What are good fighter choices for a carrier? [TC]

[ApatheticEthic]

Sorry if this has been brought up recently (didn't see any threads a few pages back).

I'm buying a colossus soon and looking for good fighters for tooling around.
I might use the carrier for sector defense, but I'll probably just be using the fighters to hunt some Xenon. I can't really source large numbers of PBGs, but I've got factories for the normal commonwealth weapons, silkwork missiles, and hurricane missiles. Feedback is greatly appreciated.

[TTD]

I'm not overly experienced in that side of the game,but I get on quit well with 65 assorted M3+'s in my Split carrier,when I play my main game.

[Bobucles]

Generally, when it comes to large numbers of M3s you want them pre equipped. The "L" variety of ships comes with the most equipment.

OTAS sells a nicely equipped M4 and M3, if you're interested.

[sadron]

I have enough money to pretty much outfit ANY ship I purchase how I wish. After coming back to my game after almost a year I've recently gotten my funds up to the 1.5 billion credit mark Given enough funds if you plan right you can pretty much have any ship you desire and outfit it however you want within its constraints. As for those PBGs if you're lucky you can get a few from pirates that bail.

[Rhox]

Generally, when it comes to large numbers of M3s you want them pre equipped. The "L" variety of ships comes with the most equipment.

OTAS sells a nicely equipped M4 and M3, if you're interested.

If by OTAS M3 you mean the Venti, forget it. In TC you have to work halfway through the OTAS plot, which might take a while. Even if you use the "don't return to the HQ when you're told to instead accept more missions so you get one more reward ship for each mission" approach, you might get about 10 of them at best. After that, you need a PHQ to produce more...

OT:
I like the Asp L in TC. It comes with full shielding (25 MJ, not much, but hey) and 4 of 6 bays already equipped with HEPTs, which is quite some punch.
In my games, however, that is the only purchasable fighter I use in large numbers, so I don't have much experience in that field. I guess you're good with Cutlasses or Scimitars as heavy fighters, Asps as medium fighters and Kestrels as small and fast fighters in the purchasable department.

If you have a PHQ (or even multiple ones via kurush's cloning exploit like me) you might consider gathering some special ships and reproducing them.

I already mentioned the Venti, which has good shielding, speed and weapons, but a tiny laser generator (which doesn't matter for OOS fights and is neglegible if you let the AI control them). It's production time in the PHQ is okay, but if you only have one PHQ, it might take some time producing an entire fleet.

The absolute top-notch ship is the Fenrir you get from the Balance of power plot. It has good speed, heavy wepaons and a large cargobay. However, it needs 4,5 hours to be produced. A good alternativ would be the Thor. It only has 25 MJ and two EMPCs less and is a bit faster than the Fenrir, but only needs half the production time.

Another good choice is the Advanced Mamba you get either as a reward from Strong Arms or as one of the advanced Yaki ships you encounter during the PHQ plot. It is fast (265 m/s), well-shielded and well-armed.

The last suggestion I make is the Susanowa Prototype, which you can get from the PHQ plot as well if I remember correctly. It is even faster than the Mamba (267 m/s). It has a rather limited weapons choice and a small cargobay, but only needs 58 minutes to produce in the PHQ.

best regards,
Rhox

[ApatheticEthic]

I would love to use the Venti or some ATF fighters, but I've been a little slow to finish the Hub plot, so no PHQ yet. I'm considering just using nova raiders since they're not too bad.

As for buying pre-equiped ships, I seem to always need a ship when the shipyard is out of those. It's so much easier to have my own factories and stockpiles of supplies.

[Gazz]

I'm partial to "L" Busters.

They come with decent weapons and shields right off the bat. No additional tinkering required.
Of course they are more fragile than M3 but they are also smaller and faster - and they can be bought in bulk without requiring any cloning exploits or the likes.

[Rhox]

I would love to use the Venti or some ATF fighters, but I've been a little slow to finish the Hub plot, so no PHQ yet. I'm considering just using nova raiders since they're not too bad.

As for buying pre-equiped ships, I seem to always need a ship when the shipyard is out of those. It's so much easier to have my own factories and stockpiles of supplies.

In your momentary situation, that sounds good. Remember not to build the PHQ directly after you get it! If you manage to put it into the ware list of one of your EQDs (better one in a very remote and/or peaceful sector) before building it, you can use kurush's CLS2 exploit to get as many as you want (I got 7 PHQs atm )

best regards,
Urkel

[Triaxx2]

TC Carrier fighter? Pike. Pike. Pike!

L-versions come with full shields, and 4 PAC's. That's the perfect armament for them. The PAC's will put out a lot of rounds in the contact time and I've seen a half-dozen rip up a P in very short order.

Plus they're cheap to replace and available from four different shipyards, so there's rarely no L's available at one of them.

For a heavy fighter, nothing is better than the Yaki Tenjin. Comes with 4 HEPT and 75mj of shielding. It maxes out with 9 forward gun slots and two turrets, one left and one right. This means in a turning fight the Tenjin has guns still on target even as it's turning to track with the main guns.

[DrBullwinkle]

Best all-around heavy fighter for AI pilots is the Falcon Hauler.

In AI-versus-AI combat, the last remaining ship wins. Given similar weapons, that means the ship with the heaviest shields.

Falcon Haulers have the second-strongest shields in the game; resulting in the greatest number of combat wins. A wing of Falcon Haulers can easily kill an M2.

• (Only Falcon Sentinel has stronger shields, but its small cargo bay limits its overall usefulness.)

Falcon Haulers are also the only fighters capable of carrying XL cargo. They are great cargo shuttles and miners, in addition to being the strongest fighters you can buy at a shipyard.

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

In my TC game I favoured a simple combo:-

• a small wing of MAML Spitfires to use as interceptors
• a larger wing of Cutlasses to use as main fleet (typically loaded with Poltergeists)

I would typically send the spitfires to deal with M6 threats primarily and only launch the cutlasses if I needed to run additional interferance.

3 Spitfires each with 8 x Prototype MAML can make a mess of most M6s very quickly and a single Spitfire with 8 x Prototype MAMLs can one-shot most fighters.

[Master of the Blade]

+1 to the Falcon Hauler. Slow enough that it doesn't crash, heavily shielded enough to survive a pounding, enough cargo space to haul assorted stuff around or cram with missiles, as well as being fairly cheap and available for such a good M3.

I'm also partial to Aps and Pikes if in need of something faster, for the reasons other users have stated. Pikes are also pretty good candidates for using missiles.

[ApatheticEthic]

Looks like I'll be going with Pikes and Falcons. Cheers!

[Raize]

Falcon Hauler with as many EBCs as you can stomach the cost of.

[Rhox]

Falcon Hauler with as many EBCs as you can stomach the cost of.

As far as I know, ammunition-based weapons only work IS in TC, meaning they will be pretty useless for OOS sector patrols.
If ApatheticEthic uses them to only hunt some Xenon or to have plenty of fighter support ready, EBCs are good. Should he use them as a supplement for a OOS sector patrol, they're an even worse choice than IREs.
As I don't play the STEAM version, however, I can only speak for version 3.1.1. I don't know if the OOS combat was changed in TC 3.2.

best regards,
Urkel

[DrBullwinkle]

Good point about EBCG's. They are great for IS but not so great OOS.

The OOS bug with ammunition-based weapons is not 100%. Sometimes they work; sometimes they do not. Ammunition-based weapons are most likely to fail OOS when your computer is busy doing too many other things.

The problem is that, when the bug occurs, *none* of the weapons on the ship will fire (OOS). It leaves your ship essentially weaponless.

The only complete cure is to remove the ammunition flag from all of the bullets.

For vanilla games, yes, use EBCG's only for IS loadouts. Falcon Haulers have small laser generators, so they do benefit from EBCG's while IS.

The best IS/OOS loadout that I have come up with is all PAC's on a Falcon Hauler. PAC's are efficient enough that they work IS, and are energy-based so that they work reliably OOS. Also, the real-damage-per-unit-of-energy-expended is probably higher for PAC's than for most other energy weapons (because PAC's hit more often than HEPT's).

If PAC's give up any damage-per-second (debatable), the Falcon Haulers make up for it by surviving long enough to kill almost any attacker.

[LTerSlash]

Anti-Capital the best option are Medusas Prototype... just give them typhoons and shields.

Anti-fighters, the Xenon are a bit tricky, but vs others fighters ive been using Scorpions and Asp with 6xMD... just buy the M version and but another 2 MD on equipment, since hull is weak on TC they can kill faster than anything else... except PBG.

Other options are Falcon Haulers, Elite...

[Rhox]

Anti-Capital the best option are Medusas Prototype... just give them typhoons and shields.

Anti-fighters, the Xenon are a bit tricky, but vs others fighters ive been using Scorpions and Asp with 6xMD... just buy the M version and but another 2 MD on equipment, since hull is weak on TC they can kill faster than anything else... except PBG.

Other options are Falcon Haulers, Elite...

Those special Medusas are really excellent for IS due to the Typhoon missiles (OOS they're quite average), but hard to come by. You can only get them from the Duke's Buccaneers company plot (which tends to break quite often, especially if you just board ONE paranid ship while in the plot; and with having the Hyperion and Agamemnon, they almost beg you to board their ships, don't they?). Plus, it is the very last reward you can get, meaning you will have to invest a lot of time into it. And then, even if you use the exploit of not fetching your reward when you're told to and instead completing more missions, which gives you one extra reward ship per mission, you will sooner or later have s mission where you have to dock to the company HQ. Even if you manage to always undock in time, you will get a delivery mission sooner or later where you have to be docked for a long time so that you can't stack more reward ships anymore.
Long message short: you may get 10 Medusas if you're lucky at best. To create the rest, you have to produce them in the PHQ. And that takes long.

best regards,
Rhox

[DiveBomberDave]

If you have the PHQ the Falcon Sentinel is best, not too fast that they crash into everything on autopillock and they have 200MJ shields.
The catch is you can only buy them 2nd hand so you need to RE then build your own.

on IS vs OOS I try to have different ships do the different jobs as there is no laser generators OOS so you want the full front loadout HEPTs but IS I go for only 3 HEPTs. Allways instahit OOS too so projectile speed is irrelevant too.