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[Linnis]

Cheap frigates mass + industry skill is quite fun.

I did some comparison it is actually quite cost efficient even if you lose some frigates.

 The problem really comes from having to keep crew topped up as that becomes a problem really quickly.

[SonnaBanana]

back to work, code monkey :whip:

The whip is buggy and doesn't do anything so far. It'll be fixed after the Burn Drive and Plasma Burn AI behavior fixes.

[Sandor057]

Cheap frigates mass + industry skill is quite fun.

I did some comparison it is actually quite cost efficient even if you lose some frigates.

 The problem really comes from having to keep crew topped up as that becomes a problem really quickly.

I'll second that. I usually have around 10-12ish frigates in my fleet. About 3-4 of them are tailored to some kind of situation or fire support role, but the rest is usually Wolves. While generally fragile, they can be quite fun and can swarm a smaller blob of larger ships if they don't have the maneuverability to respond (or fighters, the right fighters can tear them apart like there's no tomorrow). Also, for some flanking support you can quite easily deploy them 1-2 minutes into battle and make them take over the enemy fleet. Still, losses are to be expected, so only do something like this if you have the money or industry to replace losses.

Or alternatively, use cheaper frigates (basically any Luddic Path variant), give them weapons just sufficient to be annoying, deploy them to outflank the enemy and while enemy ships are distracted, get some work done by your Cruisers/Destroyers, or sic your bombers on them. While fun and sometimes surprisingly efficient, your will have losses. Nevertheless, no real shame of the frigates. As long as you don't get a Degraded Engines D-mod, you're good to recycle them.

[blazeroth]

Don't you find the frigate wolf packs suffering from attrition, or do the frigates somehow manage to stay alive most of the time? I usually get an initial pack of frigates early on, and then just stop holding on to them and let them die out as they are destroyed in battle. By the time I have my first capital, it's pretty rare for me to have more than one or two frigates left.

[TaLaR]

A frigate needs to be constantly over the top aggressive, because it will lose by PPT by default otherwise. Ai can't play like that, and while player can, only phase frigates are good enough at it to justify the effort.
Frigate fleet is not a viable endgame strategy, but is convenient early (since I don't want to needlessly drop Burn Speed).

[Flying Birdy]

Don't you find the frigate wolf packs suffering from attrition, or do the frigates somehow manage to stay alive most of the time? I usually get an initial pack of frigates early on, and then just stop holding on to them and let them die out as they are destroyed in battle. By the time I have my first capital, it's pretty rare for me to have more than one or two frigates left.

That's what reinforced bulkheads are for.

I deploy frigates with the expectation that they die in battle. By the time I get my first colony up and running, my frigates usually have 4+ dmods on them.

[Sandor057]

Don't you find the frigate wolf packs suffering from attrition, or do the frigates somehow manage to stay alive most of the time? I usually get an initial pack of frigates early on, and then just stop holding on to them and let them die out as they are destroyed in battle. By the time I have my first capital, it's pretty rare for me to have more than one or two frigates left.

Wolves do suffer from attrition if the battle takes longer, so as of midgame Hardened Subsystems is a must for them. Also, the AI directs your units to attack the nearest enemies, so you should make a control group out of them and make waypoints, so that they outflank enemies. This costs command points, and requires some micromanagement on the player's part, so if you don't like that aspect, then I just recommend using tougher frigates, or assigning them on escort duty right away and that's about it. Still, if used correctly, 2-3 wolves can cause sufficient distraction for you to be able to snipe bigger ships which would have taken ages otherwise. Most slow ships cannot really react to a threat from the rear if their attention is focused on a similar threat from the front, so Ion Beams to the engine are all you need to give you 10-15 seconds to tear just about anything apart.

As said above though, expect losses. Wolves need to rely on speed and maneuverability to stay alive. They can take a few shots, but that's about it. So don't expect them to win the fight for you, and you shouldn't leave them stranded. They can provide you a few opportunities, but that's it.

[IraqiWalker]

Battle size is total - you and your allies and your opponents. If you're deploying 360, and battle size is 500, that means your opponents can only field 140 points worth of ships.

Well that makes a LOT more sense to me now. Thanks for the explanation.

[Amoebka]

I tend to avoid frigates mostly because they just don't kill fast enough. Almost all fights in the game I fight when outnumbered 120 to 180, and the most reliable way to win is by having ships that can burst down enemy destroyers immediately, quickly gang up on cruisers, and then camp reinforcements. Frigates can't do that, outside of the few premium ones (SO Brawler, Tempest... and that's it I think), and even when they do, they are worse than destroyers at it (die to fighter swarms, run out of PPT).

It also somewhat boggles my mind that most frigates in the game are intended to be "support" ships that can't achieve much on their own and are supposed to escort bigger ships. What's even the point of an escort that has PPT 3 times lower than it's mothership?

[IraqiWalker]

I tend to avoid frigates mostly because they just don't kill fast enough. Almost all fights in the game I fight when outnumbered 120 to 180, and the most reliable way to win is by having ships that can burst down enemy destroyers immediately, quickly gang up on cruisers, and then camp reinforcements. Frigates can't do that, outside of the few premium ones (SO Brawler, Tempest... and that's it I think), and even when they do, they are worse than destroyers at it (die to fighter swarms, run out of PPT).

It also somewhat boggles my mind that most frigates in the game are intended to be "support" ships that can't achieve much on their own and are supposed to escort bigger ships. What's even the point of an escort that has PPT 3 times lower than it's mothership?

My fleets usually are composed of 5 ships of each class, minimum, plus the fuel, troop, and cargo haulers. The frigates I have are usually used in hunting down fleeing enemies.  Sure, my 4 tach-lance paragon can literally delete several frigates with one click of the fire button, but it is annoying to keep chasing them. So usually, if I deploy frigates, they are either deployed and ordered to be escorts, summoned as reinforcements once my big ships have worn down their big ships, to go kill and chase, or sometimes used only in the second engagement when I am pursuing the survivors.

I know people love phase ships, but for me, the Medusa destroyer is queen of the chase. I usually have an officer commanding a medusa as the head of my pursuit fleet.

Exact loadout: 2 light needleers up front. 2 Heavy Blasters, 2 IR Pulse Lasers on the front side mounts, and two burst pd lasers on the rear mounts. 1 capacitor, 19 vents, hardened shields and resistant flux conduits.

A small squad of these can burst down shields and hulls super fast.

They're not meant for long duration missions, they're meant to show up, blow something up really fast, and get out. That's how I use my destroyers, and my frigates.

Now, when running an all frigate fleet, there's something to be said for getting the damaged and worn down ships to retreat, and sending in a second, third, or even 4th swarm.

[Igncom1]

Yeah one of the best ways to deploy some ships is half way through a battle to prey on the weak.

Drag the enemy fleet into a corner of the map after your heavies and then flank with a frigate swarm to nibble at their weak points.

[Amoebka]

Thing is, "preying on the weak" (what they call a "win more" option in card games) isn't a very valuable thing to do. If you managed to break the initial deployment, the battle is usually over and cleaning up is trivial either way. You don't need specialized ships for that, especially when they are useless in most other scenarios.

Deploying several huge waves of frigates would be potentially amusing, but you can't do that because of the 30 ship fleet limit. That's at best 1.5 waves at 120 dp.

[Helldiver]

What's even the point of an escort that has PPT 3 times lower than it's mothership?

This so much. No escort ship can function right now due to not being able to fight alongside the bigger ship long enough.
Add to that escorts blocking the big ship's guns (no formation AI) and most PD on smaller ships having such low range that they can't cover the bigger ship's perimeter.

[Megas]

Thing is, "preying on the weak" (what they call a "win more" option in card games) isn't a very valuable thing to do. If you managed to break the initial deployment, the battle is usually over and cleaning up is trivial either way. You don't need specialized ships for that, especially when they are useless in most other scenarios.

Deploying several huge waves of frigates would be potentially amusing, but you can't do that because of the 30 ship fleet limit. That's at best 1.5 waves at 120 dp.

I agree.  I noticed that in endgame fights, they are generally decided by whoever smashes the initial rush first.  After that (assuming the fight is not some huge endurance slog), victory is mostly assured (just kill the trickle of reinforcements), but the fight changes toward casualty prevention (i.e., don't let your AI ships do stupid things).  If my big ships can flatten the initial rush, they can destroy whatever trickles in later, usually, and do not need further help, barring PPT expiration.

Due to cowardly AI, fast scaling of fleets, and too low PPT, I consider most frigates obsolete by the time the player leaves Corvus for the first time.  Destroyers are okay until around late-game.

There were previous releases when frigate fleet was good.  0.6.5a was the golden age for frigates.  Even during 0.7.x, when Onslaught was the godship, had moments when frigates could shine.

0.8 and later killed most frigates with weaker skills, cowardly AI, and bigger enemy fleets.

I doubt thirty frigates will do much when the enemy has ten capitals and twenty cruisers.

[Twilight Sentinel]

I doubt thirty frigates will do much when the enemy has ten capitals and twenty cruisers.

That's exactly the problem.  You might be able to deal with such a fleet with a handful of large ships plus a hundred frigates.  Then you'd have the same deployment numbers between each fleet.  But you can't take one hundred frigates in your fleet.  Plus any number of smaller ships probably means that your opponent gets a deployment advantage, which makes those frigates and destroyers a liability even if you don't use them.  Those hundred frigates would also have the same maintenance, fuel, and crew costs as well as similar armament costs.  It's only the arbitrary 30 ship limit in the fleet that stops you from doing this.  Which might be done for entirely sensible reasons performance wise.  The unfortunate consequence is that it means you're forced to use fleets composed of larger and larger ships as the game goes on.  If you don't like that gameplay, you're just out of luck.