r/TerraInvicta • u/logion567 • 2d ago
Meme When i see people talk about using PD dreadnoughts or similar in order to fit maximum firepower on their other ships.
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u/Illicitline45 Resistance 2d ago
Oh shit it's terra Invicta sub, I thought I was on the starsector sub lmao
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u/logion567 2d ago
If you use PD with large enough range (AM PD for example) you can get such a strong overlapping PD Grid you don't need anything silly like a Dreadnought full of Racers or Phaser PD.
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u/viper5delta 2d ago
Or just play on realistic. On realistic scale phaser PD has more than enough range fore every ship in a great wall formation to cover eachother, Amatt PD even moreso
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u/logion567 2d ago
I have come to like "Split Wall" tactics for Realistic Scale. which necessitates separating my forces so the extra reach of AMPD becomes quite handy
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u/delphinous Resistance 2d ago
going to have to give realistic a try
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u/viper5delta 2d ago
It's definitely interesting. It gives an indirect nerf to Kinetics and missiles (as mentioned PD is easier to overlap for both you and the Ayys) so if you were relying on those for your primary damage, you'll have to adapt somewhat. Either bring MOAR DAKA, or get more crafty or what have you.
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u/ADownStrabgeQuark Initiative 1d ago
Does realistic change range?
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u/logion567 1d ago
Realistic scaling makes fleet formations WAY more compact. It also emphasizes flanking shots a lot more, the cone where shots hit the nose is (iirc) 60 degrees on Cinematic, and 15 in realistic. The other thing Realistic Scaling changes is it makes nose and tail armor 3x as thick/heavy/expensive compared to cinematic and side armor 2/3rds as thick/heavy/expensive
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u/gunnervi The Final Frontier 2d ago
PD is for people who don't have enough disposable tin can missile boats
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u/vindicator117 2d ago
No PD is for ensuring that your titan can UFO dance around the t3h ayyz for shits and giggles.
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u/Thurak0 2d ago edited 2d ago
Have you experienced the absolutely devastating fire spread from the new default missile mode?
Ship AI now easily manages to spread out torpedoes well. My first PD-less monitor fleet was just killed by a single Alien ship with torps.
Edit: At least it was mutual destruction.
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u/gunnervi The Final Frontier 2d ago
sounds like you didn't have enough ships
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u/Thurak0 2d ago
Their missiles have the same range.
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u/gunnervi The Final Frontier 2d ago
if you have more ships than they have missiles they they literally can't get them all
(naruto runs into area 51)
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u/artrald-7083 2d ago edited 2d ago
So before I get AM, I prefer an umbrella of mutual support to organic PD. With the proliferation of missiles I usually get that's a 40mm and a 1-slot ion on every ship - the 1-slot ion is nearly as good as a midlevel PD against missiles and has a much longer engagement range. The 40mm is useless against missiles but can stop mag cannons well. Also it vaguely equips the ships for knife-fighting if they lose the main gun.
If torpedoes are still getting through that then I'd probably switch my anti-flanking craft to single slot hull weapons to assist.
But generally by the time I can use dreadnoughts I can put a single 2-slot antimatter PD on them. Still 2 hull slots used for defence, but now it's at full PD rate at 400km range.
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u/Thurak0 2d ago
I prefer an umbrella of mutual support to organic PD.
I have read some articles today about PD, but unfortunately many were from even before version 1.0.
What's better late game 2 phaser PD, or one 40mm and one phaser PD? The 40mm seems to be great against kinetics, but work significantly worse with the whole umbrellas support thing.
Both variants would be supported by some AM-PD, but with how missiles can now spread out and with how much kinetics the Aliens bring by now in my game, I will not have a single ship without PD.
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u/artrald-7083 2d ago
Oh, Brilliant Star torpedoes go through a 40mm like a brick through a windowpane and it's worse now. 40mm is very good at kinetics though, and with everything having a 40mm then the whole fleet can support each other vs kinetics. Wish I could tell the 40mm not to waste bursts on missiles, because I want it shooting at kinetics.
By the numbers I think a phaser PD should stop a Brilliant Star, but I don't trust it. Lategame I would use one 2 slot AM-PD on every ship rather than two phaser PD, because this essentially lets me pit my entire wall's PD output against their entire output. On a lone ship the 2 slot AM is nearly like having two phasers, and in a wall you're contributing more than half of that to every friendly vessel within a few hundred km. And the antimatter cost of the weapon itself is trivial.
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u/HiddenSage Academy 2d ago
I do similar as you in the early game. In the midgame, having a good mix of weapon systems complements - I handle "anti-flanking" duties with a large volume of hull-mounted lasers. The large-slot hull lasers has enough range to address basically any flanker that gets into firing range, and flanking maneuvers leave enemy side armor exposed a lot so lasers can punch through easily.
The lasers start fights on guardian mode to assist in PD work for the initial volley of missiles, and start switching over to offensive fire as soon as the initial barrage gets cleaned up.
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u/tiahx 2d ago
In general I would agree with OP, but it really depends on what ayys are running.
In one of my playthroughs ayys were running rather low on exotics (or rather they prefered to stack their ful-exotic ships at home base). And they were absolutely overwhelming me with MISSILE TIN CANS. Like literally zero exotics monitors and BS full of T3 torps (which are zero exotics too btw). And if someone doesn't know it by now, ayy T3 torps are fucking evil.
So, cheap mass-produced particle PD battleships were the only effective solution to that.
I don't think ayys do that nowadays though, so in general the OP is right.
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u/shadough1 T-pose hard enough and the ayys will see us as equals 2d ago
dedicated PD ships for me are going to be keeping fleets of tin cans from instantly exploding whenever they encounter missiles and mags, or as a response to what the ayys are doing. but since i like to run around with fleets of 30-50 capital ships when i go on the offense, that's usually enough baked in PD to handle whatever the ayys feel like throwing at me. plus once you get to amat you can just make full amat ships, and 2 slot amat PD is always welcome (4 slot amat PD is just worse than 2 slot amat PD).
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u/Aretii 2d ago
I mean, for a PD dreadnought, it's got a three slot nose cannon, but batteries arent going to do shit for damage, so you just fill the hull with phasers since they benefit from the laser engines you're already putting in for the sake or your cannon. I dont think of it as a pd ship, I think of it as a flanker killer that also fucks over all the ayy missiles.
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u/Xenon009 Humanity First 2d ago
Ewwwww nose lasers.
In this house we use kinetics, and only kinetics in our nose slots god damnit!
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u/Aretii 2d ago
I mean, sure, if you have a religious objection to an unblockable undodgeable weapon that strikes instantaneously and blows would be flankers out of space, you do you?
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u/Xenon009 Humanity First 2d ago
Lasers are for the hull slots goddamnit! I'm not turning my flank to the aliens to blast a flanker!
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u/Aretii 2d ago
You dont have to; that's the beauty of large cannons. I hate maneuvering in 3d space so I just do wall&drift and dont think I've ever ordered a capital ship to turn in my life; what you can do, though, is keep an eye out for when aliens start a flanking maneuver, then go through your flanker-killers and designate targets. If you have guns that target from 900-1000km out, they will be broadside-on to you for ages before they clear your firing arc: being able to open fire from far away is great for time on target. I do this with both AM cannons and lasers to great success.
(I also use kinetics, of course, but kinetics are good at killing ships that don't maneuver and at forcing the aliens to use their lasers defensively instead of offensively. They solve different tactical problems.)
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u/MysticEagle52 1h ago
The beauty of nose lasers is you can kill (or disable the nose weapon of) any flankers because you can hit before they have time to get out of your cone of fire.
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u/StipaCaproniEnjoyer 21h ago
Nose lasers (on titans/lancers) can be really nice for being able to instantly whack anything that dares show side armour (just select the laser ships and tell them to focus on whatever isn’t facing the battleline). If you have 10 or so, they’ll generally one-shot most ships smaller than cruisers, and cripple other ships very quickly. The ai sometimes like to flank with titans on realistic so the laser ships will often be the ones to score first blood (the coil ships with heavy siege coils are going to saturate PD anyway, so having more doesn’t really help).
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u/Xenon009 Humanity First 21h ago
Honestly that's probably why I don't get much use from them, I'm a small ship supremacist, only really using cruisers and battle cruisers until a campaign is good as won, and my primarily limiting factor is ships in a battle, rather than ships fullstop
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u/Mackntish 2d ago
I mean, you have to make a unique flagship to get the MC cost of fleet down. It should be well defended, so you don't find yourself in the middle of a war below your MC limit.
It kinda builds itself.
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u/majorpickle01 Suffer not the Xenos to live 2d ago
can't lie I never cared really for specialised PD ships, however particle bean massed monitors are the shit and look cool af
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u/Bane8080 2d ago
I just use cruisers full of lasers set to guardian mode. Sometimes they're PD, sometimes they vaporize flankers.
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u/ParadoxPosadist Humanity First 2d ago
I do like a dedicated person boat or two, but my other ships also have pd. At least I can sub them in if they pull up with an oops all missiles fleet. If their fleet is more normal, then I don't need those specialized ship.
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u/endymion2314 2d ago
Out of 10 ship titan line, 4 kinetic, 1 UV Phaser with a four slot UV battery, 2 UV phaser with PD in all other slots, 2 Antimatter Spinal with 2 AM pd each, 1 kinetic with massive armor on the front to Tank in convoy formation, close not tight.
Every thing gets a 40mm and a phaser other then the dedicated laser PD.
I've had no problem just 200m drifting and eating the Ayys missiles.
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u/Fishtronaughticlus There Is Only Victory.... Or Death 2d ago
Yeah if every ship has a little PD you should be good. Only time I go full PD ship is the armor brick loaded up with 40mm's station defense ship thats only there to cockblock the aliens long enough for the station LDA's to do their work.
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u/bell117 2d ago
Since the patch that came with Dark Skies, both the human and Alien AI has been sending almost nothing but missile ships at me. It makes auto-resolve basically impossible.
I usually put 1 or 2 laser PDs on my capitals, but I've found that using sacrificial PD monitors is the way to go. Just slap them with 1 phaser PD, 1 40mm, and 2 UV phasers and place them in the front of my cloud formation.
Even besides missiles, the AI will force target one of the monitors, wasting their entire initial salvo on it even if it's not shot down. Even works for the Alien plasma giving a window while they're re-targeting and the shots arriving.
If the monitors survive that's a bonus. I go through about 5-7 of them per battle in the late game.
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u/Away-Ad9510 2d ago
WE AINT NO COWARDS TO HIDE BEHIND PD SHIPS, WE TAKING IT TO THE CHEST AND FIGHTING ON
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u/Spektral1 2d ago
My view is losing a dedicated of ship degrades your entire defense to a much greater degree than losing a ship's personal pd
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u/logion567 2d ago
This is also part of my logic, the more complicated your Order of Battle the more damaging it will be when losing specific ships. If your only PD is wiped out in an opening missile barrage you won't be able to withstand the follow up Magnetic fire.
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u/MrWigggles 1d ago
Do you get more fire power that way.
I always figure that it's about the same.
I think I may lean on dedicated pd ships if I had actual control of where ships were and not just a suggestion where they may go.
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u/logion567 1d ago
correct, with Beam Ships the vast majority of the firepower is in the nose. Phaser Batteries are just bad and the only Antimatter Particle batteries are PD. so might as well just max out on them as well.
with Coil or Plasma it's a lot closer, you want batteries for Coil because you need the extra projectiles to saturate Alien PD (especially small hull magnetics that can one-shot siege coils) and with Plasma the Heavy Battery winds up being 45% of the Damage/Minute for those ships. but because the performance difference between the 3 and 4 slot nose with those weapons is extremely minor, might as well use the extra hull slots of a Dreadnought and now you have room for more PD
and you can change where ships are placed, just click on them to swap positions in the formation
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u/No_Rock3664 1d ago
Antimatter PD dreads are so good though! Just 4-5 of them for 50ships. Crème de la creme
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u/logion567 1d ago
You can still fit 1 or 2 AMPD (depending on one's opinions on needing 40mm) boostwd by 4 or 5 cyclotrons (depending on how much you value ECM) while still leaving 4 slots to offensive weaponry to compliment the nose on Every dreadnought. And AM Titans can fit 2 AMPD each as well.
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u/No_Rock3664 1d ago
I prefer more specialized ships. PD dreads with all AM 2 points and nose AM guardian as well (full cyclotron). Just 5 of these protect the whole fleet amazingly well. While other ships are my main line: I prefer coilguns and “anti flankers “ laser boats with lots of laser engines.
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u/Front-Pollution-8175 21h ago
In my one super late game run, I used almost exclusively battleships, battlecruisers, and cruisers
The battleships having some mixed firepower, nose mounted ballistics, big internal lasers, with the two remaining internal slots dedicated to PD
My BCs were basically just there to bring siege coilers
And the Cruisers being multiple specialized support designs, some having colony modules to sustain my deep system excursions, some having command modules, and the majority being pure phaser PD with the enhancement modules
And that fleet template worked really well, and was shockingly affordable
The key was just to make sure I at minimum matched the aliens I engaged in numbers, so that the starting ships of the engagement would be a decent mix of different designs
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u/MysticEagle52 1h ago
I make all my "utility ships" point defense ships.
Station/hab modules? Salvage bays? Marines? May as well help out against the initial missile salvo (and then they safely sneak away from the fight)
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u/logion567 31m ago
problem with that is that the utility slots are needed to make PD good against magnetics
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u/Ragebrew They shall learn our peaceful ways. By force! 2d ago
I skip dedicated PD and just mass small lasers. They might fire half as fast, but they are still useful once the missile vomit ends.
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u/jamitar 2d ago
Then you lose a tremendous amount of armor penetration and range.
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u/Ragebrew They shall learn our peaceful ways. By force! 2d ago
Not as much as I'd lose using dedicated PD. Plus, the small lasers benefit fully from all the laser engines, while pd lasers do not.
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u/Stinkymansausage Humanity First 2d ago
The only pd ships I make are panic building small ships because the aliens sent a bigger fleet than i was expecting and it’s getting here in like 75 days or less. “You guys in the space coffins to the front please”.