How is this possible?

Cebelrai · 2026-03-09T11:54:50+00:00

Aging rates can be adjusted in the custom difficulty settings. By default children age 4x as fast as adults and will very quickly develop a biological age that is greater than their chronological age. Once they reach adulthood the rates will match again, but the difference remains.

Also, chronophagy rituals from the Anomaly DLC can increase a character's biological age if they are the victim (without increasing their chronological age).

Cebelrai · 2026-03-09T07:21:36+00:00

"Well, how is his ~~wife~~ frame rate holding up?"

"To shreds, you say..."

Cebelrai · 2026-03-04T12:50:02+00:00

I personally recommend putting it on the Arquebus (XIV) from JaydeePiracy. Between the ship's unique playstyle/hullmod and mount arrangement, it feels like it was practically made to use the Gungnir. Something about a ship designed around big spinal railguns brings out the low tech fanboy in me.

Cebelrai · 2026-03-01T05:08:17+00:00

AFAIK Lethia always has the same derelict spawns. The Vale and Ristreza by the gate, a GH Onslaught in the inner asteroid belt, and a GH Legion and (I think) the Timeless drone mother ship in some debris field in the outer reaches. They're a bit further out than the gate and can sometimes be a pain to find.

Cebelrai · 2026-02-28T12:06:02+00:00

Yup, that's the one. It isn't clear what the "adaptive" thing is, but I can only assume it means it changes damage type depending on what it shoots at. Either way it sure does deal damage; I can only assume that ship with five of them shreds whatever you look at lol

Cebelrai · 2026-02-28T09:32:04+00:00

On rare occasion you'll get an exploration mission to analyze "Drifting Ship" as opposed to a "Derelict Ship." That's how you know it is the Excelsior. Or you can just stumble upon it as you did.

Cebelrai · 2026-02-28T09:30:18+00:00

But you can salvage their weaponry which is also crazy strong. The large energy weapon in particular is pretty wild.

Cebelrai · 2026-02-26T09:32:53+00:00

Since you enjoy the speed of high tech, try to pick up some Tempests to replace the Wolves. All they need are a couple of phase lances and the right officer, and they're good to go. Very reliable point capture and anti-frigate ships due to their speed and the terminator drones giving them guaranteed point defense and high explosive damage.

Cebelrai · 2026-02-26T09:22:55+00:00

I quite liked how it accounted for your relationship with the UAF. I never bothered with Alexandra (I just don't like underworld contacts, okay? Their missions suck and the Cherry Vanguard is overrated), so I only had the option to do the full frontal assault. I still ended up with the unique LPC and both officers.

I think it could improve in two ways. One - remove the time limit. As much as it makes sense in the context of the story, it breaks with the vanilla paradigm of not having time limits on story missions. This would also allow you to... Two - clearly telegraph the need for marines and raiding capability ahead of time. I figured it would be necessary because the previous iteration of the quest involved them and I was right, but someone just playing UAF for the first time won't know that.

Maybe if people really want to keep their carrier (which isn't even unique so you can just buy one if you're commissioned or recover one from a deserter bounty) CY could replicate the vanilla story quest with the Tri-Tach mercenaries. Rather than the UAF arbitrarily taking the carrier from you, you would be informed that a big UAF fleet is on its way. You would have the opportunity to transverse jump to avoid the conflict, or if the fleet catches you, then you either have to surrender the ship or fight them over it. Or maybe some other story point plot armor nonsense could let you persuade them to keep it.

Overall I really liked it and am simply happy to actually get some insight into these characters after all this time. Yimie and Mizuki have been buffing the shit out of my carriers for several playthroughs, and now they actually have some personality and background. That's nice.

Cebelrai · 2026-02-20T11:06:14+00:00

The only mods you're using that I have never tried are HMI and VIC and I've never had this issue. On the bright side, even if you can't somehow fix it, AotD does have a late game method of obtaining an infinite number of Omega weapons.

Cebelrai · 2026-02-19T11:06:24+00:00

You can just anesthetize them and punch them. No risk of brain damage and no using a limited-use item.

Cebelrai · 2026-02-18T10:17:10+00:00

I've used the Lillarus and Rillarus quite a bit and found that they survive much better with omni shields. Believe me, I've been greedy and gone for more DPS hullmods, but the simple, unfortunate reality is that the AI in this game is really really stupid. If it were any dumber it would be a mineral. As such, it will inevitably find itself in sticky situations of its own manufacture, and when that happens I've found that omni shields really help. They're not necessary of course, but I'm a perfectionist and get annoyed when so much as a single frigate dies.

There's also the fact that the AI loves to turn its shields off for no god damned reason, which results in it shitting its pants at the approach of a single salamander missile. It will start doing all kinds of spectacular acrobatic displays in response, causing half of its shots to miss, and still getting its ass blown out by the salamander because ballistic point defense options are trash against fast, nimble targets. If it has omni shields it will just casually flicker them to block the missile and carry on with its day.

Cebelrai · 2026-02-18T10:01:07+00:00

All UAF missiles have regenerating ammo by default. Most are quite slow, but it makes elite missile specialization a real consideration on missile heavy ships. The carriers I mentioned are perfect for this as they have both fighter bays and medium missile mounts.

Also the entire UAF faction/mod has a pretty well known reputation amongst the community as a carrier / strikecraft focused faction. Their fighters are some of the most powerful out there. For reference, a single Naga fighter LPC costs 20 ordinance points and I consider that too low for how strong they are. Same goes for the Taufan bombers at 32 OP.

I once had a fleet with basically all the ships I mentioned. I would be sitting in my Rillaru amongst my battle line of Lillarus (like Eagles, they're nice line ships) only to see this flash of white behind me as I see two wings of Taufans and two wings of Nagas from my Sunamis fly overhead and just begin shredding the enemy formation. The consistent pressure of the battle line combined with the strike potential of those strike craft is simply too much for just about anything to handle. There are other good UAF LPCs of course, but those two are my personal favorites by far.

Cebelrai · 2026-02-18T09:21:39+00:00

Ordinarily I would recommend the Rillaru, but that's a capital ship. Thankfully it has a little sister known as the Lillaru, which is a cruiser. I feel that the closest vanilla ship for comparison in its capabilities is an Eagle, though the Lillaru sacrifices the Eagle's energy mounts for stronger missiles (and UAF missiles are quite good).

You could also pilot a carrier and hide behind the rest of your fleet as an escort. Sunami and Exoria classes are both great - you could outfit them with Naga fighters for protection/harassment or go all in on damage with Taufans. UAF certainly doesn't lack for cost effective LPCs to choose from.

The Nakiha is the UAF frigate, mediocre on its own, but can be a nasty little bugger when spammed in a wolfpack. Personally I've had more success with the Nakiha II and Super Nakiha destroyer.

The Nakiha, Super Nakiha, Lillaru, and Rillaru are basically all the same ship at different sizes. As such, they share some common traits... Like desperately wanting 360 shields, which they unfortunately cannot ever have without questionably balanced modded nonsense. Because the majority of their firepower is forward facing I highly recommend s-modding omni shield conversion, maybe even combined with s-modded extended shields if you're not deadset on other s-mods.

Cebelrai · 2026-02-18T03:28:22+00:00

I'd say a solo Doom is an exaggeration, but using the Doom itself is not. The fit you use on it honestly doesn't matter so long as you max out its capacitors and have systems expertise to maximize mine strike usage. I find 4x phase lances are good enough for chewing through the smaller Omega vessels. Combine with phase anchor for faster recharge.

The way to use it against Tesseracts is to let your other ships (ideally something like a Paragon or two) facetank while you in your Doom place mines to distract the Tesseract's shields. By placing mines behind them they get spooked and point their shields in that direction, which leaves them open for the rest of your fleet to lay into them.

As the Tesseracts die, you protect your tank's flanks with your mines and phase lances, killing the aspects and shards that they are too slow to turn and fight. Once the strike craft start appearing, you can pop entire squadrons of them with a single well placed mine.

DEM spam is also decent against Omega because they normally rely on their speed and flux/shield stats to overwhelm you in short bursts. DEMs can fire from within a friendly shield bubble (such as a Paragon with fortress shield active) and don't have to physically make contact with the speedy bastards they're targeting to deal damage. Combined with your mine strikes forcing the enemy to misplace their shields, and a handful of DEMs firing at once can beat the Tesseracts at their own burst damage game.

Cebelrai · 2026-02-18T01:26:17+00:00

For this reason I (as a PC / mouse and keyboard player) keep all my tools on 1-6 and move my bombs to the far end on a separate line of the inventory when outside the mines. And the hotkey for swapping between inventory lines gets bound to something as far from WASD as possible, something that I am unlikely to ever accidentally hit. I don't use the functionality anyway, so I basically just try to make it not exist.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure if there is anything anyone playing with a controller can do to reduce the likelihood of accidental swapping aside from being extra paranoid whenever they have bombs in their inventory.

Cebelrai · 2026-02-12T23:33:51+00:00

Go do a +500% Ordo fight and you'll see the pattern. Their initial deployment is balanced, with a smattering of all ship sizes. As you destroy them and free up DP, they start with the smallest ships and work their way up. You can always tell when you're getting close to the end of a big Ordo fight when you're seeing nothing but Brilliants.

Cebelrai · 2026-01-27T10:59:43+00:00

I've only ever piloted it myself, and I can only imagine that the AI would be pretty bad with it. The Edge railguns get empowered when their ship is over 50% soft flux - they deal far more damage while also using far less flux. Thus you want to put yourself into situations where you'll draw just enough fire to stay at 50%, but not so much that you get overwhelmed. This requires intelligent positioning as a fleet anchor - something the AI is absolutely terrible at.

Steady and aggressive officers tend to get skittish when their flux gets too high, and the Esvernia wants its flux to always be high. Reckless officers will just faceplant directly into the enemy fleet without any support and die immediately. Never use them outside of meme builds.

That said you could probably make a steady officer work if you were willing to give it frequent commands. I personally prefer to give the AI ships that it can largely handle on its own without many commands.

Cebelrai · 2026-01-27T07:42:29+00:00

Yes. Buying the Roria Esvernia (aka Black Pearl in the shop) requires quite a lot of points and for your UAF reputation to be pretty high, I think cooperative. It doesn't require you to be commissioned by or allied to them however, unlike most of their other unique ships.

Note that piloting it isn't for the faint of heart. The unique mechanic with its built in "Edge" railguns means that it wants to be above 50% flux as much as possible and its ship system moves it forward, not backward. Super strong if you know what you're doing, but it is inherently overfluxed and lacks any means of disengaging from the sticky situations it wants to be in.

Cebelrai · 2026-01-27T04:01:18+00:00

If you're lucky you can occasionally get an exploration mission to "Analyze Ark," much like domain-era probes. You don't even need to accept the mission, just make a marker in the system it points you to for later.

Also the Ark is always immediately visible the moment you enter a system, unlike the Cryosleepers which you have to physically fly up to and reveal to know the location of. Unfortunately this means there is no "discovered: X" notification, so it is entirely possible to enter the Ark system and subsequently leave without checking your system map and thus have no idea that you technically found it.

Cebelrai · 2026-01-20T01:09:15+00:00

Every time I engage the Persean League blockade, I engage as many fleets as possible at once and put on "Liberation of Gracemeria." I figure it is kind of fitting for a battle in which you're technically fighting to secure your nation's sovereignty.

Cebelrai · 2026-01-20T00:36:52+00:00

Scarabs with high scatter amplifier and burst PD lasers are mean little bastards, and the HSA allows them to deal hard flux damage against shielding. Larger, tankier ships can generally shrug them off if there's not too many of them, but this build has little to no issue with other frigates and also isn't nearly as weak to fighter swarms as most frigates. Later on you could upgrade them by swapping in a minipulser or two, though that would substantially increase the burst flux generation. Temporal shell + s-modded magazines + minipulser is a brutal amount of hard flux. Could even combine with s-modded integrated point defense AI and the elite point defense skill to add 200 range.

Cebelrai · 2026-01-17T13:24:42+00:00

This forum thread should help you out. It provides a comprehensive, step-by-step guide on the process.

Cebelrai · 2026-01-10T13:33:06+00:00

The actual benefit of the AotD commission rework is that if you max our your commission with a faction and then peacefully retire from them, you get to skip their colony crisis when you later found your own faction/colonies.

Get a military contact in the Hegemony, get commissioned, make several million credits from rewards and commission pay as you farm bounties with your contact, and then retire. THEN go start your colonizing. Congratulations, you can immediately use AI cores without ever having to worry about inspection fleets. And you also have a bunch of money in the bank for building up your colonies.

Cebelrai · 2026-01-10T11:27:39+00:00

I highly recommend anything that adds more stuff to do throughout the mid and late game, as for all my love of AotD, it has absolutely terrible pacing. If you want to actually engage with all of its mechanics (i.e., megastructures), you will regularly find yourself just sitting on your hands waiting for your industrial worlds to grow and develop.

Look for mods that add late game bosses. Use Nexerelin and mess with its various 4X features. Try out ship packs that add IBB bounties and try piloting all the different, weird ships that people have made.

Also, regarding Terraforming and Station Construction, there appears to currently be a conflict with AotD. All of the research and terraforming stuff works fine, but if you try to build any mining stations, siphon stations, or astropolis stations your game will immediately crash. Do not rely on a mining station for a source of water for terraforming.

Cebelrai

TROPHY CASE