After seeing some cringeworthy decisions made by "pro" Vasari players in some replays posted here, I'm going to share my bits of knowledge experimentation in fighting with and against the Orky. I posted a bit of this in the giant mythbusters thread, but I think a separate thread is worthwhile for the Vasari mainstay weapon.
Upgrades and tanking capability
What we know (I've numbered the paragraphs so we can more easily refer to them in the subsequent discussion if necessary; feel free to post your own experiments filling any gaps, especially at the high end of the upgrade spectrum):
U1) An upgraded Orky can handle 30 Disciples (survives a bit with under 1000 hp), but dies to a flock of 40 with 24-28 Disciples surviving.
U2) An Orky with one health upgrade (6K hull, 3.5K shield) survives with around 2500 hull left vs 40 Disciples. It dies however to 50 with 22-24 Disciples remaining, and to 60 with 33-40 Disciples remaining.
U3) An Orky with one health upgrade and one gun upgrade (the purple anti-structure beams) can handle 50 Disciples with 1.3K hp remaining, but dies to 60 with about 28 Disciples surviving.
U4) An Orky with two health upgrades (9K hull, 5K shield) and no gun upgrades can handle 60 Disciples with ~3.8K hp left, but dies to 70 with about 28 Disciples surviving it. (The last part surprised me a fair bit, I might have to retest that one.)
Anyway, from U3 and U4 you can see that if the enemy fleet is going to be a concern, the purple beams are a pretty bad investment, unless you have tons of money and you built it somewhere where the enemy has a ton of expensive structures (certainly way more than 3 extractors and one turret, which is what I've seen a "pro" buy this upgrade to deal with, only be short of funds soon thereafter and lose another Orky in a nearby system for lack of any upgrades.) The two hull upgrades improve anti-shipping capability a lot more than the purple beams do.
U5) An Orky with two health upgrades, no gun upgrades and two levels of general hull upgrade research (10% or so resulting in a bit over 10K hull for the Orky -- this costs extra less than half of another full health upgrade) still dies to 70 Disciples but with only about 12 of them remaining.
U6) An Orky with three health upgrades (12K hull, 6.5K shield, but more notably an armor of 15 [from 12 at the previous level]) and no gun upgrades can handle 80 Disciples, although its health dips under 1K hull during the fight. (For those not so well versed in the damage equation, an armor of 15 means only 10% damage taken post-full-mitigation and post-armor, whereas an armor of 12 takes 16% real damage in the same circumstances, so the 12 to 15 armor increase reduces actual damage taken by about a third...)
U7) An Orky with all 4 health upgrades (including the ultimate/1.5x-costly one, so more like 4.5 upgrades), plus two ranks in the general hull research, so at 18.5K hull, 8.75K shield, armor 19.5 (!!) still dies to 120 Disciples, which I've upgraded to +20% lasers, +20% shields and +10% hull (stuff you can buy with 2 labs), as to be more realistic for an early mid-game stage. About 60-62 Disciples survive. If instead you buy 3 health upgrades and two in weapons (so you get the phase missile launchers, with a total cost comparable to the uberhull tested previously) it still dies to 120 upgraded Disciples and about 69-72 of them survive. So these two combos (4.5+ hull or 3/2 hull/weapons) are about equally [in]effective vs. a fleet. A tighter bound on the survivable number of Disciples is yet to be determined experimentally for these mid-level Orky's, but I guess it's less than 100 upgraded Disciples.
U9) Finally: 7 upgrades with 2 ultimate ones (health & weapons, so at the cost of 8 standard upgrades) trounces the 120 semi-souped-up Disciples, and the Orky's health only dips under 5K hull. (We need a test with only 6-6.5 upgrades as well, so I left a gap on purpose in the numbering.)
Maneuvers guide (preliminary)
Please refer to the 3rd post https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/454588/page/1/#3469171 for now.
To be continued...
Ummm.... what are you doing with your orky? You know about micro?
Those are interesting tests you've run; they are handy benchmarks. But one of the biggest dangers of Orkies is how upgrades and reinforcements make the fight harder while you are in the middle of it. The deadliest Orky is not the most upgraded one, but the one you barely have enough ships to kill.
In my experience, micro with the Orky is hardly worth the time. It buys 5% more survivability at best. Below is a primer on the maneuvers I know of. If you know of more effective ones, let us now, preferably with a pair of comparison fights (with and without your bag of tricks to compare the results.)
There are two reasons to maneuver the Orky: increase your firepower by exposing all 4 sides (by default 4x4=16 banks) to the enemy ships, and decrease theirs, by reducing the time when they can fire at you. Alas, the Orky by default already fires with 3 of the 4 sides, so you don't gain a whole lot in the first department (theoretically it's 25%, but in practice it's usually less.) (Update: this statement is very wrong, the firing graphics of the Orky are horribly misleading relative to what the logic of the game processes as damage; I'll make another post on this issue.) And because the Orky moves slowly relative to the turn rate of most ships, it's hard to gain a lot of time outside their guns. (I've seen one "pro" trying to run away with his Orky from LFs in a straight line. That was completely lulzy, as it has no effect whatsoever given that even a space snail will catch up with it.) So, this what works, albeit only marginally:
But like I said, the effect of all this maneuvering work is pretty minimal with the Orky. Finally, picking targets for the Orky is almost completely pointless in a fight against an uniform bunch of enemies as you can't realistically manage the mitigation of pack of 40+ enemies in real time and most of the Orky's guns will still shoot at whatever they want. I din't get any results above statistical noise in trying any sort of fire disciple with the Orky. So, how do you micro the Orky and how much does that buy you (in terms of extra ships you can handle at any given upgrade level)?
Actually, the maneuvers above work far better than I gave them credit, but only when enemy formation is large, above 50 ships or so. In my 3-health-upgrades Orky vs. 80 Disciples I lose with some 50 Disciples remaining if I don't maneuver as per above, but I win with my maneuvers!! This seems to be mostly because the sudden stop works increasingly well against large formations, which orverflow around the big spikes, but when the enemy formation goes below 40 most if not all of them bump in the Orky on the sudden stop. I've made some recordinsg and will be posting the shortly (initial save game + two recordings, one with maneuvers and one doing none.) I'll also have to look at them in the dev exe to see effective dps. The initial save game was made with the dev exe, but then I played in the normal exe [mainly because my dev exe seem not want to record any enemy ships in that setting, only some Orky moving, LOL.] Uploaded now to http://www13.zippyshare.com/v/20646987/file.html
So, what have you done to account for Vasari repair bays and prog shield regen?
Also, almost all skilled players know cobalts kill orkies better than disciples.
Use mines, nooblords.
I'll write a more elaborate/4noobs version of this (in the top post) later/tomorrow, but here's a quick update on the Orky maneuvers:- the winner is "flower power" which simply means to position the Orky in the middle of the enemy formation and just keep it there with strafe movements. To get Orky positioned for flower power use a ramming/run-through of their formation followed by a sudden stop in their midst or let them chase the Orky and cause them to overshot by a sudden stop. In the best case scenario you scatter the enemy fleet both above but especially below the Orky. Flower power can turn worse than the next contender (180s, discussed below) if all the enemies end up above because Orky's banks (especially the side ones) have some blinds spots there. The simplest fix for this unfortunately involves the controversial z-axis movement, although it's only a slight movement, popping the canopy of the Orky upward through the enemy formation. I call this souped up version "flowerZ power" and it's simply the best maneuver I found.- a close contender for flower power is to run back and forth making 180-degree turns with straight movement spans in between. But for optimal results you have to tune the length of the straight runs in relation to the speed of the pursuing fleet in order to cause overshoots at the turns, which are basically flower-power situations, albeit temporary ones. For LFs, the optimal run length between the turns is about two grid diagonals. The 180s maneuver does a bit worse than flower power even in its best execution (I could muster), but is generally easier to pull off close to its maximum potential (with a uniform enemy fleet anyway) and requires less attention.- a slightly simplified and combined version of these two I called "flower park" (or maybe I should call it flower bed), is basically is just two 180s. The end result is 3/4 flower power which last quite a while (the Orky tilts backwards if left to his own devices in a flower power setting, so its rear bank won't have targets.) Because this maneuver doesn't have that many turns to average your luck against, the variability in outcome seems higher than in continuous 180s.
I have tried quite a few other cookie cutter maneuvers, all of which do worse than the above three, e.g. triangles, pentagrams, squares, etc. (including varying their sizes); squares in particular, will get the Orky destroyed when it could win! I'm uploading some recordings, which should be self-explanatory... Here are some brief and incomplete notes on these:
flowepower:- true dps (seen via dev exe) climbed steadily to over 560 and stayed there for much of the fitght! hull only dipped to 3.6K. The fight was also over quite fast.
triangles:- the larger ones basically do about as well as my more laborious manual efforts from the previous post. Which is to say no to so well compared to the newer alternatives. Hull went under 2K.
squares:- epic fail, lost.
large 180s (3 diag long):- true dps stabilized around 460-470. hull dipped a bit under 3K.
small 180s (about 1.25 diags long; any shorter and the Orky basically refuses to move, considering itself already there.) There is only a bit of overshoot here, most the Disciples just turn, but 3-4 of them sometimes overshoot. true dps stabilized around 380. hull dipped under 1.5K.
medium 180s (a bit shy of 2 diags long.) Consistent overshoots with about half of the Dispsicples, so the turns were basically all flowerpower style. Oddly, true dps only got to about 450. But the overshoots apparently affected the Disciples' firepower a fair bit, beacuse Orky's hull dipped under 3K. This is basically a good compromise between reliable outcome and not much micro; the paths are easy to plot.
flowerpark (two 180s, and then left Okry to its own devices/AI).Strangely enough, it did surprisingly well. It basically tilted almost all the way "flat on its back" and shot with 3 banks most of the time with a true dps of around 470. Hull dipped to about 3.3K.
flowerpark2: did a rerun, to see how much luck affects this one. Quite a bit, it seems.
manual again: Tried to combine the best of run-through and flowerpower. Hull got to hull got to 3.5K, so still worse than pure flowerpower.
flowerZpower: added uppward Z-maneuvers to break up formation in the blind spot. Hull only dropped to about 4.5K!
There are a few more experiments in the archive, which don't yet have notes. Here's the download link: http://www63.zippyshare.com/v/98469764/file.html
And by the way
This is a myth. Two tests in that archive show that 64 Cobalts perform on par with 80 Disciples (the Orky beats them with a similar amount of damage sustained, using the 180s maneuver); these two are equivalent fleet supplies. Maybe if you throw in capital ships there's a difference because of varying abilities etc., but pure LF fleets turn out to perform as their theoretical value indicates (1 Cobalt = 1.25 Disciples).
I think this gets perpetuated because TEC players who find themselves head to head with a new Orky usually have a Marza with them, which really outshines the Progen for Orky killing. Also Disciples often suffer a bit more attrition because they are more fragile so the Cobalts "feel" superior because they can sometimes avoid losses, but as you say, there should be more Disciples to begin with, so it pans out.
50 Cobalts+Marza (300 supply) vs. Orky http://www.mediafire.com/?3g40yyo2cv43a4x 43 cobalts+Marza survive... (265 supply)
62 Disciples+Prog (298 supply) vs Orky http://www.mediafire.com/?37dqqbqv9w9i0nj 29 disciples+Prog survive... (166 supply)
Not doubting you, but you've duplicated the same link for the Disciples+Prog; the one for Cobalts+Mazra is actually missing both here and in the mythbusters thread. So there's nothing to compare ATM. Also the two initial save games would also be useful (if you still have them) as different maneuvering can sometimes make a huge difference.
Should be fixed.
Thanks. A quick observation is that the Mazra had its abilities with autocast enabled (radiation bomb, incendiary shells), while the Prog did not and its abilities were never fired manually during the fight either. Faster kill -> fewer losses. To stack the odds even more, TEC had four levels of hull research completed, four levels of armor, and three levels of lasers research with the 4th completing early in the fight (that's effectively 20% more fleet), while Advent had none of that. Another issue is the poorer maneuvering/positioning of the Orky in your TEC fight. Only the front banks fired at the Cobalts most of the time, while in the Advent case 2-3 sides fired at them. The effective DPS in the dev exe went to 500 for the Orky in the Advent case, but only to about (Let me see if I can upload some screenshots to illustrate this.)
I've done a somewhat fairer test (no TEC upgrades, no abilities, 1-up SB hull): 35 Cobalts survive in one test run and 34 in another, albeit with three more nearly dead (less than 100 hull): so 31-35 surviving Cobalts is fairer bracket. This is still better than what the Advent managed in your test, but less astounding. Recordings: http://www17.zippyshare.com/v/14862866/file.html
Anyway, here are a few more comments on the recordings posted by sinkillr/Hydraling. (Dev exe screenshots to accompany the analysis are at http://imgur.com/a/xD9uF#0.)
LvL 3 marza with lvl 2 incendiary and lvl 1 rad can solo un upgraded orky
lel
Yes, but the two sinkillr/Hydraling tests used a 1-upped Orky (6K hull), although in the TEC fight he posted the Orky hull upgrade finished just as the first shots were flying (though apparently before any of them landed, so that issue didn't seem to affect the outcome relative to the Advent fight he posted, where the Orky was upgraded with a bit more breathing space before the fight began).
Oh, and Prog + 62 upped Disciples (2 labs, so +20% guns, +20% shields, +10% hull) kill the 6K/1-upped Orky with zero losses if the Prog uses Shield Regeneration and has full AM reserves (shield restore fires 4 times during the fight). But you have to play the Advent manually, because the AI is completely incapable of using that ability properly (only uses it once after the Orky dies, LOL.) The Orky is a bit hampered in positioning by the fact that the AI played it, but keep in mind that SR is an uncapped AoE so even if the Orky had fired at more ships simultaneously that would not have affected the result because those ships would have their shields restored too...
Replays at http://www53.zippyshare.com/v/75583653/file.html. I've also included in that archive two replays in which the AI was playing the Advent; both exhibit the single, silly casts of SR at the end.
This should give a hint at the effect of Prog SR, which Seleuceia asked about above. A wider range of tests is needed though, because this fight could have been won by the Disciples alone with ease (and some losses).
In a very early test I posted only in the mythbusters thread, the regen bay didn't seem to help the non-upgraded Orky much; it still died to 40 Disciples whether they shot the bay first or at the Orky. I didn't save replays back then and my memory of that is foggy with respect to details. Needs more up-to-date tests with good maneuvering included.
I've done a bit more testing with repairs/regen.
I was curious if the 2-hull-ups (9K hull) Orky, which can handle 60 Disciples (240 fleet supply) but dies to 70, can take on 50 disciples +Prog (=250 fleet supply). It can't; the Prog uses shield regen like 7 times, and wins with 21 Disciples still alive, but these were the +20/%+20%/+10% guns/shield/hull Disciples.
Finally, adding two repair bays to the Vasari side was a tiny bit more interesting. If the Advent fleet (same config as above) shoots at the Orky all the time, it eventually loses, but it takes an insane amount of time for the Orky to kill the Prog. Self-shield-repairs on the Prog plus the fact that the Orky can use at most two banks (that is 1/8 of its total firepower) on the Prog; and you need continuous manual positioning to keep the Orky at 45-degree angle for that, otherwise its firepower vs. the Prog goes down to a single bank with its default behavior... On the other hand, if the Advent fleet shoots at the repair bays first, these go boom in seconds, even though they can repair each other. There's basically no difference in losses on the Advent side then, they win as if the bays aren't even there. You'd probably need to spam like 5+ of these underpowered Vasari repair bays to make a difference if the Avent player targets them first, and that's already unreasonable from a cost perspective.
This is probably going to be my last post here for a while. I find the various bugs related to recording and save games pretty off-putting at the moment even for practice/study stuff like this...
A few more test I ran... Can you save the 2-hull-ups (9K hull) Orky from the Prog + 50 Discs by adding a Vasari level 2 cap ship, on top of 3 repair bays? (The Prog was level 2 too.)
Well, yes, any cap ship will do in this scenario, but any (dangerous enough cap ship for the Disciples to pay attention to) besides the Kortul will get killed while buying enough time for the SB (to upgrade itself). The Kortul has the unique ability that it denies anti-matter restoration to the Prog (Disruptive Strikes) and can repair itself (boost its own shields). The Skira does not cut it because it doesn't deny anti-matter restoration. In this fight, the difference between the Prog using only its initial AM (3 restores) and all AM it can regenerate during the fight (something like 4 more uses/casts) has a dramatic impact on the outcome. If you add something 3-4 Vasari turrets (missile platforms) and the Disruptor Nanites research, then the Skira is okay too. Disruptor Nanites is basically the stationary version of the Disruptive Strikes. Its most useful feature (in this context, but probably vs. any capital ship) is denying AM restoration while in combat. Sure, the Prog can run away from turrets to a place where it can start to regen AM (while it can't outrun the Kortul, which is slightly faster than the Prog). Alas, if the Prog does run from the turrets, then it's not protecting the Disciples during combat, and if those run along with it, that buys more than enough time for the Vasari to upgrade his Orky... In this setting anyway. The Marauder doesn't really work. Although it can deny/delay the Prog's effective use of its initial AM stores (via Phase Out Hull) so that the Orky starts killing Disciples earlier than with any other supporting cap ship, that doesn't compensate the Marauder's lack of self-repair ability as far as its own survival is concerned. (Repair bays suck, like I said.) As a bootnote here, the best way to time Phase Out Hull is right after the Prog initiates Shield Regen; that way the Prog spends its AM with little in the way of returns/results; but that requires paying very close attention, because any second lost in casting POH is quite while the SR is ongoing is quite precious. Finally, the Rankulas is indeed a piece of crap. Not only are its cooldowns for repair nanites absurdly long (so the Rankulas basically just sits there, with AM reserves nearly full), but the tiny unit it produces is hard to see, hard to click on (have to use the sidebar) and it usually starts repairing something irrelevant as soon at it comes out; and besides the micromanagement snafus the Rankulas entails, its repair unit is external from the cap ship itself, so extremely easily killed by 50 Disciples. (I think the cooldown for repair nanites should be cut/modded to like 12 seconds for this cap ship to have any worth; they're at 60 seconds in the dev/designer's wisdom or lack thereof. But I don't want to get into this aside any further.)
I think I'm going to try one more round of testing with Advent reinforcements added in, coming from a nearby system and with some kind of Vasari fleet also building; that's going to take a fair bit of work to set up because apparently you can't spawn structures with the dev interface (to quickly set up the Adevent nearby in this case.)
But from the testing I've already done, the Vasari look pretty bad. The main issue is their inability to defend their resources/econ. Orky doesn't buy you that. The repair bay(s) can be safely ignored when shooting at structures with even just the pretty small 250-supply fleet used here [and which can be built in around 15 minutes if everything is timed well, and with ease in 20 minutes]. The 9K-hull Orky amplifies the repair bay effects on itself by its higher armor and shield mitigation, as well just lasting for more than one cast/10-seconds. Alas, the smallish fleet used here is enough to send all the resource extractors and constructor frigates to kingdom come with basically no losses for the attacker. (Constructor frigates in particular die before the repair bay can even cast once on them; that happens because you can't initiate repairs if they're at full hull, and the game engine accumulates pending damage for a while and then suddenly applies all of it. You can see that with the dev exe.) The TEC/Advent fleet can basically rinse and repeat the same econ destruction in all the Vasari systems, plus leave a couple of corvettes running circles to deny (by increasing the time to 10X!) rebuilding of the constructor frigates and the Vasari econ is in Davy Jones' Locker for good or at least a very long time. I honestly don't know what could possibly save them. I'm guessing the Skira is better choice because if upped with fighters at least it can chase down the corvette/rebuild-denial forces more effectively. If you have any suggestions for actually saving the resource extractors, I'd like to hear them. From the recorded games I've seen, mines are too expensive to be cost effective. Rush for Phasic Barrier? Or reintegrating Skirmishers as extra Vasari fleet? LOL. (Don't say corvettes.) Vasari can't build enough fleet to be a threat and up their Orky at the same time, even less so if they need multiple Orkies (upgraded enough so they aren't just XP feed for the Prog+Disciples). Basically, no [semi-]static defenses like an Orky can compete with the offensive abilities of a TEC/Advent LF fleet. The game mechanics are still like in Sins 1.01 as far as defenses are concerned after a relatively low threshold ("critical mass") is reached by the attacker fleet. Sure, the AI is extremely incompetent in dealing with the Orky, so you can (OMG!) SB his howeworld with ease and so the Vasari may look awesome after you pull that (I win as Vasari vs. the AI quicker than with any other race), but after you see a few recorded games of human "pro" players, I find it extremely implausible than any level of skill as Vasari can resist a competent human player (e.g. like sinkillr, UT4, or HuyMac) unless the Vasari gets feed and the other side doesn't etc. Does anyone have any good Vasari replays from "pro" games? I think I'll some sort of rush for PJI too see if at least you can defend extractors at the backwater planets with an Orky at the fronline one[s], but given that the 250-supply Advent fleet can easily thrash 3-4 repair bays with minimal/any losses, I'm not exactly optimistic for the survival of PJIs either.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
Sign in or Create Account
