most of my damage coming from Railguns.

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