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[Zangi]

Huh, that is pretty interesting.  Reckon you could make a faction like the luddites or pirates pretty powerful by selling them premium tech.  Destabilize the sector even more.

[Majestic7]

Luddites should really refuse to use advanced technology on principle, considering their whole ideology.

[Egan_BW]

What, advanced technology like spaceships and FTL travel?

[Zangi]

Technology is a means to their end.  There must be some pragmatism.  If they can't win space battles, they can't enforce their ideology. save humanity from itself.

[Egan_BW]

Which works just as well as a justification for using slightly more advanced spaceships, bam.

[Blastbeard]

I was sorely disappointed to learn the Luddic Path don't actually use their Prometheus conversions as highly explosive ramships.
If they're supposed to be ramming me someone forgot to tell them. If they're not supposed to be ramming me, why not?
I wanted fire ships in space and all I got was a vague Waterworld reference.

Speaking of conversions, is the Atlas superfeighter supposed to be as rare as it has been for me? I've seen two, maybe three of them this entire playthrough, all in military shipyards which means I can't buy them without a commision. I haven't had any luck with blueprints, either. The Atlas mk.II on the other hand is as common as dirt, it's a rare thing to see a pirate fleet without at least four of the things. I mean, that would explain the lack of base models...

[Mephansteras]

I recently installed the Nexerelin mod and a bunch of factions and have been having fun with a crazy living-ish map. Extra factions seems to help a good bit in keeping it from feeling too static. Plus I like having all the different ship options. Even if I'm pretty sure it's not all that balanced at this point.

It'd be better if I wasn't kinda bad at combat in this game. But..eh, so it goes. I'm good enough to win most of the time at least.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Lol Mephansteras,

I am incredibly trash at combat in this game. I never control anything manually cause I can't aim for shit. My role is limited to fleet command for the safety of my crew!

[Majestic7]

My number one enjoyment in battles is having a carrier fleet and seeing my fighter wings trash enemies. I mainly fly Apogee because it has 360 degree shields and attract enemy fire while the little guys do the killing.

[Zangi]

I am also awful.  So I use big ship with big 360 shields.  Put most of the weapons on autofire(and/or make them point defense) and only focus on using the ones pointing forward.

[Paul]

I like to put my main weapons on autofire and focus on maneuvering and working my shields. I only manually fire things like antimatter blasters and missiles.

I like kitting out ships for close range brawling with safety overrides and whatever other speed boosts I can get, so generally if anything is in range of the guns I want to shoot it - so autofire works best and lets me focus on getting in and out without taking hull damage.

[Mephansteras]

Right now I'm using a stealth carrier from an unusual start scenario. Broken Blade Deserter, I think. It's fun, and I've built up quite the bounty hunter fleet. Need some more carriers, though, to round things out. Between the fast speeds of most of the ships and augmented engines I've got a fleet with a min burn of 10. I can outrun pretty much anything I can't outfight and catch up to most bounty pirate fleets pretty easily.

[Blastbeard]

A Legion with a hangar full of bombers can work wonders. The AI prefers getting in close when I give it a battlecarrier to play with, so the bombers can usually fire their payload as soon as they've launched. Just don't let them get behind it, there's no shields in the back. If you've got to kill a Legion, aim for the ass.

As for strike wing composition, I've gotten good mileage over a split between Longbow and Dagger bombers. Longbows pop the shields, Daggers pop the ship. I tried the Trident bomber for a bit, but that many points for an extra torpedo just isn't worth it in my opinion. However, one benefit from the Trident's slow speed is that it will almost never fire before the Longbows have delivered their payload, but they can sometimes take too long and let the enemy's shields come back up.

[Majestic7]

Torpedo bombers have a friendly fire potential, though. Unless I remember wrong, torpedoes can hit friends unlike ordinary missiles? So sometimes an overtly eager friendly DD gets themselves creamed by moving between the torpedo bomber wing and the target.

[Blastbeard]

I've accidentally hit my own boats with atropos torpedoes fired from normal ships before, but I haven't noticed any incidents with Dagger bombers yet. The Legion's obsession with face-to-face manfighting probably helps. If they can help it, they try to get right in front of their current target, close enough for the point defenses to fire on the ship. You could probably eschew point defenses entirely in favor of more dakka and a defensive strike craft, like the Xiphos, but I haven't tried that yet.
It's a good thing it's such a tanky boat, otherwise I'd have to deal with them biting off more than they could chew every other battle.

As it is I've had more friendly fire incidents with tachyon lances. I've almost completely abandoned frigates altogether because they keep flying into the beam while it's firing and exploding. The bigger ships do it too but at least with them I have a chance to minimize damage, with a frigate it's usually instant death.