M6 vs M3 duels

[PLX]

Both M6 and M3 are AI controlled. Combat takes place IS. All situations are taken from real life, uhm, real game.
Situation 1. Pirates Kea vs Split Dragon. I was IS for some time, then noticed 1 pirate ship (that Kea) entertaining with Dragon. There were no other pirates. Dragon's shields were at about 33%. Kea had FBL in front turret an was shooting it for quite a long time, reducing Dragon's shields. The Dragon did nothing to make me worry about Kea's shields. In some time, Dragon was disassembled into spacedust. Kea wins. What a surprise!

Situation 2. Pirate Nova vs Paranid Nemesis. Now I watch the duel with more attention. Before duel, that was 2 lonley ships flying thru space wih full shields. Then Nova was lighted by weapon strikes and suffered considerable shields damage. after that, they've began dancing around. Nemesis was damaging Nova's shields from time to time, even to around 50%, but not lower. But Nova did some good attack runs on Nemesis, shooting HEPTS. Also Nova used around 4 missiles. Nemesis has 425 MJ of shields (plus regenerating), so missiles didn't do all the job, but helped conciderable. A screenshot:
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And then Pirate Nova wins. Now, not a surprise for me.

Situation 3. Revenge of M6 . My Heavy Centaur Prototype (HCP) vs Pirates Nova again. HCP wasn't able to kill Nova on te first attack with main weapons. And that was the last attack with main weapons of HCP - after they started dancing around, HCP hadn't a cahance to shoot it's main weapons. Nova, of cource, had such a chance, and not one. But now we have a corvette with 800 MJ of shielding and, more importantly, with excellent turrets (2x guns in 3 turrets, waay better then two previous competitiors). Most of the time HCP was shooting at Nova from side turrett. With 2xCIGs it kept Nova's shields low, but that was going for quite a while. I was flying near enogh for transporter (not taking part in combat!), so i changed guns for HCP. How HEPTs in turrets. Quite the same siuation with Nova's shields for a while. Then PACs. Looks like they hit better, HCP killed Nova in not a long time. Btw, Nova wasn't able to deliver significant damage to 800 MJs of HCP shielding. No missiles. But even the pack of 4 missiles, like in situation 2, won't give Nova any chance against HCP.

These test do not cover things like

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Very good maneurability corvettes: Hyperion and Vidar. Superiorly maneurable corvette: Xenon P. A corvette with REAL anti-figter weapons in turrets: Springblossom. However, all these are not so easily obtainable in numbers (Springblossom is not by itself, but because of Prototype SSC for it).

But what I see is that M6, as a whole, is not nescessary superior class to M3(+) in the hands of AI pilots. And I should stick with well-turreted heavy M6 when buying corvettes from Commonwealth shipyards for my IS taskforce. But have you known or expected that AI pilots are so many times less effective with M6 then player?

[sjones25]

IS the M3s are sometimes tough for the M6s to catch in their crosshairs, but OOS, that becomes a non-issue and the M6 will often destroy an M3 in the first pass.

[PLX]

Completely agree about OOS. But IS - M3s a over-super tough to get into M6 crosshair in a duel.

[AgamemnonArgon]

En masse, fighters all cause problems with other ships, even if they are Capital warships.
Arm ships with missiles against Pirates and other fighters.