Doesn't really make sense to me - playing hard difficulty without (normal) block limits - eg the normal maximum for laser turrets is 24.

Anyway, how many of the turrets have you upgraded to heavy turrets? Why no plasma or projectile turrets?

Plasma turrets is a good choice imho. Some Laser and Cannon turrets to stun them so the plasma can actually hit reliably. Otherwise guided Missiles are good against drones, although I personally have not tried them against Legacy. But they work well against the others. Maybe worth a try.

And grogez advice to upgrade as many as possible is golden. The upgrade kits can be bought.

Cheers

I think that to upgrade a turret you will need 1 x Advanced System Upgrade Kit (can be bought) and 1 x Large System Upgrade Kit (afaik must be found).

If there is somewhere to buy Large System Upgrade Kits, I'd really like to know where. The chances of finding them in 1.5 really seemed to drop dramatically and so far I've struggled to find 16. However, it appears this has been addressed in a recent update.

Dunno about buying the large upgrade kits. Can be easily farmed on the planets with the AA-POIs and the Xenu Fortress. Just kill the cores of the AA-bases without destroying the turrets and then salvage them. You can get around 100 Large Upgrade Kits clearing the planet.

Cheers

I tried downgrading them but never salvaging them. Thanks for the tip! Barren Metal planet here I come.

Edit - Salvaging doesn't work but deconstructing them does yield a Large System Upgrade Kit. Any time I've pulled a heavy turret off a ship it's reverted to being a normal turret but these stay heavy. And there's so many of them. This is going to make a big difference.

I have no turrets upgraded to the heavy versions.

Reasons?

When combating legacy ships like devastators and eradicators,
turret losses are, in my case, unavoidable.
With basic laser turrets, losing any number of them, replacement is cheap.
I do have dozens of heavy and large upgrade kits, but at a rate I am losing turrets,
these would not last long.
Heavy turrest are great to improve firepower when no more hardpoint are free ...
My ship has easily 200 hardpoints for turrets ...
I named the ship "Glacia", but "HardPoint Carrier" would describe it much better.

Another reason is the ammunition. Buying or making ammo is exhausting my credits and resources.
That is why I am trying to make a transition to the beam laser turrets, no ammo, just energy.
This is the first time I do this, so I just hope its a good idea ...
Beam Laser turrets are a bit time consuming to manufacture, but still cheap.

I dont use cannons, my ship is space combat oriented.

This setup with the miniguns and lasers can easily defeat any number of Zirax drones.

And of course, my ship has a lot of anti CV turrets too, like 55 plasma.
But I do not allow plasma to shoot drones, they never hit, just waste ammo.

What I did not try yet are missile turrets and/or flak turrets.
Not sure if those symbiotes can outrun the tracking missiles,
and flak seem to have horrible rotation speed ...

Heavy missile turrets need only one of the upgrade kits,
you do retrieve them from Zirax structures and deconstruct,
for 100% chance to gain it. Salvage is a bit unreliable.

But heavy laser turrets need 1 large and 1 advanced upgrade kits.
Those you can deconstruct from heavy lasers or plasmas,
and those I found only on the Xenu Fortress so far.

Originally posted by PeterM1x:

Heavy missile turrets need only one of the upgrade kits,
you do retrieve them from Zirax structures and deconstruct,
for 100% chance to gain it. Salvage is a bit unreliable.

I am just to lazy to core every one of those AAs. But sure, retrieving them is the better option (you also need less POIs). Normally I kill the core and use the SV multitool.

Good luck with the LGC - keep us posted about the trackMissiles.

Cheers

I might try hard difficulty next time but certainly on medium difficulty the symbiotes are trivial - just retreat-retreat-retreat and occasionally attack which forces them to attack in a straight line much more often (I have no miniguns btw). They did not take my shield down very much at all. And neither the Devastator nor the Eradicator in the sector could hit me even when I was as close as 500m so my shields stayed at 100%. No need to take out turrets or thrusters. Neither did they attack together.

It's been a while since I've been to a Legacy asteroid field and I remember them as being much tougher. The reason I stopped going was because I got sick of a Devastator (different) and 2-3 Infectors hunting as a pack. And they did take my shield down. Repeatedly. Same ship I'm using now. Same tactics. If you took one ship down it was impossible to stay in render range while you fought the others and by the time you got back to it, it would have inevitably disappeared taking it's loot with it. Massive waste of ammo. Good to see things have changed.

Hard difficulty with high drone presence and ... symbiotes are still fairly trivial and a Devastator still scores zero hits on my shield.

Best way to deal with the symbiotes is to retreat - use thruster boost if necessary - when they are fanned out. Wait until they converge into a tight group directly in front and then attack, preferably with all weapons switched on. After coming into range and firing the first salvo, immediately retreat because they will start to attack and fan out. Repeat until they are destroyed.

Recommend:
- Bastion shield
- Forward and reverse speeds of 99m/s
- Vertical or lateral speeds of 99m/s
- Upgrading turrets - if you are losing turrets, something is very wrong or we're not playing the same game.

Not sure if the hit points of the symbiote is any worse than other drones but they do seem to be using a slightly different physics engine than the player. I've watched symbiotes change their x,z,y with no regard for deceleration and acceleration and literally dance around any projectile or energy weapon I may be using. And I'm using the default drone difficulties so I cannot imagine their behavior with hard or ultra.

I don't think their behaviour is any different though they might have a few more hp but these were nerfed in a recent update anyway. What is it with symbiotes? Are you at the Dyson Sphere? There's a bunch of about 50 there. I've taken battleships there and found it very difficult to wipe out the drones at the DS. These days I just take my mining CV - in this playthrough it wiped out the symbiotes very quickly (before their hp were reduced). Ten heavy laser, two heavy plasma, six Zirax plasma, twelve projectile cannon and a beam laser.

Right now I'm at the Legacy homeworld working my way through all of the Eradicators, Devastators and Infectors there. If you have problems with symbiotes you definitely should not go there.

That is an impressive mining CV sir. I usually have 1 to 2 mining laser on mine and when interceptor/inderdictor show up just get out as quickly as possible.

Yeah well, with this one you can completely ignore them and carry on mining. It has four laser drills at the corners of a 5x5 block square (ie there are three blocks between laser drills). Seems to work pretty good.

Update…

There are two types of Legacy systems.



One, inside legacy territory, around all planets. There are no structures, only wreckages. Here many drones spawn, symbiotes, interceptors, interdictors, they are marked “The Legacy”, they are in CYAN color.

There are never any capital ships here, just drones.

Fighting these drones is simple, move a bit with your ship, let the guns do some damage. Easy!



Two, in asteroid fields, in legacy territory, but also in black hole systems anywhere in the galaxy These are marked in PURPLE color. There is usually a single structure here, infected station or matter converter.

Plus there are one or two capital vessel spawns. Anything from Infector, Devastator or Eradicator. No Decimators?!?

Fighting here is a nightmare, usually 20-25 symbiotes spawn, they stay clustered together, move to, then with the capital ships. And the capital ships also join up.



Btw, an Infector has like 12-14 disruptors turrets, the Devastator has like 40 turrets, and the Eradicator has 102 turrets.



My attempt with the tracking missile turrets (16 turrets) did fail. Yes, missiles track, and hit hard, but they also hit very rarely. No more that 10-15% are hits, just a huge waste of ammo. But the light show is impressive …

Missiles start firing too soon, at targets too far, and run out of fuel.



My attempt with the flak turrets did produce better results, I installed 28 flaks. The range is very close to the range of the miniguns, when the miniguns stun the drones, the flaks kill them pretty fast. Ammo consumption is high.



It takes me 25-30 minutes to get rid of the drones, multiple retreats for shield recharge are needed.

Then it takes no more than 5 minutes to kill a single capital ship.

Killing two capital ships takes a long time, since turrets are stupid and cannot concentrate fire on one of them…



Sadly, I must report, that legacy capital ships are a big cheat. They are built with 800% generator overload. The thrust is a cheat too.

CPU? With a CPU capacity of 600k, they have several millions allocated. The Eradicator has a CPU use of 28.000.000. With 2 extenders = BIG CHEAT



With the current symbiote drones, there is no need for any capital ships for the legacy. 40-50 drones can kill anything without mercy.

Maybe these systems are setup for multiplayer games, where 2-3 ships make a huge difference.



The fights can be won, but I cannot provide the required ammunition for the fights. Nor with own production, nor buying it from Polaris, with ammo factor 0.7, with 20% discount.


Fly safe!