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[Kinsume]

You'll want at least Target Analysis, Energy Weapon Mastery and Systems Expertise on all of your officers. Rest is up to you. I don't have the patience to retrain officers, so usually I just mentor them to aggressive and go with the skills I get.

Yeah I might need to start over on some of them then lol, wasn't really paying attention when I was selecting the skills.

If you really just want a giant pile of frigates and destroyers and don't mind the individual power dropping off for each, then there is an option to grab Support Doctrine if you haven't already, which gets you a fake level 3 officer in all your unofficered ships at which point the SO frigates without officers aren't at such a disadvantage in terms of PPT since they get Combat Endurance.  Helmsmanship isn't bad for frigates either.  Although it doesn't activate the actual Wolfpack tactics skill which still requires a real officer.  With that Support Doctrine, you can arguably go with as many SO hardened subsystem frigates/destroyers as you can fit into your DP deployment allotment.

Unfortunately, the DP reduction from Support Doctrine won't do you much good yet since you're still just shy of hitting minimum deployment DP (assuming 400 DP setting in configuration, 160 is minimum, you look to have 156 DP), and already have 19 combat ships (out of a fleet soft cap of 30).  Since frigates are good at grabbing map objectives, you can reliably deploy 220 DP, if not 240 DP.

Although setting your campaign doctrine to aggressive (level 3) or higher is a must if you're running safety override support doctrine ships.

Relying on Support Doctrine does potentially change how you build the unofficered ships, since if you are relying on being at high flux to do more damage with EWM, it doesn't work without that skill.

Right now I'm level 10, currently working with...

3 points into Leadership - Coordinated Maneuvers, Wolfpack Tactics, Crew Training
2 points into Technology - Navigation, Gunnery Implants
5 points into Industry - Bulk Transport, Salvaging, Containment Procedures, Makeshift Equipment, Hull Restoration (Honestly all of this is for the QOL stuff. I don't like D-mods, half supply/fuel usage is amazing and the extra cargo space + salvage gained is nice)

Was planning on going into Leadership some more, though I feel at some point my guy needs combat skills as well.

[intrinsic_parity]

I don't think systems expertise is necessarily a must pick, it's useless on some ships (tempest for instance) and it can be actively bad on others for instance, on scarab, it increases CR drain significantly, and while it definitely has upside, I'm not actually convinced it's the best choice.

[Kinsume]

I don't think systems expertise is necessarily a must pick, it's useless on some ships (tempest for instance) and it can be actively bad on others for instance, on scarab, it increases CR drain significantly, and while it definitely has upside, I'm not actually convinced it's the best choice.

So then what would be your must have skills for this kind of fleet?

[intrinsic_parity]

I think for frigates/wolfpack officers, some combination of target analysis, field modulation, energy weapon mastery, gunnery implants, ordinance expertise, combat endurance, and systems expertise.

I think field modulation is my only must-pick (on frigates) since it's the only good survivability skill for them. After that it's more a question of which 1 or 2 of those to not take for me. I personally also love elite gunnery implants on frigates to win the ECM battle.

[Gergin]

I'm telling you, mix 2-3 of these bad boys into your fleet and they'll do you proud.  They'll either outright kill or force just about anything to drop their shields.
This is the idea at its bare minimum, they get substantially scarier when you get the proper armor skills and elite target analysis.

[Kinsume]

I think for frigates/wolfpack officers, some combination of target analysis, field modulation, energy weapon mastery, gunnery implants, ordinance expertise, combat endurance, and systems expertise.

I think field modulation is my only must-pick (on frigates) since it's the only good survivability skill for them. After that it's more a question of which 1 or 2 of those to not take for me. I personally also love elite gunnery implants on frigates to win the ECM battle.

Makes sense, I can have 10 officers now then myself. I'm also 1 point away from the support doctrine for my un-officered ships. Which 11 ships would take priority for my fleet for being manned. Toned it up a bit to...

2x Medusa (1x Heavy Blaster, 1x Ion Cannon, 2x Light Dual Autocannon, 2x PD Laser. 14 Caps, 15 Vents and SO)
2x Hammerhead (2x Assault Chaingun, 2x Railgun, 2x Light Dual Machine Gun. 4 Caps, 7 Vents, SO, and Hardened Subsystems)
3x Hyperion (1x Heavy Blaster, 1x Heavy Machine Gun, 1x Ion Pulsar. 0 Caps, 8 Vents, SO, Hardened Subsystems, Extended Shield)
4x Scarab (1x Anitmatter Blaster, 1x IR Pulse Laser, 1x Ion Cannon, 2x Swarmer SRM Launcher. 4 Caps, 10 Vents, SO)
6x Tempest (1x Pulse Laser, 1x Sabot SRM, 1x LR PD Laser. 6 Caps, 6 Vents, SO, Extended Shield)
3x Omen (1x Anitmatter Blaster, 1x IR Pulse Laser, 1x Breach SRM. 5 Caps, 10 Vents, Hardened Subsystems, Accelerated Shields)

2x Colossus
2x Dram

I also currently have like 25-30 story points banked up, haven't used any on ships yet.

I'm telling you, mix 2-3 of these bad boys into your fleet and they'll do you proud.  They'll either outright kill or force just about anything to drop their shields.
This is the idea at its bare minimum, they get substantially scarier when you get the proper armor skills and elite target analysis.

Spoiler

[close]

Sorry I think I missed your response before. Those do look interesting. Currently my fleet doesn't have any issues with pirates. I could see those for an alternate in the early game for getting the ball rolling though. Looks like it'd be fun to pilot.

[Gergin]

They would fit into a late game fleet as well.  What they bring to the table is pure damage and unchecked aggression.  If you have some stuff that can kite/distract, these things will be the hammer to that anvil.

[Ibudoto]

I will just quote my other thread.

Some people seems to think that frigate only wolfpack is not viable but here it is, deleting worst threats.

Downside is that it actually made game too easy I'm bored of playing anymore though. Pretty much 95% game can be won without any risk with auto piloting

Problem with Hyperion is low peak performance due to SO and fighters but you can cover it with only letting reckless officer drive them and full assault + eliminate order on everything. That make them extremely aggressive, often ignoring fighters and everything else and only attack. They can't use fighters if you kill their carriers and they can't shoot missiles if you kill their ship.

Pretty much every vanilla weapons cannot damage Hyperion anyway due to 0.40 shield damage taken. Even kinetics deal only 80% damage while energy weapons deal only around 30% because solar shielding, around 20% from explosive, and that's if the weapon manage to hit instead of missing due to small hull of Hyperion.

Hyperion without SO is utter garbage so don't use it without SO. Even with elite helmsmanship you need to drop shield before using teleport which is too dangerous, not to mention you can't really deal significant damage due to limited weapon choice.

Heavy blaster deal similar damage to large weapons, 600(with wolfpack) damage per shot allows it to penetrate armor better than explosive weapons while dealing with shield better than kinetic weapons.
To make example, Heavy Needler deal 500 DPS against shield, while heavy blaster deal 600 DPS, with wolfpack.
Assault Chaingun deal 150 damage per shot against armor which is not enough to penetrate heavy armor, if the target ship has officer with Polarized Armor it's going to deal practically 0 damage against armor and hull. 600 damage on the other hands, can penetrate even the hardest ships including the Omega.
Only downside with Heavy Blaster is that it cost high flux which is covered by Safety Override.

Even with SO I can't use 3 Heavy Blasters without building up too much flux so I'm using 2 Heavy Blaster and 1 Heavy Machine Gun. Heavy Machine gun deal practically 0 damage against hull, but deals around 750 DPS with shield. What make this build extremely powerful is that it doesn't generate any soft flux. 2 heavy blasters generate 1440 flux which is decreased by -10% from Energy Weapon Mastery, add Heavy Machine Gun and now it's shooting 1400 with flux per sec, shield generate 150 soft flux with stabilized shield. 1550 soft generated while 1560 vented, it's perfect zero flux build.

with 0.40 shield efficiency + around 2000 DPS + no soft flux build up you can win every flux war. Once they drop the shield they have to take 1200 damage from Heavy Blasters every second which will break their weapon and engine on top. Even the strongest enemies will just melt.

[Kinsume]

I will just quote my other thread.

Spoiler

Some people seems to think that frigate only wolfpack is not viable but here it is, deleting worst threats.

Downside is that it actually made game too easy I'm bored of playing anymore though. Pretty much 95% game can be won without any risk with auto piloting

Problem with Hyperion is low peak performance due to SO and fighters but you can cover it with only letting reckless officer drive them and full assault + eliminate order on everything. That make them extremely aggressive, often ignoring fighters and everything else and only attack. They can't use fighters if you kill their carriers and they can't shoot missiles if you kill their ship.

Pretty much every vanilla weapons cannot damage Hyperion anyway due to 0.40 shield damage taken. Even kinetics deal only 80% damage while energy weapons deal only around 30% because solar shielding, around 20% from explosive, and that's if the weapon manage to hit instead of missing due to small hull of Hyperion.

Hyperion without SO is utter garbage so don't use it without SO. Even with elite helmsmanship you need to drop shield before using teleport which is too dangerous, not to mention you can't really deal significant damage due to limited weapon choice.

Heavy blaster deal similar damage to large weapons, 600(with wolfpack) damage per shot allows it to penetrate armor better than explosive weapons while dealing with shield better than kinetic weapons.
To make example, Heavy Needler deal 500 DPS against shield, while heavy blaster deal 600 DPS, with wolfpack.
Assault Chaingun deal 150 damage per shot against armor which is not enough to penetrate heavy armor, if the target ship has officer with Polarized Armor it's going to deal practically 0 damage against armor and hull. 600 damage on the other hands, can penetrate even the hardest ships including the Omega.
Only downside with Heavy Blaster is that it cost high flux which is covered by Safety Override.

Even with SO I can't use 3 Heavy Blasters without building up too much flux so I'm using 2 Heavy Blaster and 1 Heavy Machine Gun. Heavy Machine gun deal practically 0 damage against hull, but deals around 750 DPS with shield. What make this build extremely powerful is that it doesn't generate any soft flux. 2 heavy blasters generate 1440 flux which is decreased by -10% from Energy Weapon Mastery, add Heavy Machine Gun and now it's shooting 1400 with flux per sec, shield generate 150 soft flux with stabilized shield. 1550 soft generated while 1560 vented, it's perfect zero flux build.

with 0.40 shield efficiency + around 2000 DPS + no soft flux build up you can win every flux war. Once they drop the shield they have to take 1200 damage from Heavy Blasters every second which will break their weapon and engine on top. Even the strongest enemies will just melt.

[close]

Haha, what a build. Now I do like havingg some variety to my fleet so I don't think I'll go Hyperion only like that. Seems very effective though. I've been using the Ion Pulsar on mine instead of a second heavy blaster, which seems ok for utility.