The problem is that fighters are not a fast enough counter for fighters. It works fine as long as the enemy fighters are willing to engage yours, but when they set orders to only attack cruisers and frigates things can get really messy unless you have a very heavy investment in tractor beams and such, or can coax the enemy fighters into shooting stuff they can’t kill - like a well armoured cruiser.
Armouring all your ships to 10+ does the trick… I find that a bit expensive, so I try to trick the enemy fighters with some carefully placed ‘honeypot’ cruisers, a little in front and to the sides of the fleet which ARE armoured, unlike the bulk of the fleet.
I think Rebel are considered armour weak because
They don’t have any cruisers with armour bonuses.
Their main advantage is speed bonuses. Armour is heavy.
In contrast, every single Alliance hull has a armour bonus of 9% or more.
It would be nice to have some sort of AoE anti-fighter weapon like the popularly requested flak.
As for the Rebs, I don’t play them too much but I built some ships today. They are quite HP fragile so maybe you’re right and a few shields with one armor plate is the way to go.
BTW - 1.29 live, Rebs got a new hull Cliff is awesome.
I used my old Armor slot to add in a Engine, the person who told me not to bother with armor if I’m only going to put one slab on was right, having cruisers that go 0.30+ is a pretty good defense too, of course in my favorite minotaur ship I convert a hardpoint into a utilitypoint but it seems to work pretty well without that slab and minus 1 hardpoint. I have experiemented moving my minotaur design to a Valkyrie and it does the same thing with extra HP and marginally cheaper too, I wish they would switch the bonuses for the Valkyrie with the Minotaur cause the Minotaur I think is the best looking ship in the game. I would take a Minotaur Ship as my avatar picture if the forums had a picture of it available to choose from. Actually looking over some of the ships after the patch the Valhalla could fit a even better shield tank and its got a bonus for it.
Remember, it’s usually much more effective to give you ship roles. A few touch nuts to crack in front of fragile but butt-kicking heavy assault craft can really be brutal… They brought fighters? They’re set to hit frigs? Bring in some anti-fighter frigs w/enough armor to hold them off, and some anti-fighter missiles… I found that much more effective than making well rounded jacks-of-all-trades.
I beat my first 4 star challenge with the tribe on the second attempt 12% could just as easily failed too to be honest, my ships with the 3 fast regeneration shields were practically invulnerable to his fighters, so unless they are really careful about setting up the range of attack on the fighters to get under my ships shields it generally isn’t a huge issue. but I did try two rebel bait ships probably not enough to really help or even with enough antifighter guns really I’m going to try to find a way to make a better bait cruiser. if anybody has any doubt on my main cruiser I’m thinking of posting it so they can try it.
Whenever I set my fighters to focus on capital ships rather than other fighters (which is pretty much always) I set the ranges for those attacks very very short, specifically to ensure that the majority of shots are taken inside the shield bubble. Seems to work very well against frigates and moderately well against cruisers.
I would be interested to see it work, should I look for your forum name to find a challenge with fighters set to attack inside a shield bubble, I’m sure my anti cruiser cruisers would get torn to shreds but I’m curious how effective they will be.
I actually haven’t done anything with the challenge system. Suppose I should try that here soon; I’ve just been mostly trying to figure out some strategies against the single-player missions that don’t have me admitting defeat when my fleet hits 45% before the enemy hits 90%.
I’ll see if I can slap something together, since I would like some opinions on whether my stuff actually works worth a hoot.
i’ve tested it (not very extensively though), and it seems to me, that the way how fighters move negates your efforts…
they have a certain minimal turn radius, you can easily observe this for example by equipping the hawk fighter with a single engine, let it escort a cruiser and speed up the game to 4x.
they won’t stay inside the bubble of a cruiser (maybe empire…) and in no way inside the bubble of a frigate.
so i dare to say, no offense intended, your observation that they perform better is maybe imaginary…
None taken, but I didn’t say they perform better. I said they perform well. Better would imply a comparison, and as I said, I’m late to the fighter game so I have nothing to which I can compare my current strategy.
i was a bit ahead and ignored the fact that you hadn’t a comparison, i implied that there must be something different (= better) with your tactic you wanted to tell us ;).
Speaking of challenges there is a Challenge against a Federation Enemy that is labeled I Win the ships have tons of HP and armed to the teath with cruiser lasers beat that with roughly equal number of cruisers and frigates and fighters and if your ships can beat them with roughly equal numbers they can stand up to alot of challenges.
Cliff is awesome.