So, I've finally finished my second vanilla campaign. I ended up with postponing my modded experience since I wanted to see what all the dakka in vanilla was all about. It impressed me in some ways and disappointed me in others.Anyway, the self imposed rules of this campaign were to
1)not use any laser weapon bigger than an LR laser, excluding taclasers
2)Not use any "blue trail" ship, not even the pirate ones, I also avoided ships that could be undone by the "no energy" rule like the Eagles and barred some ships I used extensively in the previous campaign (Drover) and a single fighter type (Spark, because ofc the thing is disgusting)
3)Play Iron Mode and not safescum, no matter how unfair it got. I've got to say I managed it somewhat. This had to make me restrart the campaign once but no matter since it was a very dumb reason anyway.
With that out of the way, here's my fleet starting from biggest to smallest ship:
Legion (normal variant): 6
I fell in love with the standard version of this. I was not a big fan of litterally running out of weapons on a ship that more or less can only retreat at 40 speed so I went into customization with the objective of suppressing any and all enemies by overloading shields and drowning them in fighters, sometimes both at the same time, 7 Hypervelocity drivers really do work at any range, with great flux efficiency and EMP effects to boot. Three of the legions are full of Broadsword Heavy Fighters when I basically just need them to do shield damage and keep the enemy occupied, while the other 3 are with a full Hammer loadout to give all sorts of fast and/or phase ships the heebie jeebies. A stock (no commander in there) variant of this can beat pretty much anything but a Paragon, two stock versions beat that one too, abeit after some time. They are not the primary damage dealers in my fleet.
Dominator (IV group): 8
This thing. It just wont die. It's great against a superior enemy force or to just distract one of those [REDACTED] murder bois from eating away at my legions uninterrupted. 11k health, high armor, the amazing point defence when compared to capitals and the brutalistic way it fights really sold me on the Dominator. I simply tossed any and all missile weaponry aside and just went for the dakka. The Mk.9 autocannon does amazing damage against shields but it also does some good work against armor. A pair of Hypervelocity drivers would probably work better than the maulers but I wanted more of a generalist unit as the backbone of my fleet and this does it. I find the auxiliary thrusters to be ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY since the thing handles like a damn log into a pool of molasse, it also renders it pretty capable of chasing down destroyers and even frigades effectively in conjuction with the booster, with the added bonus of not getting absolutely shredded by phase ships without a fight.
Heron : 5
I used to want a fast, nimble destroyer to properly couple my very heavy fleet composition, but I soon found out (against endgame fleets) that I lacked both concentrated shield and armor damage to quicly finish off/keep away the most dangerous enemies. I decided to build upon my already solid fighter presence with bomber action and it paid off quite well. The Heron is a really fast, hard hitting carrier that might not be doing decisive damage to enemies bigger than a destroyer but that will force retreats and/or allow my Dominators to keep the pressure on and bring the target down.
While I definetly had more fun in this fleet compared to the laser vomit one, I've got to admit I did not like the lenghts at wich the vanilla meta forced me to change its compositions, especially the weapons. Kinetic damage is just the way to go I'm afraid. High explosive damage just does not cut it if the enemy has such a huge flux pool that it's basically making your own ship fire less effectively and the enemy one advance more aggressively. Armor more or less feels like just an extansion of HP pools and not something that should totally be able to negate small arms fire damage like shield weapons or hell, even Broadsword machinegun fire.
Speaking of wich, fighters are so damn strong, even without sparks. Broadsowrds are basically infinite HP pools you throw at the enemy and a full Hammer squad is superior to any frigade/destroyer when it comes to chasing things down and hardcountering swarm plays/phase ships. I just wish there was more depth into it rather than "forget the high explosive, just spam kinetic and EMP until everything dies" approach.
Another thing I wished was better AI ship designs. Is there a mod making enemy ships have better customization?