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[Modo44]

It's not a real fleet unless it has a paragon to lead it.

And if your Shrikes do not routinely take out cruisers, you are not doing it right.

[TaLaR]

All it can do is armor tank until it dies, even a frigate is a serious threat to a Mora

I don't typically use Mora either, but that's just not true. A pair of Railguns + cruiser ITU stop frigates hard and ensure that it will be able to fire back against DEs except HVD/Mauler + ITU combo.

Mora is also the most difficult carrier to deal with for Afflictor, but that's of dubious worth, considering that AI can't pilot phase frigates.

Still dies quite easily to overwhelming firepower - it's too slow to retreat from capitals. Where Drover/Heron could simply avoid them.

[Null Ganymede]

I like the stability of a low tech artillery battle line, because that's the first effective playstyle I figured out. As such I keep coming back to it.

Otherwise any fleet built around a cool flagship is good, and most of the fancy-subsystem flagships are high-to-mid tech. Kind of makes sense to bring a matching fleet to support :p

[sotanaht]

It's not a real fleet unless it has a paragon to lead it.

And if your Shrikes do not routinely take out cruisers, you are not doing it right.

Never understood the Shrike.  Why would I use one of those when a Tempest has almost 3x the firepower and more than double the speed?  Since the Odyssey has effectively the same speed as the Shrike, between the two there's really no role left over for the Shrike to fill.

[Althaea]

Never understood the Shrike.  Why would I use one of those when a Tempest has almost 3x the firepower and more than double the speed?  Since the Odyssey has effectively the same speed as the Shrike, between the two there's really no role left over for the Shrike to fill.

The Medium Missile slot. It also has better flux stats and more ordinance points to play with, and also better range due to being a destroyer. It's generally more survivable and can stay in the fight for longer (this one is big: the Shrike has nearly twice the endurance of the Tempest). Overall I'd agree that the Tempest is better, but that's because the Tempest is very good, nothing to do with the Shrike being bad. And obviously, compared to an Odyssey, it's a fifth of the deployment points.

(The pirate version of the Shrike also has a ballistic slot that's incredible to mount a railgun in, but that's cheating.)

[TaLaR]

Shrike is weak to the point where I refuse to recognize it as a proper combat DE (in comparison Enforcer at least counts as the weakest combat DE). It can do ok job at hunting frigates 1v1, but falls easily if outnumbered or is deployed against proper combat DEs.

Medium missile is as much curse as it is blessing, it means you can't have a proper endurance build like any other combat DE (1 light ballistic on shrike p is still not enough to compete). So the 300 CR time that is supposed to be advantage over Tempest is actually unusable.

[Althaea]

I may be overestimating the usefulness of the base model. Personally I've only ever really used the Pirate variant, which I find can pull their weight just fine up to the point where you're constantly fighting Remnant Ordos. Their role is indeed to first deal with lighter targets and then to gang up on heavier ones.

[Null Ganymede]

It's worth noting how questions of general fleet composition and tech balance always tend to devolve into people learning how to fully exploit specific ship hulls.

In other words, no one's got the game fully figured out. Everyone has preferred play styles that they're comfortable with and works for them, and massive knowledge gaps outside that niche.

[Gotcha!]

It's mainly Midline for me, with a hint of High-Tech. Apart from the Hammerhead, Sunder, Heron, Gryphon, and Conquest all being very useful ships (in my humble opinion of course), they also look very good.
When it comes to frigates, it's high-tech. Wolves are great in packs. I don't really like to use any of the other frigates.
Capital-wise, I don't like any of the low-tech/high-tech ships, because they're way too slow for me, the exception being the Odyssey, which is bloody amazing.

[Locklave]

I'm a somewhat new player, and I've mostly stuck with low tech ships as I was playing with the Hegemony and lovin thicc boy onslaught but I plan on trying out more high tech ships soon. What is your favorite tech level and why?

Oversimplified ship tech tiers

Low = Low maintenance, slow turning, heavy armor, slow speed
Midline = Medium maintenance, mixed armor, medium speed
High = High maintenance, light armor heavy shield, fastest ships

Low tech is perfect for early game, I love them being dependable and cheap. Midline for carriers however, low tech carriers suck too much.

[Thaago]

The Shrike is a quite effective super frigate for cheap, and with the right loadout it can burst down destroyers (sabot + heavy blaster). Its not a proper combat destroyer, but it has burn 10 so it doesn't really need to be, and it is a proper super frigate. Its flux stats and shield efficiency are surprisingly good (.7 shield efficiency with 5400 base dissipation is a decent bit of shield tank). Its mainly hamstrung by the AI's useage of the plasma burn and its heavy, heavy dependence on heavy blaster for its main gun (if you don't have one its in trouble). IR Pulse + Pulse laser can work, but that takes OP that the Shrike just doesn't have.

In a contest between Enforcers and Shrikes... well Enforcers provide a doormat to slow the enemy down. Maybe. They are terrible at most roles, rising to just "bad" as missile/Converted Hangar/Flak escort ships. Unless they are SO, they can't fight proper destroyers - Hammerheads, Sunders, and Medusas all tear Enforcers to pieces. And as SO they are still inferior to those ships when they are also SO. Shrikes are actually good at hunting frigates and have enough PPT to last in larger fights, if PPT is a problem.

Re: favorite tech level
Mid for me - the ships are just very dependable.

[Igncom1]

To chip in on the mora's usefulness. If your carriers don't have room or time to run away, then having an absolute unit for a carrier is very useful to give you a little time.

Your average frigate and most destroyers just don't have the pure dps to kill them very quickly and will likely need to use their torpedoes to even start making a dent, let alone kill it. So sure a couple drovers or a heron are just straight better as carriers, but when their lives are on the line a bloated block with two medium missile mounts to panic fire is surely better then anything flimsier.

But that said, that is planning for failure of their escorts. It's generally not good to plan for failure when you should be planning to succeed.

[sotanaht]

The Shrike is a quite effective super frigate for cheap, and with the right loadout it can burst down destroyers (sabot + heavy blaster). Its not a proper combat destroyer, but it has burn 10 so it doesn't really need to be, and it is a proper super frigate. Its flux stats and shield efficiency are surprisingly good (.7 shield efficiency with 5400 base dissipation is a decent bit of shield tank). Its mainly hamstrung by the AI's useage of the plasma burn and its heavy, heavy dependence on heavy blaster for its main gun (if you don't have one its in trouble). IR Pulse + Pulse laser can work, but that takes OP that the Shrike just doesn't have.

In a contest between Enforcers and Shrikes... well Enforcers provide a doormat to slow the enemy down. Maybe. They are terrible at most roles, rising to just "bad" as missile/Converted Hangar/Flak escort ships. Unless they are SO, they can't fight proper destroyers - Hammerheads, Sunders, and Medusas all tear Enforcers to pieces. And as SO they are still inferior to those ships when they are also SO. Shrikes are actually good at hunting frigates and have enough PPT to last in larger fights, if PPT is a problem.

Re: favorite tech level
Mid for me - the ships are just very dependable.

Enforcers are bricks.  Highest armor of any destroyer, comparable to many cruisers.  The best thing about them though is that they can rotate their armor, thanks to their round design and omni shield, and force most enemies to break ALL their armor in order to kill them (the AI does this frequently).  An single enforcer can take longer to kill 1 on 1 than many capitals.  On the other hand, they have no real escape mechanism and poor firepower, meaning they WILL die sooner or later and don't really contribute much besides a distraction.  I personally find that fast frigates like Tempests have the distraction role covered as they usually manage to single out one or two enemies and kite them indefinitely, and almost never die.

[Thaago]

I disagree with Enforcers taking a long time to kill. 750 armor is enough to protect against smaller shot size energy and kinetic, but not enough to meaningfully defend against armor crackers - either heavy mortars or any of the armor piercing energies (heavy blaster, phase lance, am blaster, most large mounts) will deal with it in short order. Because its relatively small (destroyer sized) it doesn't have a huge number of armor cells either, and 5000 hull is ok, but nothing special. I will admit that it has enough armor to deal with the kinds of low penetration weapons that frigates often have, but anything destroyer+ has the weapons to crack it.

So its armor is strong for a destroyer, but not strong enough to actually withstand any armor piercing weapons. Its shield is awful. 1.2 efficiency is not quite the worst as a raw number, but unlike other low efficiency shields it doesn't have the flux stats to back it up. This really needs to get changed to 1.0 imo, like the dominator and Onslaught, for the Enforcer to be competitive.

The 750 armor does help against light fighters, because they are using the same low caliber weapons as frigates, and the Enforcer can mount a good flak screen, which helps against swarms and missiles. So I'll give the Enforcer points for fighter defense: probably the strongest of the destroyers in that role. But its also very slow, so can't catch and kill the fighters.

...An single enforcer can take longer to kill 1 on 1 than many capitals. ...

If the capital is a converted pirate then maybe, but I doubt it.

[Plantissue]

In AI hands the Mora is the first, and often only, ship to die in any fleet. It's tough, but it's incapable of fighting back.  It's flux stats are pathetic at only 4000, making its shields weaker than any destroyer class warship.

Enforcer has weaker shields.

Anyways, Shrike is fine now that its Deployment cost is now 8 and for the Hammerhead is now 10. I tried making fleets of mostly Shrikes and it worked out perfectly fine. Its main weakness being fighters, but that was due to the way I fitted them. Shrikes are also suprisingly over-represented in pirate fleets.