Best Chaos Lance Ships

[Sneakimus]

What are the best Chaos Lance ships by ship class?

I like to go lance heavy in most of my builds, but I admit the ship descriptors and classes can be somewhat confusing at times.

For instance, the Hellfire looked very promising on paper, but when it comes to battles, it seemed very underwhelming, and its front lance batteries appear to not work properly. Whereas the Murderer on the other hand seems capable of punching far above its weight class when it comes to lances.

What are the best Chaos ships for lance play by ship class?

[Ashantai]

Hellbringer Mk2 is very good for its size. The new Apostate is a good ship for an escort.

Cruisers don't have many lance ships except the Devastation.

The Acheron is a great lance boat BC. With lock on and the right upgrades you can get a 27000 range.

The GC don't have great lance ships. The Hellfire is OK I guess.

The Desolator is the ultimate lance BB...but it is very slow. I don't really recommend it.

[Ashardalon]

archerons if you want to do effort and run
executor if you just want to win while afk
its a ridiculous ship you can barely do wrong with

[Ashantai]

Is the executor any good? It's short range.

[Archaist]

Originally posted by Ashantai:

Is the executor any good? It's short range.

I've been using 4 executers and 10 apostates with demonic infestion and many eyed prophet the executers are great for their price, they only have 5 dps at 18K with lock on and 10dps at 13.5k with lock on but with the escorts acting as a meat shield they can beat most factions more often than not, even eldar becuase they're always doing damage and it just adds up.

[Sneakimus]

What are your thoughts on the Murderer?

It seems to have a devastating frontal heavy lance battery for long range fights, and side mounted macro batteries for when the fighting gets tough.

Playing with it, it feels like it does well in long range engagements, even though it is very squishy next to the Executor.

Also, I get the feeling the Executor's improved boarding action is a lot more valuable, especially against Orcs as the AI tends to immediately go to Call to Arms whenever they are boarded, which cripples their offensive capabilities and so is especially useful to counter the Orks' most dangerous ships when they get close.

[Archaist]

Originally posted by Master:

What are your thoughts on the Murderer?

It seems to have a devastating frontal heavy lance battery for long range fights, and side mounted macro batteries for when the fighting gets tough.

Playing with it, it feels like it does well in long range engagements, even though it is very squishy next to the Executor.

Also, I get the feeling the Executor's improved boarding action is a lot more valuable, especially against Orcs as the AI tends to immediately go to Call to Arms whenever they are boarded, which cripples their offensive capabilities and so is especially useful to counter the Orks' most dangerous ships when they get close.

To be honest I'm not sure against ai, I'm pretty much multiplayer only, so I'll just talk from a statistical point of view.

The Murder has a double barrelled prow lance which does 24 per shot every 16 seconds for 3 dps at 18-22.5k range, it's broadside macros 10 dps at 13.5-18k but suffer -20% accuracy per range step.

Comparing that to the broadside of an executor it's identical at the same range, on paper, becuase the executor has -25 armour compared to the macros 0 - -15 armour depending on the availability of armour piercing munitions. Additionally the lances are 100% accurate compared to the murders 80/60/40/20 base accuracy. So in terms of firepower executor has better broadsides, but the murder also has it's 3 dps prow lance, so they're about equal in terms of overall firepower.

The murder does have 200 speed however which is typically enough to out manouvre most factions compared to the executors 170 which though slower is still more than most cruisers. In terms of staying power the executor has 50% more shields and 25% more hull for almost the same price with GC/BS class boarding so it'll force the ai to stay on call to arms for longer or if your running bloodletter parties can depop several ships.

In summery the executor is better for fighting factions you can't outrun whereas the murder would be ideal for fighting factions you can outrun. Also as a final note the dps of the murder's prow lance is only 0.333 more than an apostate escort so it's actually not that powerful and most of the time it won't be angled on anything since the main weapons of the ship are broadside based. Instead I'd recommend looking into the carnage cruiser as it fills a very similar niche but comes with the added bonus of it's frontal weapons being turreted allowing them to shoot in 270 degrees to add to broadside damage when not targeting anything forward facing.

[Sneakimus]

I have actually been comparing the Desolator and Executor, and it seems the Executor actually has a higher DPS than the Desolator on paper despite being a smaller ship, and the Desolator being hailed as the king of lance ships for Chaos, where they have similar guns, but the Exector has about 2 lance guns more than the Desolator.

Is this true?

[Archaist]

The Despoiler has torpedoes 3 lance batteries per side and 2 triple heavy missile launchers. The broadside lances do 15 dps compared to the executors 10 dps so it's already 50% higher in that regard but the Despoiler also has the missile launchers which add another 6 dps. However not only is the Despoilers broadside dps (21) higher than the executor (20) all of it's weapons are ranged at 18k which can be up'd by lock on to 22.5k compared to the executors max range of 18k. Further more the Despoiler can use it's full dps at it's max range whereas the the Executor is only able to use half of its weapons at it's max range. The torpedoes do 8 x 90 damage with -25 armour on hit however due to battleships not being able to use high energy turns it's unlikily to be in position most of the time, so don't count on it.

The Despoiler by nature of being a battleship also has 33% more shields and 20% more hp at a cost of 68pt more. So yeah the Despoiler can be if you can keep an enemy at max range but for medium range 9k-13.5k the executor is typically better. However there are scenarios in which the Despoiler can viable when fighting factions with high crit chance like orks with mega kannons, this is because each ship has a hidden crit resistance multiplier. Here's what the devs say the crit resistances are;

Ships are now less likely to suffer system critical hit depending on their tonnage.
LC: remain unchanged (no critical reduction)
CR: critical reduction chance modifier reduced from 0.9 to 0.8
BC: critical reduction chance modifier reduced from 0.8 to 0.6
GC: critical reduction chance modifier reduced from 0.7 to 0.4
BS: critical reduction chance modifier reduced from 0.6 to 0.2
Info available in patch #1 patchnotes

So what that means is your less likely to be hit by say a 144 damage ork mega kannon that due to crits will do 100% armour piercing damage, and the reduction compared to a grand cruiser means the Despoiler is twice as resistant to crits as the executor meaning you'll probably last longer but it's still RNG at the end of the day.

As for my opinion I'd stick with the executor since it may not be better but it is better value for money letting you take other ships to make up for it's weaknesses.