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[SCC]

It's not about fighters being good, it's about fighters being faster and having more coverage than any ship that could be used as a PD boat. Not to forget that fighters can fly through ships too.

[Megas]

During 0.65, LR PD spam on about two dozen Wolves had decent PD coverage, though that was more a side-effect of so many ships overrunning everything.  With current LR PD flux costs, ships would run into flux problems.  With the coming change for 0.8.1, they should be a bit more useful at stopping a stray missile or two.  Still would not be much use against Squalls or huge missile spam due to low power.

I tend to be a bit afraid of missiles so PD is overly abundant in my fleets.

To the point that many ships might only have one or two actual guns to fight with.

In case of some ships, that is a good idea due to flux usage.  More guns for assault are not always better if the ship does not have the flux to support more guns.  Legion with two Mjolnir often kills about as quickly as Legion with two Mjolnir plus a third weapon.  Onslaught does not have much flux stats to support more than TPCs and heavy weapons.  It is a good idea for Onslaught to load up on flak.

[billi999]

Contrary to how you might think PD = effective against missiles = effective against fighters, I find less PD can actually be more effective against fighters at times, because certain wings like the broadsword can clog up your PD with those active flares while being very dangerous to your shield, thus leaving them untouchable and yourself open to enemy strikes. I have had great experiences with both a SO hammerhead and a SO eagle for less PD and highly aggressive behaviour and just bulldozing everything (granted I used them as flagships though).

Hammerhead: 2x heavy machine guns, 2x light assault guns up front, 2x LR PD lasers at back. Missile slots empty. SO as mentioned.
Eagle: 2x heavy machine guns (leave the middle ballistic empty), 1x ion cannon in the front middle small energy slot, 2x IR pulse lasers, 3x pulse lasers, 2x burst PD at the back. Missile slots empty again.

For the Eagle I initially tried a PD heavy approach but it just couldn't kill fighters fast enough. After a few rounds of optimization I came up with the above. It can do it all, it has the grunt to take out fighters quickly, and that same firepower is pretty deadly against your regular ships. You might think it's open to missile attacks but unless you're getting completely swarmed you can usually swing the HMGs around thanks to maneouvering jets (also helps if you want to speed up clearing off fighter swarms). The burst PD is almost always enough to get rid of those annoying salamanders with precision and not an enormous OP cost since you're only using 2 of them. I guess the whole thing is pretty flux heavy but since you have SO your flux dissipation is doubled and maxing vents helps a lot.

[Thaago]

billi999's point is really good about PD sometimes being less effective against fighters because of the flare system. I find both tac lasers as light assualt guns to be really effective anti-fighter, non pd weapons - the front turret in my Lasher's is always a LAG so that it can deal with fighters better. Haven't really tried IR pulse for that role.

[cjuicy]

I keep a wolf or two late game with Tac lasers, Swarmers, and Gravitons. No IPDAI due to PD flares, but for a while I also had a normal PD laser.
They were great for clearing out bombers/heavy fighters.

[ahrenjb]

I rarely field dedicated PD ships, but it's also a strategy I haven't put much effort into developing.

Early game, I really like having a Shepherd escort with a Swarmer to provide PD escort to weaker destroyers or mount starved frigates. Mid to late game, I'm usually cramming as much PD as I can onto ships because fighters start to become much more prevalent, and you just can't be safe without it.

I've been meaning to try getting some 4-frigate PD groups together as cruiser or capital ship escorts, but my recent campaigns have been based on running whatever I can salvage or find at the time which has meant a lot of mishmash fleets and sub-par weapons loadouts. I'm just getting to the point in my current game where I can start building some more "hand crafted" fleets.

Honestly, I'd like to see the ranges of most weapons in game increased by as much as 50-100% combined with the ability to zoom out a little farther in the battle screen. It would be easier to space ships out in sensible formations and establish overlapping fields of fire which would increase the strategy element a little. Don't know how it would actually play out, but I might have to try my hand at putting a mod together to put this to the test.

[Megas]

Honestly, I'd like to see the ranges of most weapons in game increased by as much as 50-100% combined with the ability to zoom out a little farther in the battle screen. It would be easier to space ships out in sensible formations and establish overlapping fields of fire which would increase the strategy element a little. Don't know how it would actually play out, but I might have to try my hand at putting a mod together to put this to the test.

That was something I forgot to mention in my feedback topic:  weapon range!

For most of the game, weapon range was annoyingly short.  Early in the game, I felt my ships were playing with knives and chainsaws, not guns and cannons.  When I made it to cruisers around mid-game, it was a bit better but not by much.  Actually, I probably would have ranted more about terrible shot range all around until I got Paragon.  When I got Paragon, my desire for long-range combat was partially satisfied.  However, it would be nice if there were more viable long-range options.  It kind of stinks to wait until endgame before I can use something resembling long-range combat (that is not fighters).

Yes, I like to see weapon ranges increased across the board.

I also like to see ships sped up across the board too.  Even when game is run at double speed, it still feels a bit slow-paced at times.  It would consider running game at 2.5f, but Alex warned about fidelity issues when running game too fast.  (I tried and I can kind of see what he means.)

[FooF]

I've tried using Hammerheads with 4x LRPD in this role before but a.) LRPD isn't that good b.) it gimps the Hammerhead to using just the two medium ballistics and missiles to do anything of consequence and c.) ships are too spread out most of the time. Energy PD is pretty much a luxury if I can squeeze it in but Dual Flak is on every Cruiser/Capital I have that has a medium ballistic mount. Dedicated PD boats only work if they're guarding stuff and that seems like a waste in everything but the biggest fleet battles.

To be honest, I gear up most of my ships as if they're going to be solo'ing everything. If I make every ship relatively self-contained, when they fight together, their PD overlaps.

[Cik]

yeah, weapon range is an "issue" at least if you want a game where PD is actually a thing you build ships FOR instead of basically just a stand-alone feature of every ship. in the patches before now fighters were so toothless that PD was rarely more than an afterthought, but if fighters retain their current power it might be good to start thinking about what a flak ship looks like.

granted i feel like alex is loathe to put in anything with """"real""""" range (as in, half of the table) because of what a nightmare that stuff always is to balance without a real deployment/sensor/whatever system to actually degrade the enemy's ability to target you at great ranges. as it is now anything past the range of an II sledge gun is basically out of the running as a thing because on a ballistic projectile of a reasonable speed there's never any ability to dodge for anything cruiser+. because there's no inherent uncertainty of the enemy's range at longer ranges there's never any incentive to close past the absolute max range of your guns and thus broadening that range ends up making everything just a kite+snipe game of "mount the longest range guns on everything and hold range until enemy dies" which is not great fun.

basically:

PD ships require range extensions or ship passthrough to work
both aren't very workable
PD ships are likely going to remain mostly useless/nonexistent for this reason
ordnance then has to be balanced around an individual ship level, not a fleet level
weird effects

not really sure there's a way out of this problem

[Megas]

To be honest, I gear up most of my ships as if they're going to be solo'ing everything. If I make every ship relatively self-contained, when they fight together, their PD overlaps.

That is what I do.  Try to build ships to be self-sufficient.  When you get enough of them, they collectively act as PD boats for each other.

0.65 was glorious for frigates.  With more than twenty Wolves overrunning the enemy (along with ten to twenty more frigates with ballistics and missiles), there were beams and missiles (Swarmers or Salamanders) everywhere, and the enemy and missiles were fried in a beam spam crossfire.

[Schwartz]

My ships all get decent individual PD, except for efficient shield setups or specialty ships.

The only time I went all-out on PD was when fighting Templars in previous modded versions. And even then Vulcans were pretty pointless against Clarents. Higher range and higher burst damage PD was required to handle these. Aegis Flak, medium Flare Launchers etc. Haven't tried mods for this version yet, so that'll be interesting.