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[woodsmoke]

So I came across this sumbitch while playing today.

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Normally carriers aren't a problem for me; I just transfer command to my medusa, hop behind enemy lines and hunt down the condors while my fleet handles the rest of the enemy's ships. The problem is, in this case, there's precious little else to handle, and between the eight of the bastards the battle map is essentially just wall-to-wall missiles and fighter wings. I'm basically squaring off against a zerg rush and finding, much to my frustration, none of my usual tactics seem to work. If I try to rush the carriers I get surrounded and overwhelmed and if I try to lure them out my ships start running into CR problems before the carriers simply turn tail and run as soon as their fighter hulls are exhausted anyway. I've fought fleets boasting multiple battleships gave me less grief than this one.

This is my fleet, for reference.

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Any ideas?

[Screamlord Scrub Seeker™]

lots, and LOTS of point defense, preferable lasers

[Protonus]

I think flushing out fighters and oncoming missiles with point-defenses on cruisers and battleships in a corner is the best bet of cleaning off striker-blobs at the moment. It may be a long fight but at least it keeps your ships from being overwhelmed by larger ships whilst stung constantly by bombers.

[King Alfonzo]

Flak Cannons on the Vigilance, heavy Burst Lasers on the Medusa, and fill out the medium slots on the Conquest and Vigilance with flak. The Afflictor and Phase Frigate should not be deployed. Kites with dual machine guns can be useful-ish, but don't expect miracles. Lashers with SO and machine guns can do a fair whack of damage to fighters and bombers, but lack effectiveness vs. missiles. Centurion, Sunder and the Hammerheads are going to be at a bit of a disadvantage; the Centurion because it's difficult to get proper fire focus to take out threats (although it has Damper field so it should last longish), and the hammerhead and sunders concentrate their firepower too narrowly forward. Dual heavy machine guns or burst flak cannons on the Hammerheads can kind of help. Maybe keep one around to take out the hounds, then deploy the rest later when the fighter numbers drop. The Vigilances aren't going to help you, unless you have access to anti-fighter missiles from a mod. The Wolf will maybe survive if covered in PD.

Overall I believe the idea is to not deploy everything you have, just deploy enough to mince the fighters. Eventually they will hit 0 CR and be essentially useless, and the condors will flee. Then, for the pursuit, chuck in your undeployed ships (the phase frigates come to mind, Kites will be more useful here than on the proper battlefield) to mop up.

[Harmful Mechanic]

Get into the Medusa, and configure it for carrier hunting. Twin AM Blasters, pulse lasers, railguns or needlers in the hardpoints, burst PD. Set your phase frigates to follow you.

Set the rest of your frigates to capture any Nav Buoys and Sensor Arrays on the map. Rally the rest of your fleet (don't bother deploying the Conquest or the Sunder) in a tight bundle in front of the most valuable point (probably a Nav Buoy). This should allow them to cover each other nicely against bomber strikes. Everything that can mount a Dual Flak or Burst PD/HBL, should. Tac Lasers in every other small energy/hybrid slot.

(The Enforcer in particular makes a great goalkeeper against fighters; three Dual Flaks, two Heavy MGs, and four Swarmers will clean up those Daggers nicely).

Run like hell for the rear edge of the map when you deploy, doglegging to avoid being snared by too many fighters (you'll probably run into a few; wipe them out and keep going), and work your way around the back, killing any carrier you see. Your phase ships can be set loose on other carriers.

[Gothars]

I'd try to escape, and instantly turn around in the escape scenario. The carriers will all deploy at the bottom very close to you, while the fighters should mostly deploy further away at the sides. That gives you time to wipe out the carriers before they get fighter support.


I'd love to try it myself, do you have the safe?

[Sy]

I'd try to escape, and instantly turn around in the escape scenario. The carriers will all deploy at the bottom very close to you, while the fighters should mostly deploy further away at the sides. That gives you time to wipe out the carriers before they get fighter support.

that could work, but there's a high chance you'd lose your civilian ships. with that many bombers, defending your Atlas is gonna be a nightmare.

my suggestion:

• don't deploy ships that are vulnerable to getting surrounded and killed, like Vigilance (unless its loadout has good PD).
• try to keep your ships close together in one or two groups, so they can cover each other.
• go after the carriers, but don't rush in with just a small force. Condors are slow, you can probably corner and catch them even with your larger ships. even if it takes a while to get them all, taking them out one by one should slowly reduce the number of fighters you have to contend with, as your large group(s) will likely kill them faster as they can be replaced.

for future battles, since this kind of enemy fleet seems to cause yours a lot of trouble, i'd either get some carriers and fighters of my own (particularly ones that are good at killing enemy fighters, like Wasp, Boradsword, Gladius, Xyphos) or get some dedicated PD ships armed with Swarmer missiles, Tactical Lasers (+ Advanced Turret Gyros hullmod), (Heavy) Burst Lasers (+ Expanded Magazines hullmod), (Dual) Flak Cannons, or even the large Guardian PD System. Odyssey, Aurora, Medusa, Enforcer and Centurion all work well for this job. most carriers themselves can also be outfitted with good PD/anti-fighter weapons.

[Megas]

This is one where I would deploy one of the bigger ships alone, sit at an objective, then kill everything that tries to steal my point.  It gets tedious with so many fighters and you get forced to kill them all first, but it will get the job done.  Then, if the carriers retreat and there entire fleet retreat, auto-resolve the pursuit to wipe as much as you can without risking your ships.

[HELMUT]

Agree with Megas on this one. With that many bombers, your destroyers/cruisers have a high chance of being overwhelmed no matter what.

Deploying the Conquest alone is probably the safest strategy here, it's fast enough to keep the Piranhas at bays and dodge/intercept the Daggers. The tricky part will be to manage the shield to avoid being overloaded by the Broadswords and flamed-out by the Thunders. Depending on your loadout, you should be able to take down the first wave before the arrival of the bombers.

No need to force a direct engagement with the Condors, you should have enough CR to beat them in an endurance fight. The fighters only have regular crewmen and shouldn't have too many replacement.

Ideally, this is what i would try to fight with:

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Piranhas and Broadwords will saturate the screen with relatively harmless projectiles (bombs are too slow and swarmers too weak), which is why i picked Tac lasers over PD lasers.

Single flak have longer range and AOE than the dual version (also quite a bit cheaper), which is pretty good for the "offensive" side of the Conquest, in combo with the always good Mjolnir.

The other side is what you'll switch to when the enemy will engage you at close range. Four dual flaks will be more than enough to stop most projectiles and give you some breathing.

The twin charge launchers at the prow have huge AOE and sufficient burst damage to destroy entire fighters wings in an instant. Insta-kill on the whole fighter wings prevent them from being "resurrected" by the carrier (i don't know if it's bug, but it's a neat feature i think). And because of the long range, you can even start firing them even before seeing the enemy. Otherwise, you can still try the Locust srm launcher.

Swarmers on the sides if you're lazy, or two additional proximity charge launchers is also an option.

[Sy]

Ideally, this is what i would try to fight with:

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that's a great loadout. i'd still switch two of the Dual Flaks to the starboard side, though. a bit of extra range on the normal Flaks is nice, but the DF's increased dps more than makes up for that. two normal Flaks probably won't cut it once a swarm of Reapers comes flying, and you can't count on dodging all of them.

[woodsmoke]

Damn, I wasn't expecting so many responses. Lots of really good ideas here; thanks a ton folks.