Small Craft experiences/feedback?

[tarquelne]

I’m curious about how and what people are doing with Small Caft.

I’ve come to like how an Interdictor draws fire while simultaneously giving your defense a boost, though I’m curious about what governs its ability to actually intercept enemy fire. I like the Patrol talents. I expect Interdictors to shine when the enemy gets Small Craft.

I highly value how a Wing Commando can put your fighting crew on an enemy ship at long range. 2 reactor points and a few turns delay can give you the death of 4 enemy crew + 3 or 4 good debuffs. 1 level of Wing Commando+several levels of Pirate or Pilot+Many levels of Soldier has become a favorite Officer build.

Bombers, OTOH ... I like the talents, but not enough. I see them as the slow, expensive, but only choice if you want to put what’s effectively a long range weapon in a Large slot and don’t have the crew to make an assault shuttle work. That’s far from nothing, but still rather niche. This might change quickly if I weren’t confident that ship combat will generally happen at the range I choose, and that the challenge will lie in evading/surviving enemy hits, not hitting the enemy. (Giving Bombers more punch would help too, of course. And there may be something about how ships take damage that makes the Bomber’s ability to deliver extra damage on top of the output of your 8-10 reactor points of weapons worth the investment.)

I’d love it if the number of craft launched was taken down to 1 or two per Launch bay. I think it’d help make the dedicated carriers special.

I look forward to more small craft-centric components. (My favorite at the moment is the micro launch bay.)

[drspendlove]

I think the bombers post-patch got a pretty big boost to where they were supposed to be. Some of the flight plans weren't applying +crit or +damage before. The bombing debuffs are very strong and when they get a little lucky and land a crippling effect as well and time their attacks with mine, it's very strong.

Interdictors as far as missile/torp screening only matter if your base defense isn't high enough to always dodge them anyway. Regardless of that, one thing that irritates me is that they can be hit by missiles/torps easily, even if their idea is to intercept those for other ships. I wonder if a change to allow their interception to apply to missiles/torps aimed at other small craft would make sense. But then, you'd be protecting your main ship less. The change I'd really like to see is to have Interdictors (and only Interdictors) have a bonus to evade missiles/torps on top of their normal evasion. Something like +20% additive would be sufficient. Otherwise my repair bills just get too darn high for deploying them.

One thing I like about interdictors is their ability to use Screening Swarm to boost the evasion of all my small craft. It can really keep my repair bills much lower.

Shuttles can be very strong if you have a low agility ship and few/no Gunners for their range 2-3 boarding talent. They can do some good damage with their post-boarding talents and then can also apply a nice debuff on top of them.

I still am missing the details on too many mechanics to make great use of small craft though, and that troubles me.

[divini]

It's fun. Even more fun with the recent buff to shorten flight paths to 3 turns. I run with 1 fighter, 2 bombers, 1 shuttle

I've actually grown to like bombers a lot since they give out really strong debuffs that can't be removed, which combined with boarding talents (which also can't be removed) from your shuttle craft let's you seriously cripple the strongest ships.

Bombers do require a lot of support though. A +accuracy talent is a must, though there are plenty available (E-Techs, Wing Techs, Wing Leaders, the Wing Bomber themselves). It's also vulnerable to Close-in defenses and Knock from the Void which I see everywhere at high levels and usually use it on your bomber. I like to run 2 bombers because of that.

They're surprisingly tanky too, the lv6 craft can take a ton of punishment, and even 3 rounds of Lightning Lock isn't enough to take one down.

They are very expensive to repair even with Triage so yes between repairs, launch bay and craft costs, crew/officer job slot investment of pilots, talent investment they are a massive investment. But man when you got extra cash late game and can put it all together it's a lot of fun.

Shuttles gives you the ability to board from 4-5, which is great if you don't have a close range loadout, and is very good vs certain types of enemies like xeno.

I just wish I can launch 5 craft at once, since the biggest ships can hold 5 craft, and I don't believe it's worth the space, extra pilot just to have a backup.

[fallen]

divini - many thanks for sharing and for sharing how its working for you. I am not sure if we'll ever enable 5 craft again, it was pretty problematic and would get more so once the enemy starts launching as well. Some limitations were required

Great strat!

[tarquelne]

Trying out bombers some more, I’ll modify my take on them to *very good* long range weapons. I still don’t think they’re as powerful as an Assault Shuttle + good combat crew ... but then they cost no more, don’t require the combat crew, and the basic debuff talents have 0 cool down, where the boarding party’s debuffs will get used up. And the bombers can stack up on a turn.

Given all that I’d say bombers need less support. While you may need some +hit buffs to make sure they actually land thier blows, that’s considerably less burdomsome than the boarding crew requirement of Commandos - and less risk.

A ship with just 1 craft, I think I’d go with 1 shuttle, for offense, or 1 interdictor, if I want long range defense. On a heavy carrier with 3+ craft I did come around to adding multiple bombers rather than multiple shuttles. (Bonus: No more being bugged about using the core boarding party for every combat.)

[pendell]

I run with a single interdictor , which I expect will be more useful once enemy carriers become available.

I will say that interdictors have become much more useful with the latest patches, since now they draw fire off the main ship. "Teamwork is essential, it gives the enemy someone else to shoot at", as they say.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[dmesse]

I think I'm the only person I've seen around here and Steam discussion forums that uses a full mix of small crafts (2 interdictor, 2 bomber, 1 shuttle) to close into range 1 and zealously pound the enemy ship back to stone age using both incendiary charges and boarding parties to grill everything inside hostile ship alive. Most of what I've read are folks staying on long-mid ranges of 3~5 while relying on remotely shuttled boarding parties to provide boarding debuffs. Here's how it usually plays out for me:

My opening turns are quite similar to others though, except I'm always advancing forward while under interdictor cover. My carrier is also only armed with 4 weapons: 2 autocannons and 2 lances. I am intentionally leaving AP reserves ready in case I need to do emergency relaunch of small crafts that were forcibly landed by enemy captains.

Turn 1 -> [Range 5] Use Forward Thrusters talent, launch 2 interdictors with Aegis pattern and 1 bomber with incendiary charges. Move forward.

Turn 2 -> [Range 4] Use Evasive Maneuvering talent, launch 1 bomber with incendiary charges. Relaunch any small crafts forcibly disengaged by Knock from the Void. Move forward.

If for any reason I failed to close range on this turn, throw in a 2nd Forward Thrusters talent then launch the shuttle now as I need to kick down some doors ASAP.

Staggering the launch of bombers is intentional to maximize the chance of enemy captain wasting his talent card usage on recovering talents, rather than actual offensive talents.

Turn 3 -> [Range 3] Use talents appropriate to the battle situation so far. Erase crippling effects, heal hurt crew members, restore morale with Overriding Discipline, crank up Tag the Beast, or if things are going pretty well Vigilant Scanners. Relaunch any small crafts. Start shooting two Lances. Save shuttle for turn 4. Move forward.

Turn 4 -> [Range 2] Use appropriate small craft buff talent. 2 lance shot, 2 autocannon bursts. Shuttle sent out. Move forward.

Turn 5 -> [Range 1] The real fun begins here. Rip & Tear with an all out offensive, with colorful combination of bombers, boarding, lances, autocannons, and interdictors on attack runs rather than defensive flights.

Two successful bombing runs tends to have roasted a lot of components and crew members already. Proceed to kill their crews or destroy critical components for successful looting of fuel and cargo.


All in all, my battle plan leaves a lot of room open for future counter small craft maneuvers. I've gotten myself accustomed to having a small pool of action points ready in case things go south.

This may experience difficulties when I encounter a Xeno carrier in the future that's fully kitted out for aerial superiority, but I'll be ready to switch things up when that day comes.

Come on, guys, why wouldn't Xenos want to terrorize us with a big horde of small crafts?

[drspendlove]

This sounds like fun dmesse. What difficulty are you doing this on?

[dmesse]

May 27, 2019 9:40:23 GMT -5 drspendlove said:

This sounds like fun dmesse. What difficulty are you doing this on?

Hard mode. I haven't had time to test this out on Impossible yet.

[fallen]

dmesse - yours is indeed the first strat I've seen that focuses on closing. Love the use of near-range AC and lances along with bomber debuff. Incendiary charges are a really nasty one

You're strat will also be good at handling enemy fighters as you're packing autocannons and interdictors.

[resistor]

Like I mentioned in the BH community challenge thread, I am currently using a Cautela Titan with 3 bombers. It is going amazingly well.

My bombers are officers, so they equip the gear that gives +10% chance to evade, hit, and prevent MPs.

Here is my typical attack pattern:

1) Deploy all three bombers, two with Havoc Burst Pattern and one with Bombing Run, while advancing on turn one (using the extra 2 RP from Warhammer/Behemoth engine), and using Vigilant Scanners talent for more Defense and to make my attacks more accurate on the next two turns

2) Move forwards while firing two small railguns, and activating either the Inspiring Squadron or ECM Surge Hunt And Seek talent, depending on how I want to balance craft evasion vs damage.

3) Fire the small railguns and two small lances while activating Coordinated Fire for a Crit and Dmg bonus. This is the turn where my bombers strike, and the last turn my Vigilant Scanners talent will affect. Most of my ship gun and bomber attacks will crit, doing huge amounts of damage to the enemy.

4) The enemy's dice pools have been crushed by the heavy internal damage from last turn, as well as being hit by the Bombing Run debuff. Not to mention all the crippling effects like Distortion Fields and System Blackout I've scored on them. I've basically won at this point, and will spend a turn or two firing on them to finish cracking their weakened hull.

The only enemy that has lasted long enough to get hit by a second bomber squadron attack was a Terrox Heavy Cruiser.

Because I rely on doing massive damage to severely wound them on turn 3, PX Incendiary Payload is actually not very useful to me, and I only use that one if I want to take a ship intact.

Edit: Oh, and I am only using those tier-2 Mirage Heavy bombers. I don't have rank with any faction that gives special bombers. I will get on Thulun's good side eventually and get even stronger bombers.

[fallen]

resistor - sounds like a heck of a build out. Interesting to see the addition of the Warhammer/Behemoth really to allow you the flexibility to get out all 3 in one go. Getting that much damage packed into a single turn is dynamite.