Why are fighters so OP?

[Captain Feather]

A group of 5 fighters simply should not be able to take down my drestroyer so quickly in a mild rated system.

[TheBear]

ran into a similar issue.

Average mission, delivering some goods to a station in the hannibal system (starting system essentially, where i had to go back to)

So there i am in a decked out in mk4 weapons and defenses etc, arcturus class destroyer.. getting totally raped in 5 seconds by 4 or 5 fighters.

How the F is that an average mission by the way?

And it didnt happen once oh no, 3 waves like that you got to deal with.. and then there is a giant ring of exactly those deadly fighters (something like red alpha.. something) around the station you need to get to.

And ofcourse you have to deal with the capital ships aswell.

I made it after 6 tries, but that was just downright awkward and felt buggy.

[michaelmerlin]

Fighters are somewhat reduclously good, especaly the ones that spawn and swarm durning Delivery missions and in other scriped, unavoidable ambushes, with 4 fighters or gunboats haveing higher DPS then a comparable level dreadnought. An "average" delivery can have 10 fighters, bombers and gunboats spawn in surrounding you at short range.

For a quick fix, pause, scroll to your Mission Log and Abandoned any delivery missions. They really aren't worth doing at all.

The Merchant's Guild sells Organic armor, an option to help releave some of this by giveing extra damage reduction vs Small Craft.

[Longtail]

Tip if you are having trouble with fighters.

Buy laser weaponry. I have 4 mining lasers to whittle down shields and 3 Particle lasers on my 7 turret ship. I can take down any fighter up to mk5 shields in a matter of seconds.

After buying lasers, manual target ships one by one or choose "attack targeted only" for your turrets so they all focus on one enemy, because AI scatters your firepower depending on factors I don't know about.

Buy EMP secondaries. they immobilize fighters immediately for at least 4 seconds. How to use them? Full stop or press down button to slow down, then press a directional button to spin yourself while pressing shift to launch emp all around you like sphere. I can go into 15+ fighter groups and clean everything up in less than 30 seconds. Once immobilized, they are the easiest enemies ever.

Good luck

[TheBear]

Originally posted by LucyLongtail:

Tip if you are having trouble with fighters.

Buy laser weaponry. I have 4 mining lasers to whittle down shields and 3 Particle lasers on my 7 turret ship. I can take down any fighter up to mk5 shields in a matter of seconds.

After buying lasers, manual target ships one by one or choose "attack targeted only" for your turrets so they all focus on one enemy, because AI scatters your firepower depending on factors I don't know about.

Buy EMP secondaries. they immobilize fighters immediately for at least 4 seconds. How to use them? Full stop or press down button to slow down, then press a directional button to spin yourself while pressing shift to launch emp all around you like sphere. I can go into 15+ fighter groups and clean everything up in less than 30 seconds. Once immobilized, they are the easiest enemies ever.

Good luck

I have that, mk3 mining laser and mk4 particles + 1 swarm set to engage fighters.
Even the merc i had set to engage fighters only.

It helped, and after knowing where they would attack from etc, it was eventually doable.
But it was not "average", when i blow straight through such missions normally. (which i guess would make it too easy at that point but yeh no middle road apparently)

[D92C]

get the emp flak secondary. i cant survive w/o it

[Kegbelly]

i just tried to do the third reilquery got it but merc was killed decided to warp to a station and i got warp disrupted by two ships OP for me alone .1 ship constantly screwed my engines but i was surviving as i struggled to reach a station , then suddenly this fighter fires a death ray and knocks both my shields and armour on my rear and kills me, about 30 mins trying to survive wasted

[Longtail]

Originally posted by TheExile:

i just tried to do the third reilquery got it but merc was killed decided to warp to a station and i got warp disrupted by two ships OP for me alone .1 ship constantly screwed my engines but i was surviving as i struggled to reach a station , then suddenly this fighter fires a death ray and knocks both my shields and armour on my rear and kills me, about 30 mins trying to survive wasted

Not wasted, a hard lesson learned :P

[Trook]

Besides EMP flak you can also hire a merc (station bars). Those little pets are awesome =)
If you got a faster ship, you could also use the normal flak secondary, which doesn't disable fighters, but does more dmg and also destroys most of incoming missiles.

[Anelyn]

You have problems with fighters not because of the damage they deal from shooting you, but from the missiles they fire which are of 3 types (up to my knowledge from in-game experience):

- engine impair missile - it slows you down for x% and lasts several seconds (higher tiers bigger slowdown effect and increased duration)
- shieldbuster - deals a large amount of damage to shields - 300%
- normal damage missile - homing version - similar to the ones you can install on secondary ports - wave of 2-6 depending on tech level

Fighters normally fire the slow missiles, bombers the homing waves, and gunships the shieldbuster.

What you need to do, after you get the audio warning of incoming missiles (as you may or may not see them incoming on your screen depending on your FoV and direction they were fired from) you pop your deflector to absorb the initial damage, and then you proceed to thin out the fighters swarm until you get a new missile attack which you repel again with your deflector.

It's pretty much like in real life (space sim movies and what not) always fighters and bombers gave trouble to capital ships - Star Wars has plenty of space combat sequences that illustrate this.

[Swirler]

EMP flak is amazing against those annoying flies. Just remember that the EMP has to be manually operated with a hotkey.

Also bonus points for pretty effects using the EMP.

[SamVG]

What I've been doing so far is kiting them around. Switching what side I show them so none of my hulls get broken. If you see them surrounding you - DON'T wait in the middle, use your boosters to engage them in smaller packs because it's near impossible to fight ~20 fighters at the same moment, all coming from different sides. When your shields go down/there are shieldbuster rockets incoming, you need to use your deflector.

I use the Flak Cannon, particle lasers and HS Missiles to take them out.
The hardest mission I did involving fighters so far was the Korian Super Swarm.

[TheBear]

Originally posted by Schlongmongler:

What I've been doing so far is kiting them around. Switching what side I show them so none of my hulls get broken. If you see them surrounding you - DON'T wait in the middle, use your boosters to engage them in smaller packs because it's near impossible to fight ~20 fighters at the same moment, all coming from different sides. When your shields go down/there are shieldbuster rockets incoming, you need to use your deflector.

I use the Flak Cannon, particle lasers and HS Missiles to take them out.
The hardest mission I did involving fighters so far was the Korian Super Swarm.

Odd because i found super swarms to be the easiest.
No emp flak, or any flak for that matter.

[TheGeordieGriller]

Because consoles couldn't handle it if they made them more to scale and had 50 smaller units flying around causing the same amount of havoc?

They're annoying but there are a few good tips in here that should help with fighter related woes.

[MrPenguin]

Pro Tip: Theirs A LOT of Anti-fighter weapons in the game and you get plenty of space to install them. From flak to lasers you really don't have much of an excuse.

Pro Tip 2: Hire a mercenarie. Seriously, I cannot stretch how important this is.

[Nolan]

Use hit and run tactics, hit the fighters first. Just mann the turret and shoot them down first and time your Difusion shield when missils come at you, or you can also shoot missils down.