Ariadne with drone haulers
Posted: Fri, 9. Feb 18, 18:49
Got bored and decided to try the Ariadne, with actual drone haulers. For RP reason. Have to use the argon one (450m/s, 20ish m/s accele, 23.5 rpm turning, 4mj shielding, 1.5k hull) with 4 IRE.
Tested against a terran fleet.
They performed completely differently than anticipated, both in a good and a bad way.
The goods:
1) They actually did a good job attacking M6s and below. An RRF claymore had its shield (175mj) gone seconds after it jumped in.
2) They can carry 12 dragonfly missile, which is the only non-dumbfire missile compatible. 60k damage in total.
3) They survived a lot longer than fighter drones. At least against a whole terran fleet plus the RRF goon. Might not do so well against the commonwealth flamethrowers or PSGs.
The bads:
1) They crashed. I don't have Bounce installed and two died to the jump gate immediately after the group flew by one. They don't crash into each other thanks to the small hitbox. Thanks to great (poor) accel/decel they don't stop dead in the water like those discoverers, but rather do "fly-bys".
2) They are actually not that small. Upon inspecting their relative size in X3 model viewer I found them to be about the same size of a Xenon N. Which is much larger than fighter drones. If you have no idea what they look like I highly recommend checking them out; in short, cool af.
3) They died like flies to SSC. With 450m/s top speed I had hoped they might dance around capitals. Nope. One shot, one dead.
4) Poltergeist is their arch enemy. The fact that this missile is the only small missile the terran have, and that it reaquires targets, means terran ships big or small are extremely effective in killing them. I had 5 or so casualties seconds after an RRF yokohama jumped in. I thought it was the SSC, but a full screen of blue missiles confirmed otherwise.
And then I repeated the same test with fighter drones MKI and II.
Basically drones did a much poorer job of keeping themselves alive. 24 fighter drones were gone in less than 30s but half of the drone haulers are still lollygagging after 2 minutes. One poltergeist kills 8 drones.
Total cost of one fully outfitted drone hauler (argon):
PHQ production cost:
65*16+2*156+484+2*128+2*504+1684+13476+19390 = 37650 cr
armament:
4*5193+4*4608+12*1012 = 51348 cr
total: 88998 cr
which is about the cost of 22 fighter drones or 3.4 MKII. I know we all have a few billions but still.
It's economically a good decision to give them 12 dragonflies. As they only add up to 13% of the cost of the drone hauler itself but magnify their offensive capability. I'm thinking of giving them only 1 IRE but 15 dragonflies instead.
No I'm not running MDM on them. The point of those drone haulers is the ease of outfitting/replacing them. Manual activating/checking of MDM? No thank you.
In the future I'll probably deploy a fleet of the split drone haulers (600m/s top speed but slightly lower turning rate and accel, 3mj shielding and 15 cargo). With three 1mj shields and 1 IRE they can still carry 11 dragonflies. The Ariadne will serve well as a decoy carrier and arrive at the scene slightly earlier than my main fleet.
Tested against a terran fleet.
They performed completely differently than anticipated, both in a good and a bad way.
The goods:
1) They actually did a good job attacking M6s and below. An RRF claymore had its shield (175mj) gone seconds after it jumped in.
2) They can carry 12 dragonfly missile, which is the only non-dumbfire missile compatible. 60k damage in total.
3) They survived a lot longer than fighter drones. At least against a whole terran fleet plus the RRF goon. Might not do so well against the commonwealth flamethrowers or PSGs.
The bads:
1) They crashed. I don't have Bounce installed and two died to the jump gate immediately after the group flew by one. They don't crash into each other thanks to the small hitbox. Thanks to great (poor) accel/decel they don't stop dead in the water like those discoverers, but rather do "fly-bys".
2) They are actually not that small. Upon inspecting their relative size in X3 model viewer I found them to be about the same size of a Xenon N. Which is much larger than fighter drones. If you have no idea what they look like I highly recommend checking them out; in short, cool af.
3) They died like flies to SSC. With 450m/s top speed I had hoped they might dance around capitals. Nope. One shot, one dead.
4) Poltergeist is their arch enemy. The fact that this missile is the only small missile the terran have, and that it reaquires targets, means terran ships big or small are extremely effective in killing them. I had 5 or so casualties seconds after an RRF yokohama jumped in. I thought it was the SSC, but a full screen of blue missiles confirmed otherwise.
And then I repeated the same test with fighter drones MKI and II.
Basically drones did a much poorer job of keeping themselves alive. 24 fighter drones were gone in less than 30s but half of the drone haulers are still lollygagging after 2 minutes. One poltergeist kills 8 drones.
Total cost of one fully outfitted drone hauler (argon):
PHQ production cost:
65*16+2*156+484+2*128+2*504+1684+13476+19390 = 37650 cr
armament:
4*5193+4*4608+12*1012 = 51348 cr
total: 88998 cr
which is about the cost of 22 fighter drones or 3.4 MKII. I know we all have a few billions but still.
It's economically a good decision to give them 12 dragonflies. As they only add up to 13% of the cost of the drone hauler itself but magnify their offensive capability. I'm thinking of giving them only 1 IRE but 15 dragonflies instead.
No I'm not running MDM on them. The point of those drone haulers is the ease of outfitting/replacing them. Manual activating/checking of MDM? No thank you.
In the future I'll probably deploy a fleet of the split drone haulers (600m/s top speed but slightly lower turning rate and accel, 3mj shielding and 15 cargo). With three 1mj shields and 1 IRE they can still carry 11 dragonflies. The Ariadne will serve well as a decoy carrier and arrive at the scene slightly earlier than my main fleet.