First off, I haven't gotten to a point where I can comfortably support a capital ship yet. So I'm sure my flagships will change as I have an opportunity to get into the heavyweights. When talking about flagships, I think it's important to take into consideration your overall fleet composition. Your flagship has to complement your fleet, and vice versa. The fleets I've been running typically utilize a cruiser size carrier for support, with another cruiser or a destroyer as my personal craft supported by frigates and fighters.
This ended up being a long post, so I've added some spoiler tags to break it up a bit and make scrolling past my long winded wall of text easier.
Playing vanilla:
Spoiler
For vanilla ships, I found that I really enjoyed piloting a Sunder. It's highly mobile and equips a fairly powerful shield. That combined with the three small ballistic mounts which I devote to PD (I almost prefer ballistic PD to energy options) allows for a pretty survivable destroyer in my hands. I don't don't how it fares with an AI pilot, haven't tried. The three energy mounts end up being my offensive weaponry, with an autopulse laser leading the way. By mounting a couple of flux-efficient weapons in the medium turret slots, you can keep constant light fire on the enemy, chipping away at armor or driving their hard flux up. By activating energy focus and dumping your magazine, the autopulse has incredible burst damage. I can pretty make quick work of any destroyer or frigate and pretty effectively engage cruisers in this manner.
If you support that with a Heron fast carrier, a couple decent fighter wings, and a good strike frigate or two you can dismantle fleets that largely outnumber you.
The Medusa is of course a great craft, and highly effective, but was always kind of dull to pilot in my opinion. I haven't had a chance to spend much time operating a Hammerhead, Falcon, or Eagle so I don't know if I'd like any of those more than the Sunder. I doubt it.
When it comes to mods, there is a ton of content out there so I'm slowly sifting through what's available and finding what works for my playstyle without diluting the universe, balance, quality, or theme too much. I'm a little picky about my mods. Currently running just six... I've found a couple of favorites, and still testing things out.
- Bushi
- Higaran Descendants
- Tore up Plenty
- Nomads
- Mayorate
- Blackrock Driveyards
One ship I found that really worked with the way I like to fight was the Rover Class Carrier from TuP. I feel like it fits the universe very well and is extremely well balanced, while being a quirky but useful craft. It mounts effective, if not oddly placed (which is a good thing, it adds character) PD, combines it with a decent sized mount good for supporting other craft or defending against frigates, and high mobility which is enhanced by the burn drive. You can get it into place very quickly while your other ships and fighters do the rest. Very neat ship.
Other mod ships and opinions:
Spoiler
I recently stowed my Rover in favor of a Bushi Tanto. Simply awesome aesthetics. Slightly reduced PD is augmented by increased long range offensive support in the form of LRMs and its built in "shuttle" weapon. It sacrifices some mobility in favor of a built in fighter wing, which I'm on the fence about. It almost feels like cheating. Quick, powerful fighters with no fleet upkeep cost or logistic hit. It's essentially free heavy fighters, and you get 6 craft. That combined with their ultra high RoF blasters and a somewhat obnoxious sound effect leave me kind of on the fence about this otherwise great ship. Time will determine if it remains a component of my fleet.
I'd really like to give the Lance carrier from TuP a run, I just haven't found one for sale yet. Another concept I've been playing with for carriers is replacing my single cruiser size carrier with two of the Hiigaran Faal-Corum Drone Carriers. Two small, fast ships would offer more tactical flexibility, but also complicates micromanagement and potentially leaves my carrier support more vulnerable. These also have an inbuilt fighter wing, in the form of drones. You get like 15 of them, each armed with the equivalent of a burst PD laser. Again, this feels a little overpowered. With the drones deployed in a holding pattern, this destroyer sized ship is effectively invulnerable to any massed amount of missiles and most fighters. Great concept for a ship, might need a little balancing attention.
Now that I've covered carriers, I guess I should get back on topic. Flagships. After reaching New Hiigara and buying their friendship, I purchased a Skaal Ion Beam Cruiser. After a brief test period, it was an easy decision to mothball the Sunder and make this my new personal flagship. It has a fairly slow, mediocre shield and only two open weapon mounts, both light energy. So what use is a fragile, relatively slow cruiser that can only mount a bare minimum of PD? The built in large energy weapon is what makes this ship shine. With a range that can keep you well out of reach of anything but LRMs or the occasional tachyon lance, this beam weapon is capable of dispatching any frigate or destroyer sized ship in a single burst usually. Cruisers rarely stand up to more than three or four firings. All this power comes at a cost, however. The Skaal is slow and unwieldy, and the maneuvering thruster and unstable injector mods are almost necessary to ensure a baseline level of mobility. It also generates flux. A lot of it. While the beam itself has a fairly high rate of fire, even with maxed out vents and capacitors flux has to be manually vented after each firing. Still, the ship has a lot of room for hull mods, maybe more than it should. I can equip unstable injectors, thrusters, turret gyros, and two high level small PD turrets and still have enough points left for nearly maxed out vents and capacitors. You are vulnerable to fighters, bombers, and frigates that manage to get close, but most AI frigates are too stupid to properly orbit and stay out of the way of your main weapon, a little escort support easily alleviates the enemy fighter problem. This ship is a ton of fun to use, hands down. Even with its drawbacks though, it feels a little OP. I might end up replacing it to avoid feeling like I'm cheating. I do, however, think it could be balanced pretty easily by dropping the burst damage to a more reasonable level. Cruisers should be a bit more demanding, and destroyers should be able to take more than a single burn.
I briefly played with a Bushi Katana, but found it lacking for my playstyle. It would make an excellent picket cruiser for a larger fleet though, I might bring it back for that later on. There are still quite a few more cruisers I want to try out, so we'll see what future testing has in store. I haven't had a chance to play with any Blackrock or Mayorate ships yet, and the Nomads are more fun to fight than to fly for me.
