X3 TC Best setup for OOS Ships

[JJRSC]

Me again... I have a few Skirons I'm trying to set up as OOS patrol craft. I know how I'd set up a Skiron that I'm personally going to fly, but given the OOS combat system and everything, I'm wondering if anyone has any suggestions. Any thoughts? Thanks.

Oh just remembered... I'm also putting together a wing of Ventis for a Griffon I'm going to use for an OOS patrol craft. Ventis can mount a ton of guns but have trouble powering them all. OOS changes this dynamic, I believe. Should I just give them all PACs or HEPTs across the board (with PAC or IRE in the turret for missle defense)? I also read once that range isn't a factor in OOS combat... if that's the case, maybe I should fit the Ventis with mass drivers or PBGs? Thanks again...

[Geek]

There is no energy drain OOS, no area of effect, no missile defense, and no evasion.

Fighters usually die quickly for that reason.
But in any case, you should only use the biggest guns (high damage per shot) : FBL if possible, HEPT otherwise.

For similar reasons, M6 should use as much CIG as posssible, then lighters guns.

[Timsup2nothin]

As Geek said, the big thing is that there is no energy limit, so just load the biggest gun that will fit in every slot, including the turrets.

Once that is done the biggest factor that will affect the lifespan of your ships is the structure of your fleet. If you have all your ships set to "patrol" they will fly around in their little formation until they get within noticing range of a target, then the fastest ships will fly over there and get destroyed.

Finding a structure of "attack target of..." and "protect..." orders that works is interesting. Perfecting such structures is an art form. The basic key piece of knowledge is that ships on a protect order will not attack UNTIL the ship they are protecting is targeted. If you have a ship that can take the damage doing the patrolling it will charge anything that it sees, and be attacked in turn. When the counterattack triggers your lighter craft with protect orders to attack, they will attack ships that already have a target so they won't get shot at...in theory.

There are people who could write you a book on what ships to use at the core of a patrol, how many of what ships to give "attack target of.." and how many of what ships to assign to protect the lead ship, and what to assign to protect each of the attackers. Then ships to protect the ships with protect orders. I'm not one of those guys, but I'm experimenting and learning, so I may write that book one day.

[MarvinTheMartian]

I have a few Skirons I'm trying to set up as OOS patrol craft.

I always have to double check that it's the damage per shot and not damage per second (as shown in the in-game encyclopaedia) as it seems counter intuitive but then I guess in the 30 seconds turns of OOS that could become rather unbalanced once you get to capitals. Not sure if it's only 1 shot per turn though.

The Venti is a good choice for an OOS fighter, but it has reduced shielding over what is on offer on other M3s (100mj vs 200mj or even 400mj) which will affect OOS survivability in a big way. Have you considered the Falcon Hauler? While it only has 9 guns (vs the Venti's 11) it can mount FBL in all slots which actually makes for more total damage per shot compared to the Venti and has 2x the shielding, costs 1.5m Cr less (for the L variant) and is faster too!

I'm not 100% sure that both shield & hull damage have independent effect on the target (like IS combat), but assuming they do, you need to balance this so you're not all shield and no hull like most of the "ion" weapons. Although you're playing TC where ships don't have the thicker hulls in AP you might be tempted to favour shield damage instead of hull, however, the IPG does not quite make up for it - I did some crude maths and worked out that 8 IPGs would take 23 hits to kill a fully shielded Skiron but only 19 using CIG. This makes assumptions like the shields dropping first without hull damage followed by hull damage only (no shield regen in between shots) - I'm happy to hear from anyone with a more accurate formulae though!

So, on a commonwealth corvette, CIG is a good balance for OOS (more so in AP) and for the Skiron it's better than IPG in the cockpit and, in the absence of FBL, use HEPT in the turrets.

[Geek]

I always have to double check that it's the damage per shot and not damage per second (as shown in the in-game encyclopaedia) as it seems counter intuitive

Technically it is not the exact damage per shot value, but OOS the rate of fire is largely ignored. So it is a good approximate.
You can test this by comparing weapons OOS strength, ie CIG vs ISR or even PSP vs PPC.

I'm not 100% sure that both shield & hull damage have independent effect on the target (like IS combat)

It does. You can test with ion weaponry, or MD (which do not affect shields at all).

[JJRSC]

Cool... thanks a lot guys. I'm going to go ahead and use the Ventis since I already have them but if they get shot down quickly/easily will def try out the Falcon Haulers.

Will also play around with the "attack target of" and "protect" commands and see what works best. Interesting.

Thanks all for the insight on OOS mechanics... really appreciate it!