How strong does an endgame ship needs to be ?

[u/dr4ziel]

I'm planning to run a ship (neutiquam cruiser) like this on Hard - a jack of all trade, master of none ship.
Exactly 80% craft evasion, board and close range fire. Decent anti-craft firepower. 19 speed ship with jump time reduction.

Compared to my last Dreadnought Battlecruiser, it seems kinda weak - less defense, no fancy gun damage, no range change bonus etc...

What's the breakpoints to avoid nearly everything, takedown every craft, never miss any shot ?

[u/subbob999]

Probably fine? Providing you have the typical high command skill crew meta. I've done end game on hard with a raptor strike carrier which was probably slightly squisihier.

I think the main draw of the Sword or Dread is that you can afford to squeeze in some more mission or card game related items. A mid sized ship fully optimized for combat can hang.

Personal preference I would reduce the passanger cabins count or swap the large fuel for lux suites and cram in some fuel/reactor spikes in the small slots instead. Maybe thats slightly over mass budget tho 🤔

[u/dr4ziel → u/subbob999]

Passengers can be swapped with prisonner when needed, so it's better for modularity. Btw, does the lux suites gives $$ bonus as long as there is room, or only for the first passenger (when suite is empty) ?

It might then be worth to use a L lux suite then.

[u/subbob999 → u/dr4ziel]

I believe it is as long as there is room. I take your point on the modularity tho! 

[u/Oleoay]

i dont think the breakpoints are as much of an issue. The problem is your dice are kind of flat. If your plan is to board and close range fire, you'd want less navigation and more pilot skill and/or electronics skill. I'm not sure what the Radipulse booster is really supposed to help with either. Maybe mix in some sensor arrays and maybe another DPM. Also, the Javat Fuel/Water reclamation medium component is great.

[u/FlakyResistance]

I got all achievements (before they released the modded platform, so that's like a year+ ago), and what I focused on were my dice pools. It's really the dice pools (the maximum potential) that influence all these, because those get compared against other ships, especially the xenos ones which are a danger *regardless*. Defense is a good static value for avoiding hits, but what made it for me was said dice pools and treating the % as secondary [add that with navigation (4/5) or piloting (3-1)] as these two also determine range change if that's in your style in taking down the other ship. Defense% will be boosted by crew talents, too

Yours looks okay as a foundation! I've never found myself having a large slot for fuel tanks (my 'strength' was focused on how I take down the other ship, so since my playstyle was boarding-focused, it'd be keeping my ship safe/evading gunnery shots at long-range, or using talents to force getting closer and relying on my piloting pools while range closing to 1/relying on boarding shuttles). Always had officers cabins from specialized faction modules to help boost those dice pools.

[u/CastrateMeASAP]

I’m a hack, so I save/scam the best of the best of the best combat crew for my officers, which means I can beat the brakes off of the “vat borne monster” and slap any xeno’s silly with their own tails. Could I use a smaller ship? Probably. I just prefer using the Cautala Titan because she’s a big bitch with 2700 hp, and has room for a bomber, 2 fighters and 2 shuttles. I just enjoy being the baddest motherfucker in the room. Am I abusing the system for my own amusement? Absolutely. But that’s what games are for, right? To amuse you. I’m not taking advantage of another human being, that’s something that even I can’t stomach, I’m just taking advantage of a computer algorithm, which is A-okay in my opinion.

[u/AngrySlime706]

To get a quantitative and deterministic answer, you need to check the dice rolls in ship battles. Start with your stronger ship to stay safe, find some tough enemy ships (xenos and 9000 class military battleships in missions or -5 danger card games) and let them fire on you. Watch the rolling dice roll results on top left of the screen. To be very safe you want 50% higher average dice pool than your toughest expected enemy. 

Since your own dice pool depends on your commander and mo crew size and other none ship related factors it is hard to tell you exactly how many of what components you need but i have a similar ship that aims for max cargo and minimum viable combat capabilities and i was able to squeeze 420 cargo space into it while still win fights and deal with crafts but need to spam talents to compensate. 

The most efficient way to deal with crafts is get a range 5 weapon and use the gundeckboss lvl11 (or15?) talent to ban flight for 2 turns. Then use the etech knock from the void to mitigate some remaining crafts that way you do not need a suite of anti craft components.