Fractal Softworks Forum
Starsector => General Discussion => Topic started by: Dampfnudel on October 12, 2020, 03:27:52 AM
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Hi I am new to the game.
My fleets struggle versus carriers.
I am doing exploration/scan ship tasks and sometimes encounter pirates/ai remnants.
While these big capital ships are not scary at all, some small fast carriers are a huge pain. My ships are constantly scared by the fighters and are busy fighting them. As they replenish, this leads to a fight until combat readiness is exhausted. I use every small weapon slot for PD. It does not help.
Using engage order does not help. using the eliminate button does help, but then my ships fight way too dumb.
I am not a good enough player to use my flagship to solo the entire enemy fleets, so I need to rely on my other ships to help me.
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PD weapons are not a good choice against fighters because fighters are like little ships - they have armor and sometimes shields. Stuff like Light Assault Guns and Pulse Lasers work fairly well. A Locust launcher or two will also do a number on fighters.
Of course the best choice is to kill the carriers. I usually do that with bomber strikes or a fast, powerful flagship.
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PD weapons are not a good choice against fighters because fighters are like little ships - they have armor and sometimes shields. Stuff like Light Assault Guns and Pulse Lasers work fairly well. A Locust launcher or two will also do a number on fighters.
Of course the best choice is to kill the carriers. I usually do that with bomber strikes or a fast, powerful flagship.
I tried outfitting my ship with pulse lasers. But it does not seem to work.
Any ship 1v1 versus an astral. AI controled. No amount of PD/assault guns/Pulse Lasers make it work.
The only thing that worked was using my own carriers.
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The Astral is an edge case. It can and will keep sending bomber runs with near impunity. You really need a fleet to counter that effectively.
In my experience, the best anti-fighter weapons are Swarmer/Locust missiles, and beam or fast turning medium guns. PD weapons can only deal with small, shieldless fighters. It also helps to have wide, efficient shields (either by using hulls that come with them, or by adding shield-improving hull mods).
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The Astral is an edge case. It can and will keep sending bomber runs with near impunity. You really need a fleet to counter that effectively.
In my experience, the best anti-fighter weapons are Swarmer/Locust missiles, and beam or fast turning medium guns. PD weapons can only deal with small, shieldless fighters. It also helps to have wide, efficient shields (either by using hulls that come with them, or by adding shield-improving hull mods).
What about the condor? It is a super cheap ship with 2 bays and only takes 10 deployment.
Meaning a legion (40 deployment) has to face 8 wings. how to play that?
I currently spam condors and AI has no chance at all.
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What about the Condor? It can be rushed by anything, since it does not have enough ordnance points to bring actually OP fighters. When you hit real opponents, especially of the <REDACTED> kind, things will get more interesting. You are correct in general, though. Carrier spam is currently the strongest fleet strategy.
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Carriers are just strong OP. Best counter to carriers is either piloting your own ship and taking them out since the AI won't usually risk getting into a position to attack enemy carriers. If they do it's going to usually be a frigate or quick destroyer which won't pack enough punch to bring it down easily. Frigates also risk getting swarmed by fighters and destroyers getting clipped by a few units of heavy ordinance. SO destroyer or cruiser or phase ships are the best.
Second option is to bring your own carriers slapped full with fighters or interceptors. Not very exciting but PD just doesn't deal with fighters/bombers very well unless massed, and then your ship won't be very good at doing anything else.
The thing that makes carriers so strong is their ability to saturate an area with firepower. You can only fit so many ships into a single space, fighters/bombers though can be massed infinitely. Additionally carriers do have their fighter strength depleted over time but it doesn't put them at risk and regenerates as long as CR holds up. It's very risk free if you have a half-decent frontline to stall while the fighters/bombers work over the enemy fleet.
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What about the Condor? It can be rushed by anything, since it does not have enough ordnance points to bring actually OP fighters. When you hit real opponents, especially of the <REDACTED> kind, things will get more interesting. You are correct in general, though. Carrier spam is currently the strongest fleet strategy.
4 Ai controlled Condors beat any AI-controlled ships of the same deployment cost. (Except for astral)
I spam Condors and have not lost a single ship yet.
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Use Dooms. Mines hurt fighters... and everything else.
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Any ship 1v1 versus an astral. AI controled. No amount of PD/assault guns/Pulse Lasers make it work.
An Onslaught can do it. It takes like five minutes, but eventually it can grind down enough fighters to burn drive into the Astral and take it out.
Also for what it's worth, the Predator or Prey Mission, which pits a Dominator, Condor, Lasher and Hound against an Astral can be beaten AI controlled with no orders.
But yes, in general ships have a lot of trouble dealing with large amounts of fighters, especially if they aren't on aggressive or reckless personality.
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Doom obliterates Astral.
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Those phase 'capitals' are great as support to a regular fleet for that reason and more.
Got mine in my last game (before I encountered a crash to desktop that I don't know how to solve) armed with some of the yuri mod's missile launchers and thus is even more broken. They aren't the capitals I deploy for the majority of the battle, instead I deployed say some conquests supported by drovers, and then when the drovers ran out of CR I withdrew them and deployed the dooms to help mop up the PL's carrier fleet with their super fast herons.
They massacre anything without a significant escort or PD capabilities. The mines massacre the strike-craft and can easily cripple carriers with poor PD weapons (LRPD lasers simply cannot deal with doom mines.) They sweep across the battlefield killing anything they encounter unlike what even their smaller phase counterparts. Absolutely amazing!..... for about 2-3 minutes then they need to run away because a phase ship without their phase ability are more vulnerable then civilian freighters.
Mid battle deployment is a tricky but powerful way of changing the fate of any battle.
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This is why I always avoid carrier heavy fleets. You need doom-class ships or capitals with tons of fast projectile guns to beat them.
Not only that, fighting against them is not fun. Having to grind through wave after wave of bombers (which can flank you if you are playing with a low tech ship) coming from all sides isn't fun.
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Or you could just personally delete all offending carriers with an Afflictor (or several, if it's literally 300+ DP of carriers). A lot of them before yours and enemy fleets even come in full contact. The only carrier that has decent resistance to AM Afflictor is Mora (because DF activates instantly and is omnidirectional).
And based on current patch notes, while Reaper build will be completely removed, AM build won't receive any nerfs (except maybe side effects of skill revamp).
Depleting fighters isn't that hard either. Capitals with maxed out officer/player have enough firepower to simply do so, at least against typical AI carrier fleets. They don't deploy 20+ Spark Drovers after all.
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I personally also found carrier spam to be an issue until I modified both my fleet composition and way I play battles against a lot of carriers.
The first thing you need to do is to not have your units wander off by themselves. A carrier lives and dies by its ability to pick the enemy off one by one and you must not make it easier for the enemy to do that.
The second thing is proper fleet composition logic. All my capitals are more or less PD bastions for my forces to anchor around. It gets even better if your capitals also have an aggressive officer making them naturally more prone to be targeted by carriers and leave your other assets alone. I also never and I mean never use bombers unless I have a carrier centric fleet myself. They will not be useful if you do not have the fighter advantage.
The third thing revolves around ship retrofitting. The best combination of tools to deal with fighter spam is Point Defence AI, Integrated Targeting Unit, Dual Flaks and Kinetic Damage small PD mounts. Give up on frag or energy damage PD weapons as they are generally better against missiles with very few exeptions.
You carriers should also get something in the way of effective PD capability but the most important thing needs to be their fighter complement. Your carriers will usually focus on covering allied ships when encounteri g a fighter disadvantage, so you have to pick sturdy and/DPS intensive fighter LPCs to both outlast the enemy fighters and help deal with them until the enemy starts running out of CR and you can push into their force, slaughtering the helpless carriers.
You can also look into using a Doom phase cruiser since it's great against fighter swarms as people before me said, but there also are very useful utility frigades like the Monitor, Tempest and Scarab that offer amazing resilience and PD capability and will gladly get swarmed by enemy fighters/bombers instead of your other, more vulnerable units.
Edit: autocorrect is killing me.
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There are some very useful counter-carrier fighters you can use too like the Wasp and Flash with their proximity bombs that can annihilate whole fighter waves!
I usually tend to stick with basic light machine guns for my point defence as it's cheap, common, and surprisingly effective vs anything with shields. Sure heavily armoured fighters with flares give me trouble but they aren't as common as you'd expect. Cheap machine-guns of all kinds can be fired for almost free and so often tend to overcome tougher fighter swarms through sheer sustained fire-power without compromising flux capacity to a terrible extent.
Only really astrals are true threats as other carriers often hit a wall where their current wings are being demolished faster then they can be replaced, then you just move in a slaughter them. Astrals have such a swarm that can be recalled that they can be hard to pin down.
Larger fleet compositions also allow for specialisation that can help immensely, even against gunboat fleets. If you can stomach it, capital ships with conservative load-outs of PD and kinetic damage can be very defensible and almost unkillabe when supported by missile boats/carriers if your own to do the real anti-armour damage. I personally put little stock in using frigates as PD support as they can barely cover their targets even from the rear, and usually just get killed protecting them from the front. No personally if you are using escorts at all it's to support defensive capitals/cruisers with their killing potential such as using sunders/hammerheads with anti-armour damage in highly mobile and disposable packages.
Escorts in SS serve better as torpedo boats then flaking defenders in my experience. (Carriers/missile boats are however a decent exception with their long range.)
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Omens emp emitter is amazing against fighters and missiles. I just have a few of those escorting key ships in my fleet, and I have several carriers of my own with interceptors. That's enough to deal with all but the most carrier heavy fleets IMO. I also do use a lot fo escort commands to ensure that smaller ships don't wander too far and that ships stay in groups.
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There are some very useful counter-carrier fighters you can use too like the Wasp and Flash with their proximity bombs that can annihilate whole fighter waves!
I usually tend to stick with basic light machine guns for my point defence as it's cheap, common, and surprisingly effective vs anything with shields. Sure heavily armoured fighters with flares give me trouble but they aren't as common as you'd expect. Cheap machine-guns of all kinds can be fired for almost free and so often tend to overcome tougher fighter swarms through sheer sustained fire-power without compromising flux capacity to a terrible extent.
Only really astrals are true threats as other carriers often hit a wall where their current wings are being demolished faster then they can be replaced, then you just move in a slaughter them. Astrals have such a swarm that can be recalled that they can be hard to pin down.
Larger fleet compositions also allow for specialisation that can help immensely, even against gunboat fleets. If you can stomach it, capital ships with conservative load-outs of PD and kinetic damage can be very defensible and almost unkillabe when supported by missile boats/carriers if your own to do the real anti-armour damage. I personally put little stock in using frigates as PD support as they can barely cover their targets even from the rear, and usually just get killed protecting them from the front. No personally if you are using escorts at all it's to support defensive capitals/cruisers with their killing potential such as using sunders/hammerheads with anti-armour damage in highly mobile and disposable packages.
Escorts in SS serve better as torpedo boats then flaking defenders in my experience. (Carriers/missile boats are however a decent exception with their long range.)
How do you field the flash? Isn't it a remnant wing?
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you can recover remnant fighters from battles and also get them from research stations I believe
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Flash wings are Remnant fighters, and may be looted like Sparks.
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But outside of fielding your own carriers. Is there anything to make normal ships be able to survive fighters? There is simply no PD weapon that can kill fighter.
The dual flak fails as it runs out of ammunition before the carrier runs out of replacement rate.
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Omens emp emitter is amazing against fighters and missiles. I just have a few of those escorting key ships in my fleet, and I have several carriers of my own with interceptors. That's enough to deal with all but the most carrier heavy fleets IMO. I also do use a lot fo escort commands to ensure that smaller ships don't wander too far and that ships stay in groups.
Is there a weapon similar to the emp emitter so I can equip my normal ships with functional PD?
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But outside of fielding your own carriers. Is there anything to make normal ships be able to survive fighters? There is simply no PD weapon that can kill fighter.
The dual flak fails as it runs out of ammunition before the carrier runs out of replacement rate.
Dual flack does not have ammo?
Any weapons with high DPS and/or accuracy/turn rate is effective. IPDAI helps as well since it improves weapon tracking and since it prevents flares from eating dps (and since it makes PD weapons kill missiles faster).
A SO Dominator with at least 2 assault Chaingun in the medium turrets as an example pretty much laughs off fighters. Massed Vulcans with IPDAI are good. IRPulse are good....
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Heavy machineguns do the work for me, if nothing more exotic takes your fancy. They will chew through anything smaller then a destroyer for hilariously cheap prices.
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Heavy machineguns do the work for me, if nothing more exotic takes your fancy. They will chew through anything smaller then a destroyer for hilariously cheap prices.
I actually use dual machineguns and even heavy machineguns (the latter is real good since it has 450 range) on Overridden ships since they do amazing shield damage with disgustingly good flux efficiency.
Anyway. Just stack more and more ships with PDAI, Dual Flaks and Vulcans/Machineguns until you tear thru the enemy. Things like Overridden Frigade Spam with good AA is a lot, a lot worse than your sterotypical fighter (not even spark) spam.
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There's also a skill that adds 50% damage to fighters. A capital ship with that, some of the aforementioned guns, and IPDAI really does just chew through fighters.
You can also use any large missile mounts you have in the fleet on Locusts. They clear out fighters pretty well and are useful general purpose flux free damage against other targets.
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There's also a skill that adds 50% damage to fighters. A capital ship with that, some of the aforementioned guns, and IPDAI really does just chew through fighters.
You can also use any large missile mounts you have in the fleet on Locusts. They clear out fighters pretty well and are useful general purpose flux free damage against other targets.
I will anchor off of this statement to highly suggest you to get yourself a Gryphon and just build it like a missile based enemy airforce obliterator.
Locust on the big missile mount, swarmers on the small ones, whatever you want on the two mediums (I find harpoons really good sicne they provide a lot of utility).
Full PD loadout on all the ballistic mounts, plus PDAI and of course ECCM package.
Rest goes into flux management, maybe even cram hardened shields if you feel like it.
I tried it once when I had to deal with an especially spammy carrier faction (Stormhawk Republic) and it did really well.
Edit: I actually have a gryphon stored in my home planet so I actually went ahead and fiddled with it: this is the vanilla Gryphon you can use for anti-fighter/anti-frigade purposes and it's quite good at it too:
Weapons: 1x Locust SRM Launcher, 2x Salamander MRM pod, 3 Swarmer SRM launcher, 1x Dual Flak, 5 Light Machineguns
Hullmods: ECCM package, Integrated Point Defence AI
Flux management: 20 capacitors, 15 vents
Optimal officer: Aggressive so it can get close and keep the pressure on small frigades. Just have it escort your vulnerable ships if you want to make sure it does not get into trouble and want it to focus on providing fighter coverage. The dual salamander MRM pods really help it nail frigades as they try retreating once the missiles start piling up flux and also have the added advantage of even turning bigger crafts around as they're immobilized, making it easier for the other missiles to chew at the target.
Other loadouts: You can really put whatever you want on the two medium missile slots as there really isn't a medium size anti-fighter missile weapon in the game. You could and I mean could experiment with the Proximity Charge launcher (the Gryphon will actually turn sideways and aim them towards whever target you're firing at too!) but I only have one of those weapons so I can't really speak about its performance.
Harpoons are a great option when it fights in the frontlines, Sabots too. Just give it Pilums if you want it to hang back.
Let me know if you can get your hands on one and if this weapon loadout works for you!
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Advanced turret gyros along with any sort of beam weapon shreds fighters in my experience.
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But outside of fielding your own carriers. Is there anything to make normal ships be able to survive fighters? There is simply no PD weapon that can kill fighter.
The dual flak fails as it runs out of ammunition before the carrier runs out of replacement rate.
Dual flack does not have ammo?
Any weapons with high DPS and/or accuracy/turn rate is effective. IPDAI helps as well since it improves weapon tracking and since it prevents flares from eating dps (and since it makes PD weapons kill missiles faster).
A SO Dominator with at least 2 assault Chaingun in the medium turrets as an example pretty much laughs off fighters. Massed Vulcans with IPDAI are good. IRPulse are good....
Flak (and most other balistic weapons) have ammunition. They replenish, but once the initial amount is gone, the damage output is not big enough to fight off fighters.
I will try pulse lasers/machineguns with better turrets.
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Flak (and most other balistic weapons) have ammunition. They replenish, but once the initial amount is gone, the damage output is not big enough to fight off fighters.
What? There was one short-lived version quite long ago when all ballistic weapons had clip mechanics like that, but it was scrapped very soon.
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Flak (and most other balistic weapons) have ammunition. They replenish, but once the initial amount is gone, the damage output is not big enough to fight off fighters.
What? There was one short-lived version quite long ago when all ballistic weapons had clip mechanics like that, but it was scrapped very soon.
I can confirm this, if my flaks ran out of ammo or started firing slower I would definitely be able to see it in the missiles my ship would eat.
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Flak (and most other balistic weapons) have ammunition. They replenish, but once the initial amount is gone, the damage output is not big enough to fight off fighters.
What? There was one short-lived version quite long ago when all ballistic weapons had clip mechanics like that, but it was scrapped very soon.
I can confirm this, if my flaks ran out of ammo or started firing slower I would definitely be able to see it in the missiles my ship would eat.
Ok weird. I guess I reinstall th game.
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Are you using any total conversion mods that might change vanilla weapons? I think Archaen Order is the only one currently and I don't know if it changes ballistic ammo considerations.
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Ammo and clip mechanics were removed in 0.65.2a (http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=8810.0). That was uhhhh 6 years ago.
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Ammo from standard ballistics weapons were removed. Clip mechanics are still there, being used by various energy weapons like Autopulse.
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Ammo from standard ballistics weapons were removed. Clip mechanics are still there, being used by various energy weapons like Autopulse.
I don't believe there's anything this guy could be fielding which fits the bill of being able to use flak and autopulse, though? The Paragon's the only player-available ship that can fit both at the same time, that I can think of.
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A lot of mods add new weapons. Including PD. Some of them actually are viable.
But in vanilla, I still struggle. Dual Flaks seems to work okay. But most ships can not use it.
Most AI controlled cruisers struggle against a single drover.
I use the onslaught now, this ship shreds fighters quite good with Vulcans and flak. But it does not feel fun not to be able to use most ships as they fail to win against drovers.
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Huh? I've never experienced a truly overwhelming AI carrier spam even from TT or the PL.
The meta drover spam works for the player when they have, like, 20 of them. But for the AI it's just a little harder dealing with the ablative fighter screens.
An unescorted drover is still an easy kill for most ships, lets not make a mountain out of a mole hill.
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Tri-Tachyon is more annoying with phase ship spam, especially Doom spam. I need to micromanage and deathball my fleet to fight phase ships so my ships do not try to chase the phase ships and get picked off.
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I've encountered a few bounty fleets made totally of carriers that I've needed to do refits of my ships to handle. Not often, but its a bit nasty when it does. Luckily we get a preview of enemy bounty fleets!
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A lot of mods add new weapons. Including PD. Some of them actually are viable.
But in vanilla, I still struggle. Dual Flaks seems to work okay. But most ships can not use it.
Most AI controlled cruisers struggle against a single drover.
I use the onslaught now, this ship shreds fighters quite good with Vulcans and flak. But it does not feel fun not to be able to use most ships as they fail to win against drovers.
You'd have a lot more luck including a few anchor ships in your fleet composition if this presents such a problem - put IPDAI, ITU, and mix frag and kinetic in the small/medium slots as appropriate. That is, using dual flak in the mediums and light machine guns in the small slots, or vulcans in the small slots and heavy machine guns in the mediums. This, with an officer who has advanced countermeasures 3, will make it so that only the most egregious fighter/bomber spam will get past it's area of influence. It will also help if the ship is fit so it's difficult to disable these defensive weapons with Armored weapon mounts/Automated Repair Unit and the relevant officer skills so some thunders or an ion beam/pulser don't defang it at the most inopportune time.
The changes to the Paladin and Devastator Alex has made for the next update might also alleviate some of your issues by adding an additional defensive option with your spare large slots, as they should be viable options for including in your roster (instead of Paladins being a memey way to flux out whatever they're on right now, and devastators only seeing use on SO dominators).
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A lot of mods add new weapons. Including PD. Some of them actually are viable.
But in vanilla, I still struggle. Dual Flaks seems to work okay. But most ships can not use it.
Most AI controlled cruisers struggle against a single drover.
I use the onslaught now, this ship shreds fighters quite good with Vulcans and flak. But it does not feel fun not to be able to use most ships as they fail to win against drovers.
IPDAI and Vulcans/LMG/DLMG. (Vulcans are best Vs missiles imo and still good enough Vs fighters) and then put normal kinetic weapons in your mid slots. Add turret gyros it’s you still have tracking issues.
IPDAI makes your weapons ignore flares and makes their target leading better. Ignoring flares is huge. And the target leasing effect vs small high transverse fighters is imperative.
Normal longer range kinetic in the mid slots (high burst ideal) because you can KO shielded fighters (which includes most bombers) on their approach better with long range weapons. Non-shielded fighters get shredded by the Vulcans
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A lot of mods add new weapons. Including PD. Some of them actually are viable.
But in vanilla, I still struggle. Dual Flaks seems to work okay. But most ships can not use it.
Most AI controlled cruisers struggle against a single drover.
I use the onslaught now, this ship shreds fighters quite good with Vulcans and flak. But it does not feel fun not to be able to use most ships as they fail to win against drovers.
IPDAI and Vulcans/LMG/DLMG. (Vulcans are best Vs missiles imo and still good enough Vs fighters) and then put normal kinetic weapons in your mid slots. Add turret gyros it’s you still have tracking issues.
IPDAI makes your weapons ignore flares and makes their target leading better. Ignoring flares is huge. And the target leasing effect vs small high transverse fighters is imperative.
Normal longer range kinetic in the mid slots (high burst ideal) because you can KO shielded fighters (which includes most bombers) on their approach better with long range weapons. Non-shielded fighters get shredded by the Vulcans
Integrated Point Defence AI also gives you a flat bonus to damaging missiles, making some weapons with good range/tracking but poor damage potential like PD/LR PD lasers and even Tac Lasers and Medium Lasers perform very well against high health misses like Squall. I've got some High Tech ship setups like the Aurora that are literally able to shoot a Hurricane MIRV down before the missile even spawns its submunitions thanks to IPDAI, Advanced Optics, ITU and Advanced Turret Gyros.
Big true also on Vulcans. They're the best anti missile tool for their OP since missiles only have hull hit points/no armor and the Vulcan does frag damage wich deals 200% damage to hull.
I find myself using kinetic PD over Vulcans if I have more issues against fighters than missiles and I already have Flak dealing HE damage. Vulcans will struggle against shielded/armored fighters but a combination of Kinetic bringing down shields and HE nullifying armor allowing kinetic to do full damage is lethal to any enemy fighter, even some mod ones with 1500 (or was it 1200? Can't remember) hull points, 200 armor and an Omni Shield (Immortal Assault Corvettes from Kadur Remnant).
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Frag damage does 100% hull damage, 25% armor & shield damage. All the damage types inflict exactly 100% hull damage.
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Frag damage does 100% hull damage, 25% armor & shield damage. All the damage types inflict exactly 100% hull damage.
*Slaps forehead* mistook Starsector's fragmentation damage from another game's Frag mechanics :P
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Integrated Point Defence AI also gives you a flat bonus to damaging missiles
Yea I was trying to highlight the advantages vs fighters, not missiles. Broadswords dump flares as an example and the time your weapons shoot at that is time that broadswords have to make themselves hard to track by getting close. Just ignoring flares and increasing target leading is a huge advantage vs fighters (though it can produce targeting issues for non-PD small weapons)
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Integrated Point Defence AI also gives you a flat bonus to damaging missiles
Yea I was trying to highlight the advantages vs fighters, not missiles. Broadswords dump flares as an example and the time your weapons shoot at that is time that broadswords have to make themselves hard to track by getting close. Just ignoring flares and increasing target leading is a huge advantage vs fighters (though it can produce targeting issues for non-PD small weapons)
Correct. Don't be like me and install Point Defence AI on ships with light mortars.
*looks in the distance* Never again.
Although railguns are quite good at sniping sabots before they activate and overloading shielded fighters
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When I deal with redacted fleets I usually nullify the issue by fighting fire with fire by doing the simple thing of and replacing all fighters on lighter carriers with sparks. Usually go with 12-15, but sometimes more if I have the slots.
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When I deal with redacted fleets I usually nullify the issue by fighting fire with fire by doing the simple thing of and replacing all fighters on lighter carriers with sparks. Usually go with 12-15, but sometimes more if I have the slots.
Doesn't that work on literally anything?
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When I deal with redacted fleets I usually nullify the issue by fighting fire with fire by doing the simple thing of and replacing all fighters on lighter carriers with sparks. Usually go with 12-15, but sometimes more if I have the slots.
Doesn't that work on literally anything?
Can't wait for 0.9.5 when the Spark, Reserve Deployment, the Drover and Expanded Deck Crew Hull-mod ALL get nerfed back into sanity and stop making anything a triviality.
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One weapon I find surprisingly effective against fighters and bombers, assuming you have a large energy turret available, is the autopulse laser. High rate of fire, fast projectile, decent turn speed and energy damage mean fighters of all types are vulnerable to it and the clip refills fast enough that it's usually ready for a new wave. Just sweep it across a swarm and watch stuff pop. Even better if you have a couple of them; the increased density makes it nearly impossible for fighters to dodge and any payloads they fire get obliterated. Naturally you need the flux dissipation to make it work but if it's an option, try it out. You might be surprised. Of course, the best part is that once you DO chew through the fighters, you now have a highly damaging dakka laser to punish the carriers who dared throw ants at you.
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One weapon I find surprisingly effective against fighters and bombers, assuming you have a large energy turret available, is the autopulse laser. High rate of fire, fast projectile, decent turn speed and energy damage mean fighters of all types are vulnerable to it and the clip refills fast enough that it's usually ready for a new wave. Just sweep it across a swarm and watch stuff pop. Even better if you have a couple of them; the increased density makes it nearly impossible for fighters to dodge and any payloads they fire get obliterated. Naturally you need the flux dissipation to make it work but if it's an option, try it out. You might be surprised. Of course, the best part is that once you DO chew through the fighters, you now have a highly damaging dakka laser to punish the carriers who dared throw ants at you.
Can confirm, once fitted two an autopulse(s) on a Chronos battlecruiser (the one with temporal bubble) plus maxed officier, was the equivalent of a squirrel on crack holding an AK.
Edit: Checked the codex after the comment below, the Chronos only has one L energy slot. Either i'm delirious or there's a M size spray-type energy weapon from a mod that i forgot about.
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One weapon I find surprisingly effective against fighters and bombers, assuming you have a large energy turret available, is the autopulse laser. High rate of fire, fast projectile, decent turn speed and energy damage mean fighters of all types are vulnerable to it and the clip refills fast enough that it's usually ready for a new wave. Just sweep it across a swarm and watch stuff pop. Even better if you have a couple of them; the increased density makes it nearly impossible for fighters to dodge and any payloads they fire get obliterated. Naturally you need the flux dissipation to make it work but if it's an option, try it out. You might be surprised. Of course, the best part is that once you DO chew through the fighters, you now have a highly damaging dakka laser to punish the carriers who dared throw ants at you.
Can confirm, once fitted two autopulses on a Chronos battlecruiser (the one with temporal bubble) plus maxed officier, was the equivalent of a squirrel on crack holding an AK.
Wait, Chronos has two large energy slots now? I can sweak the last one I saw only had the one large mount at the front, 3 medium slots in the middle and one back-facing medium mount with 3 smalls at the back!
Back on topic tough, Autopulse is great against carriers indeed, it just feels very annoying when you've got something with multiple autopulses and you're closing in on a target just for most of them to start opening up on a single bloody fighter at max range.
PS: Autopulse get even better against fighters with either officers or mod-introduces hullmods improving weapon accuracy and travel time.
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Onslaught with double flak in all the slots eats fighters with no issues, along with the range mod and advanced turret gyros eats fighters.
Advanced turret gyros also lets hellborne cannons on it be able to hit frigates with the tracking skills / CR bonus.