Quasar vs Eclipse vs Pulsar

[Imperial Good]

I am starting to rethink by ideas about the Buzzard. I assumed it was useless because it does not have the legs of Paranid ships or the Pulsar. But after dropping advanced satellites inside Xenon gates and seeing what goes on there I began to wonder. I would see a Buzzard or two taking on multiple Ks, Ps etc. Numbers that would make mincemeat of my tricked out Nemesis if I did not stick to hit and run tactics (dog fighting 10 or more Xenon at once in a Nemesis is a recipe for death I think). The Buzzards hang in there for ages and seem to be able to withdraw to recharge shields. Brave Teladi. Spacefuel courage.

OoS damage logic is completely different than in sector. There is also a bug where by if an S ship constantly changes its attack logic between flee and attack or something like that it becomes effectively invulnerable. People have reported Ks dancing with HOP S ships like that for tens of hours.

In sector and personally flying my Nemesis I often solo swarms of 20-30 M, N and Ps. I once did it to save a destroyer of mine that stupidly decided to solo a Xenon Shipyard instead of defending a position. Xenon ships are so slow compared with the Nemesis that if your shield is at risk a quick tap of the boost and you are safe. After a few seconds of no damage one can travel mode and leave the Xenon eating your dust. Only real risk to the Nemsis are K and Is because the XEN L turrets on them can mince you in a couple of seconds if they start to connect.

My fighter fleets are usually 40 to match capacity of destroyers etc. I will have four Pegasus for speed. They can chase down a K and stop it engaging travel drive. 20 Perseus are not far behind. They are followed by 16 Pulsar for the knock out punch. I am not sure how I would use a Buzzard for that.

I just threw 40 Pulsar and 10 Nemesis onto a Zeus Carrier with full Ion Blaster Mk2 loadout. To put it in perspective they eat a Xenon Defence Platform in ~2 minutes from full HP while also killing the 30 odd Xenon ships defending it. Ks die in a couple of seconds from full toughness. Such is the brokenness of OoS combat logic.

[Buzz2005]

apsolutly broken, in 2.6 its even more highlighted bc factions have a lot of ships now guardian and attacking xenons essentially making them like khaak, useless and a canon fodder killing them in 15 hours on a new save

if ego don't fix this somehow I will have to quit playing

[Tamina]

Be it a Xenon K, destroyers, fighters or stations of any kind, my ships always die in this order:

Quasar >> Pulsar/Buzzard > Eclipse/Nova

Quasar is the most unreliable ship of them all. They usually all die before even one ship of any other ship class gets destroyed.
It has the hull and shield of a Nova but a multiple times bigger projected front face area, as we call it in aviation engineering, or simply spoken "It is multiple times easier to hit".

My two cents:
- Nova | Size: +++ Agility: +++ Firepower: + HP: + | =8
- Eclipse | Size: ++ Agility: + Firepower: ++ HP: +++ | =8
- Pulsar | Size: + Agility: +++ Firepower: +++ HP: + | =8
- Quasar | Size: + Agility: ++ Firepower: ++ HP: + | =6

6 vs 8: Quasar is bad. Either the price needs to be dropped or how about increasing both Agility to ~3 and hull/shield to ~2? Making it an in between of Eclipse and Pulsar.

As it stands now it is neither worth its price nor it's name "heavy fighter".

[Berserk Knight]

From what I can see, X4's definition of "heavy fighter" is if a ship has 4 or more guns.

Low-end fighters for each race has 2 guns and at least 3k hull. (Argon Nova 3100, Paranid Perseus 3700, Teladi Falcon 3900)
High-end fighters of non-Argon races have 3 guns and increased hull. (Paranid Theseus 4200, Teladi Buzzard 4100)
Argon high-end is the Eclipse, with 4 guns and increased hull (4000). But it has 4 guns, so it's a "heavy fighter" unlike the other high-ends.

Pulsar? Interceptor level of hull (1900), but with 6 guns for ultimate glass-cannoning. 6 guns is more than 4, so it's a "heavy fighter". (Back when this monstrosity had 3900 hull, it really was a heavy fighter. Okay, maybe not. It was too OP to be just a heavy fighter.)
Quasar (1700 hull) is just 2 Argon Discoverer scouts (1400 hull) glued together. (From this we can conclude that Discoverer's wings contribute 300 hull.) It's a jury-rigged junkpile, but it has 4 guns, so it's a "heavy fighter" as well.

They need to redo the fighter classifications.
Put the high-ends of other races in their rightful place as heavy fighters, and also put those glass-cannons somewhere else. (The "interceptor" classification really suits them.)
...And demote the current "interceptor" Elite to "manned defense drone".

[AquilaRossa]

...And demote the current "interceptor" Elite to "manned defense drone".

It reminds me of a Toyota Prius for some reason. As useless in combat as it is I always keep Val's Elite in my game. I use it like an Uber driver to assign ship traders to my docks. Interceptor? Maybe for intercepting the 'known criminal spotted" in the early game when i was a full noob and 1500cr reward seems worth it (I played X3R/TC to death, but felt like a total noob coming back 10 tens later).

I just tried 40 Buzzard in Tharka's Cascade. That's the only dangerous Xenon zone left in my 2.60 beta game. Hop and Teladi have quieted the rest. The Buzzards are pretty bloody good. I gave them an ion blaster in the middle and two beams. My favourite is actually the Perseus with beam and Teladi shields though. They can not kill as fast, but they get there a lot faster, so i can get more kills with them over a period of time. Send one for repairs and it is not gone for long and not usually accosted along the way. Not so good in sector though. Theseus does not seem as useful to me. Today i will try the Quasar and see if it does better than 40 Eclipse. My Wharf has five building docks, so 40 fighters can be assembled in 2 minutes. All that automation and my workers still do long hours. No way for me to give them better pay and more time off.

p.s. OT but known criminal spotted is kind of meh huh? Death penalty for an ordinary factory worker having some Magaglit, while the big time narco smugglers just get told to drop it and get on with their day. The smugglers must have lobbyists at faction HQs.

[XTC0R]

In sector and personally flying my Nemesis I often solo swarms of 20-30 M, N and Ps. I once did it to save a destroyer of mine that stupidly decided to solo a Xenon Shipyard instead of defending a position. Xenon ships are so slow compared with the Nemesis that if your shield is at risk a quick tap of the boost and you are safe. After a few seconds of no damage one can travel mode and leave the Xenon eating your dust. Only real risk to the Nemsis are K and Is because the XEN L turrets on them can mince you in a couple of seconds if they start to connect.

I don't understand why M class ships are faster than S class ships. Seems all of us using the nemesis. Because it is fast, has good shields and firepower.
I would believe the (heavy) fighters should be faster because they have less or equal firepower and lower shields.

[Johnson98]

I don't understand why M class ships are faster than S class ships. Seems all of us using the nemesis.

Because it´s not the speed that makes fighters, it´s their agility. The Nemesis has the agility of a dying goose, flying forward is the only thing it can do well. I really dislike it´s flight characteristics and only fly it myself if I need the firepower to blow up an unfortunate K. Why would you want to fly 300-400 m/s in only one direction, if you could fly 250-300 m/s in every direction? That´s what a Nova does and that´s exactly why it´s propably my favorite fighter.

Sadly we only got one fighter that takes this to the extreme (a Falcon does not handle like a Nova at all) and no direct upgraded version with similar flight characteristics, which leaves us somewhat undergunned.
Since the AI is quite dumb and only uses one strategy (strafing runs) the potential of fighters like the Nova ends up being unutilized if not used by the player however. Quite a shame.

[Tamina]

The problem isn't the Quasar, that one fairly balanced. It's just that the Eclipse and Pulsar are simply way too powerful. The Teladi and Paranid also have nothing that would be remotely adequate to the Eclipse or Pulsar.

Perseus and Thesus are both outperforming every other fighter in the game. They are the most agile, yet very durable fighters and on top of that have a low profile.
Teladis Buzzard and Falcon can both easily compete with Eclipse and Nova. Buzzard i.e. has a bit better hull and shield then Eclipse and is smaller and faster. Eclipse has more weapons on the other hand, and Nova is more agile then a Falcon. They are pretty balanced but I can see why some people would prefer more weapons.

The Quasar on the other hand has half the shields, half the hull and half the speed of a Perseus AND is three times bigger! No matter which numbers you take from the Quasar, they are the worst. Even the Elite has better stats.

[mr.WHO]

Perseus and Thesus are both outperforming every other fighter in the game. They are the most agile, yet very durable fighters and on top of that have a low profile.
Teladis Buzzard and Falcon can both easily compete with Eclipse and Nova. Buzzard i.e. has a bit better hull and shield then Eclipse and is smaller and faster. Eclipse has more weapons on the other hand, and Nova is more agile then a Falcon. They are pretty balanced but I can see why some people would prefer more weapons.

The Quasar on the other hand has half the shields, half the hull and half the speed of a Perseus AND is three times bigger! No matter which numbers you take from the Quasar, they are the worst. Even the Elite has better stats.

I must admit I'm a weapons/hull/shield guy, so anything other than Eclipse and Pulsar seem crap to me.
You made to take a closer look at Teladi and paranid fighters.
It's a shame that X4 encuclopedia is so lacking in showing you the actual strong and weak points of designs

[Unbekanntes Feindschiff]

Perseus and Thesus are both outperforming every other fighter in the game. They are the most agile, yet very durable fighters and on top of that have a low profile.
Teladis Buzzard and Falcon can both easily compete with Eclipse and Nova. Buzzard i.e. has a bit better hull and shield then Eclipse and is smaller and faster. Eclipse has more weapons on the other hand, and Nova is more agile then a Falcon. They are pretty balanced but I can see why some people would prefer more weapons.

The Quasar on the other hand has half the shields, half the hull and half the speed of a Perseus AND is three times bigger! No matter which numbers you take from the Quasar, they are the worst. Even the Elite has better stats.

These statements are simply wrong. Neither Perseus nor Theseus are durable at all. They only have one shield slot and their profile isn't better than the one of a Nova. And the Buzzard doesn't have a better shielding than an eclipse (both have 2 shield slots), nor is it faster nor smaller.

The Quasar is fine. It's like a slower Theseus which gets an additional gun in turn.

Are you sure you are not playing with any kind of rebalancing mod?