Jupiter Battlestar ... worth the money?

[garry619]

Just got access to the Jupiter, at long last! But having read over the stats I'm wondering whether I should just stick with the Artemis.

Considering the huge increase in price over the Arty which gives you pretty much the same ship I don't see a big up side to paying out for a Jupiter. They have BS Artillery, but those are terrible guns. Really low accuracy, slow firing rates, no up side. It has the same amount of Point Defence guns on the sides as an Arty does, but the Arty has Heavy Turrets on the front and bottom arcs which fire faster and are more accurate even if just by a little. It does have a lot more armor, but that melts away if you get caught under a Cylon missile volley and their big guns the same as any ship. You get a Raptor slot, but I haven't had a need for Raptors yet so that doesn't add to the sell. It has a bigger flak field, great, but you can't use the broadside guns or missiles if you have your flak up so the ship becomes a defensive wall rather than an attacking force.

Also on the negative side the Jupiter is a lot slower than the Arty which makes a difference when the Cylons get in close and you need to turn the ship to save it from more damage. Even the Dradis range and fire wall regen is worse that the Arty. But I think the biggest downer is simply the price. A whole 600 points more than an Arty for not much more bang for your buck. I mean get two Jupiters and thats more than half your fleet spend gone. It doesn't even have an extra missile tube, or Evade score for it's Vipers, things I thought would be standard on a ship which is hailed as the best thing since sliced bread!!

[Lochdanon]

yes very effective in the correct hands or just used correctly. COL Waggle demonstrated.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkbMsAFQ_2w

[twosnark]

Hmmm. well a few things.

First, I tend to agree that the Jupiter seems a bit over-rated. HOWEVER - - it is still quite a viable ship; and I do like to have a few floating around (Current game will probably end with about 8 fleets; 2 led by Jupiters 5 by Minervas.)

* The extra squadron slot would house an assault raptor. A very, very useful tool for painting targets. The rockets can also ruin someone's day. In my current fleets; I generally have about 5 viper squadrons and one assault raptor squadron.

* The Arties have excellent firepower. The accuracy may be low. . but when they hit. . .they hit at long range and with quite a punch. HOWEVER, the Arities are quite weak on bottom firepower. If you have a couple of archanes and couple of revenants coming in low. . . .a pure Artie fleet will struggle. Mid game I ran with a Minotaur + Minerva to add bottom firepower. If no Minerva; then two Minotaurs. In the late game, I am swapping Hercules for Minotaurs - - and trying to get either a Minerva or Jupiter into each fleet.

* I agree that the Jupiters are slow, slow slow. But given the firepower. . .that's ok. :) I just make sure that I have the flak guns able to bear on the enemy munitions. I hear they pair well with Atlas carriers. (I personally thing the Atlas are TOO slow to be effective)

* The biggest knock on the Jupiter is the cost. Sure - the firepower is awesome. But my late stage 7000 pt jupiter fleet trades out a Hercules for a Beserk to keep the points in check. In my End game 8000 pt fleets; I have a swap between Jupiter + Hercules vs Minerva + Artie. Not sure which will do better. . . the Minerva fleet has 9+1 (Viper+Raptor) squadrons and 7 munitions. The Jupiter fleet has 8+1 squadrons and 5 munitions.

So on balance. . . .I don't stress out on having Jupiters. I keep one or two in the Grand Fleet; but the bread and butter is Arties. (End game Grand Fleet will have 2 Jupiters, 5 Minervas and 19 Arties spread across 7 battlegroups)

[garry619]

Originally posted by Lochdanon:

yes very effective in the correct hands or just used correctly. COL Waggle demonstrated.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkbMsAFQ_2w

An interesting vid, but that was up against 6 big ships that didn't move and only fired missiles at you. How do they fair against a fleet of 7 or 8 Cylon ships like Revenants or Arachne that actually manoeuvre? Also what happened to all the Cylon fighters those Basestars put out, I couldn't tell. Did they all just fly straight into the flak wall? Again if you have a fleet of Colonial ships the Cylon fighters don't always fly at your Battlestars, they also avoid the flak wall to go after easier targets sometimes, I've seen it happen. In this vid there was only one target so they probably did fly right into the flak.

[Lochdanon]

i love the J1 and J2s depending on the fleet i have built, and what im fighting ill use either or, campaign as soon as i can i use them, then flak fields alone are why. but like any battle concentrated fire from enemy guns will melt any ship eventually. I say just experiment with the numbers and see if it can fit your play style, but yea i think the vid was funny and yes it is only a certain point of view =D good hunting out there!

[Sir Wagglepuss III]

1. That video has been taken out of context to the extreme. That's an extra video that was posted alongside an instructional video demonstrating a properly executed Debris Mine and Flak bait, to show that a ship with flak and just a couple squadrons can easily take on a squadron force 5x - 10x it's size. The full video of taking out the 6 Basestars with 1 Jupiter was for ♥♥♥♥♥ and giggles in comparison, because when you've wrecked 12x Raider Mk I's and 6x Wardrivers with 2x Viper Mk II's, a Derbis Mine, and Jupiter flak, you may as well finish the plate and gun down the Basestars too. Actual description on how to do a proper Debris/Flak bait is not a simple process and I'm not detailing it here on top of a Jupiter talk.

2. BS-Arty is not terrible and you're going horribly wrong if that's the conclusion you draw. Out of the box, yes, it's accuracy is mediocre. That's why you get an officer up to +7 or more offensive posture and use Assault Raptor paint target to ramp up your max range accuracy to 60%+. BS-Arty typically slings out 8 shots from it's standard mounts, at 6 damage per shot, at around 1 salvo per 2 seconds. At 100% accuracy, that'd be about 288 damage per turn, which is why it has crappy accuracy out of the box. Getting BS-Arty to even 50% accuracy pours out 144 damage per turn on average - That's enough to one-turn anything smaller than a Revenant, and that's on a bad day. That's ONE ship with standard BS-Arty complement of 8x guns.

3. The ventral firepower of an Artemis is complete junk compared to a Jupiter Mk I. 2x Heavy guns isn't putting out DPS worth spit, whilst 6x BS-Arty can threaten Arachne and Revenants if you've levelled your officer (And by the time you hit Jupiters, you should have). Run a pair of Jupiters and you'll be beating the crap out of any single ship that comes into your firing range - Which at a minimum of +7 offensive posture that firing range should be at least 6400m, allowing for a clean 2-3 salvoes before the Cylon ship gets close enough to fire.

4. The Jupiter is a defensive ship, and it pairs naturally with other slow and heavily armoured ships such as the Atlas and Janus. If you want to play the aggressive-headbutt-your-enemy style, the Jupiter will not suit your needs. The Jupiter has the largest flak field in the game, it is big enough to quite literally cover an entire fleet behind it, should formation be held properly.

5. Play broadside, fall back, dive. The Jupiter Mk I is about having a ridiculously difficult to break wall that uses squadrons to get the work done, and the fleet mops up whatever is left. Example fleet: 2x Jupiter Mk I, 3x Atlas. That's 10x Viper Mk II's, 5x Assault Raptors. The Assault Raptors use their missiles to snipe any priority threats that make a bee-line for your fleet, and anything that gets past your Assault Raptors gets to enjoy either 16x or 12x BS-Arty on +7 Offensive posture and buffed by Assault Raptor paint target (Oh, and 9x Heavy / 6x Mediums from the 3x Atlas, should you keep them close). That quantity of Viper Mk II's will maul anything the AI throws at you in campaign, and if they look like they are struggling, you can throw a Debris Mine on one of the Jupiters. Honestly, with that much squadron power and the brick wall of armour/guns behind it, the munitions are completely at player discretion.

6. DRADIS range and Firewall on the Jupiter are irrelevant. You've potentially got up to 15x squadrons that can go scout, and if you're struggling with hacking by the time you hit Jupiters then I'm not sure what to say.

7. "You can't use broadside if you've got flak up" Man, the PDC damage output is dirt compared to the BS-Arty. Half the campaign I flipped on the flak button and forgot the PDC's existed for direct combat whilst using Jupiters. If you're desperate enough in a combat situation to consider PDC output, you went wrong about 4 turns ago.

8. No point 8. This post got too damn long as it stands.

[twosnark]

^- - - - agree with everything above. :)

The video looks very staged. . . and if you swapped three revenants for three basestars. . .the battle would look VERY different.

In my heavy fleets, the Jupiter tends to draw the majority of the munitions in the early stages of battle; and the ship sits under a flak wall. Usually with a "0" posture; as I don't want to nerf the flak wall with multiple torpedo salvos incoming. Then, the surrounding ships (Arties and Hercs; with a +max attack posture) deal out death to any revenants/archanes that are closing in behind the swarms of raiders..

Every fleet needs a bit of balance; or you will find certain cylon fleets will rip it to shreds. For me, the Jupiter is a nice flagship. . .and (effectively) has three fighter slots. It also provides good bottom firepower; which the Arties lack. The cost, however, is high. And generally, I have to take a weaker ship somewhere else to compensate.

[Lochdanon]

^ agreed. i only meant to show the J1 is good and in the right situations and right hands its deadly like any ship in the game just about (in my opinion)

[Sir Wagglepuss III]

"The video looks very staged"

That's because it was.

Like I said, if you had read the very first part of my post, I set that whole thing up to demonstrate the use of Debris Mine and Flak baiting. The full video of 1x Jupiter vs 6x Basestars that was linked here was purely for ♥♥♥♥♥ and giggles as I had the Jupiter finish off the 6x Basestars after the demonstration, and I posted the whole video as a result. The actual demonstration video is all of 2 minutes long and shows the focus on what I'm doing to make a Debris Mine and Flak bait happen.