Fighters are too good against capital ships

[conmanguyler]

what really annoys me is how good small fighters ae against capital ships. for the rebels its ok, cause you can take as many small fighters without having to waste money on capital ships. but if you are the empire, you have to buy bloody frigates and SD's if you want any fighters at all. and because you have so many large ships, the small rebel fighters are able to eat away at your forces and you cant do anything about it.

 

i mean my fleet of 3 VSD's, and 5 acclamators were anhialated by around 8 ish squads of x-wings, a couple of y-wings, and a couple of corvettes.

 

and in another battle, piett's SD, the accuser was destroyed when 3 squads of x-wings attacked it, it took a while but, i had no fighters and they took no losses.

 

they could at least give the capital ships some kind of anti-fighter ability. like in star wars battlefront 2, all the capital ships have machine gun type turrets and laser turrets.

[DasFlo]

Hey,

most people seem to regard the fighters as pretty useless.

3 VSD's and 5 acclamators - you don't mention any Tartans. Even one of those would have eaten those x wings, let alone the countless ties to support that.

I suppose you might just want to make sure to bring along anti fighter ships, just have them guard your caps - which in turn can guard your tartans from enemy ships. fighters = bye.

[ScorLibran]

Corvettes are indeed the best at fighter/bomber control. But I've actually stopped using Tartans, myself. I've looked more closely at the Acclamator, and it's a great little frigate. It's bristling with weapons, is fairly hardy, builds fast, moves fast for being a frigate, has no targetable shield generator hardpoint, and - my favorite aspect - it's a tech 1 unit.

 

It's armed with two laser cannons - the anti-fighter weapon corvettes use - although corvettes have more of them, two turbolasers - the anti-capital ship standard, one proton torpedo launcher and one concussion missile launcher - both of which penetrate shields to do damage.

 

I've noticed that between the two laser cannons and the concussion missiles, they can clean up fighters and bombers fairly well. Not as fast as an equivalent number of corvettes, but their benefit lies in their ability to serve more than one function. They can fend off fighters and bombers from themselves and other ships in your group, they can attack big ships and space stations, and they carry a small compliment of their own fighters/bombers.

 

The description says it's a ship that "fills many roles - both its strength and its weakness", but I experience much more of the strengths than weaknesses with it.

 

I use a similar mix of Acclamators and larger ships as you are using, and I play on medium and hard difficulties depending on the game type and/or mission. And I can clean up far more than 8 squadrons of enemy fighters/bombers with 4-5 Acclamators in my battle group in the first 60 seconds of combat.

 

The problem your running into if your Acclamators aren't doing this might be tactics. Try using attack-move - hold down the "Ctrl" key while you issue a right-click move command. I used to use the guard command extensively with my corvettes to protect my capital ships, and the space between them and the source of enemy fighter/bomber groups (i.e., space station hangars), then I'd use specific attack commands for my big ships to attack enemy corvettes/frigates/cruisers and space station hardpoints. My kill ratio averaged 3:1 on medium and 2:1 on hard. But now I simply group together my ISDs/Victorys/Acclamators and attack-move them back and forth right through the thickest part of enemy activity, and my kill rate has now consistently exceeded 5:1 on normal and 3:1 on hard.

 

The AI for the game is pretty good at having each ship target the most significant threats first...Acclamators will target Y-Wing bombers before fighters, and cap ships will target missile and torpedo launchers before other hardpoints. So I trust it, and it almost always comes through for me.

 

Acclamators are practically expendable - I usually carry between 20 and 40 in my assault group - and they build fast. Right now in my current conquest game, losing one or two of them in a battle is the norm - during which I'm killing 10+ enemy corvettes, 8+ frigates, 8+ fighter/bomber squadrons and 2-6 cruisers. Plus the space station if I'm the attacker.

 

I normally reinforce each planet on my front-lines on the galactic map with the highest level space station possible and 6-8 Acclamators. I've been attacked by battle groups of Mon Cals and contingents of Y-Wings, corvettes, etc., and I tear into them so hard that most of the time they retreat within the first 2 minutes of battle. I've lost one planet out of at least 30 attacks so far in this game, and it's one I had mistakenly forgotten about and left mostly unprotected.

 

So look again at the Acclamator for fighter/bomber control - and for other reasons too - and try some different tactics with it. It's a highly-underrated ship, in my opinion, and can eliminate the need to fill your precious reinforcement slots with single-purpose corvettes.

[wuyanxu]

when playing as the Empire, you can just ignore fighters as the fighters launched by the cap. ship will automaticly protect it's capital ship unless been ordered otherwise.

 

if you see bombers, simple, just Ctrl+A and click on your fighters, and then right click on the bombers, they will disappear as soon as you see green lights around the bombers

 

the Tartan frigate is also really good at taking out fighters, just park one behind each cap. ship and watch them eat throuh the bombers. if you feel they need more firepower, just active their max firepower

[Thor the Bassis]

LEARNING POINT FOR THIS GAME: EVERYTHING HAS A COUNTER

 

Many annoying strategy games have a superweapon that kills everything but not empire at war - thats whats so great about it.

 

My basic fleet consists of some frigates assault frigates and mon calamari cruisers. These then must be accompanied by correlian corvettes for fighter support but only to defend the larger ships.

 

Anything else is just a specialist ship that I could use on whatever mission i'm doing. eg X wings and A wings are much better anti-fighter ships when in really close quarters. Y wings and topedo boats have a great advantage when attacking stations and large ships.

 

I'd say the basic fleet that can take anything is a calamari cruiser with corvette escort. Other stuff just makes it better and more efficient

[Darth Badguy]

I destroyed the Home One with my imperial level 1 space station, using TIE fighters and bombers... it's quite ridiculous that's possible...

[PoiuyWired]

Well if Home One is Doing the right thing It is Impossable. Home One just needs to close in and blow up your Station/Hanger While being smart about when to use the shield boost. Bombers may be a bit of trouble, but not the fighters.

[Thor the Bassis]

Most things AI do are stupidly dumb. I'm not really suprised that you could destroy Home One with fighters - AI can usually be picked apart as it is so predictable. That's an AI problem not a fighter balance really.

 

Fighters aren't really useless. Just make sure you protect them from the predictable first wave of corvettes that the AI sends at you.

[Splatah King]

I agree that fighters and bombers are to strong against capitol ships my 30 ISD's were annihilated by just 19 X-Wing squadrons and 8 Y-wing squadrons. but they did have 1 Mon Cal Cruiser and Home one. I also had a level 2 space station

[wedge2211]

And did your 30 ISDs have any Tartan escort? Fighters are quite easily countered by just a few corvette-class ships. Just give them guard orders.

[YertyL]

I agree that fighters and bombers are to strong against capitol ships my 30 ISD's were annihilated by just 19 X-Wing squadrons and 8 Y-wing squadrons. but they did have 1 Mon Cal Cruiser and Home one. I also had a level 2 space station

OK that doesn't sound right - 30 ISDs have 300 TIE fighter/interceptor squads - they should be able to own such a small number of Rebe fighters...

[Ctrl Alt Del]

OK that doesn't sound right - 30 ISDs have 300 TIE fighter/interceptor squads - they should be able to own such a small number of Rebe fighters...

 

 

Ooops, you caught him there.

 

Unless his a extremly poor commander, he can't lose with a infinite fleet of TIEs.

[wedge2211]

Well, if the Consortium had corrupted the planet with Bribery, the TIEs wouldn't deploy.

 

Still, a well-rounded Imperial fleet should always include enough Tartans or Defenders to wipe out Rebel bombers.

[Rust_Lord]

correct me if im wrong but wouldnt the bribery only stop the TIEs from the station not the ISDs as well? I dont recall it doing that? Still, I wouldnt be advertising that i lost 30 ISDs to a bunch of fighters...poor guy....at least have some tartans in your fleet and if you at first dont deploy them and find you really need them you can bring them in.

[Lt_Justin]

I was playing and I Had the max number of AI's all set to be imps and iwas a Rebel so with only one allie I held for just over 20 mins before my staion was destroyed I'll tell you from experiance the corvettes are usless in huge figts the smallest ship with a chance is a Frigit. Home one Lived 15 mins before she died. She will be avenged

[Thor the Bassis]

Corvettes die quickly if they don't have frigate and capital ship support. Its like an endless support circle. You must have many different types of ships to counter other stuff.

 

Plus that sounds like a well hard skirmish

[xhh2a]

Empire has boba and tie scouts...easy win against ANY fighter combination. I was up against AI of like 20 Y-wings and 10 x-wings (and other ships), same pop cap as 3 tartans worth of tie scouts and boba(5 tie scouts, 1 boba) killed the fighters FASTER than 3 tartans (3 tartans would die versus the y-wings hands down) while the rest of my pop cap was ISD's...worked quite well...

 

Consortium has their overpowered crusader (which 10 can take down a lvl 5 space station if used right by themselves) and buzz droids, no problem there (maybe bossak which has missles which are always effective versus fighters, splash damage)

 

Rebels are harder. there are no easy fast killer that is effective. A-wings aren't worth it, nor are fighter counters. Either Solo who is SLLOOOWW in killing fighters (but does) or maruders (make sure to protect them)...corvettes don't work versus bombers(especially when the emps spam the garrison bombers against the corvettes), but the rebel corvette works wonders against anything else, (surprisingly the tartan can be killed by x-wings)

 

I will say that fighters if used right on the other hand can be effective. if you had the time to micromanage your x-wings for example you could turn the foils on AFTER they've fired (vs a ship) to speed up their setting up another run, and turn if off before they fire again to increase damage.

 

Empire can use ties as cover, and free bombers rock.

 

Consortium Buzz droids are a cheap way to counter corvettes and fighters, and their bombers are okay, which has the ability equivalent of the interdictor (in a waY) but cheaper