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Author Topic: My fleets struggle versus carriers  (Read 5460 times)

Igncom1

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Re: My fleets struggle versus carriers
« Reply #15 on: October 18, 2020, 03:17:58 AM »

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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intrinsic_parity

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Re: My fleets struggle versus carriers
« Reply #16 on: October 18, 2020, 08:42:04 AM »

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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Dampfnudel

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Re: My fleets struggle versus carriers
« Reply #17 on: October 18, 2020, 09:59:53 AM »

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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intrinsic_parity

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Re: My fleets struggle versus carriers
« Reply #18 on: October 18, 2020, 10:18:10 AM »

you can recover remnant fighters from battles and also get them from research stations I believe
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Megas

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Re: My fleets struggle versus carriers
« Reply #19 on: October 18, 2020, 10:51:34 AM »

Flash wings are Remnant fighters, and may be looted like Sparks.
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Dampfnudel

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Re: My fleets struggle versus carriers
« Reply #20 on: October 19, 2020, 12:31:45 AM »

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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Dampfnudel

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Re: My fleets struggle versus carriers
« Reply #21 on: October 19, 2020, 12:35:06 AM »

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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Goumindong

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Re: My fleets struggle versus carriers
« Reply #22 on: October 19, 2020, 02:16:01 AM »

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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Igncom1

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Re: My fleets struggle versus carriers
« Reply #23 on: October 19, 2020, 04:48:57 AM »

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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Arcagnello

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Re: My fleets struggle versus carriers
« Reply #24 on: October 19, 2020, 09:06:44 AM »

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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Thaago

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Re: My fleets struggle versus carriers
« Reply #25 on: October 19, 2020, 10:52:22 AM »

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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Arcagnello

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Re: My fleets struggle versus carriers
« Reply #26 on: October 19, 2020, 02:55:15 PM »

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!
« Last Edit: October 19, 2020, 03:38:52 PM by Arcagnello »
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DancingMonkey

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Re: My fleets struggle versus carriers
« Reply #27 on: October 20, 2020, 07:12:29 AM »

Advanced turret gyros along with any sort of beam weapon shreds fighters in my experience.
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Dampfnudel

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Re: My fleets struggle versus carriers
« Reply #28 on: October 20, 2020, 09:32:12 AM »

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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TaLaR

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Re: My fleets struggle versus carriers
« Reply #29 on: October 20, 2020, 09:41:14 AM »

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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