Burst PD laser is always good since its a vanila PD weapon. For light house PD, I don't know I never used them, I expected them to be as bad as mining PD laser, if you do try them... tell me your opinion about them I am curious...I used light plasma driver because I try to use as much mod weapons as possible on my builds.
And no unfortunately you cannot tell weapons that can hit fighter to not shot at them, its a problem even for vanila large weapons like "hellbore canon" that shot super slow projectiles but still try to hit fighter with it...its why the railguin of this mod are nice because if they do try to shot fighter they melt them from very far away.
if big ship are escorted it mean they lack ship somewhere on the battle line, just keep the big ship occupied as you search for an attack vector. At worst put a "avoid at all cost" order on those big targets, it will start a chase usually, the AI will often break its battle line which may give you an opportunity to strike one of its ships
I was not impressed with the lighthouse.
So I actually put my officers on ships... levelled them up....take out the pellet cannons from the large slots on the alastairs and replaced with 2x tachylon lance each, 2x heavy auto cannon and kept 2x bulldog auto cannon. put the light plasma driver on the back x 4. And the Base Drum medium point defense in the medium ballistic slot.
I tweaked some other ships as well nothing major...but instead of pellet canon, my king class each now have tachyon lance. And I also put some light plasma driver where it made sense.
McNamara:
I removed 2 x bulldog autocannon and replaced with 2x heavy auto canon. The pellet guns stay because the medium versions are very worth the damage, range, and flux it uses. But when a targets flux is high, no need to use the pelletguns, so I shut them off and just let the heavy autos keep him fluxed, while the bulldogs fininish the armor.
That fit remains the same, except for 3 changes because I have 4 heavy cruiser. In the center ballistic on one of them I have a medium combat laser, to keep pressure on a ship retreating to lower flux. On another mcnamara I have a base drum in the center in place of the combat laser providing point defense. in another one I have a heavy plasma driver in place of the medium combat laser.
The light plasma driver is SO good against missiles and fighters, so they work perfect on the alastair, and even though the heavy version for the ballistic medium slot isn't listed as point defense like the light version, it still can target those fighters, and it also is 100/100/100 shield/armor/hull.
With these tweaks and some better management of my weapons and auto firing on the flagship im piloting (an alastair) I beat Janus 3rd group. I lost some ships but I won the fight. Was a tough fight. I found with me controlling my tachyon beams, instead of on auto fire, i fired them more tactically, i even got rid of some smaller ships first, and some time combinations of my tachyons with my king class which has a tachyon each, melted the smaller guys who ventured too close. I killed the smaller guys faster. The fighter spam was taken care of by my better point defense the Base drum and light plasma driver additions, and alastair's web when well placed.
I realised at one point during the fight i had an opening, and ordered 4 ships to close and destroy a battleship. From there I had too much pressure on and with having taken out a good chunk of his destroyer/cruiser escorts, the battleships remaining although they had some were out flanked.
I played the range game better and with his smaller targets of opportunity and also slight pressure caused thoise smaller targets to move forward to help their battleships. The Edith class sure helped too.
I think everything I did with your advice, my officers, my leveling up, the fitting, my better flying and strategy, the point defense, sealed the deal. Also the combination of ships to take in. I could take 2xalastair. 2x heavy cruiser, 2x king, and some destroyer backup and the edith. with my king's better fitted with their tachyon instead of the terrible pellet cannon, that with the 4x tachyons combined on my 2 x alastair helped hold the center.
Also, ace-wing...I use one each on my alastair and they stay escorting, they shoot down the clouds of missiles those guys were firing, in addition to my pooled point defense, better point defense and the alastair web and ace wings on at least 3 of my ships, able to keep the missile spam off. because i have my shields down alot, because the flux isn't ideal. and the missile spam used to hurt. clusters of small missiles. ace-wing is an ace up the sleeve vs missiles combined with the 4x light plasma driver helping out.
I use 1x ace wing and jack combat drone now on any ship with 2 bays. so my lyons have 2 bays, and the alastairs. tempted to put 2x ace wing on the alastair.
The pelletcannon might work well for other races with the flux, but it don't work well for us. also i found the arsenel ship a good tank, but useless otherwise.
