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Author Topic: The best fighters against stations  (Read 3022 times)

CristianoRH

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The best fighters against stations
« on: September 09, 2021, 06:23:32 PM »

Hi,

New on game here. I'm getting harassed by pirate raids constantly. Question is, what would be the best fighters witch could help the rest of the fleet on defeating theirs stations? My fleet can't face them for long.

Regards

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Thaago

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Re: The best fighters against stations
« Reply #1 on: September 09, 2021, 07:03:38 PM »

Hi, welcome to the forum!

Stations have a lot of guns and very heavy armor, so there's basically two choices for fighters:
1) Broadswords + Claws or other Ion. The Broadswords help get the shields down with their kinetic guns, and their flares will keep the fighters alive. The Claws will fire a lot of ion and shut the station guns down. They won't do any real damage to the station, but hopefully that would let your combat ships close in and punch it.

2) Bombers, particularly high damage ones. For dealing with stations I'm a fan of Khopesh + Cobra. The Khopesh goes in front helping the Cobra to survive and their cloud of rockets acts as a wall of ordnance to help the Reaper get through. I don't recommend piranha bombers: they just are terrible.
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Kos135

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Re: The best fighters against stations
« Reply #2 on: September 09, 2021, 07:08:13 PM »

Fighters of all kinds usually end up being chewed up by station PD. The key to beating stations is to have big tanky ships, especially capitals, that can weather their barrages and bring down their shields. You want to bring some kind of ion weapon (ion beam is good for this due to its long range) to disable the station segment so you can safely destroy. I recommend some variety of bomber, especially the dumbfire bombers, the Piranha and the Flash. They can easily devastate the armor and hull of a station segment that has been ionized.

Many people dislike dumbfire bombers due to their tendency to miss smaller targets. They prefer the guided bombers like the Dagger, and the Dagger would also work fine. But I've been using dumbfire bombers for a while and I like them. Since the station doesn't move your Piranhas and Flashes will have no problem closing the distance and delivering their payload to an ionized station segment.
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Flare

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Re: The best fighters against stations
« Reply #3 on: September 09, 2021, 07:30:29 PM »

I don't bring fighters I use for fleet combat for station killing. It's just a big waste of supplies and crew for little gain. With ships you can tell them to form up on your flag ship and kinda control which side of the station they're shooting at. Fighters and bombers just dive right in and get slaughtered. That station range bonus just cuts down so much.

But in mods that have fighter frigates though, I fin that those do better.
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SapphireSage

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Re: The best fighters against stations
« Reply #4 on: September 10, 2021, 07:19:09 AM »

Longbow + Cobra/Trident/Dagger combos along with my favorite, Piranha spam.

In 0.9 during my pure carrier playthrough (using only Moras, Herons, Astral, and Condors) I would keep my bomber carriers with their Longbows + Daggers and replace most of the other carriers interceptors/fighters with tons of piranhas bombers and sit all the carriers at around 3000su range until the enemy station got whittled down and destroyed. The mines and missiles weren't a problem due to all the stacked PD from the clustered carriers and the station often didn't have enough 1000+su range weapons to do much about my squatting out past 3000su while I could barrage them with tons and tons of bombs.

Piranhas also work well because they're fairly tough on approach and spam so many bombs that their retreat is covered through all the garbage thrown in front of them. Their normally bad traits of firing slow, inaccurate, and unguided bomb projectiles are nullified due to the fact that the station is immobile and large enough to absorb all the bombs thrown at it. Mind you that those downsides are because Piranhas throw out the most damage per salvo in unguided munitions, it normally doesn't come into effect because of the aforementioned downsides, but worked explosively well against stations. That said, carriers have been nerfed pretty heavily across the board so I'm not sure if this can still work on the tougher stations, but it should still be fine for a level 1 pirate outpost so long as you have enough hanger bays with piranhas or longbow+bomber combos and the crew for the fighter losses you'll take.
« Last Edit: September 10, 2021, 07:23:07 AM by SapphireSage »
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Daynen

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Re: The best fighters against stations
« Reply #5 on: September 10, 2021, 01:28:39 PM »

If you really want to bring lots of fighters against a station, piranhas LOVE bombing stations; they have a prodigious payload when all their bombs hit...and against a station, they can't really miss.  Trick is, you have to bring a LOT of piranhas to make sure enough payload gets through to make a difference.  Any fighters that don't require crew are good for screening your fleet because you are GOING to lose more than a few and those crew losses can add up FAST.  You'll still want something with some solid shields and maneuverability to tank volleys and back off to vent, like a well-modded apogee, eagle, or a nimble capital like the odyssey or conquest.  The more the merrier of course.  Stations are something you just have to wait to take on; you need heavy firepower and ships that can both avoid and endure heavy sustained damage to get close enough.  You also need a strong balance of kinetics and HE weapons to consistently disable multiple shields and chew through really thick armor.  Go big or go home.
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Brainwright

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Re: The best fighters against stations
« Reply #6 on: September 11, 2021, 09:54:11 AM »

Best thing is to use a combination of two ships loaded differently.  First ship has bombers, that is a longbow plus whatever else you want.  Even another longbow is good.  Second ship is heavy fighters equipped with flare launchers and as many as you can get.  That's the best combination of PD suppression and flux pressure.

Claw is always a good bet in an endurance fight, but remember that fighters launched from a carrier tend to key their speed to the slowest fighter launched.
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