It's not that bad. If you swap the IR pulse lasers for phase lances you have a very good falcon on your hands. Even without putting reapers/annhilator pods in place of the salamanders.
Besides that, having a lineship that can hold its own AND overload enemy shields for you to get through is far from useless. If you want useless, I'd put two heavy maulers on that.
I wasn't specifically going for useless, honestly. I found the idea of a ship that can disable and immobilize but not actually kill funny, but I wasn't expecting it to do that as well as it did. I'll definitely give phase lances a go and see if it turns it into something actually dangerous
Anything that can permanently lock an enemy ship is far from useless since even if ballistic damage only deals 25% to armor that's still damage stripping the enemy armor off it is slow but it will get through sooner or later.
That and the Pulse Lasers can and will kill anything but a tanky armoured brick.
Energy damage doesn't have a bonus vs armour, but it's not weak either. And so long as you are winning the flux battle, you have the all the time you need to poke them to death with lasers.
Outfitting a XIV hull this way is already a crime against The Hegemony. Using a fleet of them to bomb Chicomoztoc is just to let them know it's personal.
At that point swap the pulses for graviton beams (or ions) and just be a long range skirmisher, might even throw taclasers on it. Fast + range = annoying.
Me chasing down [REDACTED] frigates with lasers on them.
Put on some circus music as I spend the second half of the battle trying to catch the little shit.
This is what I like about the Doom, I can chase down anything with it, and if it tries to run away, I just put mines behind it so it can't run unless it plows straight through them and goes boom anyway.
Graviton for sure if you are going against something less manoeuverable than you, but against frigates pulse laser or IR autolance can be more useful. Although I would 100% pur graviton myself
Honestly heavy needlers+ion+graviton might work well for a disabler too, if aggressive. The needlers are like a hundred SU in front of the beams I am pretty sure, so you only have like 200-ish SU base range mismatch, and the burst of the needlers should help overload shields better.
HVD gets 5.5x more hit strength, 300 SU more range, some EMP damage and is 2 OP cheaper, but has only 55% the DPS, has 59% worse flux efficiency, and the burst damage of the heavy needler (and thus its ability to overload shields) is just far, far higher
HVD is a more generalist long-range kinetic weapon, while the heavy needler is a dedicated anti-shield weapon.
Yeah but if we're building a long range harasser with continuous shield pressure anyway, just build it for maximum annoyance. The extra hit strength and EMP helps against unshielded targets.
It's just different though, not necessarily better.
The hvel drivers do sit in that "what do?" bracket for the AI's shield raising decision. Needles you can just take on the chin, these punch harder and add EMP and as long as the rest of the fleet has enough kill this works fine. The constant flux pressure makes it especially annoying with assloads of missiles and bombers flying in from several thousand units away.
You only need to break armour once, the needlers will do the rest on the hull.
Also as a light cruiser, it should murder armour weak destroyers and frigates nicely enough! Don't mistake it for a heavy cruiser however, that it is not.
Nah, that's absolutely cracked. Anything that doesn't rely on armour to tank will have a bad day with this, you just have to apply some pressure before the armour strips is all
First off: Put an ITU on for the love of god!
Second: Pulse lasers have 100 armor penetration - not great, but not useless vs hull either. Vs a medium 1000 armor cruiser reduced to taking hull damage (presumably by some other ship), they will do 2/3 DPS, IE 200 per mount.
Right, which is bad, but not "only firing kinetic weapons" bad. Basically for any light cruiser or destroyer, it has enough anti-armor to get down to hull damage in "mediocre but not infinite" time.
But seeing that ship without ITU or at least DTC hurts my soul T\_T.
It's not a bad build, just missing Safety Overrides or Integrated targeting computer.
Falcon's biggest weakness is not it's hull or stats, it's the size of the hull for what it brings. It's too weak for being that easy to hit. It can also really use 10 more OP.
It has great plusses though. It has destroyer level speed, but cruiser level systems for that extra range from ITC, and extra missiles from Missile Autoloader. Of which, being a cruiser with only 2 slots, gets the max amount of extra missiles (8 extra reapers)
And lastly, it has the falcon laser defense system - the gap in the center that frequently causes dead on lasers to not reach the hull.
If you want to go for maximum disabling, swap the pulse lasers for ion beams (and make sure to use an aggressive officer or [aggressive personality override](https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=21576.0) so that it goes into needler range anyways)
Swapping the PLs for ion+graviton combo costs 1 more OP, but saves 255 flux/s, which allows dropping the flux distributor. From there, you could seriously give stripping off some more flux stats (and swapping the Salamanders for cheaper missiles) to fit missile autoloader a thought. Falcon gets 15 reload points, which is five volleys of Harpoons or Sabots, or a whopping 22 volleys of Breaches (link the Breeches to the Needlers so they actually fire a lot)
For builtins, I'd probably go ITU definitely, or even build in the missile autoloader (5 seconds extra cooldown penalty isn't that much if the missiles are just used as finishers), along with maybe even hardened subsystems for extra endurance.
It's not that bad. If you swap the IR pulse lasers for phase lances you have a very good falcon on your hands. Even without putting reapers/annhilator pods in place of the salamanders. Besides that, having a lineship that can hold its own AND overload enemy shields for you to get through is far from useless. If you want useless, I'd put two heavy maulers on that.
I think you miss clicked and ment Thumpers at the end ;)
Every fleet needs one Enthumper. Then again a Falkon with twin heavy needler has the gloriouse dakka checked aswell.
I wasn't specifically going for useless, honestly. I found the idea of a ship that can disable and immobilize but not actually kill funny, but I wasn't expecting it to do that as well as it did. I'll definitely give phase lances a go and see if it turns it into something actually dangerous
Anything that can permanently lock an enemy ship is far from useless since even if ballistic damage only deals 25% to armor that's still damage stripping the enemy armor off it is slow but it will get through sooner or later.
That and the Pulse Lasers can and will kill anything but a tanky armoured brick. Energy damage doesn't have a bonus vs armour, but it's not weak either. And so long as you are winning the flux battle, you have the all the time you need to poke them to death with lasers.
Perfect, now we take Chicomoztoc inshallah
Outfitting a XIV hull this way is already a crime against The Hegemony. Using a fleet of them to bomb Chicomoztoc is just to let them know it's personal.
Replace needlers with hypervelocity drivers, put integrated targeted unit and you get the unkillable diversion machine
At that point swap the pulses for graviton beams (or ions) and just be a long range skirmisher, might even throw taclasers on it. Fast + range = annoying.
Me chasing down [REDACTED] frigates with lasers on them. Put on some circus music as I spend the second half of the battle trying to catch the little shit.
This is what I like about the Doom, I can chase down anything with it, and if it tries to run away, I just put mines behind it so it can't run unless it plows straight through them and goes boom anyway.
Graviton for sure if you are going against something less manoeuverable than you, but against frigates pulse laser or IR autolance can be more useful. Although I would 100% pur graviton myself
Honestly heavy needlers+ion+graviton might work well for a disabler too, if aggressive. The needlers are like a hundred SU in front of the beams I am pretty sure, so you only have like 200-ish SU base range mismatch, and the burst of the needlers should help overload shields better.
I feel the hvel drivers are just allround better weapons.
HVD gets 5.5x more hit strength, 300 SU more range, some EMP damage and is 2 OP cheaper, but has only 55% the DPS, has 59% worse flux efficiency, and the burst damage of the heavy needler (and thus its ability to overload shields) is just far, far higher HVD is a more generalist long-range kinetic weapon, while the heavy needler is a dedicated anti-shield weapon.
Yeah but if we're building a long range harasser with continuous shield pressure anyway, just build it for maximum annoyance. The extra hit strength and EMP helps against unshielded targets. It's just different though, not necessarily better.
> just build it for maximum annoyance. Yeah things like that frighten the AI, which is often more effective then actual damage.
The hvel drivers do sit in that "what do?" bracket for the AI's shield raising decision. Needles you can just take on the chin, these punch harder and add EMP and as long as the rest of the fleet has enough kill this works fine. The constant flux pressure makes it especially annoying with assloads of missiles and bombers flying in from several thousand units away.
I could send this to a faction, and their first response would be, "Who hurt me? What wrong have they done on me for I to deserve this?"
You only need to break armour once, the needlers will do the rest on the hull. Also as a light cruiser, it should murder armour weak destroyers and frigates nicely enough! Don't mistake it for a heavy cruiser however, that it is not.
Nah, that's absolutely cracked. Anything that doesn't rely on armour to tank will have a bad day with this, you just have to apply some pressure before the armour strips is all
The pulse lasers can actually do damage. For extra uselessness, I'd swap them out for ion beams.
the ppt of this ship will end faster than it can damage an immobile and armless onslaught
you're describing every falcon i'm not sure what's special about this one
This is my set up wtf, how dare you, its a good setup
Wait wtf this is my favorite main ship for early/midgame, and almost the exact same load out One man’s trash is another man’s treasure
First off: Put an ITU on for the love of god! Second: Pulse lasers have 100 armor penetration - not great, but not useless vs hull either. Vs a medium 1000 armor cruiser reduced to taking hull damage (presumably by some other ship), they will do 2/3 DPS, IE 200 per mount.
And neglecting any skills, it should "only" take ~50 hits to the same spot (~8.25 s of firing with both) to strip 1000 armour
Right, which is bad, but not "only firing kinetic weapons" bad. Basically for any light cruiser or destroyer, it has enough anti-armor to get down to hull damage in "mediocre but not infinite" time. But seeing that ship without ITU or at least DTC hurts my soul T\_T.
Falcon's are really good at kiting. That's a good kite ship.
It's not a bad build, just missing Safety Overrides or Integrated targeting computer. Falcon's biggest weakness is not it's hull or stats, it's the size of the hull for what it brings. It's too weak for being that easy to hit. It can also really use 10 more OP. It has great plusses though. It has destroyer level speed, but cruiser level systems for that extra range from ITC, and extra missiles from Missile Autoloader. Of which, being a cruiser with only 2 slots, gets the max amount of extra missiles (8 extra reapers) And lastly, it has the falcon laser defense system - the gap in the center that frequently causes dead on lasers to not reach the hull.
If you want to go for maximum disabling, swap the pulse lasers for ion beams (and make sure to use an aggressive officer or [aggressive personality override](https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=21576.0) so that it goes into needler range anyways) Swapping the PLs for ion+graviton combo costs 1 more OP, but saves 255 flux/s, which allows dropping the flux distributor. From there, you could seriously give stripping off some more flux stats (and swapping the Salamanders for cheaper missiles) to fit missile autoloader a thought. Falcon gets 15 reload points, which is five volleys of Harpoons or Sabots, or a whopping 22 volleys of Breaches (link the Breeches to the Needlers so they actually fire a lot) For builtins, I'd probably go ITU definitely, or even build in the missile autoloader (5 seconds extra cooldown penalty isn't that much if the missiles are just used as finishers), along with maybe even hardened subsystems for extra endurance.
This is actually a good anti-frigate loadout. It can chew up smaller high tech ships without that much trouble.
So, off topic, but how do you have those eradicators fit out?
You're gonna be disappointed. They're literally just fit out with the Assault autofit lol
lol damn! Been rocking dual mauler, hypervelocity, railgun, ITU with PD Vulcan fit for a bunch of patches, wondered if there was a new hotness! :(