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[shoi]

this is a good mod!

I try to make ZENITH REV wanzer using strife as a base, its so hard with so little pixels!

[Arkar1234]

You know... i have an idea....

Unique Mod-Versant IBBs!!

[Squish Cat]

This will probably be a bit long winded, and hopefully not sound too much like a rant.  My intention isn't to yell at anyone or call anyone else out specifically.  Given what just happened, though, I do feel a little frustrated at the moment, so I apologize in advance if this comes off as rantish or feels like a personal attack against the author of this mod.  It totally isn't meant to be, I swear!

So I decided to do a new faction play through and chose Diable Avionics as I'd never done a faction play through with them.  I have used Diable fighters before, just never their ships.  When I do faction play throughs, I generally try to stick exclusively to that factions ships and weapon systems.  I've always loved the way Diable ships look and the current story behind them is pretty neat.  The Versant is probably my favorite Diable ship looks wise.  The way it transforms is just frigin' sweet.  I'm using Nexrelin and Dynasector of course because yes.  I've never actually flown a Diable ship until last night, though.  Maybe I am doing something horribly wrong and I am just not "getting" these ships, but these ships feel incredibly paper thin and weak to me.  Perhaps this is just how the faction was designed and its supposed to be this way, I don't know, but I am losing even sided fights against things I wouldn't be losing too if I was flying vanilla ships or the other faction ship mods I am using.  It seems to me that unless I out number my enemy at least two to one, I lose.  Very badly.  Completely and utterly.  Going down in flames because you shot your own tail off Indiana Jone's style kind of losing.  Like, I'm losing so bad that I'll kill maybe one ship before all mine are dead.  This is happening in under two minutes as I'm not even going into CR loss by the time this happens.

My current fleet is 3 Vapors (with me flying one), a Draft, and a Fractus using 2 Frost wings.  I managed to build this up by getting super lucky and capturing an Atlas filled with supplies and machinery early in my play through.  It was only being guarded by a single Wolf and Cerberus, which I have to admit took me WAY longer to kill as a solo Vapor than I feel it should have.  The supplies and machinery it was carrying sold for a good 200k to Pirates which allowed me to build up what I have now.

For three hours (what can I say, I'm a stubborn bastard) I was banging my head against a merchant fleet of 2 Lashers, a Wolf and a Brawler guarding a juicy buffalo that might be carrying some Organics that they're keeping in reserve.  They kept completely wiping the floor with me, and I honestly wasn't understanding why.  I out numbered them.  I have a destroyer sized light-carrier that should be deleting at least one frigate right away with its fighters, or at the very least distracting it long enough to turn the fight 5v3.  Instead, the Vapors are getting themselves blown up over and over, and then the Fractus, with its paper thin defenses, was getting wrecked in half a second.  Finally I took a hard look at why the Fractus itself is dying so fast.  In a lot of these fights the Fractus was the first to explode.

After looking at stats and comparing them to other ships, I was beginning to understand why I was having this problem.  Seriously, statistics wise, the Fractus is possibly the weakest light-carrier and probably weakest combat focused destroyer sized ship in existence right now.  Its seriously weaker defensively than quite a few frigates and that shouldn't be happening.  Especially compared to the Vapors, and they're already having trouble as it is!  Even the Shadowyards Sargasso isn't this bad, and the Sargasso is kinda fragile too.  But the Sargasso is at least fast enough to stay out of the fight and let its fighters do the job.  Or maybe this is an AI thing, and the Fractus is considered a combat ship, while the Sargasso a "pure" carrier and avoids direct confrontations entirely.  Either way, the Fractus does not have the defensive capability to deal with front line combat.  I'm not talking about fire power here.  Fire power on carrier type ships comes from their fighters, not their guns.  I'm talking strictly about its ability to survive.  1.1 shield flux damage ratio and only 3500 flux capacity?  Ouch.  That is pretty bad.  Thats what I would expect a freighter to have, not a combat focused ship.  The Vapors are better than this (just barely) and they're frigates!  The Fractus does have decent hull HP and armor, but this isn't enough to save it.  I have to say that the Fractus is a pretty bad carrier.  I noticed someone above made a similar comment about Diable carriers not quite being up to snuff and I'm going to have to agree.  At least in regard to the Fractus, anyway.  The Fractus is a bad ship, and I'm starting to hate the Vapors.  Surprisingly, the Draft tends to out live the other AI controlled ships and ends up one of the last to go down.

So just to prove a point to myself, I stopped chasing that merchant, flew to a close by pirate base.  It was really close by where I had been trying to deal with this merchant fleet.  I grabbed a Lasher (D) that had 3 D-mods on it.  Compromised Engines (because its always Compromised Engines :x), Glitched Sensors, and Faulty Powergrid.  It was the only thing for sale that I could afford and felt was combat worthy.  Put a pair of machine guns (singles, not the duals) and a pair of light mortars,  and a single rack of Hornet missiles.  I hate light mortars, and they only had that one missile rack for sale, so this is what I had to work with.  I chased that same merchant fleet down again (It hadn't gone very far.) to see if I couldn't make this work some how.  I like fighting up hill as a way to challenge myself, so I deployed myself in the Lasher (D) and a single Vapor as a distraction this time around against their 4 frigates.  It was a completely different fight this time.  2 vs 4, I wiped the floor with THEM in under two minutes.  Unfortunately, the Vapor managed to get itself killed 1vs1 with the enemy Brawler mid way into the fight.

So at this point I was just like, whatever.  I loaded my last save to before I bought the Lasher and gave up trying to kill that merchant fleet.  I've been flying around for the last two hours or so trying to find fights that do work for me with what I have, and unfortunately I keep running into the same problems.  Fights where things are even, or I slightly out number my opponents and still losing horribly.  I love the design of the ships and the lore behind this faction, but I really don't know if I can make this work.  These ships just feel too weak to me and I can't seem to get any where doing what I'm doing.  I've never had this problem before while doing an exclusive faction play through using vanilla ships or other mod factions.  Again, maybe the problem is that I don't understand these ships, but I do feel like this faction is on the weak side of things.  Now that I mention it, I honestly can't remember ever having a fight against Diable not being me just steam rolling them.  That is to say that Diable can't be dangerous.  A wave of Diable fighters is very much scary as hell, but more so when I'm the one fielding them.

I want to make this work, but I feel that this isn't going to go well for me in the long run.  Tips?  Tricks?  Anything?  How do YOU get Diable ships to work for you?

[Tartiflette]

Well, the Fractus isn't a combat ship. It's a converted tanker and can't take any beating really. And using Frost on it that early in the game is probably not the best choice: those wanzers are anti-fighters with a special attack against large ships. They are pretty much a meat-shield for large battles but useless against frigates: any other Wanzer wing would do better. When outnumbering the enemy, Drafts are nearly un-killable thanks to their system, your's should be able to distract a couple of enemies for you to sneak some shots in their back. Vapors are bloody fast and just as fragile as you can expect. They must either have strong burst weapons to flux-lock the enemy, or very long range to never get into danger.

The gist of the faction is to have missiles and Wanzers distract and whittle down the enemy while your Advanced Avionics hullmods charge up, and then go in for the kill with enhanced stats. Their ships are fragile despite a reasonable amount of firepower: they really need to be escorted by Wanzers and to support them.


I also have a couple of improvements in a wip patch, but I just don't have any free time to finish it for release these days...

[Squish Cat]

Well, the Fractus isn't a combat ship. It's a converted tanker and can't take any beating really. And using Frost on it that early in the game is probably not the best choice: those wanzers are anti-fighters with a special attack against large ships. They are pretty much a meat-shield for large battles but useless against frigates: any other Wanzer wing would do better. When outnumbering the enemy, Drafts are nearly un-killable thanks to their system, your's should be able to distract a couple of enemies for you to sneak some shots in their back. Vapors are bloody fast and just as fragile as you can expect. They must either have strong burst weapons to flux-lock the enemy, or very long range to never get into danger.

The gist of the faction is to have missiles and Wanzers distract and whittle down the enemy while your Advanced Avionics hullmods charge up, and then go in for the kill with enhanced stats. Their ships are fragile despite a reasonable amount of firepower: they really need to be escorted by Wanzers and to support them.


I also have a couple of improvements in a wip patch, but I just don't have any free time to finish it for release these days...

I see.  So basically I chose all the wrong ships and fighters for what I am doing.  I did not bring the right tools for the job.  Yep, sounds like that be the problem.  So given that I am trying to build up via privateering Hegemony and Tri-Tachyon's merchant fleets, what Diable ships (and fighters) do you recommend I use for this?  Given that Vapors are fragile, but fast, they look like they'd be perfect for chasing down fleeing ships rather than taking things head on.  What is the work horse offense frigate for Diable Avionics?

Regarding the Fractus.  See, I thought it was the other way around.  The Tanker was a converted Fractus.  I thought it was supposed to be more durable than it really is like all the other light-carriers.  If the Fractus is a converted Tanker, yeah, now that makes total sense why the Fractus has all of the durability of a freighter.  It technically IS a freighter.  So if the Fractus isn't a combat ship, then it might erroneously have its default AI set to a combat ship.  The thing keeps flying straight into the middle of the front line and getting itself killed.  The other light-carriers I've used don't have this problem and remain well away from the fight while projecting their fighters at things.  This is of course without officers seated in the Fractus.  I haven't found any I like yet.

Also regarding the Frosts.  I had done some tests with Diable fighters before and found Frosts to be all around better.  Time to kill, two Frost Wings have always beat out two Strife's or two Snipers hands down.  The Snipers of course are obviously going to survive longer since they don't run the risk of getting shot down by enemy PD, but they also do not chase target.  Snipers will only hug their carrier, even with the engage order set, so the carrier has to wade into the thick of battle for the Snipers to do anything.  Yeah, eventually the two Strifes will kill its target, but it takes them a LOOOONG time to do so, even against frigates.  Destroyers just shoot down Strifes with their normal weapons because they're so big so they're completely ineffective against them from what I've seen.  Frosts on the other hand are small and fast enough to dodge the big guns from Destroyers, while being numerous enough to overwhelm the PD.  Then they just slice up the destroyer with that blade move which is totally bad ass BTW.  Versus frigates, Strifes just don't have to speed to keep up leaving them very ineffective against anything thats faster than they are.  For me, Frosts have always done the job faster with less hassle because they can stay on target, theres more of them making them less vulnerable to PD focus fire, and they chase.  If one Strife dies, which it usually does, the damage is effectively cut in half.  But if a single Frost dies, there are still three more in play, and generally because there are more fighters, it spreads the PD out against more targets, rather than concentrating the fire onto a single one.  This tends to make the Frosts last longer and project their damage more reliably.

One more question, though this has nothing to do with your mod really.  Since 8a, you're no longer able to look at fighter weapons directly in the fitting screen.  How do you look at the damage and damage type of fighter weapons now?  I have not been able to figure this out.

[shoi]

do you try 2 frost 1 strife? strife have huge burst damage and annihilate ship with low armor but you need something to tie up enemy like with blizzaia so they can use their system

[SaltyDog]

What is the work horse offense frigate for Diable Avionics?

One more question, though this has nothing to do with your mod really.  Since 8a, you're no longer able to look at fighter weapons directly in the fitting screen.  How do you look at the damage and damage type of fighter weapons now?  I have not been able to figure this out.

The Vapor IS the work horse frigate of Diable. If you want a player frigate, then look for a Versant. The Draft is more a support frigate, cheap to field but can pack a punch with four Thunderbolts or annoy with mico missiles. Personally, I'd field a Calm ASAP. It's cheap for a combat destroyer and would give your frigates something to base around.
For your other question, you have to look at the weapon_data.csv file. It's located Starsector>mods>(whatever mod name)>data>weapons then look for the weapon_data.csv file. It lists all the stats of the weapons for the mod.

[ANGRYABOUTELVES]

And using Frost on it that early in the game is probably not the best choice: those wanzers are anti-fighters with a special attack against large ships. They are pretty much a meat-shield for large battles but useless against frigates: any other Wanzer wing would do better.

What are you talking about? Frosts are amazing vs frigates and destroyers, they're easily the best early-game Wanzer. A lot of other Wanzers are just too slow to catch up to frigates; the Frost moves at 200 sanics, which is enough to catch up given time. They've got enough damage on their shotgun to punch through frigate armor like it's paper, and can tear destroyers apart given a little bit of support.

Squish Cat, you did two things wrong. You didn't pilot the Fractus, and you cared that a Vapour died, which means you didn't put Reinforced Bulkheads on it. Just set all your frigates to escort your Fractus, and tell your Frost wings to engage one ship after the other. The AI tends to switch between targets too fast for slow-ish fighters to properly do work. Put Reinforced Bulkheads on all your frigates so you can recover them and give them crap weapons you don't care about losing. It's not reasonable to expect to never have a ship get blown up in 0.8a, so just put Reinforced Bulkheads on them so you don't lose the hull. D-Mods aren't that terrible.

[Squish Cat]

Squish Cat, you did two things wrong. You didn't pilot the Fractus, and you cared that a Vapour died, which means you didn't put Reinforced Bulkheads on it. Just set all your frigates to escort your Fractus, and tell your Frost wings to engage one ship after the other. Put Reinforced Bulkheads on all your frigates so you can recover them and give them crap weapons you don't care about losing. It's not reasonable to expect to never have a ship get blown up in 0.8a, so just put Reinforced Bulkheads on them so you don't lose the hull. D-Mods aren't that terrible.

It wasn't just a Vapor.  It was all of them.  Plus the Draft and the Fractus.  Every single ship.  Every time.  None of them would last longer than it took for me to kill a single enemy frigate and it would always end up with me, alone, vs 4 other ships.  And its not just that one fight.  I'm struggling to fight against anything using these ships that I don't overwhelm at least 2 to 1.  I never have had this problem using other mod faction ships or just plain vanilla ships.  At worse I'd occasionally lose one ship and just replace it with a D-Mod like you said and keep going.

A few times I did try to have the Vapors escort the Fractus while ordering the Fractus to strike individual enemy frigates, but that didn't work at all.  The Fractus would just fly straight into the frigates and immediately die.  That thing dies WAY too fast for being a destroyer sized ship, even if it is supposed to be a modified tanker.  No, I didn't pilot the Fractus.  That I didn't consider that as an option was a mistake, absolutely.  I don't usually pilot carrier ships, though, and I've never had a problem just issuing orders to them before.  I never have the skill points necessary to invest into the fighter skills to make carrier ships truly shine.  I put officers with the 3 relevant fighter skills in carrier ships while I always take the 4th fleet wide fighter skill officers can't get.

As far as ships not getting blown up in 8a, that some what true to a certain extent.  Tactics, proper fits/loadouts and issuing orders to your ships can avoid most ship deaths usually.  You will occasionally lose something.  It happens and is unavoidable in the long run, yes.  A ship loss is generally nothing to worry about, especially if its just a frigate.  But again, its not just a single frigate I was losing.  Its everything.  I either win out right due to overwhelming numbers, or I lose everything.  There doesn't seem to be any in between.  Something just feels... off.

Vapors feel like they're way too fragile if they are supposed to be the main combat frigate of the faction.  It doesn't feel like they're trading that fragility for offensive power IMO, and their speed is still comparable to other frigates.  I could easily pass the Vapor's fragility off if their main role was that of an interceptor frigate, but apparently its not.  This means that Diable lacks a proper combat frigate?

What is really making me question these ships is the fact I was able to win with a hastily slapped together D-Mod Lasher that wasn't even optimally fit 2 vs 4.  Something I didn't even struggle to do. I couldn't even do this using a Vapor 5 vs 4 before.  Everything would end up getting wiped out.  A problem I am still having issues with even now with every other encounter.

The Vapor IS the work horse frigate of Diable. If you want a player frigate, then look for a Versant. The Draft is more a support frigate, cheap to field but can pack a punch with four Thunderbolts or annoy with mico missiles. Personally, I'd field a Calm ASAP. It's cheap for a combat destroyer and would give your frigates something to base around.
For your other question, you have to look at the weapon_data.csv file. It's located Starsector>mods>(whatever mod name)>data>weapons then look for the weapon_data.csv file. It lists all the stats of the weapons for the mod.

I'll look for a Versant or a Calm and see if this doesn't change things for me.  Hopefully they'll be more durable, or at least provide a better experience than I have been having.

do you try 2 frost 1 strife? strife have huge burst damage and annihilate ship with low armor but you need something to tie up enemy like with blizzaia so they can use their system

Usually on two slot carriers, I tend to double up their fighters rather than split them like that.  That way if I need a specific role covered, I have it covered on a single carrier.  Its the 3 slot carriers and above where I mix and match the fighters for a more general purpose role.  That said, no, I haven't actually tried this.  I should try testing this with a Fractus to see if that doesn't improve the situation any.  I am worried the Strife will be too fat and slow to catch a frigate, though.  A single LPC of Frosts won't be enough to take down a frigate on their own if the Strife is never able to catch up.

Again, sorry if any of this at all came out rantish or too critical.  I am just trying to figure out why everything is going so wrong and where I can fix or improve things with this faction, or if maybe Diable ships just aren't for me.  Certainly not their fighters.  I love the fighters.  They kick ass.  The fighters have already proven themselves to me.

[ANGRYABOUTELVES]

It wasn't just a Vapor.  It was all of them.  Plus the Draft and the Fractus.  Every single ship.  Every time.  None of them would last longer than it took for me to kill a single enemy frigate and it would always end up with me, alone, vs 4 other ships.  And its not just that one fight.  I'm struggling to fight against anything using these ships that I don't overwhelm at least 2 to 1.  I never have had this problem using other mod faction ships or just plain vanilla ships.  At worse I'd occasionally lose one ship and just replace it with a D-Mod like you said and keep going.

A few times I did try to have the Vapors escort the Fractus while ordering the Fractus to strike individual enemy frigates, but that didn't work at all.  The Fractus would just fly straight into the frigates and immediately die.  That thing dies WAY too fast for being a destroyer sized ship, even if it is supposed to be a modified tanker.  No, I didn't pilot the Fractus.  That I didn't consider that as an option was a mistake, absolutely.  I don't usually pilot carrier ships, though, and I've never had a problem just issuing orders to them before.  I never have the skill points necessary to invest into the fighter skills to make carrier ships truly shine.  I put officers with the 3 relevant fighter skills in carrier ships while I always take the 4th fleet wide fighter skill officers can't get.

My experience with DA ships has been almost the exact opposite of yours; I've always found Vapors to be very survivable, and the Fractus to hang back far enough to stay out of trouble. Vapors are fast, have an omni shield, and have a ship system that's basically a get-out-of-jail free card that the AI is very willing to use.

Since our experiences are very different, this sounds like a loadout issue to me; can you post pictures of your Vapor and Fractus loadouts? Vapors really want the range of medium ballistics and don't have the flux to use many energy weapons at all, so if you're sticking 2x pulse laser on your Vapors they're probably soft-fluxing themselves to death. The Fractus has a universal slot that really should be a missile slot, because it doesn't have the flux to mount 3 smalls and a medium.

do you try 2 frost 1 strife? strife have huge burst damage and annihilate ship with low armor but you need something to tie up enemy like with blizzaia so they can use their system

He's using the Fractus right now, which only has 2 fighter bays. He can't run 2x Frost 1x Strife.

[Mr. Nobody]

Question, are there any other mods in play?
It might be that you are using some fairly broken mod and the enemy is using weapons from that mod do they end up stronger than they should.

[shoi]

do you try 2 frost 1 strife? strife have huge burst damage and annihilate ship with low armor but you need something to tie up enemy like with blizzaia so they can use their system

He's using the Fractus right now, which only has 2 fighter bays. He can't run 2x Frost 1x Strife.

sorry, i meant 1 frost and 1 strife.

anyway, you guys are right about the frosts being better, 4 of them kill destroyer easily. 2 strife come close but die before they can finish. it probably is because of strife low manouverability, since i always see them get blown up when they aren't holding ground

[Squish Cat]

My experience with DA ships has been almost the exact opposite of yours; I've always found Vapors to be very survivable, and the Fractus to hang back far enough to stay out of trouble. Vapors are fast, have an omni shield, and have a ship system that's basically a get-out-of-jail free card that the AI is very willing to use.

Since our experiences are very different, this sounds like a loadout issue to me; can you post pictures of your Vapor and Fractus loadouts? Vapors really want the range of medium ballistics and don't have the flux to use many energy weapons at all, so if you're sticking 2x pulse laser on your Vapors they're probably soft-fluxing themselves to death. The Fractus has a universal slot that really should be a missile slot, because it doesn't have the flux to mount 3 smalls and a medium.

I try to keep my weapon flux stats as close to the vent rate as possible.  Pulse Lasers are for Cruisers and up, IMO.  Even Destroyers have trouble balancing the flux of Pulse Lasers.  Frigates certainly wouldn't be able to handle the flux rate of a Pulse Laser unless that was the only weapon it had and nothing else.

The Fractus: 1 Recson V, 3x IBIS.  Hull Mods: Insulated Engine Assembly, Expanded Deck Crew

Spoiler

[close]

The Vapors: 1 Glowtusk Linear Rifle, 1 Grave HMC, 2x IBIS.  Hull Mods: Insulated Engine Assembly
My personal Vapor has 2x Magicbox PD instead of the 2x IBIS but everything else is the same.
Weapon groups on the Vapors are set to have the Glowtusk to autofire while the Grave HMC is manually controlled.  I know the AI kinda doesn't care and will tend to fire HE weapons at shields anyway.

Spoiler

[close]

The Insulated Engine Assembly is on every ship in my fleet.  Its there because I'm currently trying to go all privateer against Hegemony and Tri-Tachyon merchant fleets to generate income.  So I'm going all sneaky ninja like with my transponder off and going dark a lot to avoid patrols.  I want the smallest sensor profile I can get ATM.  Insulated Engine Assembly doesn't technically have to be there and I don't intend for it to be there permanently, but it only costs three OP on frigates.  Once I'm done raiding merchants I was going to dump Insulated Engine Assembly anyway.

Question, are there any other mods in play?
It might be that you are using some fairly broken mod and the enemy is using weapons from that mod do they end up stronger than they should.

For this play through I have these mods enabled.

Nexerelin
Dynasector
Combat Chatter
Common Radar
LazyLib
Omnifactory
Portrait Pack
Practice Targets
Ship/Weapon Pack
Unknown Skies
Upgraded Rotary Weapons
Audio Plus
GraphicsLib
Lightshow
Blackrock Drive Yards
Shadowyards
Underworld
Diable Avionics
SCY Nation

[ANGRYABOUTELVES]

A Glowtusk/Grave Vapor is not a good loadout right now. The Grave is too flux heavy for a Vapor to handle, the Glowtusk is just not very good right now, and they're both sub-700 range. You'd have a lot more luck with 2x Trifire Scatter Cannon (Slightly flux heavy but very flux efficient) or 2x Recson V (long range and flux efficient) on a Vapor, but even a Glowtusk/Grave Vapor shouldn't be getting itself killed too often. Are you hitting Full Assault at the start of every battle? The IBIS's don't really matter, but I've never found the Vapor to need PD. I'd recommend swapping them for some HE missiles.

You gave the Fractus a Recson V, and it wants to use that Recson V to kill things. Try giving it an LRM, like a Thrush. The Fractus is very slow, so if it gets anywhere near the battle it's not going to be able to retreat if it comes under heavy fire, so you do not want to give it weapons that require it to be near the battle. If all else fails, you can give it a carrier rally order and it'll stick around there.

[Squish Cat]

A Glowtusk/Grave Vapor is not a good loadout right now. The Grave is too flux heavy for a Vapor to handle, the Glowtusk is just not very good right now, and they're both sub-700 range. You'd have a lot more luck with 2x Trifire Scatter Cannon (Slightly flux heavy but very flux efficient) or 2x Recson V (long range and flux efficient) on a Vapor, but even a Glowtusk/Grave Vapor shouldn't be getting itself killed too often. Are you hitting Full Assault at the start of every battle? The IBIS's don't really matter, but I've never found the Vapor to need PD. I'd recommend swapping them for some HE missiles.

You gave the Fractus a Recson V, and it wants to use that Recson V to kill things. Try giving it an LRM, like a Thrush. The Fractus is very slow, so if it gets anywhere near the battle it's not going to be able to retreat if it comes under heavy fire, so you do not want to give it weapons that require it to be anywhere near the battle. If all else fails, you can give it a carrier rally order and it'll stick around there.

Alright, I'll try one of each.  A dual Trifire and a dual Recson V and see which works out better.  I'll also swap the IBIS/Magicbox PDs out for some torpedoes or HE missiles.  Personally, I am really terrible at using missiles myself, but the AI does a decent job of knowing when to fire them.  The Fractus I used one of the autofit loadouts which gave me what it currently is using.  I don't know the Diable weapon systems very well yet, so I have been using autofit loadouts for everything.  Glowtusk/Grave is the "Standard" variant for the Vapor I believe.  I'll remove the Recson V from the Fractus and leave the slot empty until I can find a Thrush to replace it.

I almost never use Full Assault.  I issue commands individually to my ships where needed.  Usually with frigates I'll issue orders to them in pairs.  Set two frigates on a target and have them gang up on something.