#Luddic Path

[luddic-butch]

I finally put together a Path compliant fleet that can handle 1 and 1/2 Ordos without severe losses. Which I think is as good as its going to get.

The Prometheus Mk 2 is the star of the show. I started this run mostly because I liked the way this ship looked and wanted to make it work. Autogenerated LP Fleets appear with laser equipped Sunders, which is why I'm allowing myself to use things like the High Intensity Laser and the Monitor. The Prom2 is a very fast capital ship (for low tech, anyway) equipped with a burn drive. I used three of these to establish combat zones and act as anchors for my hounds (not the ship).

Here's the primary hound. While the Prom is the star of the show the LP Manticore certainly wins best supporting actor. These things can put an insane amount of pressure on a single location very fast. They're great for harassing the enemy flank and picking off high value Destroyers.

I typically paired the Manticores with Eradicator (P)s. Continuing the aggressive hunting dog theory behind this fleet these quick cruisers burn to the flanks and tease apart the enemy formation.

While the combat ships encourage the enemy fleet ball to break itself into its component parts this little fella just waltzes right towards the most powerful capital ships in the area. The Monitor is superb for drawing fire and holding enemy attention while the rest of my fleet secures map control.

I love this set up. It feels very fast and very effective. When I had to face down particularly nasty stations I brought along an XIV Onslaught or an Invictus. Outside of that though, this compostiion has stayed with me for the entire game.

May the Path you tread be Righteous!

[vaulttecvevo]

some very effective builds i found by trial and error, u rly cannot go wrong w autopulse lasers and ion pulsers

[sephirajo]

here i am thinking the luddic path are amish with guns and everyone else is out there comparing them to ISIL

[i-am-a-hegemony-officer]

whats the luddic path and where can i find it. i didnt see it in my star chart

The Luddic Path is a terrorist cell founded as a sick perversion of the Luddic faith. Please do not try to follow it.

[rainydayscore]

i found a system with a hidden luddic path base in it but i just stripped their satellites for copper and left

[guardianofmemes]

Welcome to the Sector, idiot

Okay rise and shine sleeper, its 200 years after the collapse of the galactic empire. Don’t panic, you’re lucky you didn’t get picked up by pirates. We’re just independent privateers and smugglers. The difference is we won’t take your organs for pocket credits. Now if you wanna survive in space you gotta pick a side. Hey, hey, don’t pass out on me. You need to keep that brain firing or it’s gonna sludge up. You’ve been in cryo for a long time, its important to stay awake. You with me? Alright, I’m gonna give you the rundown on the factions.

The empire? Yeah they’re dead, long dead. Like, since the collapse. The gates all shut down like two centuries ago. All that’s left is some automated defenses.

Oh, these guys? Yeah, they’re the new empire. Sort of. More democratic and... well militaristic. Their planets are run by civilians, but the military basically runs the whole show. they say its just an emergency state until they can unify the sector but like, its been an “emergency” for over two centuries. read the room. founded by some imperial soldiers and civvies after the collapse. decent place.

oh boy, so. SO. There was or was not this guy called Ludd. Your basic Abrahamic prophet type of guy. He said technology bad, empire bad, and so he got cuffed up and sent through the gate towards the Sol Sector for judgement. And as soon as he was alledgely sent through... the whole gate network collapsed and we were stuck in this backwater galaxy. ugh. the church wants us all to give up our tri-pads and live nice farming lives and go to communion. practical buggers though, they’ll gladly use ships to trade and enforce their will.

trust me, trust me. you do NOT want to join these guys. you know the Luddic Church right? and how much they hate technology? those guys are the MODERATES compared to these clowns. The “Followers of the True Path”, my third glowing nut. they just love blowing up technology, they think the apocalypse is right now. they’ve been like that for two hundred years. absolute mad lads.

oh god the PERSEAN LEAGUE. This is the Persean Sector by the way, our little backwater galaxy. Ugh. You know how the Hegemony is this military empire, trying to get all the core systems under their control? oh i forgot, by the way. there’s twenty-six core systems, most of them populated, and tons of outer systems in the sector we don’t know about. random and insane out there. anyways the hegemony wants to take over everything. some planets don’t like that. and the league is basically a federation of independent planets united under that one core idea: fuck the hegemony. also fuck the pirates, the megacorporations, and the church, and anyone else who tries to step on them. don’t go thinking they’re some socialist buddy-buddies though. most of them are planet-or-system authoritarian kingdoms, and fight with each other all the time, even live-fire over disputes. they’re just united in hating everyone else.

So, you might’ve guessed that the Hegemony being a military empire, they have a lot of hero worship going on. and there was this young buck called Philip Andrada, he was the next big thing like fifty years ago or so. there was this system, askonia, the planets there were in an uproar. So, the Hegemony sends Philly to deal with it. Thing is he goes nuts and uses a planet-killer weapon, or PK. That’s the grave goddamn sin, its unforgivable. He killed millions, billions. In the chaos he formed a one-system dictatorship, the Diktat. Its unstable and insane and there’s not enough to eat, and the cults and cyborg mafia runs amok. there’s tons of rebel movements too. but they have some amazing fuckin lobster.

oh god, you want to work for these assholes? trust me, bad idea. its a megacorporation, by definition you aren’t a citizen, you’re an *employee*. And you don’t want to know what happens when you contract is TERMINATED do you? it means you’re fired. out a fucking airlock. Also, these guys are probably what cut us off from all the other sectors. They like making AI cores, which they nearly wiped out humanity with twice in the two AI wars. Yeah they tried to take over what was left of humanity twice and wiped out like, 90% of what was left of humanity in it. The two wars were like this; tri-tach and league versus church and hegemony. And they used a lot of planet-killers too. Absolute psychopaths. sad for the sector, their products are just so goddamn good we have to use em.

ah, gonna be an independent trader or merc? good goddamn choice. just know its not really a federation, its more like a loose alliance of space-bound merchants and privateers that are tied to planets and stations with no unifying empire or federation or company. and they can range from really nice and lovely to absolutely horrible monsters. but hey, even the worst indie planet isn’t pirates.

oh god, pirates. don’t be a pirate. everyone hates pirates, except the luddic path because they’re pirates too just with extra goddamn steps. pirates terrorize everyone, they do slavery, they attack innocent trade convoys in deep space and leave you to die if you aren’t worth their time. they kill for fun and- oh wait, the price on organs just rose by 400% on Culaan. change of plans, we’re pirates now. and with how we kindly revived you from cryo, i think you owe us- HEY! STOP THAT PRISONER! THEY’RE GETTING TO THE ESCAPE PODS!!!

[myopinionisimportant]

Something I really like about Starfarer is how the colony stuff funnels you into combat.

Like, you make your first colony and after a little while it starts to attract pirates. So okay, you run them off, maybe take out a base of theirs.

You start to build up your picket fleet defences, and that helps with the pirates, but now you're starting to industrialise, which means the Luddic Path want to take you down! Similar stuff to the pirates, but a bit more of them and also some terrorist infiltration stuff which is trickier. How do you deal? Why, space combat!

Then after all that, you start to hit some hard limits on expanding your colonies, and the only way to get more is...putting AI cores in charge. But the Hegemony are big and tough and don't much approve of AI, so soon enough it's time to warm up the Mjolnir Cannons again...