Or you can even just spam the plasma frigs with fighters and/or cruisers with lasers (these tear through frigs like a hot knife through butter).
I lost a battle because I didn’t enough fighter support in my fleet, and eventually got worn down by the enemy fights. So I decided to come up with something to deal with enemy fighters.
[config]
name = fed assault fighter
guiname = fed assault fighter
hull = Federation Leopard Fighter
cost = 111
[modules]
0 = fighter_rocket,
1 = fighter_pulse laser,
2 = fighter_engine III,
3 = fighter power III,
This little guy absolutely destroys enemy fighters. I had a battle where at the start three squads of these basically took out an entire enemy squad in one pass. After these guys took out the rest of the enemy fighters (in about the first minute of battle) they continued to pelt the enemy frigates and cruisers the rest of the game.
That said, is there a counter against plasma? Missiles can be shot, but plasma seems to be unrelenting, multi-coloured death. Also, does the target laser aid plasma? I’ve assumed not, but it’s worth checking.
Tip against plasma - get a frigate, load it up with four+ engines, give it rapid fire lasers, make it work, get it to engage at a distance of about 150. That’s inside the engagement radius of plasma, so the plasma weapons can’t hit you. Experiment with that.
Ah, cool! Thanks very much, that’s nice and sneaky! I haven’t really been playing around too much with the engagement ranges, I really should give them a look see.
You may also need to get those frigates escorting each other - otherwise, they get to their target and stop - at which point, OTHER ships (at the other end of the field) can shoot them with great accuracy now they’re not moving.
Beamer Cruisers + Disruptor Bomb frigates = win
Could use a bit of both.
Tip:
Currently there are two major paradigms in GSB that I know of, others should feel free to correct me.
Paradigm 1: Run up and claw - Some kind of relatively fast fleet, designed to move close and engage with short range weapons. Short range weapons typically do very well against shields - EG, the Ion Cannon for frigates. Usual defence is a widely spread fleet using paradigm 2 and/or responding in kind.
PAradigm 2: Hold back and shoot - This is your plasma-spam, your large fleets of missile ships, etc. Sit back and engage at range, usually with very slow ships. Usual defence is Paradigm 1 and/or responding in kind.
I came up with the same design. Nasty little buggers. Watching them swarm an unescorted cruiser is great- like watching bees sting something to death. With lasers.
I find the best thing to do is to fill my cruiser up with long-range torpedoes (bar two slots, one for an anti-fighter weapon and one for a missile-shooter-downer), a quick-charge shield and shedloads of armour.
The important thing - don’t bother with engines.
Then stack them all on top of each other (makes the missile-shooter-downer’s (I must look up the correct term for that) work wonders) in the corner nearest the weaker of the enemy squadrons) and let the bad man stroll toward his death.
Also - my version doesn’t seem to let me assign escorts - the little line is always red when I hover the target select over other ships. Am I doing it right?
Are you left-clicking or drag-selecting? be sure to left click, that usually works for me. (Shift-F and Shift-E are hotkeys for escorts and formations!)
Yeah, I’m just clicking on the ship I want to target.
Looks like a bug 
Which version are you on? 1.02 broke escorting and formation, and 1.03 partially fixed it so that it works with a single ship at a time, but apparently not multiple ships at once.
Not sure. I’ll check when I get home.
I’ve been having some success with creating reserve groups. Have a group of frigates and/or fighters in formation with a front line ship, positioned way in the back. When the ship gets destroyed your reserve is released. This allows more fragile ships to enter the battle at a moment when the enemy ships are distracted. It works very well for fighters designed to take on bigger stuff, and is the only way I’ve found to make torpedo bombers work.
Oh thanks for this tip, this will help keep my “shields are down gogogogo” guys in the back until it is appropriate
Thanks Arathain! That’s a really clever fix to a problem I’ve been having with bombers.
I’m having some trouble with ships that are pretty much all armor and armor repair stations in a challenge. I threw together one of my own and tested it and found it to be pretty much invincible, if incapable of harming the enemy. Pretty much one power plant, one crew module, mebbe one engine if you plan on taking it anywhere, and about 5 or 6 advanced armor repair stations and 10-13 ultra heavy armor slots. If you do take it some place then it can lead and as the enemy will always shoot at the lead ship I can’t really see a way around it. I posted a challenge where the ships are pretty much hunks of armor and I’m very intrigued if anyone will be able to beat it, or where they will get bored and give up. Anyway I was hoping for some suggestions or how to beat this strategy.
I don’t know if it’s possible to beat a challenge designed to be unwinnable because the ships are all floating rocks, but I’d think that you could get around a “screening” ship with the retaliate and rescue orders. Never tried it though.