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[intrinsic_parity]

Except the Vanguard can fit A LOT of them and has an ability providing it some good tank.  Mix it with some heavier DPS frigates and it should do just fine.
Basically the Vanguard puts massive flux pressure on a target and then can vibe in Dampener while your anti-armor stuff (like a Brawler) takes advantage of the overflux'd target.

Idk, there are tons of ships with lots of small and medium mounts. Eradicator, mora, and onslaught all come to mind as tanky armor-heavy ships that have more mounts. They can all follow up on their own kinetic pressure (requiring no AI coordination which is very difficult to achieve reliably), and are all much tankier. I would much rather put an officer in any of them: they all die much less often, and do more damage.

don't really present any benefits over alternatives

They embody the hit-and-run tactic quite well and if you're willing to swap them when things get dicey they're a nice opener for any battle. To get the big boys to chase after a swarm of flies is endless fun.

In my experience, actual big boys like remnants don't do much chasing, mostly just killing. If any of the enemies have phase lances, or heavy blasters, or plasma cannons, or tach lances, or any large HE weapon, it's just gg. A scarab or hyperion will fill the same role, but die less often and probably deal more damage overall too.

[Linnis]

Try this.

Have an aggressive officer with minimum Elite Point defense skill.

This thing will shred an elite version of a hammer head within 30 seconds.

Missiles interchangeable to whatever your dealing with.

The biggest problem with damper field on frigates is that while it allows them to survive big fleet battles when heavy firepower gets shifted on them. They cannot deal with EMP, and even a single salamander will make it activate damper and get EMPED. My suggestion is allow PD weapons to fire while damper field is on, or change the AI so that it does not activate damper when heavy EMP is coming at them.

I use vanguard a lot in my late game fleet. They are wonderful at punching up into carriers, destroyers, and even cruiser level. Usually treat them like a expensive missile and keep them out of the main fight. Just don't use them against high tech fleets.

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[Gergin]

Except the Vanguard can fit A LOT of them and has an ability providing it some good tank.  Mix it with some heavier DPS frigates and it should do just fine.
Basically the Vanguard puts massive flux pressure on a target and then can vibe in Dampener while your anti-armor stuff (like a Brawler) takes advantage of the overflux'd target.

Idk, there are tons of ships with lots of small and medium mounts. Eradicator, mora, and onslaught all come to mind as tanky armor-heavy ships that have more mounts. They can all follow up on their own kinetic pressure (requiring no AI coordination which is very difficult to achieve reliably), and are all much tankier. I would much rather put an officer in any of them: they all die much less often, and do more damage.

don't really present any benefits over alternatives

They embody the hit-and-run tactic quite well and if you're willing to swap them when things get dicey they're a nice opener for any battle. To get the big boys to chase after a swarm of flies is endless fun.

In my experience, actual big boys like remnants don't do much chasing, mostly just killing. If any of the enemies have phase lances, or heavy blasters, or plasma cannons, or tach lances, or any large HE weapon, it's just gg. A scarab or hyperion will fill the same role, but die less often and probably deal more damage overall too.

Sure, if you just want to min-max the game then there's a lot of ships that aren't "good" options.
I find fun in setting some form of restrictions or doctrine and then trying to build a viable fleet within that.

Vanguard can be a viable frigate.  That's really all I'm trying to say.

[intrinsic_parity]

I don't like paying money when things die all the time is what I'm trying to say.

I will say, I did a bit of testing, and the difference an officer makes on vanguard is much than I expected (stacking wolfpack + targeting analysis + ballistic mastery makes vulcans shred stuff). I might do some more experimenting.

At the end of the day though, a HIL or tac lance just slaughters, which really hurts.

[shoi]

I had one for a bit and just slapped on autofit, it worked out pretty well from what I could see but I always run wolfpack  and it may have been officered, which probably made a big difference. the rugged construction hullmod tells me these guys are expected to die often, so I feel like it's good for what it is with that in mind BUT  if it had some sort of inherent beam/emp resist or something that'd be swell.

[Null Ganymede]

If you're expecting it to burn through its armor quickly, Safety Overrides is a good pickup. Resistant Flux Conduits + Solar Shielding + Armored Weapon Mounts if you're looking for endurance versus mid-game high-tech factions.

Kinetic PD by itself has high DPS at ridiculous flux efficiency. The AI just isn't great at abusing their low range (maybe it doesn't bother closing into PD weapon range?) but with the elite officer skill you can use other weapons as "rangefinders" for the kinetic PD punch. This makes the usual early-game Lasher flagship viable in officer hands.

"typical SO flagship Lasher"

[close]

[Locklave]

... I think lashers suck too, so saying they're maybe better than lashers is not saying much to me lol.

Lashers are a low end ship, they do well for what they are and what they cost. That taken you are absolutely correct.

[Null Ganymede]

They're low tech, not low end. I'd like to see a single high tech ship pull as much weight per DP as a machine gun Lasher does.

[TontonBoo]

This makes the usual early-game Lasher flagship viable in officer hands

You had me at "Lasher flagship". Interesting build gonna try that for kicks. I just don't get why the berthing hullmod ? Wouldn't it be better used as vents or caps ?
Those rust buckets need more love so thanks for contributing. Now if only I could rig a Vanguard to be as fun to use I'd have my frontline ready.

[Haresus]

Vanguards are not bad at all, I'd say. They're tough, have lots of room for missiles and torpedoes, one of the faster frigates (and very fast when burning forward, which is useful for capping points), and the lack of shields means that you can safely overflux them with lots of dakka
The dampener also more or less acts as a safe flux vent for the ship.

In addition to all of that, they have lots of OP for hull mods, so you can stack armor, add missile racks, or SO, or whatever you might fancy without sacrificing much.

It's overall solid, and doesn't die as often as I first thought it would.

[Locklave]

I find the concept of using the dampener to vent to be laughable.

Vanguard auto vents all it's flux when it explodes, which by the way is before flux gets anywhere near full.

[intrinsic_parity]

I added a vanguard to my late game fleet and leveled an officer just to see what would happen. Honestly, not as bad as I expected, but still pretty unimpressive. Over the course of ~5 200k+ bounty fights, it died in majority of fights, and did about as much damage as a scarab. I'm not currently grinding remnants, but I think it would probably fare much worse there. I think it's just not well suited to big chaotic fights with lots of high damage enemies. Based on 1v1s in the sim, I think it would be very effective early on, but it definitely falls off enough that I would not want to invest story points or build officers just for it.

[Null Ganymede]

It's a neat mid-game ship.

You can't really run it at level 1 the way you can a Tempest or Lasher. It probably can't endure through late-game grinds.

"but 8 guns for 8dp is pretty good"

[close]

Even with 70% CR and no useful officer skills the fact that it never gets flux locked is useful. Trick is putting machine guns in the hardpoints so it never loses kinetic pressure.

I'm curious how it would do late-game with a Solar Shielding + RFC + IPDAI railgun build.

[intrinsic_parity]

It's great as long as the enemy doesn't have any of the weapons that instantly kill it...

[Locklave]

Neat, pretty well, okay. These are not words anyone should be using to describe a premium frigate performance.

It shouldn't need officers with specific skills to be good, it shouldn't even need an officer too be good. Nor should it require player control. It isn't a late or even mid game ship, people need to stop pretending that's the case. Redacted swat Vanguard like a fly.

It's okay against early game trash enemies that lack advanced weaponry and missile capacity, which is sad because the Lasher is still better at that.

Also I checked something. I can buy and restore a LP Lasher for less then the Vanguard costs, which isn't cheap by any means. I don't have words to express how much that bothers me.