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Author Topic: How do you use carriers in 0.95.1A , coming from a 0.8 player  (Read 6212 times)

planeswalker

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How do you use carriers in 0.95.1A , coming from a 0.8 player
« on: December 14, 2021, 06:44:27 PM »

Hey all, decided to jump back into starfarer/sector after a two year hiatus. I've been reading here, the wiki and abit of the discord to get up to speed with the current version.

Now, i'm one of those people that love to use alot of fighters and bombers but from what i'm reading now, the way they are used as well as carriers have changed quite abit from 0.8. Are there any guides on how to use them now? I've read SCC's guides and others but they are more 'general' and don't go deep into how to use fighters, carriers, officers with them and what to avoid.

I've just been using my old tactic of using both thunders and khopeshs and throwing them at the enemy but i've also read that mixing fighters and bombers on the same carrier isn't efficient as the AI won't use them properly? I understand that carriers and fighters aren't as 'great' anymore due to skill changes for both player and officers?

Thanks for any tips/advice.
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Amoebka

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Re: How do you use carriers in 0.95.1A , coming from a 0.8 player
« Reply #1 on: December 14, 2021, 06:51:19 PM »

Mixing fighters and bombers is intended and optimal. Fighters provide flare screening against enemy PD. The only carrier worth using - Heron - has a ship system that benefits both, so no loss in efficiency there.

Because of the skill changes, pure carrier fleets are much weaker now, but mixing some carriers with your warships is very strong.
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IonDragonX

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Re: How do you use carriers in 0.95.1A , coming from a 0.8 player
« Reply #2 on: December 14, 2021, 07:01:35 PM »

Thanks for any tips/advice.
You can now select a ship (like your flagship) and command the fleet to Defend it. The fleet has a much better understanding of "stay out of my line of fire, arghgh!" even though it reduces their ability to strafe. Its amazing!

You missed the new(!) storyline, the changes to raiding, new easter-eggs, new ships, new skill tree... Dang there are a ton of changes in 2 years, enjoy!
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bowman

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Re: How do you use carriers in 0.95.1A , coming from a 0.8 player
« Reply #3 on: December 14, 2021, 10:25:20 PM »

As another said, mixing bombers and fighters is intended and optimal because of decoy flares distracting Point Defense. Heron is definitely not the only viable carrier, though (but Targeting Feed is pretty useful).

Key importance is carrier skills are no longer a per-captain investment and instead there's just two fleet-wide skills the player can pick up (whose effectiveness is buffed on a per-ship basis if the ship itself has an AI officer on it). They're in the first Leadership section, about the middle of the screen "Carrier Group" and "Fighter Uplink". Notably, I have yet to get them in my current run, so take my further advice with a grain of salt, but: in the previous version I considered the Target Leading Accuracy bonus on the now-defunct Strike Group(?) skill to be mandatory for carrier captains since it meant your bombers* wont(tm) miss. In accordance with my previous understanding of fighters, I'd consider Fighter Uplink, which took over the Target Leading effect from the old skill, to also be mandatory/high priority for a carrier fleet captain. Aside from that, and I think back in 0.8 (? the versions blur together for me, it's been a while so I cant remember if that was the carrier rework update) fighters were *much* too strong, but they play largely the same nowadays- aside from, obviously, being a little weaker than you may be used to as a result of much-needed nerfs/balancing. In my experience, though, they're still perfectly viable. The one issue they have, at least to me, is that there's no skill that directly buffs their damage (ex, Target Analysis doesn't afaik, and polarized armor exists now). So, with all the skills that increase a ship's resistances in various forms- while a ship captain has skills that effectively counter those defensive bonuses with their own offensive ones, fighters/bombers get the short end of the stick and simply become less effective against elite captains. This, however, can be mitigated by the fact that you have a full carrier-centric fleet and thus no lack of bombs to dump on them. There's no kill like overkill, after all.

If there's not so many missiles flying around you can't risk moving your own ship then you probably need more** :)

*less-so if you're not like me though since I use almost exclusively Khopesh, Perditions, and Cobras (speaking of, Perditions got buffed this latest update- now there's 3 per wing and they cost more OP)

**Exaggeration, but please do post images if you manage to pull this off
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planeswalker

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Re: How do you use carriers in 0.95.1A , coming from a 0.8 player
« Reply #4 on: December 15, 2021, 01:05:44 AM »

Mixing fighters and bombers is intended and optimal. Fighters provide flare screening against enemy PD. The only carrier worth using - Heron - has a ship system that benefits both, so no loss in efficiency there.

Because of the skill changes, pure carrier fleets are much weaker now, but mixing some carriers with your warships is very strong.

I see, ty for the info

Thanks for any tips/advice.
You can now select a ship (like your flagship) and command the fleet to Defend it. The fleet has a much better understanding of "stay out of my line of fire, arghgh!" even though it reduces their ability to strafe. Its amazing!

You missed the new(!) storyline, the changes to raiding, new easter-eggs, new ships, new skill tree... Dang there are a ton of changes in 2 years, enjoy!

Yeah i used to play every starsector update religiously for years except for the past two, the 'new' skill system didn't really interest me. Its nice they are linking the new storyline to the tutorial. Thanks for the heads up

As another said, mixing bombers and fighters is intended and optimal because of decoy flares distracting Point Defense. Heron is definitely not the only viable carrier, though (but Targeting Feed is pretty useful).

Key importance is carrier skills are no longer a per-captain investment and instead there's just two fleet-wide skills the player can pick up (whose effectiveness is buffed on a per-ship basis if the ship itself has an AI officer on it). They're in the first Leadership section, about the middle of the screen "Carrier Group" and "Fighter Uplink". Notably, I have yet to get them in my current run, so take my further advice with a grain of salt, but: in the previous version I considered the Target Leading Accuracy bonus on the now-defunct Strike Group(?) skill to be mandatory for carrier captains since it meant your bombers* wont(tm) miss. In accordance with my previous understanding of fighters, I'd consider Fighter Uplink, which took over the Target Leading effect from the old skill, to also be mandatory/high priority for a carrier fleet captain. Aside from that, and I think back in 0.8 (? the versions blur together for me, it's been a while so I cant remember if that was the carrier rework update) fighters were *much* too strong, but they play largely the same nowadays- aside from, obviously, being a little weaker than you may be used to as a result of much-needed nerfs/balancing. In my experience, though, they're still perfectly viable. The one issue they have, at least to me, is that there's no skill that directly buffs their damage (ex, Target Analysis doesn't afaik, and polarized armor exists now). So, with all the skills that increase a ship's resistances in various forms- while a ship captain has skills that effectively counter those defensive bonuses with their own offensive ones, fighters/bombers get the short end of the stick and simply become less effective against elite captains. This, however, can be mitigated by the fact that you have a full carrier-centric fleet and thus no lack of bombs to dump on them. There's no kill like overkill, after all.

If there's not so many missiles flying around you can't risk moving your own ship then you probably need more** :)

*less-so if you're not like me though since I use almost exclusively Khopesh, Perditions, and Cobras (speaking of, Perditions got buffed this latest update- now there's 3 per wing and they cost more OP)

**Exaggeration, but please do post images if you manage to pull this off

Thats alot of useful tips and info ty.
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silfidum

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Re: How do you use carriers in 0.95.1A , coming from a 0.8 player
« Reply #5 on: December 15, 2021, 11:31:47 AM »

Well, compared to 0.8 the fighters are a lot squishier and instead rely on replacement rate more to stay relevant. In terms of skills there are the players fleet wide 2 skills that boost speed, replacement rate, crew loss and target leading accuracy BUT it effect becomes weaker if you have more then 8 hangars in your entire fleet (it can be useful to use converted fighter bay to remove fighter bays from undesirable ships). Also any ship with an officer gets x1,5 effect from these. Officers can boost anti-fighter and anti-misile damage via point defence skill but other then that it's best to maximize combat readiness since it affects fighters as well since currently it's probably one of the most impactful factors since it boosts damage, speed, accuracy, toughness and replacement time.

As carriers go the destroyer bracket currently is fairly weak since drover is now 15 DP and converted hangars reduce fighter speed and durability so it's not terribly effective to get low DP ships with them like valkyrie. On the other hand current skills allow for reducing DP cost via D-mods (30% at 5 D-mods) but it's a high tier industry skill. Also support doctrine can further push it lower but it only affect ships without officers.

So I would guess that current meta is either to stick close to 8 bays and probably spam bombers since they benefit a lot from replacement rate or kinda ignore fleet wide fighter skills in favor of DP cost reduction and non-officered ship boosting skills like crew training and support doctrine. Or something in between, it's not like I'm super proficient with carriers.

A small note on bombers - since there is also no damage boosting skills it can be tough to get enough damage per run that would break the shields so it's best to use them on cruisers and bigger ships with lots of hangars. Destroyers can be decent in early game but when you start encountering cruisers it goes downhill real fast.

I'm kinda curious how boosted 8 piranha wings will fare now, they kinda tend to orbit their target when you boost their speed and their payload was always a bit overkill.

Edit: not sure but IIRC there was some weird interaction with reserve deployment (which was nerfed pretty significantly) and bombers or something but drover with cobras is pretty strong too if it can chain pull 2 bombing runs at relatively close range.
« Last Edit: December 15, 2021, 11:38:36 AM by silfidum »
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Wyvern

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Re: How do you use carriers in 0.95.1A , coming from a 0.8 player
« Reply #6 on: December 15, 2021, 11:51:55 AM »

Just for a contrasting opinion, the Mora is a beast now - especially if you give it an officer with both Impact Mitigation and Polarized Armor.

I've got one currently that's based off a variant I ran into in a pirate fleet that gave me a lot of trouble: 2x Trident, 1x Longbow, 2x Sabot Pod (alternating), ITU, small slots starting with the hardpoint and going clockwise: light mortar, light autocannon, vulcan, LAC, vulcan, LMG, vulcan, LMG. No vents or capacitors.
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Wyvern is 100% correct about the math.