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[Karlito]

Friendly reminder to make sure you've got full damage on

I was disappointed to learn that the new update flipped my setting back to half damage, but it turns out correcting the error didn't screw with my current play too much. When you're flying a Tempest, one good hit kills you regardless of the setting.

[Blaze]

I'm using a wolf with an unstable injector so if my engine even gets plinked it'll go down; which is a big issue if I run into fleets with lots of SRM fighters or Buffalo MKIIs. On the other hand with helmsmanship at 10 I can outrun interceptors.

My Wolf loadout is as such:
1 Pulse Laser
2 Single-Reapers
3 Tactical Lasers

Hardened Shields
Integrated Targeting Unit
Unstable Injector
Hardened Subsystems
Flux Resistant Conduits
Everything else into vents.

My current strategy is simple:
Buffalo MKIIs first, so they can't fill the area with missiles; they go down quick so it doesn't take much time.
Prioritize carriers so they can't replenish fighters.
Pop fighters by focusing my 3x tactical lasers one at a time.
Dispose of hounds and cerberuses so they don't annoy me later.
Lashers and other shielded frigates can be dealt with as needed.
Kite Sunders/Enforcers so they use up their flux capacity then shoot them down. Use reapers if there's no other large targets.
Cruisers tend to not overheat themselves, so dodge as much as you can and then use reapers to overload their shields. Then finish them off with more reapers or fly around them and take out their engines and plink them to death (it may not be an option if they have omnishields).
In case I run low on Combat time, retreat to save readiness and reload torpedoes. I'm usually at 100% to start, and large fleets tend to hover around 50-60, so by the time I hit 50% (No bonuses/maluses), they're usually down to 20-30 and start risking malfunction.

Of course, I've only been fighting against pirates so far, their D variant destroyers will overheat themselves with weapons that'll never hit me; so this probably won't work against Tri-tachyon ships. And AI in general is really exploitable; my pulse laser can shoot from just outside the range of most destroyers/frigates. If Enforcers and Daggers actually used their reapers correctly they'd actually be a credible threat.

I've considered using an Afflictor armed entirely with Reapers or Atropos Racks (For 8x atropos or 12 with 5 in missile) as a strike frigate. Once my wolf takes down all the smaller threats I can swap ships, cloak and fly behind them and nail them down. But I've never actually found one.

[Karlito]

Tri-Tach military has a base in Magec, so that's probably the place to look.

[Rez]

If you want to up your 1337 level, play uomoz or shadowyards or brdy with the indra/ceski/robberfly.  These ships are great.  Imaginos is... silly.  I find it silly, particularly at the last supply cost it was set at

[Aklyon]

The Imaginos can be ridiculous if you have more than one of them. The Nevermore from Blackrock, while it isn't a frigate, is still pretty capable of taking many things on at once by itself, and is probably my favorite flagship.
Also, Exigency ships tend to have four things in common: A lack of shields (Repulsors instead), very slowly regenerating armor, an extra ship system (the normal one, and then another one you get by pushing a button), and Mx array weapons. The last one there is a flurry of slowly regenerating minimissiles that is bigger on the larger ships, which also tend to have more of them. Which means more minimissiles on top of whatever weapons they actually have.

The Lillith frigate from Mayorate has a builtin, scaled-down, non-turret thermal pulse cannon variant as part of it, but they aren't exactly durable.

[Blaze]

So I did find a Tri-Tachyon Shipyard, and while I didn't find a Shade or Afflictor, I found a hyperion.

Compared to my previous Wolf there's a ridiculous difference, with my skills and hullmods factored it has 4000+ flux capacity and 500+ flux vent, 250+ speed, a 360 degree shield arc, and a teleport ability that lets me essentially ignore any ship with frontal shields. It can hold two pulse lasers compared to my Wolf's one, and it can fire long enough to kill a destroyer without needing to vent.

The biggest downside is the fact that its cargo capacity is 10 and it eats up supplies even when fully repaired; but that's easily mitigated by hauling around a single hound (75 cargo) and beating down pirates. I can easily destroy an entire pirate armada in a single run.

[Flying Dice]

Incidentally, if you're ever looking for a good cruiser to upgrade to, the Eagle is excellent. The (good) engine and maneuverability modules + its inbuilt extra thrusters make it faster and slipperier than some destroyers, and it can mount 3x medium energy.

[WealthyRadish]

If you're looking for the best Tri-Tachyon stuff, I think the only military base they have is on Tibicena in the Magec system. That's where I managed to find an Apogee, and I don't think any other Tri-Tachyon bases have the "military" market, so they probably never get Cruisers or higher, and only sell standard boring weapons.

Personally I'm not a fan of the solo frigate way of playing, but maybe I'm just impatient. With a sufficiently kitted out Apogee, you can just ram into things and force their shields down in a couple seconds with all the strike BS you can fit on it. I would also say that the only types of ship that can't really be run in a no-losses fleet are frigates (unless you're piloting it of course), since they tend to be too dumb to live, with everything else working well enough with its AI and the command options available. You could probably also make some frigates work, if you babysit them and make sure they retreat when damaged. Worth keeping in mind that I also have construction 10, since +20% armor makes a big difference for the rest of the fleet (even if my shields never come down except to vent).

What I'm looking forward to now is the officer system, which I think(?) is next. It'll make the skill system so much better when you can have party members with the fleet wide bonuses (piloting something like a carrier) while focusing on combat skills for yourself and other fighting ships (rather than having to waste your points on things like logistics).

[Girlinhat]

So I did find a Tri-Tachyon Shipyard, and while I didn't find a Shade or Afflictor, I found a hyperion.

Compared to my previous Wolf there's a ridiculous difference, with my skills and hullmods factored it has 4000+ flux capacity and 500+ flux vent, 250+ speed, a 360 degree shield arc, and a teleport ability that lets me essentially ignore any ship with frontal shields. It can hold two pulse lasers compared to my Wolf's one, and it can fire long enough to kill a destroyer without needing to vent.

The biggest downside is the fact that its cargo capacity is 10 and it eats up supplies even when fully repaired; but that's easily mitigated by hauling around a single hound (75 cargo) and beating down pirates. I can easily destroy an entire pirate armada in a single run.

I considered the Hyperion.  The multiple slots are nice, as are the raw numbers for flux and stuff.  I was hesitant about the enormous upkeep cost though, mainly that it's what like 40% CR per deployment?  With 30% reduction that's still 38% CR per deploy, so it ends up being bad for attrition fighting and having a long down time.  But if you can take out fleets in one combat setting, then attrition doesn't come into play.

I personally just started carrying multiple Vigilance.  I'll use them one after another, so they share CR degradation and I can take on larger fleets one after another.  I just outfit them the same.  Only problem is the non-prime ships start with 90% CR, where mine starts at 100%, and lose 7% per deploy, so I need to deploy mine twice before it's worthwhile to deploy a different one.  I'm quite loving the ship though, 9 torps, a phase beam, and omni shield are brutal.  It doesn't have the maneuverability of some other frigates, but the shields are tough and those torps means I can take down whole fleets in single engagements.  Large cruisers might take 3 torps, and I'll need to reload, but against a lot of smaller (hound, cerberus, etc) I can just use the laser and keep the torps for the big targets.

I considered a Wolf, and equiping it with the guided torps, since there's a dual rack, which can enjoy the +75% ammo for 3 missiles, and then skill bump to 4 ammo, at 2,000 damage each (3,000 after skill).  Compared to the unguided, there's 2 ammo at 4,000 each (6,000 after) so the damage rate is the same, but they're guided and hit in smaller punches, so you don't waste large torps against small targets.  The problem is that an unguided single is 2 points, so dual wielding costs 4.  The double guided racks cost 10, so 20 for dual + 5 for the missile ammo mod, 4 compared to 25 is a BIG difference in ordinance points.

[puke]

What I'm looking forward to now is the officer system, which I think(?) is next. It'll make the skill system so much better when you can have party members with the fleet wide bonuses (piloting something like a carrier) while focusing on combat skills for yourself and other fighting ships (rather than having to waste your points on things like logistics).

haha, I'm looking forward to it for the opposite reason.  I play most combats through the tactical map, and rarely manually control a ship at all.  I never take bonuses to one ship, and always fleet bonuses.

I'm looking forward to getting captains that can have those individual ship bonuses, while I sit back and command.

[Blaze]

Boo, so my game got corrupted and now I have to start a new one.

Does anyone have any mods to suggest?

[Flying Dice]

The radar one if you don't already have it.

[Aklyon]

Mayorate, Lazylib, the radar one.

Also, increase the numbers in vmparams (assuming you have more than 1gb of ram free), you tend to get less save corruption that way. Something like -Xms512m -Xmx2048m works fine, usually.

[Fikes]

Boo, so my game got corrupted and now I have to start a new one.

Does anyone have any mods to suggest?

I thought mine got corrupted as well, but after closing and re-opening the game it worked. If that fails try restarting.

[WealthyRadish]

What I'm looking forward to now is the officer system, which I think(?) is next. It'll make the skill system so much better when you can have party members with the fleet wide bonuses (piloting something like a carrier) while focusing on combat skills for yourself and other fighting ships (rather than having to waste your points on things like logistics).

haha, I'm looking forward to it for the opposite reason.  I play most combats through the tactical map, and rarely manually control a ship at all.  I never take bonuses to one ship, and always fleet bonuses.

I'm looking forward to getting captains that can have those individual ship bonuses, while I sit back and command.

Heh, yeah, it's fun to make a fleet capable of winning fights without a flagship doing a lot of the work. I've found though that with the introduction of things like CR and increased supply cost/consumption, I need to cut fleets down to the minimum, which often means a hard carry flagship. I remember though in older versions having large fleets with different role cruisers, managing fighters/carriers, and doing some fun stuff with destroyer/frigate groups, but man, them supplies.