Are fighters better now ?

[Zordiark Darkeater]

Every year with every big expansion i try to make carrier ships and fighter swarms ( because i think its cool )

And every single time im super dissapointed how borderline useless they are....

Not tried them 2 big expansions now

So are they good now ? im a bit bored of only Weapon spamming on all my ships but im also not a fan of gimping myself x.x

[Shinobi273]

Was there a change to strike craft? The weapons meta has not changed IMO. The juggernaut can improve strike craft but you only get 1 of those ships. AI empires build so generically it shouldn't really matter what composition you run. Spinal arc is gonna dominate late game repeatables just because of how the tech works to bypass directly to hull that has no repeatable.

[Winter]

A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away... fighters were the heart of the battle. What an amazing galaxy it is.

[VoiD]

They are OP and can destroy anything in battle.

The thing is: Once battleships come into play with their X and L artillery turrets they just destroy anything before they can even fire back, so no other weapon matters at this point.

IMO this needs to change: https://www.reddit.com/r/Stellaris/comments/utio29/do_you_think_the_game_should_have_harder_counters/
But I don't know if the stellaris devs even see it as a problem.

If it wasn't for X and L weapons then carriers would be OP, no other weapon comes close to their DPS, and they make all point defense completely obsolete, against a carrier fleet not a single missile would ever hit any of your ships.

[BuildTheWall]

So tracking is already fixed?

[VoiD]

Yes

We are back to exploding every ship in the enemy fleet before they get a chance to fire back, corvettes included.

[Ryika]

Originally posted by Zordiark Darkeater:

Every year with every big expansion i try to make carrier ships and fighter swarms ( because i think its cool )

And every single time im super dissapointed how borderline useless they are....

Not tried them 2 big expansions now

So are they good now ? im a bit bored of only Weapon spamming on all my ships but im also not a fan of gimping myself x.x

No idea how you've come to the conclusions that carriers are bad. Fighters are really good and have been for a long time now. If you want, you can start using them once you have unlocked Cruisers and then never transition into anything else.

They do get hard-countered by artillery spam, but the AI doesn't do that, it always has mixed fleets.

[Schakar]

Problem with fighters and missiles: they are to slow vanila. A decent ship with afterburner can outrun them easily mid/late game. Sometimes my ships deploy fighters but are close to the enemy before the fighters are :(.
Before they can do anything turrets did the job allready.

There are mods which increase their move speed by 50% or more. Then they feel great. With over 50% they feel overpowert. I allways had the hope for a Tech with 5 tiers to increase their move speed by maybe 50 peer tier (like Defens tower Tech for example).

Just for DPS/Damage fighters are great as they are.

[xVALERAx]

Stikecraft is decent in some situations but once an AA fleets comes into battle they are usuless and deal zero damage since they getting shoot down instantly. in other words
Strikecraft been usuless and remains usuless

[Ryika]

Originally posted by xVALERAx:

Stikecraft is decent in some situations but once an AA fleets comes into battle they are usuless and deal zero damage since they getting shoot down instantly. in other words
Strikecraft been usuless and remains usuless

That's not true at all. Strike Craft overpower any reasonable amount of point defense with ease, as has been demonstrated countless time.

Each Hangar starts with 8 strike craft, and produces an additional ship every day, whereas one point defense weapon of the same tier takes about 1-3 days to shoot down one strike craft.

Equal numbers will not meaningfully thin out the number of strike crafts in the fight, and even if they do, the fight start too lopsided to be won. Plus, Point Defense has very low DPS, further decreasing combat performance.

[CrUsHeR]

Ah... the weekly thread about strike craft :)


Strike Craft are perfectly fine on battleships, in particular if you combine them with Arc Emitters + Disruptors.

The AE don't synergize with artillery modules because these would be fighting a separate battle against the shields and armor. Only the Disruptors (and Cloud Lightning) synergize with their straight hull damage.

Strike Craft do at least ignore shields, get bonus armor damage, and combined with the PD from the Carrier module fill the defensive gap.

Going with AE + Strike Craft as secondary is also a great tech strategy, because Hangars are the best Starbase module. So you only need to research repeatables for those two (Energy Weapons + Strike Craft).



However if you are going against Prethoryn and most Leviathans who do not have shields, i believe that it is much much better to use the Tachyon Lance and Neutron Launchers.

[xVALERAx]

Originally posted by Ryika:

Originally posted by xVALERAx:

Stikecraft is decent in some situations but once an AA fleets comes into battle they are usuless and deal zero damage since they getting shoot down instantly. in other words
Strikecraft been usuless and remains usuless

That's not true at all. Strike Craft overpower any reasonable amount of point defense with ease, as has been demonstrated countless time.

Each Hangar starts with 8 strike craft, and produces an additional ship every day, whereas one point defense weapon of the same tier takes about 1-3 days to shoot down one strike craft.

Equal numbers will not meaningfully thin out the number of strike crafts in the fight, and even if they do, the fight start too lopsided to be won. Plus, Point Defense has very low DPS, further decreasing combat performance.

I guess you play on ensign but K I'll belive you and see how my strikecraft fleets get sherederd by enemies

[Robepriority]

Strikecraft completely counters Destroyers/Corvettes that aren't fully specialized in PD. Anything larger you just use spinal mount/artillery

[Ryika]

Originally posted by xVALERAx:

I guess you play on ensign but K I'll belive you and see how my strikecraft fleets get sherederd by enemies

Yes, very mature of you. If you don't have arguments, just insult the people who know what they're talking about and things are going to work out, right?

In reality, you can set up fights in the game and see how different loadouts perform. People, including me, have done this and come the clear solution that Hangars wipe the floor with anything that doesn't slot a large amount of l slot weapons. Since that's any fleet the AI will field, strike craft completely melt the AI.

Artillery Spam is of course a lot more efficient once critical numbers are reached, but if someone wants to spam strike craft instead, that's a viable strategy against the AI.

[xVALERAx]

Originally posted by Ryika:

Originally posted by xVALERAx:

I guess you play on ensign but K I'll belive you and see how my strikecraft fleets get sherederd by enemies

Yes, very mature of you. If you don't have arguments, just insult the people who know what they're talking about and things are going to work out, right?

In reality, you can set up fights in the game and see how different loadouts perform. People, including me, have done this and come the clear solution that Hangars wipe the floor with anything that doesn't slot a large amount of l slot weapons. Since that's any fleet the AI will field, strike craft completely melt the AI.

Artillery Spam is of course a lot more efficient once critical numbers are reached, but if someone wants to spam strike craft instead, that's a viable strategy against the AI.

nothing about insulting or being immature, rather play on harderst difficultie to realise that strike craft is very low in the list of best weapons, not only because they get countered very easy (and no need to tell me that there are 8 per hangar which are demi god likes corvetes, sadly it is not the case since they get shoot down by pd very fast and AI uses PD 70% since it counters your fleet) but also because the damage they have is very low compared to normal S turrets and even less compared to the L slots you sacrifice to add an hangar. No need to lie, strike crafts are low in the feeding chain and will remain low untill they add strike crafts classification and ship break points like bombers going on a bombing run and hitting critical points of enemy ship and destroyes it in seconds if it they does not get countered.
this will be a huge battle overhaul which most likely won't going to happen, MODS are your solution

[The Undead Watcher]

Originally posted by xVALERAx:

Alright, we get it, you got a big peen and are a grandmaster of Stellaris coming into a thread where OP just asked if they are good to use now.

@OP they're fine, but nothing of course beats outranging the enemy with artillery fire.
I still use them to support my arti ships and so far it worked against any enemy i encountered (mid game crisis was a cakewalk with Arti and carrier fleets).