What fighters should I use for my carrier?

[ali-stool]

Bearing in mind that I don't have the PHQ yet so I cant really reverse engineer anything fancy like a Fenrir (which I don't have anyway)
I was also wondering if an Odin would be worth using in vanilla or should I sell it and just stick with my Colossus.

I could also use some help with my UT as i'm quite late on into the game and my economy is booming, I just wanted to know what ships work best as escorts as I am constantly losing freighters to pirates and q's. It just gets very tedious having to replace them all the time.

Thanks

[Bill Huntington]

ali-stool, there are quite a number of answers to this one, and you will be getting a good number of them. Some fighters suit some pilots better than others. And it depends on the role you have for them.

I use my Tokyo sometimes to support my excursions to the Xenon sectors, like XCore 023. I have found the Scimitar is a fast, strong, survivable, and relatively cheap M3. It has survived when fully outfitted CW fighters like the Nova Raider or the Skate have just disappeared. It kills other M3s just fine, and my usual wing of 8 kills Xenon P and even Q regularly. It would take some losses with the Q, so I don't usually do that. But I could.

Good Luck !

[ali-stool]

Thanks Bill, I will give them a try next time I'm on the game. I'm not a massive fan of using novas as I find they are lacking in shielding. I just had a look at the Scimitar specs and it's actually quite fast for it's class. I used a bunch of Spitfyres earlier on though and they all just crashed into things and got torn apart due to moving way too fast.

[JackKiller2266]

if you use spitfyres do NOT give them full speed upgrades, give them enough upgrades to be at least 200m/s, me i use the Nova or Nova Raider when i plays as CW and if i am Terran i use Scim's also, i usually have a wing or two(5(5 = 1 wing for me)-10) Thor's for stubborn targets

[ali-stool]

Ah, but that's the only reason I use them ha. How do you go about getting Thor's? Last I remember you can't get them at shipyards. Playing terran conflict at the moment. I have AP but I'm having enogh fun with TC at the moment.
What are the chances of getting terran ships to bail anyway if I may ask?

[JackKiller2266]

you can get them in Balance of Power mission, but then you would have to hold onto them until you get the PHQ, chances are very very low out of 200 terran fighters i have killed in AP (haven't tried in TC yet) only two bailed

[ali-stool]

Oof, probably not gonna get one to bail then. Ah so I guess I'l just use the one i get balance of power then. i still have a fair few plot's to finish though so it could be a while.
I've heard there are problems with using Odin's as carriers as the fighters get launched into the engines? Does this happen oos aswel? Would you recommend a Tokyo over a Colossus?

[JackKiller2266]

never used a big carrier yet, so i wouldn't know but you get a Thor and Valkyrie free at the end of the Balance of Power Plot

[StarSword]

My usual advice for player-piloted carriers is one large wing of heavy-duty strike fighters and a smaller wing of fast M4 (Sabre and Solano are good) to swat flies. In the strike fighter role, I've had good results with Chimeras and Cutlasses. Mind you, a full carrier-load of M3+ is extremely expensive (something like 100 million for hulls and outfits, and I was loading a Panther, not an M1).

Another build I've heard good things about is Falcon Hauler missile boats. Pack their cavernous cargo bays with Tornado missiles and crank up the missile use rate when facing capital ships. This requires Tornado factories and a supply train.

Yet a third option is to take Spitfyres with less-than-full speed upgrades and fit them with some PMAML. That's an ammo-using corvette gun.

As to your UT loss problems, I've experimented with escorts and frankly find they don't seem to help. Anything that can destroy the freighter typically one-shots it before the escorts can engage. Keeping pirate attacks down really requires a carrot-and-stick approach. Befriend them by running non-combat missions and selling them enough drugs to keep them perpetually stoned and/or drunk. At the same time, send a capital ship OOS after any pirate that attacks your stations, since the racial militaries never seem to get there in time.

Finally, as for keeping Q's out of your trade lanes, there's only one permanent vanilla solution: a gate blockade consisting of three Osakas working in tandem. Their shields will repel the Q's OOS firepower and pay it back with interest.

[kolimbo]

I do not believe Terran pilots bail in TC. Can't confirm though.

They bail fairly regularly in AP IF your combat rank is high enough (on vindicator, they bail at around 10-15% under my missile barrages).

As for fighters, I'd imagine that the Falcon Sentinel (http://roguey.co.uk/x3tc/ships/ship-146/) is probably your best bet.

They are cheap, easy to come by, easy to arm and ridiculously tough(400MJ shields? HELL YES).

Get a flight of 50 and you'll pretty much never have to replace them.

They are terribly slow though.

If you have no PHQ, try the Falcon Hauler. 200 MJ shields instead of 400 but 130 speed vs. 100. You can buy it at teladi shipyards.

[StarSword]

As for fighters, I'd imagine that the Falcon Sentinel (http://roguey.co.uk/x3tc/ships/ship-146/) is probably your best bet.

They are cheap, easy to come by, easy to arm and ridiculously tough(400MJ shields? HELL YES).

Everything you said is correct (I hesitate to agree with best bet, though) except for "easy to come by". In vanilla TC the Falcon Sentinel is only available as a derelict, bail, or by stealing it from Return Ship missions.

[Nick Northern]

As for fighters, I'd imagine that the Falcon Sentinel (http://roguey.co.uk/x3tc/ships/ship-146/) is probably your best bet.

They are cheap, easy to come by, easy to arm and ridiculously tough(400MJ shields? HELL YES).

Everything you said is correct (I hesitate to agree with best bet, though) except for "easy to come by". In vanilla TC the Falcon Sentinel is only available as a derelict, bail, or by stealing it from Return Ship missions.

You can also purchase them from Teladi flying them around, who have put them up for sale. Same in AP.

Falcon or Falcon Sentinel are both great choices. They are slow but tough, and relatively cheap compared to M3+ alternatives. I'll vote Falcon, which you can buy in bulk, and uses a 200 mj shield. Falcon Sentinels are better but you would have to make them at your HQ.

[Bill Huntington]

The Odin is worthless as a carrier. You just have too many crashes into those big tails. I use my Carrier IS when I need it, so OOS does not matter. So again, how are you going to use your carrier ?

The Tokyo has a speed advantage over the Colossus, 87 vs. 79. Its had 5 x 2 GJ shields vs. 3 x 2 GJ for the Colussus. For survival value, speed and shields are vital. In the Xenon sectors, sometimes a Q will pop up anywhere, even the 'safe' place where you are keeping a carrier out of combat. I didn't check firepower for the Colossus, but the Tokyo is excellent with PSP and SCC.

Many veteran pilots do not use UTs any more, or in limited roles. An Local Trader is limited to a certain number of sectors, and that area can be limited to avoid pirate and Xenon sectors. They can still raise to rank 20, only 5 below the UT's 25 levels. I use LTs to cover most of the map, so the CW economy keeps going. I move my STs at Level 6, and increase their range when they get to level 10 in their time.

[ali-stool]

I've read about those falcon sentinels before, I can never seem to find any though. 400mj shield is awesome for a fighter though! Even if it does lack any sort of speed.
It seems to me however that i'm going to have to stick with the terran ships for now, they just seem a cut above the rest, it's a shame they have a very limited weapon selection. I've also heard rumours of a Goner Aran which can hold m6 class ships. Does this ship exist in vanilla TC? I could really do with a hanger to store all my Hyperion's

[JackKiller2266]

the aran is in UFJD sector

[kolimbo]

Correct me if I'm wrong but couldn't you stack Arans on top of eachother?

Imagine deploying 3 Arans with 90 spring blossoms as 'fighters'.

[ali-stool]

Can you get more than one aran though? Or 90 Hyperion vanguard, which would each hold 2 m3+! Would be pretty awesome.

[Bill Huntington]

kolimbo, you have developed TC humor !

Some pilots use the Aran as a super carrier. But it is so slow that they deploy it in a nearby sector, and jump the M3s to the action.

To get 3 of them would be a huge operation. In the latest upgrades of TC, you can only cap one of them. You could send that one to your HQ, of course. But then you have to feed it monumental resources, and it takes forever.

There is a limit to the number of big ships that can dock on an Aran. I don't know how many, it is not too many.

I use mine as a big depot ship, using its huge cargo capacity. The Aran itself isn't that useful. But the Hunt for the Aran became a pretty good quest a good while ago, and a lot of pilots really got into it. Capping the Aran is part of my regular game now.

I like your idea, kolimbo. It's a good one.

[StarSword]

For the record, the Aran can dock one capital ship.

Speaking of which, a little unsolicited advice for using carriers against capital ships. One trick I've found useful in carrier combat operations is to time my launch so that the fighters arrive at the target at the same time as the carrier. This takes practice (try ordering your fighters on attack runs against, say, one of your complex hubs, just so you can figure out the timing), but it reduces losses since your own guns are more powerful so the enemy will focus on you. At the same time, remember that you're flying a carrier, not a destroyer: you don't have the dense shields to take heavy blows, so you need to make use of strafing to avoid as much fire as possible.

[Snafu_X3]

In the latest upgrades of TC, you can only cap one of them.

Correction: in TC you can board as many Arans as you can find (each one has approx 1.4% chance of appearing in a UFJD sector, so that'd be a lot of finding..); in AP you can only board one