How to make small ships viable in mid to late game?

[Warfoki]

So, the only two achievements left for me to do, battleship raid and perfect predator. So, I figured I'd try doing a run with the Phantom. Well... I kinda have to admit, I'm completely stuck. Early game was mostly a breeze, but I reached the point where I would have to clear lvl 30+ content to have access to tech, and I often struggle to even clear simple marauder hideouts at that level, let alone hunt gold or silver star enemies or ravagers.

I never really played small ships before. I mean, sure, I started out in them, but I only used them for maybe an hour or two before switching out to a corvette or frigate (aka a real ship, that can actually be properly equipped) and sold my starting yacht or shuttle. As such, I never really considered just how extremely limiting these small ships can be. I kinda feel I can't do anything, because the ship either runs out of energy or overheats.

Beams? Nope, overheats AND runs me out of energy.

Vulcans? Overheats, and storing enough ammo is an issue, considering that I also have to store energy cells to warp.

Blasters? Can't hit a damn thing with them while I'm on the move, unless they are rapid fire, in which case they overheat.

Missiles? Works smoothly on lower levels, but by lvl 30 ships and above are either too fast, have too much shield or pack PD, and I can't pack enough launchers to overcome enemy regen / PD.

Railguns? Works on large targets, smaller ships laugh at it, and I don't have enough weapons space to run both a railgun and sufficient secondaries to mitigate this.

Mines? Nice to cheese ravagers, kinda useless outside of that.

Quantum Pulse? The most useless weapon in the game. On large enough ships that can facetank it or have the space and energy for a barrier, you have better options, and on a yacht, it's suicide.

I've been running around doing errands and avoid fights, but I don't really see how could I progress past where I can actually fight high level ships and not get wiped. My favorite is probably the fact that using s mall ship limits my zoom, so I repeatedly get wiped out from surprise shots coming from outside the screen.

[Paradox]

That's generally one of the last things I do in my games. IE. I'm already max level and space pilot is maxed. I probably have a few oranges, purples at least.

Phantom is what I use for both. I use a rail gun and target friendlies at their gates for perfect predator. I run through the gate if I ♥♥♥♥ up or to "refresh" potential victims (larger than me). For ravagers I use as many drones as I can and try to stay cloaked, circling them and picking up the drones that die (drone parts drop). Might shoot them with the railgun if/when they "leash".

I "ferry" my phantom in my larger ship as close as possible to the ravager sectors. I don't fight anything that doesn't get me those perks.

I don't think small ships are viable at "endgame", but I consider endgame negative reputation waves. They simply lack the offense and defense to kill them in a timely and safe manner. However, that's sort of how it should be, they're small and cheap compared to a big fat dread.

Not sure, as I haven't tried it, but it may be possible to ezmode both with a fleet.

[Warfoki]

So, basically, I should uptier myself as usual, just farm out gear for the yacht too, and then switch back to the yacht specifically kitted out for these challenges, full on yellow gear and all that...

I guess that makes sense, because I've seen so me crazy lethal builds with these, but I was like "ok, but how to get that gear in the first place?"

[Paradox]

Originally posted by Warfoki:

So, basically, I should uptier myself as usual, just farm out gear for the yacht too, and then switch back to the yacht specifically kitted out for these challenges, full on yellow gear and all that...

I guess that makes sense, because I've seen so me crazy leathal builds with these, but I was like "ok, but how to get that gear in the first place?"

Farm negative reputation waves in a dread. That's how I tend to level space pilot and fleet commander. Then once I get those damage perks, I push the rep even lower and farm up any missing pieces.

[phoenix_54d]

(edit: was phoning this in so I apologize for the limited formatting of this giant text block)
Playing frigates and up can spoil you a little given how much more capable they are at heat management, and with massive gear space to specialize. This is why there's a bit of a shock if it's your first time slimming down.

In the early to mid game, cannons and vulcans are quite excellent: Their heat is MUCH lower than energy weapons, and ignoring early shielding on the latter pretty much means one of the first big defensive upgrades the enemies you face gain doesn't exist.
Good projectile speed and range, and good dps when crafted.

I play almost only yachts from start to finish, so let's start with the basics.
Defensively your hitbox is a small fraction of a larger ship's. A SMALL fraction; a Dragonfly is more than 8x the total surface area of a Lacewing.
This matters for yachts since a badly timed roll could 'connect' you with a shot that's not done passing through.

The space between hardpoints and their angles means that up close it can be incredibly difficult to get more than one or two guns trained on you at any given moment. In fact you'll learn a few dreadnoughts have actual dead-zones in 'melee'... although what they carry(hint hint) may be quite intent on dislodging you. Meanwhile, ALL your firepower is pointed right at them.

Atop the double-tapped laterals is a neutral roll button you can set. Rolls grant i-frames and projectiles (including missiles) just fly right past as a result. It's powerful, but given your base hull ISN'T in the thousands like those oversized bosses you'll be fighting...

Your maneuverability is significant. Depending on crew my endgame yacht usually ends up a bit over 72 turn rate, with (despite going cheap on them) at least 90 strafe speed. Don't discount being on the move; not being where their top firepower is pointed helps keep you on the alive side of the fireball spectrum. Every shot that doesn't connect is a shot that you don't have to try and tank.

Now. You've noticed there's a bit of a heat and energy issue. You've likely been crafting the guns the way you'd make them on a capital: Overload, maximum speed or continuous, all the bells and whistles... but +30% cooling on 15/s makes that heatsink a lot less useful doesn't it.
This is not the way.

In a small ship, you're looking for efficiency and specificity. As you've been experiencing, it's easy to blow out the hardpoint and not fire a few seconds. But you're also HIGHLY mobile and so hit&run are definitely a thing.
And so is the weapon stabilizer. Try it out. I prefer it for most of my guns most of the time especially at range. Lets you dance while keeping everything pointed at the cursor, and at worst it can just be toggled off.

My favorite small ship armors are Advanced Titanium < Lithrium < Terran (top)
For Reactors, you're looking for efficiency too; so Miners when well upgraded are for MOST of your purposes going to be a better choice than the Venghi.
Endgame gearing you're looking for: Miner reactors, 2 venghi shields, a venghi charger, MAYBE (if you like longer warps) one ardonian small battery, basic sensors, Pirate Impulse and boosters.
With low mass a single purple or orange mk1 gyro may well cap your base turn rate on its own. You want a warp diverter, one accumulator and either an Improved Energy Barrier, or if you don't use charge guns a Pirate Protector (it cycles much faster and is better but it eats your flux like crazy as a result and +1 equip space, so I usually use the IEB). The Deuterium drive's probably enough but if you want good sensors, scanner and warp for more general purpose living, consider just a D.O.Sweeper as a combined package.

Railguns and Torpedoes are great against anything bigger than you are. While it's true that they could just get roll-ignored or miss when fired at a fighter, a V3's not getting out of the way of these, while cruisers and dreadnoughts can be radar-targeted from offscreen if need be. They don't care about the heat; their cooldown makes sure of it. Charge 4 will also mean a railgun gets off a second shot on the same flux, which is always nice.
Torpedoes are versatile once you're used to them, and hit like very large trucks thanks to high crit and good per-shot damage making them very flux-friendly. Even just Charge 1 will give you something that eats Ravagers in a few hits.

A few crew, enhancements and ship roles (gunships like the Dragon) offer -heat. Your Phantom however is a crit machine; built to give crits and make them huge. So if you're going to make a gatling, remember that the DPS on the tooltip is a bit of a lowball. You WANT crits because a 'mere' double damage ain't what you'll be dishing out.
As long as you can fire it for at least 5 seconds, that's probably good enough; you can cloak and run and recover if it's on such a cycle.
<SV_WeaponPreset:Basic RGLC Critfisher AP4:RLC02HEA01DAB01:RF03AP04CR01> only takes tech level 12, is fairly cheap (though there's a refined metal in there), and RAW heats you at 32.2/s versus a base 15 cooling. The AP means against 400+ armor you'll do more damage than if you had no armor pierce, BUT it also reduced the energy and heat requirements, making it easier to handle. Three of these leaves space on your Phantom; but in endgame you may want a third core (you can eventually have 12 gun space on there between Space Pilot, Dogfighter and the combat capstone).

If you like going up close and personal, point defense beams let you clear drones off (both the killing kind and the healers surrounding that dreadnought), while saving heavily on energy+heat. With high tech levels you can make some truly nasty main guns for use in hunting the big ones.

Or you can just ziggy+enhancement a high yield trio of charged torpedoes and try not to be too close to the screen when they go off.

[HellSlayer]

Any chance dev will revamp weapons? Endgame is always lasers because they dont miss those extremely fast small ships.

[phoenix_54d]

The main reason laser cores are popular lategame is that the plasmas tend to scale too large for all but the biggest ships (can't fit one in a 1-slot turret, can't fit a twin-core in a 3-space), and that they can be built into gatlings (high DPS long as you're hitting), beams (not as good but virtually-hitscan), and can select PD or not.
No access to the energy setting effects is what causes vulcans and cannons to fall off.

Torpedoes and Railguns also do very well in endgame; not much those two can't reliably massacre.
But I do think there's some fixes that need doing.

[Paradox]

Originally posted by phoenix_54d:

The main reason laser cores are popular lategame is that the plasmas tend to scale too large for all but the biggest ships (can't fit one in a 1-slot turret, can't fit a twin-core in a 3-space), and that they can be built into gatlings (high DPS long as you're hitting), beams (not as good but virtually-hitscan), and can select PD or not.
No access to the energy setting effects is what causes vulcans and cannons to fall off.

Torpedoes and Railguns also do very well in endgame; not much those two can't reliably massacre.
But I do think there's some fixes that need doing.

Time on target is not factored into the in-game DPS display (and it shouldn't be). I'd say that's the biggest factor for people not using projectiles. Listed DPS is the next reason. Ammo is the third reason (why energy based weapons are preferred).

[Warfoki]

Originally posted by phoenix_54d:

(edit: was phoning this in so I apologize for the limited formatting of this giant text block)

Wow, that is a lot of very useful advice. Luckily I haven't deleted my Phantom save yet, so I'll will try to adapt. Honestly, I think I just had a bad time trying to adapt to rolling and timing it right. On tier 3-4 ships you can't really facetank strong eenmies, BUT you have enough space to make your ship go at around 100. So the way I dealt with hunter squads was always the same: speed up to max, where they can't really keep up with me, let go of WASD, turn around with the mouse, and drift backwards while unloading everything. Since the AI is trying to catch up, they will fly in a straigth line following me, instead of zig-zagging all over the place. Which means that they are going to eat all my projectiles easy-peasy. And since they can't quite catch up, they can't harm me. The only downside is that picking up the loot means having to do an exact 180 turn at the end and flying for like a minute or two before I'm even back on the grid.

As for ravagers, I was doing what I'd call jousting: load up on maximum damage, single shot guns that wil overheat with a single shot. Use the minimap to fly straigth at them, maximum speed, shoot, then adjust my flight a bit to the side so that I barely zip past them (I literally scrape their shields ideally), to lose as little momentum as possible. By the time they turn around, I'm outside of their engagement range, so I turn around and repeat the process until they are dead.

I tried these tactics with a yacht, it didn't really work. I don't have long enough range guns that can continously fire backwards while I'm drifting away. As for the jousting, while it technically works, I'm just not used to having NO tankiness whatsoever. As in, with a corvette or firgate, I can eat some blaster or PD damage, because I have space for buffed shields, so I don't have to panic-react if a few things are headed my way when I'm charging in. With a yacht, those can easily destroy me.

Originally posted by HellSlayer:

Any chance dev will revamp weapons? Endgame is always lasers because they dont miss those extremely fast small ships.

So, I know I called them useless, but I'll freely admit I was dead wrong: quantum pulse weapons are INSANELY good against hunter squads, if you have a spinal mount. I put one on my Zeus: 10 cores, a damage mod, overloaded, maximum stacked slow fire and charged. It's reasonably low tech, since you don't need any boosters, beyond the single damage booster: not a projectile, so speed and range doesn't matter, guaranteed to crit, so crit chance doesn't matter and it'll be on a 20 second cooldown after firing anyway, so heat doesn't matter. Put Ziggy on the mount. Well, and you'll need a gold, high tier armor, stack a ton of shields AND have a minimum purple, preferably golden pirate protector or Improved Energy Barrier (Ardonian is too weak). If you have all that, you can up the crafted pulse to purple. Start charging it, then pop the energy barrier. When it blows, EVERYTHING that is less tanky than a lvl 55 gold star Venghi frigate is going to get annihilated on screen. (It's also a real quick way to clear ateroid fields, if you need the resources.) At this point, your shields, and some of your health will be gone, so you need to build accordingly: high shield regen (I'd say 200 minimum, mine is almost at 400), health regen ship enhancement (I also recommend 2 "+50% explosion range" for hillarious results) and an improved repair system. With the Zeus, I can cloak long enough that my ship repairs its hull and recharges its shields almost completelly by the time I de-cloak, so if any capital ships survived the blast, they don't get to shoot at me, before I'm fully ready. The only way you can die, is if the enemies let loose a decent amount of Peacemakers before you obliterated them. Peacemakers will head to the last known location, so cloaking does nothing, you can't dodge them with a ship big enough to have spinal mount, and they pack enough of a punch to knock your shieldless, damaged ship out.

[Paradox]

Originally posted by Warfoki:

...

So, I know I called them useless, but I'll freely admit I was dead wrong: quantum pulse weapons are INSANELY good against hunter squads, if you have a spinal mount...

My 2nd favorite form of DPS and my favorite weapon.

Rapid would be even more fun, if my fleet would use them. Could find out if I am epileptic too.