Nebulous: Fleet Command

[junior heron]

There was a raines that got plasma-ed

so it could get some HE-HC in

Strands in a Braid was the picket, and shot down a good number of bombers

[wet root]

I see something in the Nebcord that tells a story

[junior heron]

it wasn't even that bad it just seemed worth re-suggesting

[wet root]

Yeah, definitely a QoL feature that should exist

Well, not even QoL. Just... basic multiplayer feature

[junior heron]

my teammate has brought the Defendercello

[wet root]

You know what, fair enough - if you're not bringing the positioning and softkill/Sarissas to break Ocello-killers, might as well go to 20mms to have a chance of surviving torps

S2H are pretty rare nowadays

...not sure why they're not Pavises though

[glad aurora]

blue

[wet root]

The CC discussion reminds me that I need to try a lightspeed CC + Hammerhead build in PTB

SunSunRaider 250mm Ocello + LongSun plas/100mm Hammerhead, be an absolute menace to light assets and jump on heavy assets

[supple sonnet]

What's that text on the bottom right?

TomZero (Tommy, he/him) ↩️

[Reply to:](#1164000873031151637 message) my teammate has brought the Defendercello 📎

[wet root]

Steam notes

[supple sonnet]

...those are a thing??

[wet root]

Yep! Handy for taking notes in-game, I always forget to use them in puzzle games and such

[supple sonnet]

...oh my god.

[glad aurora]

... huh. Neat.

[junior heron]

you can copy images in too, which can be handy

I think one of the tips I saw for making Armored Core emblems was using notes as a template

I in theory have them here to track what missiles I'm seeing so I can softkill

in practice I think I get more use out of the "missile pylon order for craft" note

[edgy dove]

Why not run double raider atp

turn rate isn't the most important thing in the world for 450 outside the BB

[supple sonnet]

theorycrafting a rail Axford just for fun
"Hmmmmmm..."
"Do we really need PD?"
"Do we realllllly need damage control?"
"Who needs a fire control radar?"

...I know we realllyyyyyy should give it those things just in case but what if we didn't?

...maybe not an FCR though.

(Needs softkill at least. So someone doesn't yeet two containers at it and make it explode.)

(Ohhhh but we could give it Auroras since it already needs monstrous power capacity for the railguns and it doesn't need to run the rails and Auroras at the same time...)

[oak shell]

You really should put damage control on

[olive blade]

this kinda thing was pretty meta early on in the game

when railguns were busto

[supple sonnet]

Yes we are! At least a bit. :P

Perijove, (He)xagon Understander ↩️

[Reply to:](#1164000873031151637 message) You really should put damage control on

A couple lockers. Not as much as a frontline gun brawler Axford but enough.
And softkill, hardkill, anti-craft missiles, and the like.

[oak shell]

Yeah that seems fine

[supple sonnet]

...we can't be like our Railstones with absolutely nothing. :P

[supple sonnet]

Question: Auroras. How much do you have to invest into making them work before they stop being worth it, essentially?
We're fiddling around in the fleet editor making a few builds (mostly for fun or to take out occasionally just for fun in casual lobbies), and trying to fit them on an Axford requires a big investment into extra reactors to provide enough power to run them.
We could easily make Defenders + Stonewalls work for relatively cheap, but we think we can just barely squeeze a big Aurora investment into our budget for this fleet's frontline Axford.

[mint sinew]

Depends what you are trying to stop

More than almost any other PDT aurora's are very specialised in their use. They'll shred rockets, decoys and S2H while also doing okay into S3H and S2s but will struggle against anything tougher

[wet root]

They also have extra range vs craft

[mint sinew]

So swapping the bulk of your pd to auroras is usually not worth the cost as ANS as dunking on "mass rocket spam" is usually not worth the cost while weakening yourself to torps, containers and bulk S2

I quite like the first aurora in place of where you might look to run some flak as they do similar things but aurora's work better in lower volumes than flak does

[supple sonnet]

Righttttttt. Makes sense.
...might have the power budget to throw one or two on just to laser craft and such from range- yeah.

[wet root]

I'm fairly outdated when it comes to ANS hardkill, but I think the ideal is still a mix of Auroras, Stonewalls, and Defenders - just having a few Auroras is huge against containers, to pop the decoys and let the 20mm eat the boxes themselves

[supple sonnet]

Also, just checking: when you overrun your power output, does stuff shut off starting from the bottom of the list in the fleet editor, or the top?

[wet root]

Bottom

So buff modules first, then guns, then ewar, then PD/radar

(I don't recall which of the last two first)

[glad aurora]

on AN, you take one aurora for decoy clearing and anti-rocket tech, two at most

[supple sonnet]

Got it, thanks. I think if we take one Aurora we can drop a reactor and reinvest the points somewhere else.

[mint sinew]

(It swapped within the last year or so I now don't remember)

[wet root]

Since PD fires for such a small part of the match, it's fine to go up to the total of your buff modules and guns in excess power. Losing EWAR is pretty painful though since that's your softkill

[wet root]

My guess would be radar goes off first since most PD has built-in FCR

[mint sinew]

And it's also rare that all your pd on a capital ship will be active at the same time so you'll rarely even use that full reserve

[wet root]

Less so for Axfords though since ToT container strikes

[supple sonnet]

Yeah, looks like as of right now for some reason it turns off our FCR before our guns. Not a big deal, since we can just relock after the PD shuts off... if we're still alive. :P

Lark ↩️

[Reply to:](#1164000873031151637 message) Since PD fires for such a small part of the match, it's fine to go up to the total of your buff modu…

[wet root]

Huh, PD has lower priority than radar

[supple sonnet]

It does, yeah. Is weird.

Lark ↩️

[Reply to:](#1164000873031151637 message) Huh, PD has lower priority than radar

[mint sinew]

I thought that was the swap so that your pd powering on didn't cause you to lose missile tracks

[wet root]

Probably because of dual-purpose guns

[mint sinew]

You'll have your radar off when you have incoming missiles most of the time anyway so that doesn't matter too much

[wet root]

Really it seems like PD with integrated FCRs should have highest, then radar, then PD without FCRs

[glad aurora]

the Defender has an integrated FCR but no optical backup, so if there's no one else giving tracks...

you're going to want your radar on for PD cueing 99% of the time if you don't need to softkill ARAD

(and you're ANS, you don't have to softkill ARAD for as long as your AD exists)

[supple sonnet]

(Why not? /gen)

[wet root]

You would want it to have higher priority, no? So radar detects a missile, Defender turns on and locks it as radar turns off, fires until it's gone, turns off, radar turns back on, detects another missile...

[glad aurora]

active decoys emit ARAD/ACT signatures VERY LOUDLY

[supple sonnet]

Trueeeee!!

[glad aurora]

I don't think that's how the game works given how many times my PDTs have just completely stopped working if I don't have radar tracks on incoming missiles

[supple sonnet]

(Update: ditching most of the Auroras has freed up 105 points for more DC and Gun Plotting Center(s). Hell yeah.)

[wet root]

Might be a timing issue, where the track is lost before PDT FCR can acquire

[mint sinew]

Yeah, you need radar and pd fcr running at the same time to pick up the lock

[glad aurora]

you do not need more than one GPC, at-Sierra

[wet root]

Could've been fixed by having lost tracks leave a burnthrough ping for like 1 second for the PDT FCR to task on, but alas

[mint sinew]

Only way to bypass this is a PDT with optical backup and an fcr (literally just the sarissa I think)

[junior heron]

that's because the sarissa gunners are just really good snipers

[wet root]

Second GPC isn't a bad choice for ANS if you have the points and slot, IMO

[wet root]

Grazer too!

[junior heron]

does grazer?

[mint sinew]

Grazers aren't real, you can't trick me

[junior heron]

huh

[mint sinew]

Per the wiki grazer has a 3k range fcr which is potentially big if true

[wet root]

I suppose technically it doesn't have an FCR

[supple sonnet]

Yeah, we don't really have the points so we're sticking with one, but noted.

Lark ↩️

[Reply to:](#1164000873031151637 message) Second GPC isn't a bad choice for ANS if you have the points and slot, IMO

[wet root]

It has an FCEO

[junior heron]

except I think grazer fcr can't be jammed out with blackjack, so I wonder if that's for some reason literally EO validator

[wet root]

No, Blackjack just only works on missiles for some reason

It doesn't work on Pike's EO ball either

[mint sinew]

I think it is EO, Lys is just skipping the checks for performance because that interaction shouldn't come up

[junior heron]

fair enough

[wet root]

(Sarissa has the same format for the radar FCR)

[junior heron]

can't fool me, Sarissa is ACT/[ACT]

[wet root]

Almost as good as the truly fearsome HoJ[ACT]

[mint sinew]

I keep wondering about sticking a single grazer on an Ocello to try and lock Ocello killers through jamming. I don't think it saves you, but it feels like it could

[supple sonnet]

...y'know I think I kinda like what we came up with. :)

Fleetbuilding is fun. Not sure it's the best fleet ever but we had fun making it, so it was worth it.

[wet root]

It's kind of convoluted compared to just bringing Sarissas and Floodlight(s)

[wet root]

Fleetbuilding is dangerously addictive, I'm pretty sure I've spent more time fleetbuilding than playing actual matches at this point

Which reminds me, @wicked mirage what's your current S1 AMM template look like? I still have the old Esunas but not sure if they've been updated

[supple sonnet]

looks at beam turrets once

https://tenor.com/view/show-by-rock-cyan-hijirikawa-anime-cute-wow-gif-17088739

shiny...

[wet root]

Time for @junior heron to get a disciple?

[junior heron]

I'm unfortunately quite grumbly about beams, and honestly don't know if I'm even all that good at beam bb.

[mint sinew]

Yeah buff grazer pls. Gib 9999 damage and let the FCEO discriminate against decoys!

[junior heron]

But I can post my fleet when I get home.

[junior heron]

I'll keep saying it: grazer back to 999 damage and make it dual purpose (it keeps the 1.5km range)

and while we're at it let me melee enemies with the Mass Driver

[mint sinew]

1000 damage is what, 2 enthusiastic S2s? That seems fine

[wet root]

Well, S2s split their damage, and a lot of the rays like to hit nothing at all

But on the other hand a single 1k damage burst bounces off reinforced components

On the third hand, that can just delete drives, which are very intentionally the most durable components in the game

And as funny as it would be it would also suck to have a 150-point shuttle run up behind your BB and be drive-killed

[mint sinew]

No need to give it the ap damage model really. Could give it rail

[wet root]

Or like 10cm armor pen

[mint sinew]

Plasma liners swapping to their grazer sidearms to finish

[wet root]

Mainly it would need to not be able to harm capitals, since 450mms can't harm shuttles

[wet root]

This would be beautiful

[mint sinew]

Yeah, I'm sold

[wet root]

When it's using melee ammunition it's a Pile Driver

[wicked mirage]

CMD, EL Frag, minimum warhead, 280 m/s, 12g's of Maneuverability.

For anti S2H work

Also works into S2's and Rockets, though it's not cost effective vs Rockets.

For S3H I recommend a size 3 EL Frag warhead fired in pairs with CMD. 280 m/s and 11.5G's of maneuverability.

[wet root]

Ah, tyvm!

[wicked mirage]

Of course! Also for anti-Torp work to stave off Bomber strikes you can try a FACT version of the anti-S3H AMM fired in triplets. The splash can hit multiple torps in a salvo since Bombers tend to fire in one big gob.

The armor pen on a size 3 EL Frag warhead is at least 0.25cm right?

[wet root]

Hm, if I have two different AMMs with size 3 ELF, one set to target S3H only and the other S2h and S3H, will it properly send salvos of 2 at S3H but only 1 at S2H?

[mint sinew]

You can use the matrix right?

[wet root]

Oh does the matrix let you set salvo size? Not in Neb rn

[wicked mirage]

Yeah, it lets you choose how many AMM's will go at different threats

[wet root]

That simplifies matters lol

Hm, I'm building for PTB rn, I should check how Breadstick points efficiency is against hybrids

[wicked mirage]

Using BF S2's against Hybrids? I don't think they have the maneuverability for that unless the hybrids just don't have any terminals.

[glad aurora]

even without terminals, they don't have the speed for it

by the time it's maneuvering to intercept the hybrid's already sprinting and that's that

[wet root]

I was thinking cold gas BFEL to intercept during sprint

[wicked mirage]

Maybe? Try it and report back ^^

[wet root]

I think free approach should get within prox fuse range? Will have to see

[mint sinew]

Might also need to use SALs that can point forward to cut down travel time

[glad aurora]

... does ACT/HOJ or HOJ/ACT actually work? Just saw some of those pop up in a game

[wicked mirage]

I should try making an AMM SDM-2...

[wet root]

Unfortunately S/TALS don't really work since they launch immediately when launch outside limits is enabled

Instead of waiting to hit the traverse limit

[wet root]

They're fine, saves points compared to ARAD/ACT and don't get seduced as much by ADs/Lineship decoys

But of course they don't go for non-emconned ships over chaff

Toss a few in a mixed salvo with some validated act

[glad aurora]

Yeah, my thought is that I'm used to ARAD/ACT + ACT/[ARAD], but HOJ/ACT is a potential alt pick if that actually functions

[wet root]

HoJ/ACT functions fine, HoJ[ACT] is literally the worst seeker combo in the game

HoJ/SAH is a classic for a reason, and that's basically the same

The only combo that might contest HoJ[ACT] is HoJ[CMD] lol

[glad aurora]

HOJ/[EO] ignore small targets only accept validated :^)

[wet root]

Genuinely more useful, at least that goes for ship jamming preferentially over killjoys

Or ignores KJs entirely if set to deny unvalidated

[glad aurora]

Indeed, but a very funny tech missile that came to mind in the same vein

[wet root]

Yep lol

[mint sinew]

HOJ[THERM] is my favourite cursed missile

[wet root]

HoJ[anything] is just silly

HoJ[Pulsed ARAD]

Actually maybe worse than HoJ[ACT] since it requires their radar be on

[wet root]

I'm now in Neb, why size 3 warhead for S3H? It seems like size 2 has the same breakpoints, unless I'm missing something?

[mint sinew]

Hardened skin maybe?

[wet root]

Size 2 BFEL warhead is 46 damage, 3 is 57, base S3H health is 60

So 2 should kill a hardened skin S3H anyway?

Maybe it's for if one rolls poorly and they're hardened skin?

Or wait, if they fail the intercept roll is it half damage to missiles or no damage?

It's no damage for missiles I think

[wicked mirage]

Oooh yeah, Size 2 is fine for S3H sorry

I forgor

Just fire it in pairs yeah lol

[wet root]

Ah okay just wanted to make sure there's not some arcane tech you'd found lol

[wicked mirage]

Uhhh, the only benefit of a size 3 warhead vs S3H (since 2x size 2 warhead S1's hit the same breakpoints) is the bigger blast radius and thus easier time intercepting. A size 2 warhead doesn't hit 50m of Blast Radius so the missile needs to get within the edge of its blast radius to fuze.

Bigger warhead means bigger trigger radius up to 50m

[wet root]

Interesting, good point

Free Approach seems to be borked in PTB

At least on autofired AMMs

[mint sinew]

That's very odd

[wet root]

It is very clearly trying to lead the target, I'll try to get a video of it

Can someone test on main?

Oh wtf

It's specifically that missile it doesn't work on?

Okay no it's tied to something else

It specifically does not work against S3H

[mint sinew]

Is it trying to lead for sprint speed before separation or something?

[wet root]

It shouldn't be trying to lead at all

But it ignores Free Approach for the cruise stage of S3H but not S2H

[mint sinew]

I thought free approach did lead but didn't try and get in the way. I.e. taking the shortest (time) path to an intercept point

[wet root]

Nope, Free Approach just goes straight towards where the target currently is

That's the whole point of it

Min Angle is trying to intercept

Anyone know where I can upload a 220mb video easily?

[mint sinew]

Yeah, what I'm trying to say is that free approach should still try and lead the target if it has velocity data. That might look like it is taking a similar path to min angle if it's already close to that angle

[wet root]

No, Free Approach explicitly does not lead

[mint sinew]

Huh, news to me

Need to go turn that off on several missiles then

[wet root]

The whole point is to avoid missiles attempting to lead targets that are doing evasive maneuvers like terminals

Where attempting to lead would cause the missile to go far off-course, while Free Approach doesn't get mislead

[mint sinew]

I thought it was too remove the constraint of the missile needing to position itself between you and the target

[mint sinew]

And that off angle approach had the benefit of minimising the impact of terminals due to the projection

[wet root]

Min Angle isn't that smart, it's fairly basic target leading, it just also ends up positioning missiles in front of incoming evading threats if the defensive missile has enough maneuver due to how terminals work

But if you look at the video you can see how they differ in targeting cruise phase, the first missile is what Free Approach is supposed to be (and why it's only good for threats coming at you)

[mint sinew]

Absolutely wild. Definitely not how I thought that worked

[wet root]

Yeah, it's a pretty niche setting

But mostly I'm baffled as to why it's different between targets

It's the same on main, btw

Unfortunately this does kill the idea of BFEL S2s quite dead, because they are not maneuverable enough to use Min Angle to intercept S3H during sprint, they require Free Approach -_-

[junior heron]

I've had some personal stuff come up today, might not make it to boat night.

[wicked mirage]

<@&942093958551588904> Boat Night: Rising Revengeance anyone?

[junior heron]

sure!

[mint sinew]

I can catch a game shortly

[supple sonnet]

Can do!

[oak shell]

Regrettably I am away from Good Screen

[noble zodiac]

oh huh im actually awake today

[junior heron]

[citation needed]

[noble zodiac]

• not busy

• maybe have spoons

[junior heron]

@plain ice poke

[noble zodiac]

@wicked mirage @plain ice @wooden veldt have to alt-f4. the stress of the >1 second delay in inputs is exceeding my sleepiness-afflicted stress tolerance rn. im sorry

im not actively having a panic attack but i think id be about to if i keep playing

fuck. i might need to go to sleep here outright. eepy is getting to crippling levels
-# which means its time to feel bad abt missing an opportunity to interact w u pyrope

[wicked mirage]

No worries Gamma! It was a pleasure to see you!

[mint sinew]

Potentially dumb question, but the last few times the call has gone out about now we've had a good stack. Would it make sense to plan around now for boats regularly?

[junior heron]

@wet root I have some news about what version this server is on:

[lime jungle]

Fleet 'Shadowed Veil (3k S2 Levy)' is composed of 1 ship which costs 3000 points:

Her Shadowed Vale : 'Levy' class Escort Carrier [PD]
```This fleet uses 4 different missile types:
```yaml
SGM-101 Ceremonial Arming Missile : DIRECT - PSV(WAKE) - HE SHAPED [1pts]
                   SGM-263 LACUNA : DIRECT - ACT(RADAR)/[CMD] - HE SHAPED [7pts]
                   SGM-263 LUMINA : DIRECT - CMD/ARAD(RADAR) - HE SHAPED [9pts]
                  SGM-263 LUNARIA : DIRECT - CMD/SAH(RADAR) - HE SHAPED [7pts]

[wet root]

Lmao I forgot to swap the config.xml

[wet root]

Sundays are doable for me

[junior heron]

I can see about reorganizing my weekend

in theory today would have been a hang out with other friend group day, but that's kind of been hit-or-miss recently

@wicked mirage poke

[wicked mirage]

Goodnight!

[wet root]

Doing some testing in the range, I will never stop being amused by the AAR's opinion on missile defense

[wicked mirage]

200% Successes 🫦

[junior heron]

Yeah but that's still Terrible, so...

[wicked mirage]

Yeah the missile defense rating is impossible to please x.x

[restive monolith]

It's like me fr

But like emotionally

[edgy dove]

🤔

[noble zodiac]

the lipbite emoji is SENDING me

[mint sinew]

Sounds like you need to send more effective interceptors

[noble zodiac]

[headtilt]

[mint sinew]

Making a bad joke about AMMs preventing [emotional] damage

[junior heron]

oh I thought it was full SENDING meant she'll need interceptor [for what's being sent].

[mint sinew]

I can't say I thought it through. I'm sure there could be a good joke buried in there somewhere

[wet root]

Had a random hankering for Midnight Neb, I managed to do more damage with my PD than any fleet on the rest of my team did in total lol

8.5k damage from PD, the poor blues and gold on my team got Containered out of the game almost entirely by 15 minutes (one frigate survived until 19 minutes)

[wicked mirage]

Ooof, yeah CLN's can be brutal. They didn't pay the PD tax :c

[junior heron]

<@&942093958551588904> Early ping but I'm feeling a bit under the weather and want to play early before I'm too tired.
I also don't have any idea what my [friend group's] plans are for tomorrow but given the success of Sunday Neb, I might ping again tomorrow then.

[supple sonnet]

[wicked mirage]

https://tenor.com/view/frieren-frieren-fern-fern-frieren-anime-girl-peek-frieren-peek-gif-5084449026073235572

[noble zodiac]

last week(?) was in fact an anomaly as despite being awake i am not real today 😔

[junior heron]

RIP

[sharp crow]

speaking of neb, has there been any news on the single player side of things?

[junior heron]

not yet

[noble zodiac]

love having had 5 hours of sleep in the past ~34

[noble zodiac]

depends when we're measuring from but i think no

[sharp crow]

alas and alack

[oak shell]

I could make tomorrow

[glad aurora]

Which lobby are we in?

[junior heron]

Pyrope started a game right before I pinged, so right now we're just watching her stream

[glad aurora]

aight

[wet root]

Oh btw @wicked mirage even if the fighters didn't shoot down any of my ACMs, they actually did manage to make me waste like three because I kept accidentally clicking on them instead of bombers

I think it was genuinely fairly effective as a defense for the bombers, if you hadn't ran into the other billion ACMs on the team already a second flight could have obliterated me because I'd had to use so many missiles due to that

Trying to target the bombers, 2/3 end up being fighters instead ;_;

[wicked mirage]

Ah gotcha, yeah I seen that and my Fighters felt it xD

[supple sonnet]

the WHAT-

(Ended up in a modded lobby. Long story. :P)

...oh hey, it finally happened.

[supple sonnet]

Update: I think this screenshot speaks for itself. :P

Most confusing match ever!

[wicked mirage]

Oh goodness lol

[noble zodiac]

mixed modded moment

[edgy dove]

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1347625873691377674/1348054224872673280/togif.gif

[edgy dove]

Pretty meat game

[glad aurora]

that's got to be a record

[wicked mirage]

holy shit well done!!!

[edgy dove]

Trojan either is the most intimidating person on the opposing team or runs complete bullshit

No in between

[glad aurora]

honestly, same thing

man makes me worried about rocket LN rushes

[junior heron]

so, technically the torp light cruiser + carrier fleet has 100% winrate

but it needs to be hit with hammers a lot until it's a slightly realer fleet

[glad aurora]

I was about to say, not sure if I'd count the double moorline match where one of them just straight-up didn't function, lol

[junior heron]

I will hasten the arrival of PTB to main by designing this with SDM-2s on the tantos

also yeah, maybe not the truest test

[junior heron]

alright now down to a respectable 50% winrate

next game I will remember not to throw

[glad aurora]

nah, you didn't throw

the axford that charged directly into A and ate 12k of firepower threw

you actually did damage

[junior heron]

I think you were too busy looking at the new player who threw, to look at me throwing

I don't think that's true

I did backcap B twice

thereby making me the cap fleet of our team

[glad aurora]

you forced them to hide in B for longer, backcapped the point twice, and hit the LNs multiple times with torps

[wicked mirage]

@glad aurora

[glad aurora]

accurate

[wicked mirage]

I should keep playing this until blueberries start picking it up thinking it's tech

That'll be funny

[glad aurora]

Have you considered making a fifth MN that's nothing but full track correlated BH and decoy containers

[wicked mirage]

I would but I'd have to cut points, each of these MN's is like 700 points and some change xD

They all each have a DCX, a DC Storage, and a Large DC Locker + a GPC

Buuuuuut a giga LRT would be funny...

[glad aurora]

imagine orbit dodging MNs at 11km

[wicked mirage]

That might actually be tech xD

Make ANS capital ship players tear their hair out

[glad aurora]

(also replacing the TCs and huntresses with ammo elevators will both improve your DPS and free points)

[mint sinew]

Is this tech available for theft?

[glad aurora]

in fact

rip all the radars out of the gun MNs

double drive, full DPS

the decoy MN has all the radars

what happens when bombers appear? who knows

[wicked mirage]

Here's its current form lmao

[lime jungle]

Fleet 'OSP WIP 1' is composed of 5 ships that cost 3000 points:

 One Fish : 'Flathead' class Monitor [Gun Plasma EWar]
 Red Fish : 'Flathead' class Monitor [Gun Plasma EWar]
 Two Fish : 'Flathead' class Monitor [Gun Plasma Sensor PD]
Blue Fish : 'Flathead' class Monitor [Gun Plasma PD]
   Banana : 'Ferryman' class Clipper [PD]
```This fleet uses only one missile type:
```yaml
SGM-101 Ceremonial Arming Missile : DIRECT - PSV(WAKE) - HE SHAPED [1pts]

[wicked mirage]

This is becoming dangerous levels of power

I can hear the tech alarms blaring in the distance

[glad aurora]

MISSILES AREN'T REAL
DODGE ALL 450

[mint sinew]

giga TC huntress is probably still fair game (and cheaper than a LRT), jamming isn't real

[junior heron]

@wet root do you remember about how much hidden extra range did missiles have?

[wet root]

About 5081m on a missile with a 5000m listed range

I haven't retested after the clonk bugfix though

[edgy dove]

ngl I don't think charging was the right move there

[glad aurora]

I have an event at 3

so that was me going "this game is over, blue is afk and fumbled the BH, I can't win this frontline fight"

shame, I thought we'd have that after the beam DDs inted

[junior heron]

<@&942093958551588904> it's the vaguely designated Boat Night time, pending some sort of official consensus moving it to tomorrow.

(but also I want to play right now so...!)

[wet root]

I am having very slow day but might meander on for game 2

[wicked mirage]

I'm in OBL fight night atm!

[junior heron]

I love coil tantos

[junior heron]

got an ETA for that meandering? we're about to begin lobbylousing for game 2.

[wet root]

Probably still a while, don't wait on me

[junior heron]

I love them so much

[mint sinew]

same

[wicked mirage]

https://tenor.com/view/star-wars-join-me-come-here-darth-vader-you-need-a-hand-gif-12423479908260753258

@junior heron

[sharp crow]

that's one evil looking gate

[wet root]

It should look evil, it's full of Sprinterblobs

[junior heron]

I think this is the scene from the OSP trailer, if anyone wanta to rewatch that to hype themselves up.

I really hope we get another track to come with a campaign trailer.

[wet root]

(Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOe51kQi1No )

[sharp crow]

I suppose I've forgotten that the gate was always evil looking

[junior heron]

I forgot just how big it was in the trailer.

[edgy dove]

Average OSP 12k team

[supple sonnet]

Oh hey, OSP released a bit over three years ago!
That's new knowledge to us!

Lark ↩️

[Reply to:](#1164000873031151637 message) (Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOe51kQi1No ) 📎

...kinda wish we knew more about Neb lore. We've read essentially all the flavor text for the currently existing gear, but pretty sure we've still got some big knowledge gaps.

[junior heron]

There used to be an old lore document, but it got taken down to be hopefully be integrated and revised for the campaign.

@wooden veldt this is probably the biggest post that hints at the greater lore.

The secret deep lore is that Shelter Alliance was the name of a Second Life guild/group/whatever the noun is.

[supple sonnet]

OOOOOOOOOOH!!!

TomZero (Tommy, he/him) ↩️

[Reply to:](#1164000873031151637 message) @wooden veldt this is probably the biggest post that hints at the greater lore.

https://tenor.com/view/show-by-rock-cyan-hijirikawa-anime-cute-wow-gif-17088739

Oh this is lore.
Oh this is awesome.

gasp
There's only one lane!
That's why the Alliance blockaded the gate!!

[junior heron]

You also might not have seen these two, but these are the big names in ANS and OSP. Constantine is namedropped in the OSP trailer.

[supple sonnet]

I think Constantine also gets dropped a few times in the flavor text stuff...

Maybe. Our memory is full of more holes than a Solomon that got all its armor stripped by plasma and ate an entire Lineship full of 250mm. Can't quite recall.

[junior heron]

Also papapanda dropped this in the nebcord and it's really funny.

[olive blade]

https://secondlife.fandom.com/wiki/STABLE

and

https://secondlife.fandom.com/wiki/Alliance_Navy

as much as I hate fandom

the deep lore

[edgy dove]

Alliance sends 100 frigates and ezgg's that blockade

[wet root]

Shown in the trailer: one (1) Moorline
Not shown in the trailer: the 400 mines that Moorline has deployed next to the gate

[junior heron]

next to the gate no, but mine are featured!

[mint sinew]

Can't mine next to the gate, it's so much bigger than anything that'll pass through it and you'd blow up the gate

[supple sonnet]

The duality of Nebulous hull badges/names:

[olive blade]

DRON could go either way

[supple sonnet]

Was Cyn run by Platius Cyndar by chance?

Sierra (she/her) | Wyvern Silver Dragon (Dawn Subsystem) ↩️

[Reply to:](#1164000873031151637 message) The duality of Nebulous hull badges/names: 📎

[mint sinew]

The duality of LNs

(Nice flying @glad aurora)

[glad aurora]

I was taking so much fire on the way to that rock lmao

but I knew I had to get there or we'd just spend all game poking the BB's nose

[mint sinew]

yeah, displacing the frig blob off A was definitely worth the trade

[edgy dove]

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/908476894045937664/1460566479350010096/IMG_0797.gif

[edgy dove]

Cyndar basically never plays unmodded so unlikely. I think Taistycookie runs it sometimes?

[glad aurora]

are the middies okay

[quiet quiver]

Full Wed is a passable budget liner

Liver is a travesty

[mint sinew]

Played a ralas game earlier featuring:

• rail BB
• 4 beamstone hunting pack
• only ship lighter than a Keystone being an ewar Raines masq'd as a BB
  VS
• 6x MD/rocket MNs
• sniper cmd S2 MNs
• "Oops no strike" 3k CVLN

Thankfully my OSP capfleet won by the power of rat tactics

The rail BB in that game at least had a full spread of turrets and S3H sidearms

[mint sinew]

That's my read. A middy learning how to build greedy from first principles

[glad aurora]

stack overflow negative mines

[quiet quiver]

Oh that part is weird yeah

[mint sinew]

Wonder if they only had 3 but the minelayer just does -5 on activation without a check

The displayed total is floored to 0 but the internal counter is negative

Hmm, doesn't replicate in the test range. Maybe just a spec bug

[edgy dove]

Mount list

[glad aurora]

he learned pretty quick tbh

came back this most recent match with a full 450 BB with PD escort

the softkill sucked but he didn't get missiled so whatever

the flaw was that he pushed into 450LN/ocello crossfire and we tore him into little bits

[rigid bison]

The tech you don’t see /j

[junior heron]

<@&942093958551588904> I know it's early, but I'd like to play some nebulous if anyone else is interested.

[mint sinew]

Will be on in 5

[junior heron]

<@&942093958551588904> We've had first weekend boat night yes, but what about second weekend boat night?

[wicked mirage]

I can't right now, but I wish I could!

Have fun gamers ❤️

[mint sinew]

Booting up (my brain) and will be right with you

[junior heron]

(doesn't look like there's many lobbies stacking up though)

that's 2! that's a party!

[mint sinew]

There are 4 non-mod games in flight though so there are at least people online

[wet root]

I'll meander my way on in a bit

[junior heron]

@mint sinew

[lime jungle]

Fleet 'Shatterer Torp CL' is composed of 2 ships that cost 3000 points:

                       Shatterer : 'Vauxhall' class Light Cruiser [Missile EWar PD]
To Seek the Paths That Lie Ahead : 'Levy' class Escort Carrier [Gun PD]
```This fleet uses 10 different missile types:
```yaml
                   SDM-207 Legion : DIRECT - CMD - HE FRAG [8pts]
SGM-101 Ceremonial Arming Missile : DIRECT - PSV(WAKE) - HE SHAPED [1pts]
                SGM-103 Deflector : DIRECT - ACT(RADAR) - HE FRAG [2pts]
               SGM-138 Palisade-A : DIRECT - ACT(RADAR) - HE FRAG [2pts]
         SGM-211 Thunder Overhead : DIRECT - ARAD(RADAR) - HE SHAPED [12pts]
          SGM-H-301 Linebreaker A : DIRECT - CMD/SAH(RADAR) - HEKP [46pts]
          SGM-H-302 Linebreaker B : DIRECT - CMD/ARAD(RADAR) - HEKP [51pts]
          SGM-H-303 Linebreaker C : DIRECT - CMD/ARAD(RADAR) - HEKP [48pts]
                    SGT-303 Lance : DIRECT - CMD/SAH(RADAR) - HE SHAPED [13pts]
                   SGT-304 Boreal : DIRECT - PSV(EO) - HE SHAPED [22pts]

[junior heron]

@glad aurora this fleet has a 100% winrate

it must be good

[glad aurora]

surely

[junior heron]

I'm sure there were no compounding factors for that game

[edgy dove]

where did the 1320 go

[junior heron]

not the above fleet, this one

[lime jungle]

Fleet 'Triple Invested Beam DD' is composed of 3 ships that cost 3000 points:

      At the Twilight : 'Keystone' class Destroyer [Beam PD Missile Sensor]
Herald of the Scribes : 'Keystone' class Destroyer [Beam PD Missile Sensor]
          Battle Drum : 'Keystone' class Destroyer [Beam PD Missile Sensor]
```This fleet uses 4 different missile types:
```yaml
                  SDM-207 Phalanx : DIRECT - ACT(RADAR)/PSV(WAKE) - HE FRAG [5pts]
SGM-101 Ceremonial Arming Missile : DIRECT - PSV(WAKE) - HE SHAPED [1pts]
               SGM-103 Palisade-A : DIRECT - ACT(RADAR) - HE FRAG [2pts]
     SGM-H-315 Truth in Innocence : DIRECT - CMD/PSV(WAKE) - HE SHAPED [15pts]

[edgy dove]

oh

[junior heron]

the report for that game

big shoutout to our blue who has been renaming each individual fighter after players

[glad aurora]

playing against double moorline + ruttles is always, uniformly, super cancer

even if you win it's super cancer

that said the blue made it amusing

[junior heron]

anyway, I've swapped those S3H over to hot launch, so now the fleet is perfect

They'll need true names, but I think I can just follow the Pyre scheme that is most of my RNG names

As a bonus easter egg for that fun game, here's Umbra rabbit. who was spectating along.

[noble zodiac]

what the everliving shit

[junior heron]

It's a good bit, I've definitely contemplated doing the same thing with some backpack craft.

[wicked mirage]

What an absolute god, I love this!!

[junior heron]

<@&942093958551588904> anyone for some midweek neb?

[wet root]

I am tragically deceased today, if you ping later in the week maybe

[junior heron]

RIP

[wicked mirage]

I could go for a game in a few?

Just eating dinner atm

[wicked mirage]

@glad aurora Bruh your team was flouride staring so hard I'm sorry you had to deal with them

[glad aurora]

mikeh always plays like that

at the point I had to sprint my CV towards a beam goalie that hadn't moved in 15 minutes to try and get anyone to pay attention to the fact I was being fighter camped I gave up mentally

[wicked mirage]

Yeah I think AI would've been more proactive than that lol

[glad aurora]

honestly probably still recoverable if I wasn't trying to micro my strike with the two bombers on your left-side cappers at the exact same time dezzert struck my axford on A

[wicked mirage]

Mikeh just zombie trogged all the way to D uncontested with axfords

The Beam DD's were mostly AFK

[glad aurora]

but as shown with the later strike I'm not sure if it'd even matter anyway

e70'd it, multiple flare chaff dump, nah, every single torp directly into my midsection despite being act/[cmd] gg

[wicked mirage]

ACT/[CMD] set to Reject on Torps basically can't be softkilled.

If you launch within 3km gg

[glad aurora]

🎉

[wicked mirage]

The only way to softkill it is to jam both the ACT and the CMD, and even then they sometimes don't wiggle enough to miss.

[glad aurora]

yeag

still could've probably killed the rest of your cappers if the beam DD had beamed the fighters off of me, but nah he just walked straight by and let all of my returning bombers get mulched

just incredible stuff

[wicked mirage]

If you want I can give you a 6pt AMM that can go 2-for-1 on Bomber Torps because of splash damage.

[glad aurora]

nah, can't afford it on an axford

maybe on a BB but on a BB I have jam escort anyway

[wicked mirage]

So, it takes 3 of these to kill a Torp but they're set to only fire 2 per Torp because they have enough slpash with EL Frag to hit multiple S3's in a Bomber dump, and then Last Salvo being set to Yes plus 20mm can clean up stragglers.

[lime jungle]

SGM-166 Nul-Curse is a size 1 missile that costs 6 points.

[glad aurora]

neat

[wicked mirage]

Other than that, the only way I've found to deal with Sturgs is to catch them with Fighters before they dump, SDM-2 them before they dump, or have a PD Vauxhall xD

Could you afford backpack Fighters on your Axford?

A pair of Coilto's with 4x S1's each is enough dakka to tear up a Bomber wing.

@glad aurora I like that fleet archetype btw, do you mind if I take a crack at it and show you? Would you take it for a whirl?

[wet root]

Doesn't jamming just the ACT do fine?

[wicked mirage]

I don't think so, when the ACT seeker is set to reject it just rejects all the phantom targets from the jamming.

Or at least I think that's how it works

It can't see the CMD val target so it just goes straight

[wet root]

I think that's correct, but at 3km that should be enough time to dodge IIRC

(Of course with bombers they can just fly to 1km instead in main)

[wicked mirage]

Depends on the Torps, Fast Weave is very common these days.

[glad aurora]

unfortunately no, I don't use anyone else's fleets

you're welcome to riff on the concept though

[wicked mirage]

Aw, alrighty

[edgy dove]

Funnily enough I'm pretty sure 8-9/10 of my fleets are either copies or derivatives
Axfords-Zabbix's
CLs-Star's
Frig Ball-Scrubus
2CVE- Also Scrubus
ANS cap fleet- HIMARS
450LNs-ROM's
OSP Cap fleet- Also ROM

and list goes on

[mint sinew]

About half of my regularly played fleets are derivatives of others or my takes on stock archetypes.

The rest are my own creations of varying degrees of cursed

I'm usually game to try out other people's creations as they lead to interesting learning experiences

[junior heron]

sorry about the Vauxhall, it will happen again

[mint sinew]

Your so fine, I think that game would have been rough regardless of what I brought for caps

[mint sinew]

I really need to start leaving lobbies if I'm left to cover caps for teams with basically no frontline. The games are just never worth it

[glad aurora]

correct

my philosophy is that if there are 2+ fleets with over 60% points investment in missile/CV in a 4k game, either they switch or I swap to spec/leave

it is never worth it to play on those teams

[wet root]

I know I should learn to play caps, but my goodness have carriers absolutely obliterated any interest I had in doing so

[glad aurora]

ditto

[wicked mirage]

Actually, you can make a cap fleet really resistant to carriers! Wanna make one together?

(Please I'm bored)

xD

[wet root]

Alas, I have work, but I'd be interested to see an example fleet

[noble zodiac]

same (minus the work part. but Outside)

[junior heron]

btw Lark, is it later enough in the week that I could ping you into midweek neb later in the evening?

[wet root]

Unfortunately I have gotten like no sleep this week in general, so probably not, sorry

[junior heron]

:( RIP but resting in the not dead sense

[junior heron]

I've been enjoying this fleet recently. I'm descending further into my depths of "Hardkill (tanto coilgun) will save me".

[lime jungle]

Fleet 'Support Levy + Caps' is composed of 5 ships that cost 3000 points:

  Strands in a Braid : 'Levy' class Escort Carrier [Gun PD]
        Silent Steps : 'Sprinter' class Corvette [Gun PD]
       Wind and Rain : 'Sprinter' class Corvette [Gun PD]
Lost in the Darkness : 'Sprinter' class Corvette [Gun PD]
Lost in the Darkness : 'Sprinter' class Corvette [Gun PD]
```This fleet uses 5 different missile types:
```yaml
SGM-101 Ceremonial Arming Missile : DIRECT - PSV(WAKE) - HE SHAPED [1pts]
                 SGM-102 Gauntlet : DIRECT - SAH(RADAR) - HE SHAPED [1pts]
                SGM-103 Deflector : DIRECT - ACT(RADAR) - HE FRAG [2pts]
               SGM-103 Palisade-A : DIRECT - ACT(RADAR) - HE FRAG [2pts]
               SGT-303 Greatsword : DIRECT - ACT(RADAR)/[CMD] - HE SHAPED [13pts]

[junior heron]

Levy puts out some SAH tantos and Claymores to help contest the early caps, the Tantos loiter around afterwards to defend against rockets or missiles or whatever

[glad aurora]

feels way too expensive a CV for what you're doing here, you can fit an entire beam DD in there and still get roughly equivalent strike

also not sure about Invested Caps in the big 26

[noble zodiac]

strike

[junior heron]

I should probably give the corvettes s1 VLS so the tantos can illuminate for them

[noble zodiac]

that is not the point of the cv i fear

[glad aurora]

it's really not that far separated, this is a really, really invested CV

[junior heron]

it is in fact the first word of the fleet
I can probably cut some Tantos, but I haven't gotten to test this against a missile spam enemy yet, and they've been very effective at swatting cappers so far

[glad aurora]

no, not cutting tantos, cutting survivability and buff modules

also extraneous stuff like KBUs

[noble zodiac]

oh true

[glad aurora]

personally I'd run this fleet with less invested CV and cappers and fit an extra sprinter and a 2fpa beam DD in there, but it's up to your preferenc

I know a lot of people prefer not to play on the redline like I do :^)

[junior heron]

I like to keep the bombs around for flexibility, and letting me act independently

[wicked mirage]

@noble zodiac Heya! So Cheese and I just worked on this fleet together for OSP!

[lime jungle]

Fleet 'ASF+Caps' is composed of 8 ships that cost 3000 points:

     Duet Akin : 'Journeyman' class Light Carrier [PD]
    Sold Anime : 'Draugr' class Clipper [EWar Missile Gun Sensor PD]
Miser and Gull : 'Draugr' class Clipper [EWar Missile Gun Sensor PD]
 The Manic Keg : 'Ferryman' class Clipper [PD Gun]
         Ivory : 'Ferryman' class Clipper [PD Gun]
    Gene Plump : 'Ferryman' class Clipper [PD Gun]
Gin of Cleland : 'Ferryman' class Clipper [PD Gun]
          Firm : 'Ferryman' class Clipper [Gun PD]
```This fleet uses 9 different missile types:
```yaml
        SDM-242 Huntdown-B : DIRECT - ACT(RADAR)/PSV(WAKE) - HE FRAG [5pts]
          SGM-100 Balestra : DIRECT - ACT(RADAR) - HE FRAG [2pts]
 SGM-100 Balestra Block II : DIRECT - ACT(RADAR) - HE FRAG [3pts]
SGM-100 Balestra Block III : DIRECT - CMD - HE SHAPED [7pts]
    SGM-100 Nah, I'd Stall : DIRECT - PSV(WAKE) - HE SHAPED [1pts]
         SGM-120 Stilletto : DIRECT - ACT(RADAR) - HE FRAG [2pts]
           SGM-200 Tempest : DIRECT - CMD - HE SHAPED [7pts]
             SGT-300 Pilum : DIRECT - CMD/HOJ(RADAR) - HE SHAPED [11pts]
    SGT-300 Pilum Block II : DIRECT - ACT(RADAR)/[CMD] - HE SHAPED [11pts]

[wicked mirage]

ASF focused Jman plus MMT's and cap Shuttles.

[noble zodiac]

balestra IIs i presume are ... antifighter s1s?

i forget do planes have sdms on main branch still or are those just for the sals

[glad aurora]

yep, still on main

[noble zodiac]

i seee

[glad aurora]

can't say I'm a big fan of the guttles with ASF, guttle is gambling hard on ASF interception logic working (which, lol)

ruttle with ASF is at least "all I need is three seconds to dump these rockets and I still get value"

[wet root]

...okay, sure, bringing a carrier in your cap fleet does let you make it resistant to carriers

@wicked mirage do you have any carrier-resistant cap examples that don't rely on a carrier of their own?

[wicked mirage]

I could try to make one! Do you not like playing carriers?

Also do you want it ANS or OSP?

[wet root]

I dislike playing carriers, and I particularly have no interest in playing carriers while trying to refamiliarize myself with dispersed cap play

But I was hoping for a battle-tested example, I generally prefer to build my own fleets

[wicked mirage]

I could send you my cap fleets but I'm on my phone at work atm

[wet root]

I just haven't been able to find a way to build a cap fleet that can survive carriers without prohibitive spending on SDMs, so I would appreciate an example

[wet root]

No rush, I'm in the same situation lol

[wicked mirage]

Gotcha, yeah I can do that. ANS or OSP?

[wet root]

Whichever, maybe OSP since I can always just bring a SAM Raines on a normal cap fleet on ANS

[edgy dove]

There's someone I know that has 2 MMTs that replace the jammer with a TALS to fire SDMs out of

Can't say I'd recommend it but it's something to try

[mint sinew]

To look slightly outside the box: another OSP option is to include a few ruttles whose only job is to lunge the backline and assassinate any Levies

You could probably do something similar with an S2 monitor and good scouts but I'm not sure there's actually a reliable way to yub a radarless carrier parked against a rock

Just kind of softkills everything for free until it runs out of chaff

[glad aurora]

shortstop CLN gg

CLN hard counters levy

[mint sinew]

True, but CLN caps has other problems

[junior heron]

I would simply survive being rocketed because my levy is overinvested.

(11k damage hurts)

[wet root]

In the early days of carriers I had a tug setup that used TALS-launched S2 pairs specifically tuned to break ANS light ship PD, but it's painfully less effective than a classic MMT against Keystones and larger

A pain to fire as well, since they don't have mixed salvos you have to do hold fire micro IIRC

[junior heron]

smh Fluffy hates me :(

[mint sinew]

Hey, I'll take whatever gets me a team that already has caps and frontline

just played a game where my entire team swapped off their frontline after I locked in a cap fleet and looked away from the screen

then cursed me out when we died to 1 pair of sprinter bombers

[junior heron]

oh, that sucks :(

[mint sinew]

I've had awful luck with pubs lately

[junior heron]

is this the time where you're usually around to play?

I took today and tomorrow off, but this is after I would get home from work in theory

[mint sinew]

Usually it's just boat night and spare boat night I fit in games

[mint sinew]

I assume that was your beamstones that eviscerated me @junior heron? The unfortunate wedge between the spamtos, beamford and keystones was unpleasant

[junior heron]

nah, I was carrier

sorry for the spam

it felt like the only thing that could try and break through that game

because there was another fleet on A/D

and MN pushing B

[mint sinew]

I saw the blob forming and accepted my death. Fun fleets do not get budget for enough SDMs to survive craft on main

[junior heron]

sorry :(

[mint sinew]

All good, I should have ignored my teams calls to get back on C, pushing through was correct and I knew it

[junior heron]

I usually don't blob because I don't trust blobbing to work, and would rather just pick off all the small ships

[mint sinew]

It probably wouldn't have got both LNs without me exposing myself to the beamstones (and you killing my bloodhound as they broke cover)

[junior heron]

I was having trouble tracking all the ships and really thought that bloodhound was one of the LNs

[mint sinew]

I was dumping all my decoy boxes to try and live, so I'm not surprised

[junior heron]

aaahh, makes sense

there was several re-captures of B, and also E got captured

[junior heron]

oh this is going to be a good silver spectator game

the thing is, it's pillars, so this thing is rushing B point and probably gonna kill everything there

oh no

[mint sinew]

They know what they want

[olive blade]

only 56% loaded

for shame, budget cuts really have hurt the alliance navy

[junior heron]

that's its health

fortunately, the rest of it is beams and auroras, so it doesn't really need a magazine

less fortunately, it did get hit by an ocello dumping s2

[mint sinew]

Have you considered that this is actually tech Tom? Sandblast the thrusters of an LN so you can catch up and beam it?

[glad aurora]

s2cello - phl again?

[junior heron]

in this case the s2 is a backup it looks like

[olive blade]

oh oops

[junior heron]

meanwhile in the Alliance natural, 3cl is losing to 4 shuttle

time to buff cl

ah , the other ocello is also s2

but with the floodlight on the bottom c4

also, immediately after taking this screenshot, it got toasted by a reactor bloom

[wet root]

I need to check at some point whether toasted Ocellos can broadside and have 450he overpen

[glad aurora]

damn I need a cigarette after that one

deplaning a levy is a uniquely good feeling

on the tech: breakspear IIs are a bit unmaneuverable right now, but that's fine because (a) I'm targeting PTB maneuver and (b) they one-shot Claymores

any fuse is a dead bomber

[edgy dove]

Max warhead SDM2s don’t 1shot ablative foam bombers

Although you may get better than 2:1 sometimes from multi-hits

[junior heron]

<@&942093958551588904> slightly early Boat Night ping!

what's our count looking like today?

[wet root]

I'll be around in 15

[glad aurora]

unfortunately I forgot it was boat night and did all my boating early, about to get up and start on dinner

[mint sinew]

I'm out for today and next week sadly, happy boating

[junior heron]

RIP Fluffy

[wet root]

Have fun being out

[junior heron]

@wet root https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDtrnrjsOo8&list=PL53mjgVKFq7xaGB9EpKOzqBYW_eEoY1nS

"why are there so many Never To Return"

because there's a lot of enemy teams in Pyre

(this doesn't include the main team Never to Return)

[junior heron]

While it's posted, my Never to Return rankings:

1. Dissidents*
2. Nightwings (not in above playlist)
3. Tempers
4. Essence
5. Withdrawn
6. Pyrehearts
7. Accusers
8. Chastity
9. Fate
   -# *this is cheating because Thrash Pack is just that good.

[supple sonnet]

Wuh oh.

Hi Pyrope...

[wooden veldt]

[supple sonnet]

:P

[edgy dove]

All 4 of them were in call for that too btw

[supple sonnet]

Yeahhhh, that match was... a disaster for our team. :P

We spent the opening bit of it taking potshots at Pyrope's Liner and then hardkilling HARDKILL ME because strong PD go brrrr, then checked the map and went:

https://tenor.com/view/whatisgoingon-ohgod-crazy-gif-7867392

We did our best, but... not much we could do with our one Axford.

[rigid bison]

The tech you don’t see

[restive monolith]

If I find more free time to play i think I should ask to play with people here sometime

Also to try out people's fleets cus idk how to make my own at all

Only thing I've made is a modified TF Ash where I just remove the sprinter and gut the destroyers so I can have 6 of them

Grouped in pairs with 1 having a bullseye radar thingy

[oak shell]

Beam keystones are better in fewer numbers than that, IMO

[glad aurora]

if you gut the DDs they do no damage and die to rocket planes, yeah

[edgy dove]

2 FPAs or bust

[restive monolith]

Yeah they die instantly but I also never actually play against other people so I dont really learn all that much

The bots just dont shoot me lol

In general im pretty bad at the game like mechanics wise. I get what I should do but to do it all in a certain timeframe can be hard cus it's a lot to remember.

And then I tend to lose my drive because I dont have time for all that and im too lazy

I put together some work in progress fleet with missiles but idk wtf im doing lol

[edgy dove]

Playing against other players is fine, and a decent fleet isn't particularly hard to make. All you need do is ask the right people to give you one or a basic how-to guide

[glad aurora]

all formations intending to actually fight serious ships should have:

• chaff
• flares
• arming missile (1pt "technically offensive" missile to count as armed for caps)
• active decoys (conure on ANS, decoy container on OSP)
• killjoy (on ANS, cruise S2 with no seeker or warhead but a SSJ jammer; on OSP, cruise container with no seeker or warhead but SSJ jammer)
• omnidirectional CMD jammer
• at least two 20mm point-defense turrets
• if you're a BB, get a CR70 backup antenna

if you do that you're better off than 95% of the playerbase

[restive monolith]

I will use this next time I play

[edgy dove]

Flares are only necessary if the ship has or sticks near comms jamming

[supple sonnet]

Why? /gen

[mint sinew]

Flares only decoy wake primary seekers, which aren't great

[wet root]

Wake isn't usable as a primary seeker, but it gets used as a secondary seeker so that missiles will continue to fly straight under jamming (instead of going all wobbly). Having flares means that when CMD/WAKE missiles fly towards you, get jammed, instead of flying straight and hitting you, they will instead go for the chaff and miss you

(Also true of ACT/WAKE and SAH/WAKE under radar jamming but that's less common than CMD/WAKE and can be softkilled with chaff instead)

[mint sinew]

This works so well because wake is bad btw. Most of the time it's not going to see anything that you don't want it to hit

One of the options you have if you are out of/didn't bring flares is to intentionally bait wake with a smaller escort ship by burning away from the incoming missiles

It's very sketchy but it can work

[wet root]

(Also, in a lot of situations you can just dodge by changing directions, but flares are simpler and work even if you don't have Raider drives or your thrusters are damaged)

[edgy dove]

9/10 times your concern is ACT/[WAKE] (which flares do nothing against) and that 1/10 time just go backwards to prevent your main engines from firing

It's very dumb and never really explained in the game but WAKE and THERM only care about your FORWARD thrusters

[wet root]

Particularly silly with Lineships and their huge front thrusters

[supple sonnet]

Odd.

CheeseSlayer ↩️

[Reply to:](#1164000873031151637 message) It's very dumb and never really explained in the game but WAKE and THERM only care about your FORWAR…

We usually bring a couple of flares, maybe 1 or 2, just in case, but we also reverse when able so perhaps they're not super necessary.

[junior heron]

it's my turn to egopost

43km travelled too

was a very fun pillars game:
spawned low, skiff scouted a liner that I ambushed
there was a Moorline on B that I caught at beam range after that ambush.
There was a second liner hiding above B that I charged down, while a third liner from E took shots at my flank.
Eventually I had to wrap back around to A to kill that third liner.
Also the enemy rail ocellos kept leaving C point for us to recapture

[glad aurora]

🎉

[glad aurora]

apparently notes wanted to see this for some reason

[lime jungle]

Fleet 'Imagine if OSP had missiles other than containers' is composed of 1 ship which costs 3000 points:

No Shortage of Sordid : 'Ocello' class Command Cruiser [Missile Gun EWar PD Sensor]
```This fleet uses 5 different missile types:
```yaml
    SDM-210 Breakspear II : DIRECT - CMD/PSV(WAKE) - HE FRAG [8pts]
        SGM-101 Hobgoblin : DIRECT - PSV(WAKE) - HE SHAPED [1pts]
SGM-2 Lay Down Your Hands : DIRECT - CMD/HOJ(RADAR) - HE SHAPED [8pts]
 SGM-2 Let It All Pass On : DIRECT - CMD - HE SHAPED [16pts]
       SGM-270 False Idol : DIRECT - NONE - NONE [7pts]

[edgy dove]

…you have a mk66?

[glad aurora]

yeah

(a) can't afford third VLS without cringing the decoy mix in a given salvo, (b) DT break, (c) against good teams you don't get the chance to use a third VLS of munitions after you initiate anyway

[wicked mirage]

<@&942093958551588904> Weeknight Pubulous Command?

[junior heron]

pubulous: but at what cost command

[junior heron]

I'm in voice here btw

[junior heron]

@glad aurora what exactly did you mean by trading up?

[glad aurora]

nuking the blue BB that did nothing but w+m1 forwards with four (4) bombers

[junior heron]

ah

[glad aurora]

it turns out that a 3v4 was a bad place to be in

[junior heron]

I do find that 4 bombers is usually enough to get hits on a solomon

[glad aurora]

he did know to turn his e70 on, apparently, three minutes of use time, but not to shift-Z out a metric ton of chaff

[junior heron]

and also I just associate you playing on Haldet's Bluff with Shadow Wizard Money Gang

did that last bomber have anything on it?

[glad aurora]

yep

two more clusters for the CC

[junior heron]

uh oh

I was out of SDMs, so my hope was really "I hope I can land a rocket hit"

[glad aurora]

LOL

[junior heron]

I have like, 1 loadout that actually has 20mm ammo

[glad aurora]

yeah nah I'm mad I missed out on bagging one of those 450LNs early because of the permanent evade bug

I was clicking over and over and over down to 2.5km like "oh my fucking god please just launch"

[junior heron]

but also the carrier is overinvested so it might have survived

oh, that sucks

I don't think I can really afford to swap out the 3 extra SDMs to actually go toe-to-toe with that fleet

[glad aurora]

yeah nah don't even try

the entire point of SWMG is that I have more bombers coming from more angles than you have craft, it's not really something you can counter without 40 SDMs on the target

in which case I die and explode and turn into a corncob

[junior heron]

hey I got close :P

I think I blunted a lot of strikes

I also definitely told my team "yeah I'll intercept these strikes don't worry about the carriers" right before you hit the Ocello

[glad aurora]

yeah, exactly :^)

[junior heron]

it does seem a little silly, and I am looking forward to PTB coming to main

[glad aurora]

you did fuck with me at the start of the game - SWMG assumes I auto-lose a full flight before I attack anyone with it on average against a remotely competent OSP CV player, it's all good, but I had to emergency counter those ruttles since the BB exploded and I no longer had any cover on the flank, which let you intercept the bombers, complete waste of munitions

but after that I got settled into my rhythm pretty cleanly except for the bug

[junior heron]

I hadn't heard of the evade bug

That sucks

Sometimes I'll end up with ghost craft though

they died, but they're still "there"

[glad aurora]

yeah, sometimes you just get locked into the craft permanently in evade stance

it's the same reason you get craft "evading" off the edge of the map by 40km

[junior heron]

ooooh

that's why that happens

[junior heron]

<@&942093958551588904>Boat Night! Sorry for the late ping.
How's our fleet commander count looking today?

[supple sonnet]

We'll be there in about 10-15 minutes!

[wet root]

I'm very blergh today, not sure I'll be up for neb :/

[junior heron]

:( take care Lark

[glad aurora]

I have a very silly fleet to test

[junior heron]

We love testing fleets

[supple sonnet]

"Oh hey, something's capping A. Let's send a ruttle to see what's up."
The nefarious beam Solomon our team never told us about:

[junior heron]

you in a game right now?

I just got into one, but could hop over here for a game 2 if anyone's up for it

[supple sonnet]

Just finished. Sitting in lobby in ERI #5.

And yeah, we'd be down!

[glad aurora]

since that game's full I'm in ERI6

[junior heron]

<@&942093958551588904> surprise sunday boat night

[wet root]

I'll hop on in a bit, probably 15ish

[supple sonnet]

Right! Keep forgetting to post it, but we ended up modifying Fluffy's "bombardment + ruttles" fleet and making it into a 450LN + Rail LN build. Figured we'd post it here and double-check that we didn't make any egregious build mistakes with it. :P

[lime jungle]

Fleet 'Endurance Company' is composed of 5 ships that cost 3000 points:

Hull Onto Fire : 'Marauder' class Line Ship [Gun Missile PD Sensor]
 Lazarus Point : 'Marauder' class Line Ship [Rail Missile PD Gun]
        Carina : 'Draugr' class Clipper [Sensor Gun PD]
    Blitzkrieg : 'Ferryman' class Clipper [Rocket PD]
       Solaris : 'Draugr' class Clipper [PD Gun]
```This fleet uses 4 different missile types:
```yaml
CM-404 Spicy Active Decoy : DIRECT - ACT(RADAR) - NONE [3pts]
     CM-421 Box, Adequate : DIRECT - CMD/PSV(WAKE) - HE SHAPED [4pts]
         SGM-111 Demister : DIRECT - ACT(RADAR) - HE FRAG [2pts]
   SGM-123 Arming Missile : DIRECT - PSV(WAKE) - HE SHAPED [1pts]

[glad aurora]

sorry, had an incredibly dogshit match that just turned me right back off neb for the day

[oak shell]

I will be able to boat again soon

[lime jungle]

Fleet 'FIREBRAND' is composed of 3 ships that cost 3000 points:

         Fury Warm As Flames : 'Marauder' class Line Ship [Gun PD Sensor EWar]
Revenge Spills Like Gasoline : 'Marauder' class Line Ship [Gun PD Sensor]
              Loyal As A Dog : 'Flathead' class Monitor [PD Sensor]
```This fleet uses 2 different missile types:
```yaml
SGM-1 AAM Breathless Void : DIRECT - ACT(RADAR) - HE FRAG [3pts]
SGM-1 CAM A Brick In Hand : DIRECT - PSV(WAKE) - HE SHAPED [1pts]

[lime jungle]

Fleet 'FIREBRAND' is composed of 3 ships that cost 3000 points:

         Fury Warm As Flames : 'Marauder' class Line Ship [Gun PD Sensor EWar]
Revenge Spills Like Gasoline : 'Marauder' class Line Ship [Gun PD Sensor]
              Loyal As A Dog : 'Flathead' class Monitor [PD Sensor]
```This fleet uses 2 different missile types:
```yaml
SGM-1 AAM Breathless Void : DIRECT - ACT(RADAR) - HE FRAG [3pts]
SGM-1 CAM A Brick In Hand : DIRECT - PSV(WAKE) - HE SHAPED [1pts]

[glad aurora]

hell yeah, nice work

[oak shell]

What a shot!

[sharp crow]

damn that was good

[olive blade]

smooth as fuck

[supple sonnet]

...okay so: are we crazy for thinking that OSP mass drivers should be targeting heavy targets like Axfords and Solomons?

Because someone in this most recent match was so convinced that mass drivers are meant for light targets that they've got us questioning everything. :P

[junior heron]

MDs can keep enemy capital ships suppressed if they get free reign to fire, and softened up for the main gunline to actually break the surface mounts.
However, for small ships that are relying on dodging for survival, the MD's velocity means it can hit targets that would otherwise dodge everything, breaking the thrusters to set up for a kill.

So, bit of both depending on what you can see and what's the biggest threat.
On PTB the Mass Driver is getting a secondary AoE effect to try and make it better against frigate/corvette blobs.

[supple sonnet]

Right! Makes sense.
This guy seemed convinced that they're only for shooting smaller ships, and we were getting really confused. Like- there's a couple of gun Raines hanging out above C point not really doing much, we're pushing our somewhat damaged liner up to go deal with them, and you want us to stop putting rails into the Axford that is actively fighting our teammates to shoot at them because apparently we're not supposed to shoot an Axford with them ever? :P

[glad aurora]

MDs are also really good in a specific niche context - normally, MDs can't grey out anything on a BB, but they can grey track correlators.

Thus MD counterbattery can just completely zone out 11km orbiting 4tc BB

[supple sonnet]

that feeling when our carrier player disconnects and we're suddenly handed an entire Moorline having never touched craft in our life

https://tenor.com/view/this-is-fine-fire-house-burning-okay-gif-5263684

(It exploded ten seconds later to a missile barrage. Didn't even know it was coming.)

[wet root]

Er, no, they can't? Unless there's something I'm missing, the 15 damage rays into the Solly's 40% DR doesn't hit the TC's 10DT

(They can keep them red extremely easily though with the 40hp)

[wet root]

They were probably just running on outdated information, MDs used to be very effective at smashing light assets but they've been adjusted several times since then

[glad aurora]

Wasn't greying 4tc an explicit goal of MDs? I guess they've been nerfed since then

[wet root]

Honestly I haven't kept track of all the reasonings for the specific changes to MDs, but yeah, presumably one of the nerfs was to change that

They used to have a lot higher fragment damage I think

Also the 15 damage does kill TCs on anything with <33% DR, one of the like three components MDs can actually kill

Aha, I was missing something - MDs ignore DR apparently, TIL

@glad aurora

[glad aurora]

See, the 1.5k hours in this hellgame are good for something

I may never remember the names of my grandchildren but on my deathbed I will remember MDs are a 4tc counter

[wet root]

Yep, I thought you usually have mechanics right, there's a reason I double checked :P

[junior heron]

That seems like another good reason to hit capitals with them.

[wet root]

Yep, effectively dealing 167% damage against capitals

[edgy dove]

MDs have really bad pendepth which is why it's generally advised to fire at smaller targets. If you can catch a capital side on that's great but bow on MDs do almost nothing except kill the nose thrusters

They're great against CLs though because CLs kinda need those thrusters for their whole manueverability thing

[supple sonnet]

Gahhhhhhhhhh.
Trying to get better at Neb in public lobbies is rough. Half the time we don't even know what went wrong, and we've been on a massive losing streak.
Maybe we should just stick with playing at Boat Night... 😔

[junior heron]

you can always ping the role!

Neb is definitely best played in a stack, IMO

[glad aurora]

i'm ngl it's probably not your fault

I played one match today and it was... sure an event of all time

idk what's with the teams this last day or two

[supple sonnet]

True! That requires beating social anxiety first, but we'll try to remember that next time we feel up for Neb. :)

TomZero (Tommy, he/him) ↩️

[Reply to:](#1164000873031151637 message) you can always ping the role!

Yeahhhhhhh. I'm not sure what the person with six tugs and three ruttles in our last match was planning, but I don't think it worked. :P

Ash And Gold ↩️

[Reply to:](#1164000873031151637 message) idk what's with the teams this last day or two

Or, well, I don't even know if they were ruttles.

[edgy dove]

Pubs are..... are...
Keep in mind that newer players in neb are particularly resistant to advice and many don't ask or know where to ask in the first place

[junior heron]

Resistant, like whoever was playing the 3k missile MN I saw twice yesterday.

[oak shell]

How do you even get 3k into a monitor?

[edgy dove]

3 bulk mags full of expensive S2s maybe?

That'd die to almost any actual fire though

[junior heron]

Yeah, and you'll never guess what happened to it...

(It did get some missiles out game 2 but they weren't even all that damaging, and were very easy to softkill)

[wet root]

Honestly, new Neb players aren't any different from new players in any other game IME, it's just a game with a quite steep learning curve inherently that's exacerbated by lack of information availability outside Discord

Also, frankly, the community is pretty good at training new players to ignore chat (or uninstall), I don't think I've gone five pub games with a blue on my team without someone else deciding to go full all caps keyboard warrior

[edgy dove]

Had a really annoying game where a guy (low silver) went twin railcellos, me and another gold tried to convince him off for like 4 minutes before giving up

Big shocker we lost

[glad aurora]

yeah. for some reason this past week there's been a lot of "coming to terms with either shutting up and going for the hard carry or not playing the game" games

that said I don't think there was any lower point than the blue with the 120/TLS-3 CLs (pure EO, pure CMD) who turned off his comms and radar for lower signature, resulting in him (a) running directly into dualcello and dying, and (b) us not spotting the torpcello hanging out on mid rock who proceeded to then wipe out our only other frontline fleet

[supple sonnet]

Oh god, not pure CMD...

[glad aurora]

oh no blues fucking love that shit because the AI is incapable of softkill

and, equally, they think they don't need softkill for the same reason

[supple sonnet]

...bwahhhhh???

[glad aurora]

yeah, the AI in neb doesn't know how to softkill yet.

it also can't play CV

[supple sonnet]

But every starter fleet has soft kill. Are these people looking at that and going "nah, I'd win"???

[glad aurora]

yeah

because they see "softkill not working"

and TF Oak wading through infinite missiles

and go "hardkill will save me"

[supple sonnet]

https://tenor.com/view/zoom-oh-no-realization-anime-gif-15981055

That, and the lack of comms/planning is rough.
When we ask about plans as the match starts and just get "don't die" we internally cringe.

But yeah, the learning curve is rough.
...may ping later today (in an hour or two, probably) and try to get a stack up. If anyone's around, of course.

[wet root]

Workulous for five more hours ;_;

[supple sonnet]

😔

[wet root]

I think @junior heron has been hankering for more nebneb, though he might not be around for a few hours as well

[supple sonnet]

No worries! Honestly, we can wait until this evening if people are around. :)

(We don't have anything particularly time-sensitive planned today.)

[oak shell]

I could play in 6 hours

[junior heron]

I'll probably be around in 3.5 hours, but currently am at work.

[supple sonnet]

This evening it is! :)

[warm gulch]

i've unironically learnt and unlearnt the game 3 times now so yeah

it is really rough

[supple sonnet]

MASS DRIVER SWEEP-

[wet root]

Pewpewpew... pewpewpew... pewpewpew...

[supple sonnet]

Also oh my gosh were we dreaming, or did we see someone decoy incoming ACT(?) missiles by firing off a decoy container?
Big if tech...

(/lighthearted)

[junior heron]

Yep, Decoy Container is good for that.
Copies the RCS of the ship type (shuttle or LN) and also emits a radar signature, so ARAD or [ARAD Validator] will go for it.

[glad aurora]

it's the OSP (much clunkier) version of an active decoy

[junior heron]

And they cruise naturally so you can loop them in front of you if you have the micro to spare.

[supple sonnet]

With the caveat you can also use it to confuse people by spawning ghost ships.

Ash And Gold ↩️

[Reply to:](#1164000873031151637 message) it's the OSP (much clunkier) version of an active decoy

[wet root]

I think their RCS is smaller than the big chaff (correct me if wrong), so they're worse at decoying pure ACT, but in practice they're very effective due to pulling ARAD variants too

[wet root]

Also their duration is a pretty significant upside

[edgy dove]

They're better at stopping TTGI (Time To Go Impact) missiles as you can send them forward in front of you to activate their seeker and cause them to stage early, but the LN decoys do have a smaller sig than EA14 chaff

[supple sonnet]

nod
Anyways, I locked in a little too hard. >:)

Got handed two very badly built Ocellos and still did work with them.

[glad aurora]

oh joy, ocellos with empty compartments. never a red flag, that

[supple sonnet]

Also this bloody Solomon took a hundred fucking HE shells to the flank and was somehow still alive when the match ended.

[glad aurora]

yeah solomons are basically immune to HE unless perfectly flat

and/or posfired into flat surfaces like a main gun mount

[supple sonnet]

Oh, yeah, no, we were flat.
...it was a hundred meters away from us.
Stuck itself onto a point in desperation and we hammered it for ten minutes to the direct flank.

HE and AP both. Literally started running out of shells we'd been firing at it for so long.

Anyways, take a look.
This is...
Definitely an Ocello of all time.

[glad aurora]

people still haven't had it click that any modifications they make to Cobalt besides giving it killjoys make it a flatly worse fleet

[supple sonnet]

We would love to try to dual-drive it and see if we could make it work, but we haven't been able to figure out how to do that without, as stated, making it worse, so it stays with a single large Raider. :P

Ash And Gold ↩️

[Reply to:](#1164000873031151637 message) people still haven't had it click that any modifications they make to Cobalt besides giving it killj…

...oh my god that Ocello doesn't have a single reinforced DC locker.
...oh god it has a rapid and a gun plotting center in the nose.
...oh my god it has a reactor in the nose.

Neither of them have a comms jammer.

...aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa-

[junior heron]

This reaction is why spectating is so much fun.

You get to see this in game but don't have to play them.

[supple sonnet]

You can see people's stuff when spectating??

[junior heron]

Yeah!

[supple sonnet]

We gotta spectate more often so we can do a thousand yard stare when we see another dual Sundrive Ocello...

[glad aurora]

to be fair, dual sundrive ocello has a place in the world

[junior heron]

It can be really funny to watch new player games, where there's all sorts of questionable creatures on both sides.

[glad aurora]

it's just a place that's flatly worse than s2cello ever since 3sra tech proliferated

[supple sonnet]

Righttttt.

[glad aurora]

(the big advantage of s2cello is that it is capable of firing from outside beam DD range, which torpcello is not, and thus torpcello is hard countered by competent beam DD play)

also torpcello having a shorter effective range means that even if it's faster to get there, it dies really quickly to a competent AN CV unless it has an escort, which is even more points, etc etc

[edgy dove]

There's mount and compartment optimization you can do but the funny thing is cobalt is better than like 70% of the 2CCs you see in pubs

[supple sonnet]

...
I cannot believe how many people don't bring comms jammers.

[mint sinew]

it's so many people these days

[junior heron]

Hardkill will save me, surely

[glad aurora]

if you spectate low silver/blue games, their missiles are so incompetently built that hardkill actually does save them

stealing a design from the discord hits those games like crack cocaine

the more hours I've put into neb, the more disillusioned I've become over the two-tier system going on of just completely different games

[supple sonnet]

Yeah...
We try our best to ask for help here so we end up with at least somewhat competently built ships and missiles, but we don't have the skill to back all that up quite yet, so I'm not sure which "tier" we fall into, so to speak.

[glad aurora]

you're in the second tier because you understand and implement all of the game's mechanics on a regular basis

the first tier is the no comms jammers, no reinforced components, what's a hdg command of the world

and lys as shown with the CLN, carriers, etc has to somehow balance gameplay for both tiers of the game simultaneously

[supple sonnet]

Oof, that sounds like a rough problem to tackle...

[glad aurora]

(imo this is a completely fruitless effort and if someone doesn't execute their softkill or bring a capfleet they deserve to die and lose, but this is understandably a rather unpopular opinion)

carriers are imo one of the biggest examples of this gulf, because a 3k carrier is more or less useless at the highest levels of play and a free ride into 60k damage at lower levels

and it's purely based around softkill because the unguided missiles have been nerfed into irrelevancy

[supple sonnet]

I mean... it's not unfounded.
But on the other hand, the learning cliff is definitely a thing that exists, and without the Neb discord, this channel, and the ability to ask questions of/learn from people at Boat Night, we'd be lost.
It's a bit of a catch-22, isn't it? You gotta engage with the mechanics to win- but you have to know the mechanics exist to be able to engage with them.

Ash And Gold ↩️

[Reply to:](#1164000873031151637 message) (imo this is a completely fruitless effort and if someone doesn't execute their softkill or bring a …

...I can't say what the solution is. Not sure there is one, at this stage.

[mint sinew]

It's a common problem with simulation style games. When all your complexity is based in interactions between systems its a really dense teach

[supple sonnet]

Yup.

[mint sinew]

e.g. To understand why Aux steering in the bow is good you need to have a grasp on: bow tanking, DT, HEI/HE damage splitting, reinforced components and do a cost analysis vs peers

[supple sonnet]

We play a good amount of these kinds of games, so we're used to having to learn a lot. (We taught ourselves how to cold-start an A320 in Microsoft Flight Simulator by looking up real checklists and watching tutorials.)
But not everyone looks at a game and goes "alright, time to learn everything and stare at numbers and menus for an hour before we even boot up a match!"

[mint sinew]

I know when I first started realising the Aux steering was good I was hiding it out of the way as a backup until someone pointed out that I shouldn't actually care about the "can move without CIC" ability

[restive monolith]

Yeah I dont have the time for that but when I do id like to

[mint sinew]

Even then, what is "everything" to learn evolves over time

Like killjoys were tech developed within my time playing Neb and moved from "Cute, but niche" to an expected part of your softkill kit else you are throwing

[supple sonnet]

We know all of that pretty well! A bit fuzzy on HEI/HE damage splitting, though we're pretty sure we remember something about spheres. :P

Lord Fluffy (he) ↩️

[Reply to:](#1164000873031151637 message) e.g. To understand why Aux steering in the bow is good you need to have a grasp on: bow tanking, DT,…

[mint sinew]

(this is why Ash has you in the "informed player" category)

HEI (spread of rays) and HE (sphere) evenly split their damage between all components they could hit. This means smaller damage instances over multiple components so they don't DT break as reliably as the raw damage number suggests

AP doesn't do this and just dumps all the damage in the first thing it hits, so against certain targets it can be better to mix in a slavo of AP occassionally just to break things

[supple sonnet]

Huh, HEI works kinda like HEAT/HESH from From The Depths, then! And yeah, we thought we remembered that; so the more components you have in an area, the harder of a time HE/HEI will have fully knocking them out.

...Neb reminds us of From The Depths in a lot of ways.
FTD doesn't tell you how HEAT/HESH work, or how to build meta engines, or good plasma cannons, or proper advanced projectile system guns. It never really teaches you how armor works in general. You can make a lot of stuff that works- until you run into the harder late-game enemy factions that were built by community members that understand all the mechanics and use all the tech. Hell, the Scarlet Dawn faction is essentially built to be as meta as possible without throwing all style and theme out the window.
When you understand everything, the game is pretty great. Even the hardest difficulty of the campaign isn't that bad, though to be fair they broke it a bit in an update so it's easier than it should be.
...but when you're new, it's like being in the "hardkill will save me" tier of Nebulous. Things work well- until suddenly your designs get torn to pieces.

[wet root]

Honestly, for all the issues with this Ocello, 2xAEs with 3xMk66, 3x Aurora, and 3x20mm is playable, I've seen much worse creatures out there

The mine launcher is some fascinating tech though

[wet root]

The solution is making hardkill a functional system instead of a noob trap

Or remove it

[junior heron]

@wooden veldt I'm around now if you want to send up the ping, I'm gonna build an OSP carrier in the meanwhile.

[supple sonnet]

Ooh, five minutes while we grab a very late lunch, and then we'll send it up!

<@&942093958551588904> Possible Tuesday Boat Night, anyone? :)

[junior heron]

(double ping is PluralKit, in case anyone's wondering)

[wicked mirage]

Oh, gotcha lol thanks

Yeah I got prior plans and I'm in the middle of my workweek sorry x.x

[glad aurora]

making dinner right now, might be around in 30

so, game 2

[junior heron]

good neb!

[mint sinew]

Yeah

Definitely stealing the double drived gun frigs. Even once I realised it wasn't a Vaux I just assumed it was multiple groups because they covered so much ground

[junior heron]

the spyglass escort is overbuilt but it's spyglass with bullseye, and then VLS-2 has small assortment of stuff, and some PD turrets

[finite snow]

This gam good

[junior heron]

It is! If you grab the role in bot-stuff you can see the channels we hide in when we stack up.

[misty storm]

are things on testulous or mainulous rn?

[mint sinew]

We've been playing on mainulous. The PTB changes are largely well received, just waiting on devmam to find some room to merge them alongside campaign work

[edgy dove]

There's not enough interest in PTB anymore to actually get 4v4s going like, ever. But the game itself is better on PTB because craft are no longer horrendous to fight against

[supple sonnet]

We'd try PTB, but we honestly don't even know how to access it. :P

[junior heron]

right click in steam library --> properties --> betas and testing

you can also see the old conquest branch there

[supple sonnet]

...ohhhh, it's just a Steam beta branch?
Easy peasy!

[junior heron]

though it's pretty broken

[supple sonnet]

What's the big differences in PTB, essentially?

[junior heron]

craft maneuver is really reduced
there's the SSM-1, a 2 seeker size 1 missile specifically for craft
Container missile damage is halved

[supple sonnet]

HALVED-
Wowza.

[junior heron]

Craft also prefer to stay at missile range, and when firing guns only fire in bursts, so engagements are a little less all or nothing

and SDM-2 is only for OSP arm launchers

containers deserved it

[supple sonnet]

Interesting...

Sounds nice, honestly. It should be getting merged around when the campaign drops, right?

[misty storm]

Broken in a bad way?

[junior heron]

but with the agility changes, folks have developed HEI s2h missiles that can serve dual purpose against bombers and ships

[junior heron]

Conquest I think is prone to corrupting the save file very easily

[misty storm]

Oh I see

But good balance changes?

[junior heron]

PTB branch is good balance changes
In the test branches, there is also the old Conquest version, which has since been cancelled but is released in its final state for people to see the result of.

[misty storm]

OH i missed this message

sorry

i found a cool mod that adds a sort of battlecarrier for ANS but i cant track down any good examples for a fit for it

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2908659421 this mod

the discord link in there is expired

[supple sonnet]

Just witnessed [EO/ACT] missiles while spectating a match.
Somehow we feel like those two should be flipped...

Also witnessed someone shooting lifeboats. :(

[wet root]

EO/ACT (EO with ACT backup) or EO[ACT] (EO with an ACT validator)?

[junior heron]

as an aside to explain lark's question:
the game uses [square bracket] to denote a validator, which in turn needs a seeker
ACT/[EO] would be an active radar seeker with EO validation (which I need to test and see if EO auto-discriminates chaff).

[mint sinew]

It sure does, EO doesn't think chaff look like ships

[junior heron]

I thought it needed a target to do discriminating.

[oak shell]

Isn't that what "accept unvalidated targets" does?

[mint sinew]

Critically I believe that chaff (and other decoys) don't show to EO

[wet root]

Yep, EO won't go for chaff at all, and as a validator doesn't accept chaff

Though ofc you'll need to have it on reject unvalidated if you want your ACT[EO] not to stage on chaff

[supple sonnet]

Not sure, actually. Though I genuinely think it might've been EO[ACT]. :P

Lark ↩️

[Reply to:](#1164000873031151637 message) EO/ACT (EO with ACT backup) or EO[ACT] (EO with an ACT validator)?

If that's even possible.
If not it must've been EO/ACT, which makes some sense.

[glad aurora]

EO/[ACT] is possible but uh
very bad

[supple sonnet]

Though I know for a fact I saw WAKE[ACT] earlier.

[noble zodiac]

holland mentioned

[mint sinew]

WAKE[ACT] at least discriminates flares

If you are going to validate EO using [WAKE] and [ARAD] variants at least has some utility about prioritising live ships

[supple sonnet]

Oh, did I mention it was WAKE[ACT] S3?

[mint sinew]

I actually used EO[ARAD] once as part of a mixed slavo to punch out jamming escorts before the cheap seekers could roll in. Less relevant in the current softkill environment, but still a cute option

[supple sonnet]

Nice!

...in the end, at least it's better than pure CMD. :P

[wet root]

WAKE[ACT] is pretty understandable TBH, since you would expect it to let the WAKE ignore the trail and focus on the ship's engines, it's just mechanical weirdness that causes it not to work

AIUI the trail does count as a radar return for ACT validators specifically due to something about how WAKE is coded

[edgy dove]

Wake is also just a really trash seeker

[wet root]

Yeah, but if validators actually let you discriminate between the trail and the ship it could theoretically be an interesting primary seeker

[mint sinew]

Fixing the random gaps in the trail sending the missile off track would be a big step for constancy really

[wet root]

I believe it's all validators that treat the trail identically to the ship, though it's been a while since I've looked into it

[mint sinew]

Using validators to bypass the trail bugs is really just papering over the actual issue

[wet root]

Well, ideally you would fix both

Having validators work would also let you drop a missile from the side angle and have it reliably go for the ship instead of a random part of trail

[wet root]

Ideally fixing this would also stop WAKE missiles from randomly deciding to turn around when following the trail

[junior heron]

<@&942093958551588904> campaign release date!

@sharp crow news about campaign!

[wary flame]

not the best trailer we've ever had but I'm glad it's coming soonish

[open plank]

I can finally play the game!

[wary flame]

even if this is in fact not the Best Faction campaign

[misty storm]

BOARDING ACTIONS???

[wicked mirage]

Looks cool

[humble lagoon]

Campaign co op finally

[wicked mirage]

When's the PTB update though xD

[restive monolith]

Aw shit I should find the time to lock in and learn this game

In like a pvp way

Not just beating the bots over n over

[wicked mirage]

[sharp crow]

yippie

I should start relearning the game then

[eternal bramble]

holy fucking peak

[edgy dove]

I’m just waiting for the editor so I don’t have to use their provided ships

[wary flame]

I admit I would perhaps prefer the insurgents doing the insurgency campaign but ANS have always been the protag faction so that's something of an unreasonable complaint

time to Lost Fleet

[wicked mirage]

Want some help? ^^

[restive monolith]

Yeah but I dont have time

[eternal bramble]

ANS naval superiority time

we will simply win because it was fated

[noble zodiac]

oughghghg i should exist for the neb fight nights i keep forgetting theyre a thing

[wary flame]

objectively shit faction, loses to speedboats with fireworks attached

[noble zodiac]

er

neb weekends

[eternal bramble]

glory to the alliance, we should make everyone pay a million in taxes

[noble zodiac]

when

do

those happen

anyway

i forgom

[sharp crow]

I think it's been about a year and a half since I last played

all my ships were designed for the last war

[restive monolith]

They happen whenever the stars align to make me the least available

😔

[eternal bramble]

I have a single modern battleship

I'm so fucking cooked

[wary flame]

all my stuff is old as hell but I hold my own OK

[edgy dove]

Having a fleet that’s not terribly built puts you in the top quartile of players so it’s not hard

[wary flame]

capfleet is eternal

[eternal bramble]

I never used anything but BBs and they're going to force me to use things that are not immortal

[restive monolith]

Myeah but I dunno how to play at all. Idk which missiles to use when and which mixed salvos. If you firr a missile at me I will start to wonder what I'm supposed to do about it like 3 seconds before it hits me lol

[sharp crow]

I just need to collect the latest missile designs and I'm sure I can manage the rest

[restive monolith]

Id just like learn

But I dont have the time

[eternal bramble]

dear god they might even force me to learn how missiles work

this is terrible

[wicked mirage]

If anyone ever wants to make some builds for PvP together just lmk ^^

[eternal bramble]

maybe in a bit aye

[noble zodiac]

tbh that would be fun...

at some point™

also uh When Do The Weekend Nebs Happen Again Pleek I Forgor

[restive monolith]

Real

Idk uni should be slowing down soon so I would have more time but I like money so I wanna just work in that time

[misty storm]

I assume “two new hulls” is the bigass flagship and the supply ship?

[wicked mirage]

4pm CST on Saturdays usually

[quiet quiver]

Yeah, I forget the class name of the flagship but the ship name is the ANS Harsh Winds Blow

[noble zodiac]

worden-class !