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[Paul]

I like Hammerheads. They're solid ballistic destroyers with potential to really dish out some punishment with their ship system. The AI can't really handle being aggressive enough to make it work (even the aggressive officers don't get in close enough) but for my flagship I like having one with safety overrides and the biggest most damaging explosive guns I can find mixed with double machine guns to strip shields. I have to fly in dangerously close, but can chew through other destroyers and frigates with frightening speed.

The AI doesn't handle the short range well though, so for them I equip longer range guns and let them activate their system and provide heavy ballistic support from mid range.

[Majestic7]

It's not a matter of need, silly

Of course not, but there are some games I kind of feel *need* some quality of life mods to be enjoyed. Kenshi and Rimworld, for example. So there is a difference.

[Majestic7]

Hammerheads are great, I think they get most kills of my AI ships. I tend to run carrier-heavy fleets with mainly destroyers for brawling. Frigates are only good for pursuit, I think, since they are so fragily. But my play style is loss-averse, I don't like taking casualties. I feel responsible for my dudes.

Spamming the enemy with waves of safety overrides enabled trash is a valid strategy if you don't mind losing people like a charging Red Army.

[Dostoevsky]

Hammerheads are indeed excellent destroyers, and if you're doing the beginner tutorial you'll get a free one pretty quickly (albeit with a d-mod or two). I usually run them with a mixture of railguns, arbalest cannons, and heavy mortars in the forward-facing guns. All of those share a pretty good range that the AI can handle well without being too aggressive.

Overall, I find that the utility of frigates drops off as fleet size progresses. Once each side has more than 1 cruiser, then using carrier-deployed fighters and bombers is more reliable for the longer time of battles. I try to make sure I'm not using ships with a burn speed of less than 8, which ultimately works out to a mix of cruisers and destroyers, supplemented by a few destroyers for pursuit work (wolves, lashers with Safety Overrides, other fast frigates). The Brawler's combination of long 'Peak Performance Time' and strong reactor mean that they're still useful in larger battles, though.

Among the vanilla options, I tend to prefer the easier maintenance profiles of mid- and low-tech ships to high-tech ones. E.g. the Medusa may be powerful, but requires a fair bit of maintenance and can't handle successive deployments too well. Condors make great, relatively cheap carriers from early game to late game. Lashers with Safety Overrides are superb, but only for short decisive engagements. Despite being high-tech, an Apogee is an excellent flagship for an exploration fleet that can still handle itself in battle.

If I were to recommend some faction mods that I don't consider too unbalanced, I'd say Shadowyards Reconstruction Authority, Underworld (adds a bunch more pirate-type ships), the Junk Pirates suite (some of the ships/weapons are probably underpowered, but they're generally neat), and maybe Diable Avionics (might be a tad overpowered).

Probably just as important as fleet choice, though, is skill choice. I usually get a fair number of the industry and tech skills before doing any combat ones at all, which I'm sure changes how I approach things - the skill that halves the negatives of d-mods, for example, makes a huge difference to me.

[AzyWng]

Just a quick question regarding in-battle weaponry:

Is there any way to use a torpedo or missile more than just once per battle? Can I, say, retreat the ship that is equipped with one, then, later on in the battle, deploy it again, and have the missile/torpedo restocked? Or is the torpedo just a one-and-done kind of deal?

I ask because I'm not the biggest fan of the idea that my kites will all empty their primary weapons into the enemy's shields before the first five minutes of battle have passed...

[Frumple]

Well. You can take a text editor to the game and remove ammo selectively or altogether

Can also jack reload time (way) up to simulate a restock scenario. Dunno if anyone's done it or tried to do it in a balanced way but like half the times I've gone on a starsector kick I nixed ammo entirely 'cause sod that noise frumple needs more dakka. It's nice.

[Astral]

There are very few missile weapons that have a cooldown, rather than an ammo limit (mostly the Salamander, outside of mods). I've found they work pretty well with the Condor, whose F ability Fast Missile Racks means you can spit out 3 or 4 in rapid succession.

You can also add the Expanded Missile Racks hull mod to double the amount of ammo available for ammo limited missile types. The Gryphon is a cruiser class ship dedicated to the art of Macross that has an F ability which restores all missile ammo as well, but it seems to be the only ship that actually has something like that.

I think the intention for missiles in general is to give a limited ability for a ship to punch above its weight, given how much damage they can do and how poorly PD seems to fare when they're spammed. Great alpha strike potential, but poor in an extended combat scenario; if used well you can almost instantly tip the battle in your favor by taking out a few key targets.

[Dostoevsky]

Pretty much what they all said. The ability for missiles/torpedoes to do large spike damage with no flux cost is meant to be limited by ammo count. And hypothetically Kites (or the like) are cheap/available enough that one could keep several in the fleet and reinforce with new ones during longer battles.

And anyways Kites are more of a pursuit/strike craft than dedicated battler, at least in my opinion.

That said, if you want unlimited torpedo ammo in a battle you can always bring bomber wings. Those are balanced by being fragile/slow platforms with limited loadouts (compared to frigates), but replenish ammo at the carrier. Perditions, longbows, daggers, etc. are all solid when backed with a fighter screen.

In terms of vanilla choices for cooldown missiles, I believe the only small mount is the salamander. For mediums and above there are inferno mirvs, pilums, more salamanders, and... probably something else? That's all that is coming to mind. None are good strike weapons, again probably by design, but work well if mounted on many ships for mass saturation.

[Paul]

It would be nice if there was a setting to only use missiles in certain circumstances. Like setting torpedoes to only use on overloaded opponents or onto unshielded sections of crippled ships, or only use kinetic missiles if the target is being engaged by others and has high enough flux to either get overloaded or be forced to drop shields.

Right now they tend to completely waste missiles in most cases. Like flying in and smashing a torpedo into the shields of a destroyer before anything else is even engaging it and then moving back and letting it vent off harmlessly.

Occasionally they fire them at the perfect time and they're priceless, like a couple support ships overloading an enemy onslaught with kinetic missiles right as two wings of bombers and an explosive armed hammerhead with its system activated cruise in for the kill. But usually they're pointlessly shot off when the bombers are going to rearm and the other ships are disengaging.

[Dostoevsky]

Depending on what the weapon's description (e.g. 'finisher') the AI will use it in different ways. Over the versions it's been getting better at using them in the right circumstances, but is indeed not perfect. Not positive about this, but I find my ships/officers are better with saving torpedoes for the right circumstances if they have enough other weapons for handle general combat. E.g. a Hammerhead with reapers v. a Kite with reapers.

[Blue_Dwarf]

0.9.1a has been released a few days ago.

Patch notes

[Nelia Hawk]

i feel the new increased ship costs feel pretty good... makes it a bit slower to get big ships and feels better actually making the money to buy one.

[EnigmaticHat]

Just a quick question regarding in-battle weaponry:

Is there any way to use a torpedo or missile more than just once per battle? Can I, say, retreat the ship that is equipped with one, then, later on in the battle, deploy it again, and have the missile/torpedo restocked? Or is the torpedo just a one-and-done kind of deal?

I ask because I'm not the biggest fan of the idea that my kites will all empty their primary weapons into the enemy's shields before the first five minutes of battle have passed...

IIRC really large battles are fought in multiple stages (once the fight is over, if one side hasn't decisively won then it goes back to the campaign screen and you can either run away or fight).  Ships won't recover CR or armor but it counts as a new fight for purposes of losing CR over time, and I believe you get your ammo back.  Not sure about carriers recovering fighter readiness.

Haven't played Starsector in a while tho so I might be wrong.

[Orb]

You can't redeploy a ship that has already retreated until the next "phase" of the battle.

The good thing though is the AI doesn't waste missile ammo. It's usually fairly smart with it. The AI will generally hold onto anti-armor missiles until an enemy ship is at max flux (so it can't throw up shields) or it itself needs some space and forces the enemy to back off.

[EnigmaticHat]

I remember I did a big fleet engagement against the luddic path (they had a bunch of those converted freighters with missile launchers and fighters) and we basically both cycled through our entire forces, sending + retreating each ship in waves until one side took the field.  And then doing it again.