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[Philder]

Now that we've entered the age of fighters, we're going to need to come up with some good ideas on how to efficiently counter carrier fleets without resorting to just carrying more fighters ourselves. Although fighters are nice, and more fighters are great, some of us may want to try another route instead of being forced into a specific fleet comp.

So, what tactics and strategies have you come up with to combat the fighter menace? What ideas or idealogies are you working with?

.

I'll start off with something on fleet tactics: One problem with fighting fighters is that once they start mixing into your forces, friendly fire becomes an issue. As such, I've been thinking that going the route of Burst PD and Swarmer SRM would be the most effectient way to go. Machineguns and Vulcans are too short ranged, and getting your hands on enough turreted medium ballistic slots for Flak means investing in Enforcers (I don't like enforcers...). LAGs only seem to be an option for the Sunder and phase ships, as LAGs become flux expensive while they try to mow down small and fast moving fighters (also, friendly fire), so low-tech ships with bad shield efficiency and flux cap will struggle to deal with fighters.

In comes Burst PD and Swarmers! Swarmers is rather obvious as they're purposely designed for fighters. The low DPS is countered by a high hit%, HE damage, zero flux costs, and the ability to be shot through allied ships. A cost is the loss of a missile slot that could otherwise hold some dangerous harpoons, but a benefit is that Swarmers are so spammable that they'll create missile screens for your other ships that DO have harpoons. Now as far as Burst PD, their burst and tendency to have plenty of downtime means that their DPS over time is closer to 214dps rather than the 64dps. Two subtle benefits of Burst beams are, 1) the way that burst beam affects interact with armor ( http://starsector.wikia.com/wiki/Armor ), giving Burst PD a slight increase in damage, and 2) the hit rate. While ballistic alternatives may advertise higher damage number, Burst PD actually does the damage it says. Add on the increased range, the option to further increase the range with Advanced Optics, and the plethora of ships with small energy slots and you've got a pretty good tool for dealing with fighters.

As such, I nominate the Medusa and mid-tech ships as ships that can effectively mount anti-fighter capabilities while still being able to deal with larger ships. The Conquest and Odyssey are attractive anti-fighter platforms as well. The Conquest in particular I can't wait to try. I think I would set a support Eagle to escort me in the Conquest, and while my fleet faces off with the main enemy force I would sneak around the sides to take out any lightly defended carriers.

[orost]

The best anti-fighter tactic is to get behind enemy lines and kill the carrier.

[Bastion.Systems]

Fight fire with fire! Start employing carriers full of interceptor type fighters  

[Cik]

yeah

carriers are often weak except lulmora
just go shoot them
mora's absolutely insane survivability probably requires a nerf bat to be honest with you, the fact that it can stand up to so much all while taking no penalty from ion shots / crippling damage is kind of a problem. the fighters themselves are probably OK in most ways.

the tradeoff is survivability and maneuverability, survivability being the more important of the two. nothing should be as invulnerable as the mora and still be able to vomit insane waves of khopesh/fighters at stuff.

but to be honest with you i don't really think fighters need a dedicated hard counter that isn't other fighters. larger ships shouldn't need to counter the fighters, because larger ships can kill the carrier. if you are really having a lot of problems with them, there are plenty of interceptors. just get some. the balance of power always favors the strictly defensive on it's face. if the enemy is throwing 10 wings at you of mixed fighters/bombers, then you should only really need 5-6 wings to be able to stymie him.

granted of course this may not honestly be true in starsector because battlespace control is rarely a thing and every fight takes place at insanely close ranges (IE, the strike bombers are already basically in WEZ before the fight starts)

but whatever lul

[cjuicy]

I recommend 2 Enforcers fitted out with a crap load of Flak/Dual Flak and Swarmers. Other than that, perhaps Centurions or Monitors. Mount the former with PD and Swarmers, and the latter with whatever you want.
PD Lashers sounds lucrative, especially if you make them SO so they eat frigates and destroyers no matter what.
Brawlers to just sit right next to the carrier might be a counter to the Mora. (Fight fire with fire: Damper field to fight Damper fields.)

[cp252]

Beam heavy builds are good, like Graviton beams and tactical lasers (both range 1000).

[Gothars]

Has anyone extended experience with the Locust? The few times I tried it, it didn't seem worth the large missile slot.

[PCCL]

Has anyone extended experience with the Locust? The few times I tried it, it didn't seem worth the large missile slot.

Only in the last hurrah. It seems to suffer greatly from overkilling. 20 missiles are too much for a single fighter and target reacquisition leaves much to be desired

[Philder]

@comments regarding fighters to counter fighters:

As I mentioned in the top post, the intention is to discuss alternatives to fighters.

[StarGibbon]

Paragon.

A properly equipped Paragon hard counters fighter spam, and was the only thing in the campaign that stopped my super buffed, all carrier fleet cold. I like to believe I could have stopped it with more specialized fighter loadouts, but general purpose carriers typically cant overcome its shields and range.

Of course, deploying arguably the most powerful ship in the game as a counter probably isnt what you were looking for i terms of practical advice.

[Thaago]

One thing I've noticed is that the ship being swarmed has a hard time hitting fighters, but escorts or just other ships around do a good job of wrecking fighters as they approach their targets. So put some decent range PD/beams on all your ships and stick together.

As other have said, eliminate orders on enemy carriers are a good choice.

Dedicated escorts work pretty well. Omens, if you can find them, punch as hard as a cruiser against fighter swarms. After that, a beam wolf has remarkably good anti-fighter as long as it doesn't get too confused. And finally your own interceptors help a lot.

[ANGRYABOUTELVES]

Generally speaking the only ships I've found to hold up against my very carrier heavy fleet have efficient 360° shields and are either agile enough to get out of the way of most bombing runs or have Fortress Shield. So Omens, Monitors, and the Paragon. Beam wolves get surrounded and ripped apart. Enforcers die in a single 4Khopesh/2Longbow bombing pass. Phase ships can dodge bombing runs but can't deal with interceptors camping on top of them until they unphase.

The last time I used the Locust was back when the Aurora still had a large missile slot, and a Locust Aurora was very good at ripping apart carrier fleets. In my opinion, the old Aurora was the only ship that could effectively make use of the Locust. It's fast enough to catch carriers, can get 360° shields with the Front Shield Emitter, and has enough small turret coverage to fend off smaller fighter swarms, but struggles against larger swarms or heavy bomber pressure. The Locust could help it with massive fighter swarms, but I fear the new Aurora just doesn't have enough shield HP to survive against the new Longbow.

[Voyager I]

One thing I've noticed is that PD tagged weapons do a fairly poor job of killing fighters; aside from their short range, they preferentially target missiles over the fighters themselves.  Between Swarmer Talons and chaff interceptors there is a lot of clutter for them to work through before their targeting algorithms will start trying to thin the swarm, and a lot of the time they just can't keep up.

For actually making fighters die, I've had more success with non-PD weapons that are good at hitting small targets; beams are the obvious choice, but you can also do well with ballistic weapons with accurate projectiles like Railguns and Maulers.  Range also helps a lot, because they have a much easier time tracking fighters on approach than when they're in the process of being mobbed.

[Cik]

against fighters really the trick is actually hitting them. any small tap will knock engines out and send them careening across the field, making any direct-fire weapons they carry mostly ineffective.

graviton/tac are probably the best. PD is really trash besides flak imo and that isn't really that effective against anything but maybe talons.

beam PD should probably get a small buff tbh, it's mostly a waste of time against any sort of fighter-carrying platform you don't significantly outmass/outnumber.

[StarGibbon]

against fighters really the trick is actually hitting them. any small tap will knock engines out and send them careening across the field, making any direct-fire weapons they carry mostly ineffective.

graviton/tac are probably the best. PD is really trash besides flak imo and that isn't really that effective against anything but maybe talons.

beam PD should probably get a small buff tbh, it's mostly a waste of time against any sort of fighter-carrying platform you don't significantly outmass/outnumber.

Burst PD are decent.  But like a lot of people probably, I usually skimp on the PD to squeeze more damage potential out of my forward weapons, which is fine, but in which case I *deserve* to be vulnerable to fightercraft. Most forward weapons actually do a decent job of thinning fighter swarms if you see a cluster heading your way, leaving less for your PD to contend with.

That said, I don't think the player is particularly vulnerable to fighters. They're more dangerous to your smaller ships that get isolated on the fringe of battle. Fighters dont become a serious threat to the player until most of your fleet is gone and everyone is focusing on you, by which point you've probably lost anyway. The player, as long as they have decent shields, can have the presence of mind to ignore them and punch out the real threat.

 Slow, lightly shielded ships relying on armor get eaten alive by them though, which is why I never though Moras were the threat that some people felt they were if you were packing carriers of your own. Most carrier loadouts are specced to take out targets like that, but I don't encounter nearly as many anti-shield loadouts, which would be more more dangerous for the most common player ships.