Ideas about enemy carriers?

[nerezzar]

Hi,
have any of you already found a strategy against enemy small craft?

I tried using the defensive interdictor flight plans but despite starting they'd fend off enemy craft (and torpedoes/missiles), they just seemed to do nothing at all.

Shooting them with auto cannons does way too little damage to be of any use (I shot one of them three times with auto cannons and he had 25% damage...)

That basically seems to leave -accuracy or +armor skills. Is that all I can do about enemy craft? Or did I do something wrong?

[pendell]

Interdictors don't yet fight other small craft; they're only good against torpedoes. If you check in the bug reports you'll see fallen and I discussing the issue at length.

I had originally intended to have a single interdictor for anti-craft defense, but it's simply not working; it isn't , in my view, providing enough value for the expenditure of personnel and slots. So I have waved goodbye to my wing leader and wing tech, who were given an honorable discharge onto a world with starport and military 10. I gave them glowing recommendations, they should have no problem finding other work. In their place I hired a gunboss.

I have two autocannons, a railgun, a torpedo, and a gravity launcher. The first three all work in small craft defense, but I haven't been able to do more to enemy small craft than harass them; It appears that every weapon I authorize to fire will take two shots: One at the mother craft, one at the drone craft.

So currently my best defense is simply to max out my defense pool, apparently strike craft need to make a roll against my defense to strike just as the mother craft does. So the cheapest strategy is simply to max out defense and have a big enough ship to take any hits that do land.

If that doesn't work, the next step is to invest in more autocannons and anti-craft talents. I may also need a warhammer engine that gives 10RP rather than only 8 to allow the use of more guns. It might be feasible to build a "flak ship" which can fire up to 5 autocannons per turn. Backed up by accuracy modules and talents, it might be possible to start destroying some of the small craft -- but will I then have any modules left over for anything else?

One problem is that I think I can only fire autocannons at range 1 or 2. Railguns could possibly be made to serve at ranges 2-4, but I don't know of any viable anti-craft weapons at range 5 at this time.

Those are my experiences so far. Good luck!


ETA:  Discord reports : 
1) Higher-level gundeck boss has talents that will lock down enemy craft or outright destroy them. 
2) A common approach seems to be to use twitch surge to close to range 1 ASAP, ignoring the craft altogether and start boarding.
3) Wing Commando and Wing Lead both have talents to shut down craft launch for turns.   I don't find this useful, however, because by the time this happens the enemy has already deployed their initial craft. 

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[fallen]

What Talents and Components are you trying?

Hired a Gundeck Boss yet?

Interdictors do not dogfight incoming craft yet, its still in testing and balance.

[Cory Trese]

And when it is added, enemy carriers will have it too, and their Interdictors will only get stronger.

Keep in mind that the AI has access to no Talents, rules, components or hulls that you do not also have access to.

[wali]

I'm having massive trouble with Xeno carriers myself. I've done two runs with already established Captains, using Broadswords. Loadout was 4 small torpedoes, 4 small autocannons, 1 medium railgun (one run using VII and the other VIII).

Trying to stay at range and shoot Xeno attack craft is futile. You can hit them when using talents, but the damage is too low to shut them down. You may get one on its 2nd or 3rd run, but by then your ship is swiss cheese.
Likewise, I've never seen a Xeno craft miss, despite 4x +5% defence components and several talents stacked on top. They've got laser precision.
Talents that force craft to land are also mostly useless, as you can only use 1 per turn, and it seems to target random craft. Since the carrier will launch 2 craft per turn, and use its own talents for something beneficial, you are bound to fall behind.

The biggest problem, however, is that some Xeno carrier loadouts have better soft stats across the board. Higher accuracy, higher damage, huge HP pool and so on.
Especially problematic is if they are faster than you*, despite 2x Aegis Pattern, 1x Forward Thrusters and 1x Protective Escort stacked on top of each other. If all that is not enough to close range, so you can get to point blank and disable their weapons through boarding, you are stuck in limbo. You can try to use Twitch Surge, but that means however many turns of just eating damage. So by the time you get to Range 1, your ship (and crew) are in such a bad state that the Carrier can just retreat with ease.

So there are cases when I just don't see a way to victory, no matter what you try.

*This may be caused, in part, by debuffs applied by attack craft. But since there is no way to clear those (tried Flawless Reset, no dice), and no way to avoid getting hit by them, it may as well be hard-coded into the Xeno ship stats.

[fallen]

wali - we sure to check out v3.0.7, we've made some helpful improvements, especially depending on your difficulty.

Notably, ship defense ("despite 4x +5% defence components") and craft evasion are 2 completely different stats. Your Defense Pattern Matrices are not helping defend against bomber attacks at all. You want to look at components like Pilot Modules (+4% chance to evade craft, etc) and Railtrak Guidance Matrix and C-Tak Interceptor Systems, etc.

[wali]

Thank you bunches, fallen - I will be updating right away. ^.^

And you are completely right about craft and ship defence being two different things, obviously.
I'm not sure I really want to give up the defence pattern matrices, though. Of course I could just switch to craft evasion modules and skip all non-jyeeta ships via talents, but having to turn my ship into that kind of one-trick-pony doesn't sit well with me. Not to mention that some of those carriers pack enough conventional firepower to make a grown pirate shed his beard.

I may be fiddling with Wing Commando boarding a bit, as that might allow me to shut down fighters long enough to find an opening. 'going to be tricky, still, but I guess that's the intention. ^.^

Oh, and I'm playing on "hard". That's a pretty good balance between challenge and still having fun, for me.

[fallen]

We're getting a proper warning from the officers added to the start of the era to give players better heads up about tactics to take, that all jyeeta are carriers, etc.

Be sure to get 3.0.9, which includes some key balance changes.

[cerseisadvocate]

Judging from my first contact with an enemy carrier I have to say that "Knock from the Void" can be pretty devastating if timed smartly

[fallen]

cerseisadvocate - let them get close and waste a few turns before you gut punch