X4 Foundations: 6.0 Kingdom End - Combat test for the Shark

Hello everybody,
The Shark + fighter complement had its first taste of xenon "blood", 1 K and multiple escorts.
In the end, I've gone for:
- using 4 Threshers on the landing pads for additional turrets
- using 32 Makos with boron gatling (look and sound cool, and have a good chance to connect with the targets) as interceptors
- using 32 Baracudas with 2 phase guns (longest range) + 1 torpedo launcher (borons only have the mk1 variant :( )
Notes:
- do NOT use Baracudas as interceptors, they will die like flies
- if your Mako interceptors are done with the escorts, you can use them to atack surface elements
- boron turrets are so and so in regard of AA efficiency, even with the adittional help from the stationary Threshers
Next I will test this configuration against the usual 1 xenon I + 5 xenon Ks xenon war party, to see if I have a working boron fleet combat strategy.
About me:
I like to share my X4 Foundations experiences, some because they are really amazing, some because they are really anoying.
Like the video? Why not buy me a coffee?
www.buymeacoffee.com/Ragnos28

[@trazyntheinfinite9895]

I came around on the boron a bit, their control effects make other peoples guns so much better.

[@SpaceMike3]

I don't even play the game but that was beautiful and impressive

[@kermitthefrog1176]

i just cant get over that the shark throws up makos and barracudas xd

[@ragnos28]

Baarf 😅

[@Typewriter7]

I also came here to give the Ray a trial! Sank two Ks with ease, the new Boron main cannon was definitely unique

[@ragnos28]

Yeah, but it really strugle agains the xenon I, to the point were I said screw it: kzbin.info/www/bejne/rGmsYaahpZaSq8U

[@mattronin2647]

Did you install mods to make the game look prettier? Mine doesn't look as good lol... What were your total losses in this fight?

[@ragnos28]

Nope. like always...pure vanilla. Total losses: 3 interceptor Mako.

[@destyrian]

Shark is my favourite Carrier. I got rid of the Raptor which, while it has an impressive armament has laughable shields and is possibly the most unmaneuverable and slowest ship in the game. The shark has poor weaponry - able to only equip medium boron turrets. Does okay with full rails, though it takes a while to destroy capitals. However, the shark has some of the best shields of any ship in the game - pretty sure it beats Asgard, even (I have both just too lazy to check). It deploys fighters really quickly too and has 4 medium docking bays as opposed to the Raptor's 1. Also, being a Boron ship - instant travel drive. Amazing ship - its weapons are the only thing that let it down, but I'd argue that a carrier's weapons are its least important attribute anyway. Seriously though, we couldn't just have two large turrets? In general, I find Boron capital ships to be almost useless against other capital ships but excellent if you focus their loadouts on anti - S/M sized ships. Don't get me started on the Ray's useless piss laser. And the Thresher, when controlled by AI is another useless ship. Shame, as it could be so powerful in skilled hands.

[@ragnos28]

I also have fun with the Shark, ever since I have discover my boron S bomber, in the form of torpedo Irukandji, so I can have my wining combo of S bombers and S interceptors. Truly, a fast response force, well, in the hands of the player, the AI still derp around if you want to cross a few sectors, and are on board. Don't really have a problem with the shields of the Raptor, since the range of the stored fighters is....unlimited. 🤓 And while it is unmaneuverable and slow, the Chimeras it spew out have a speed of 503 m/s and are fairly manuevrable. 😁 Ppl just need to stop trying to use carriers like destroyers. 🧐 So, I still keep my Raptors around, I arrive in the middle of the enemy force, I click launched for bombers and interceptors: kzbin.info/www/bejne/mWqYc4CJocibhbM, don't really care what the opposing forces are, I win, click docked, plot course for the next sector, do some empire management.🧐 The Shark can do the same, I just can't bring the number of ""birds" I would like.

[@Talinoth]

Gee, I'm wondering - if I have my own Shark as a player flagship - is it worth modifying every single one of my Makos with green mods (minus drag Hull mod for movespeed, plus shield capacity or lowered shield recharge time and the +forward thrust/-boost/-travel speed one so I have super Makos? Fuck it, if I'm going that far I may as well put 3+ star pilots in all of them haha, too much work. At the very least, put Slasher mod on the turrets of all of your Threshers. Get a good +damage +reload speed roll and the dps increase will be quite significant, like 2-3x+ total damage from the Threshers. Crew quality might affect Thresher turret fire rate and accuracy, absolutely don't quote me on that though.

[@ragnos28]

I've never bothered on putting mods and anything smaller that a destroyer, and even then I've modded only the terran destroyers. Imo, the Makos don't need mods, their default speed is just fine. 3 stars pilots...if they do enough intercepting, they will get there on their own, all my interceptor have 3 stars (tho, they never go beyond that).

[@nikkotan2840]

The only thing i don't like or happy about this ship and every carrier in The game is their default landing platform that seems out of place for a ship that is organic as the Shar Carrier, they could have put some effort and design an docking platform that closely resemble the design, architecture, and aesthetic of the Boron Shark Carrier, i imagine the Shark carrier having it's own landing design unique to the Boron Species with its organic deep sea architecture and blinking bioluminescence aesthetic found on deep dark water built with separate opening/closing and retracting animation and model.

[@ragnos28]

I agree.🤓

[@PaddyGameTV]

i see ur an Andromeda Fan^^

[@ragnos28]

Yeap...and still waiting for that Andromeda Ascendant mod for X4...modders pleaaase 🤓 The Shark looks great...but I still don't feel like name it Andromeda Ascendant...sad noises....😭

[@user-ip6wq7vr7m]

Do you feel that Egosoft has Improved the game overall lately?.

[@ragnos28]

Improvements were made, but nothing ground breaking, as far as I am concern. Some players praise the increase in performance via TAA support, but I guess my system can't make use of that. They are some improments on fighters landing on carriers, cliping and fighters getting stuck on "waiting for free dock" happen less often, but that is counter balanced by the increase in torpedo consumtion caused by the smoke and fire effects. Still destroyers under wings perform poorly against xenon capitals and the need to make a separate fleet with destroyers is still there, along with the "need" for destroyers to align themselfs at the same plain of the target (no matter if your destroyers ar above or bellow the target, they will not remain in their ralative position and fire from there, when recieving an attack order). So, nothing that would make go...yeah, that ship type perform so much better now, yay. 😐 For me, what I like in beta is: - observations decks build on stations - fighters not getting clipped on carriers - fire and smoke and better explosion visuals In rest, is still bussines as usual, with the negative aspect of increased consumption of torpedoes against capitals.

[@michaelgoetze8531]

I see the arc guns have disappeared.

[@ragnos28]

Yes. For interceptors, I like the visual and sound of the ion gatling (despite low dmg per hit, you get a lot of hits). For bombers, as a rule I go for the weapon with the longest range, in an attempt to make them keep their distance from their target, to some extent. The S arc range is 2.1 km, while the gatling and the phase have 3.2 km. Also, for the bombers I use the weapon with the most dmg, phase > gatling, so phase won the "contract" for the bombers weapons. 🤓

[@raulmanuelsanchezcasado7756]

Seems like boron is the new meta

[@michaelgoetze8531]

Well you have to consider that this is relatively expensive.

[@ragnos28]

The Raptor + Chimeras are still the best at the "annihilate all the ships in the xenon doom sector" game. The 506 m/s with mk4 engines of the Chimera (and the shit load of weapon slots) just can't be beat, plus the Raptor can "spew" 100 of them, while taking a while to launch them. The Shark can deploy "just" 64 fighters (if you don't use the saturate the landing pads trick, Shark has 18) but has instant launch. 🤔Still has xenon core sector annihilation capability, but less so that the Raptor.

[@VengeanceMkII]

​@ragnos28 it sounds like you need two Sharks and a carefully coordinated level of teamwork. Sounds very Boron if you ask me xD. The Raptor is very split in how it will just do the honorable warrior thing and go it alone and slap down.

[@ragnos28]

@@VengeanceMkII Yeah, I was considering that. 🤔A boron fleet with 2 Sharks, that can field 64 torpedo Baracuda + 64 interceptor Mako, would be a real "doom day" force. 😁. If not for the fact that the Shark is so damn big, and subordonates don't stay close to each other. 🙁

[@info_fox]

Does the economy work in this game? Last time I played all the stations stopped building stuff and demand dried up more than my sex life.

[@ragnos28]

In X4, the player is the economy. 🤑 There are a lot of shortages in the X4 universe so that the player can fill them. That is why the factions are really ineffective in supplying mats and building ships for the player. And that is why, despite having close to 17 billions, I still need to maintain my economy infrastructure, to able to build my fleets.

[@info_fox]

@@ragnos28 I would start out with a mining fleet but over time, it seemes like no one would buy ships so the stations would stop buying mats and kill my game

[@ragnos28]

@@info_fox You don't let factions buy ships from your shipsyard, unless you want to support them. You supply ships for terran vs xenon gather fleets missions, there are crazy money in there, especially after you are able to build them yourself, always the value of the ships + 50%. Some can be as easy as provide 3 corvettes. There is alwasy the option of manual selling the ships, used to sell meson armed Katanas whenever my money was low, for what I wanted to buy. Also, you don't sell mats to the factions. All mats should go to your shipyard, so you can build ships with no cost.

[@willo1345]

​@@info_foxThe game is better from an economy standpoint. It was completely busted when I played three years ago but it's delightful now. That being said, the community to this game has had a heavy hand in balance and it has lead to many playstyles being nerfed to the point of insignificance. If you want a free form simulation, I heavily advise you to mod the game to your liking, because vanilla is designed to be played a specific way or you will feel disappointed. Case and point, they nerfed shipyard income to something like 30% original value. This makes shipyards only really valuable if you plan on making a doom fleet as selling the resources would be better income. However, I don't want a doom fleet, I just want to role-play an entrepreneur that doesn't fight much in a playthrough. Thankfully, there are mods that can make that happen and not make you rage when you find out that the shipyard you spent days trying to get is a pos.

[@LegionaryOfRome]

Shark is so bad at defending itself. Not every carrier should become a battleship like the Raptor but they should be able to defend itself. For example the Tokyo can defend itself pretty well against enemy fighters/bombers. Shark ONLY relies on it's fighters at ANYTHING. Those fighters doesn't have the best weapons too. There are also no plasma or something like a blast mortar. Boron navy doesn't have ANY anti capital or anti station solutions other than torpedo launchers (including their destroyer which is useless against stations). Boron turrets are both incapable of dealing with fighters, bombers and station attack. ALSO, their ships doesn't even carry enough of those turrets. I was so hyped about the DLC but the boron navy is lackluster at best. No offensive power. None at all. Beautiful, but harmless.

[@ragnos28]

"Beautiful, but harmless" - kinda like the boron. 🤭😋 Personally, I don't mind a carrier that I must use as a carrier, as in relying on its "birds" for defence and atack. And lets face it, the only M turret worth a damn is flak. Since I'm a race tech purist, if a race don't have flak (or don't get them through plot, like the TEM faction), I usually have turrets on carriers to fill a slot, I don't expect much from them, still use the on board fighters to do stuff. What I don't like about the Shark is that it has too low fighter capacity at 64, imo. I would have prefered about 80, to provide my usual numbers of 40 bombers + 40 interceptor per fleet. Boron fighters...yeah. - argon Eclipse as interceptors, with 2 bolt + 2 ion blasters m2 (that have more shield dmg that any boron S weapon 😮), bomber Eclipse with 2 bolt + 2 torpedo launchers (the boron don't have mk2 ones 😐) - paranid Ares as interceptors with beams and anti surface elements beam (can't remember the name), bomber Ares with BMs, forget about it - split Chimera as interceptors and bomber, 5 weapon slots (I use 4 gatling and 1 launcher), 506 m/s speed with mk4 engines all better that the boron fighters. Yeah, I don't look forward for my station demolition test. I know that torpedoes run out, the bombers hug the stations, and if it is true that the Ray don't do squat against stations...guess I will call 10 Behemoths in the spirit of the argon and boron alliance. 😁😋

[@LegionaryOfRome]

@@ragnos28 I don't know of a faction that gets flak through a plot. Which one is TEM ? How they get it ? You must check the Shih. Better than Ares with the same weapon and shield count but faster. Also suits well with the raptor visually. Looks like a Split ship.

[@ragnos28]

@@LegionaryOfRome If you side with the BUC in the paranid plot, you create a faction called TEM, that use paranid and argon tech, so a paranid faction that uses argon flak: kzbin.info/www/bejne/jmekeX14dpucjqs Can't check the Shih. I did not bought ToA, had no interest in piracy and the ships looked like crap, plus I've heard a lot of greef the players had with the "tide", the plot, and so on, and said screw that, I save my money for the borons. 🤑The only thing I like about ToA was the Astrid, cuz it has a bed for us to sleep, but that was not enough to convince me to buy the DLC.🧐

[@Nephale]

Their turrets are extremely strong vs fighters. guppy or ray can fight 30+ xenon s/m easily. maybe your turret loadout needs work?

[@LegionaryOfRome]

@@Nephale Tell me about yours and I will try that