Turrets and Tactics

[mgAV]

I've been enjoying this game and lurking for about a week here but didn't see much exactly covering this yet...

 

I started the game with a small, fast ship and a handful of chainguns. I wanted to use maneuvering and hit-and-run tactics to avoid damage, and it worked decently well:

 

1. Fly towards the enemy, reach maximum cruising speed while just reaching maximum weapons range (~5-7).

2. Hold down fire, and roll/jink here and there to evade some incoming fire.

3. Roll off right at an angle right before passing the enemy, and hit boost

4. Rinse and repeat. Ideally, you have taken a lot less hits and your shields can do this for minutes on end.

 

The same tactic still held true when I upgraded to bolters. Since I was only firing within a certain window, the overheating was not a big deal.

 

I have since upgraded to primarily cannons, with some lasers and tesla cannons on the side now, but this tactic isn't working as well. At this point in the game, it just seems better to park next to the enemy ships and fire. There is a weird balance where most enemy ships have an annoying amount of shields, but don't actually pose much offensive threat, so there is no need for hit-and-run. Maybe my current ship is overshielded/undergunned -- 11 armed turrets and 43k shields (my previous ship might have been 6 turrets and 10-20k shields), but I have no room for more guns.

 

Ideally, I'd love to have a high-speed cannon "frigate" and be able to skim within cannon range at an oblique angle, fire a burst, turn away, and wear down an enemy ship. If anyone has played the Starfleet Command series, you may recognize this as a key Klingon tactic. ; ) It seems that Avorion doesn't have a great way to fire at a target while orbiting them at high speed, not to mention trying to lead the cannon projectiles, so this hasn't proven too effective.

 

Does anyone have some cool strategies that are more involved than parking next to the bad guy and holding M1?

[LordMaddog]

No.

 

Right now the game AI suck, shield vs dameg is massively unbalanced and after you get to 10-20k tritium you never have to worry about dieing even on the highest difficulty.

 

Even more so if you throw on a shield module or two. Once you get to about 40k Xanion it becomes all about + turret modules with all other modules just equip for a few minutes then unequipped.

 

However with the mediocre combat the rest of the game is quite fun. Iv spent hours building a ecosystem of stations and endless hours making ships. The exploration is pretty good as well. 

[Ryugi]

It seems that Avorion doesn't have a great way to fire at a target while orbiting them at high speed, not to mention trying to lead the cannon projectiles, so this hasn't proven too effective.

 

Does anyone have some cool strategies that are more involved than parking next to the bad guy and holding M1?

 

Use Seeker Missiles.  They get a speed boost from your own speed and can home in on enemies quite easily.  Late game, though, shields make most weapons largely useless unless they have a decent shield piercing chance.  That fast-paced style of combat, though, is how I played the game until I upgraded to a larger ship for kicks.  I love it as well.

[Pob]

I'm not quite sure how you do strafing runs with cannons, seeing as they have the longest range of any weapons.

Ideally a cannon build would sit at range constantly reverse to keep the range open.

 

Problems I'm having is that I've hit the point where it's become a constant dps grind/race, I'm at 30k shields and 10ish guns at the Trinium/Xanium border.

Pirates and small Xsotan are not a real issue, the grind is the big Xsotan and hostile faction Destroyers which are +100k shields and +200k hull

It takes minutes of constant dps grinding to carve through them, I've taken to adding salvaging lasers into my attack after the shields go down as they do reasonable damage to an active ship once the shields go down. 

[Enzo Matrix]

In my game I'm at the outer wall distance 150-160. And my game on insane. The xsotan is modded and I'm facing up to 14 xsotan ships with so far the battleship had over 700k hp. All the others had 100k to 500k lol it's pretty random when they spawn, and firepower that was over 20k on one ship with 8k average. I have a ship that costs over 250k naonite, 100k titanium and I get annihilated right now if I take on stage 2-3 xsotan spawns myself. And I have like 600k shield and 100k hull. It's a blast I have to actually use tactics to survive.

 

The inner core is going to be totally insane. I use plasma and chain gun and tesla :)

[Longtooths]

For the scenario you describe, I would get 11 chainguns with no energy usage and no overheating and just leave the trigger pegged the entire time.

[spurgurgle]

my preferred turret is the rail gun it is ideal for a smaller "hit and run" tactic type ship

 

on my first play through i did the final boss with just 90k shields and 13k omicron all in rail guns

 

u line up a enemy and burn towards it and as soon as its in range of all the Rail guns, let rip do a full round until u pass them turn and drift backwards firing until over heat. then line up for another pass whilst the guns are on cool down and repeat

 

the small vessel will be thrown around by its own rail guns so line them up on a axis  and in pairs on either side of the ship. but being small it is also a harder target to hit so take a lot less damage then a bigger ship

 

 

[Pob]

You can do a similar tactic with seeker launchers, I've picked up two amt, boost at an enemy start shooting missiles, your speed gives them a big jump in range, mine are listed around 6km but I can hit and damage at 9-10km, I'll then change to circle strafing at around 3-4km to keep out of beam weapon range and throw off projectile weapons.

I back this up with chain guns and independent targeting turrets chain/plasma/bolter/cannon.

 

[oreganor]

OP, just focus on burst weapons, either Cannons or Railguns. My current end-game (Operates next to the Galaxy Core) ship is a 4.93M3 Cylor Rider armed with 8 Burst Railguns & 11 Seekers with registered 600k Omicron (It's artificial and due to the strange way burst weapons DPS is evaluated) mainly made of Trinium (With the mandatory "Avorion Stone plates" to be able to mount Avorion Turrets)... So it's cheap (Well... Hull is... The cost of the weaponry, all crafted, is like 10x the cost of the hull :)... Not including the ammount of time dedicated at buying weapon components :( ).

 

It's configured as a "darting" ship... High maneuverabilty, high up/down strafe (To take advantage of the classic Cylon Rider shape) so it matches the playstyle you mention.

 

The problem with any darting attack maneuver is... That the game has the habit of failing to register entire volleys worth of damage.

 

But when it works this ship wipes out 3 Small Xsontan at long range (Nominal Seeker range is 13k... But boosting towards the enemy you can hit approaching ones as far as 30k) and then it can wipeout 4 Big Xsontan ships before the Railguns Overheat at 5k... You can repeat this around each 30s, including the retreat maneuver to leave enemies out of range, while waiting for your weapons to cooldown.

 

In my hands (ie if you maneuver to avoid hits) you can't die to even the greatest of Spawns in the middle of a dense Breeder Field... But If I let it in hands of the AI, as it only has 85k HP and 200kSHP (400kSHP with "Battle Mode" systems), it dies before even killing 4 Xsontans in a Big Wave spawn.

 

So that's the current situation... Players are plagued by "0 damage" bugs, while AI simply plays the stationary turret gameplay... If you want a ship able to do BOTH... You have to use massive designs almost completely dedicated to HP & SHP... AI fares better with ships armed with constant stream weapons, although it uses Cannons very decently. Try high output lasers on your AI ships and/or cannon/seekers. AVOID mixing ranges on the same design... AI will NOT EVEN TRY TO SHOOT until the shortest weapon carried is in range (This includes any mining or salvaging turrent you have let there for "peacefull times").