cerberus question

[Bandalone]

Not sure if this is possible but can you set fighters to go your cerberus to act as actual fighters that will stand landed but launch when attacked automatically and dock when fighting ends? i know you could do this through the map but it would be rather cumbersome.

[requiemfang]

frigates though they really should be called corvettes can only dock 1 fighter craft, the only craft they really are able to have docked besides the single fighter craft is drones. The Cerb is pretty much considered a drone carrier.

[Bandalone]

thanks

[ancienthighway]

The Cerberus, as well as the Gorgon and Osprey, has hanger space for 1 S ship and docking for 1 S ship (2 ships total).
By default, if the Cerberus and two small ships are in a wing, the Cerberus will recall the small ships prior to travel mode or highway travel. Sometimes the fighters don't make it so they will follow as soon as they can.
You can change this, kind of, by just assigning the two fighters to a wing and docking them on the Cerberus. With a default behavior of Hold, they will not undock until you give them an order. You could even assign them to the Cerberus making a wing and following the Cerb in it's battle.

Is a separate wing docked on the Cerb a good idea? In my opinion, no. In addition to undocking the two fighters, the Cerb has up to 12 defense drones to launch. Everything launches one at a time.

[Thunderpunt]

Originally posted by cap61691:

Not sure if this is possible but can you set fighters to go your cerberus to act as actual fighters that will stand landed but launch when attacked automatically and dock when fighting ends? i know you could do this through the map but it would be rather cumbersome.

Normally putting a fighter in a wing with a larger ship that has a dock and then ordering to dock will allow it to launch and land during and after combat respectively. However the Cerb can only dock one fighter sized craft at a time which really limits it in terms of carrying ability. What you should look into was mentioned before; the Cerb and all other frigates for that matter, make good drone carriers. The defense drones are essentially pulse lasers strapped to engines that auto launch and land. They do a decent job in a fight and while they don't have travel mode and no shields, they are cheaper and easier to use than true fighters. I used my Cerberus as a semi command ship with a single fighter and then 6 defense drones until I found the Pulsar fighter and eventually bought a Behemoth to be my flagship.

[DrSuperGood]

The Paranid Frigate is extreemly fast and also has 100 missile capacity. I suspect that is intended to act more like a bomber than a drone carrier. I still need to test it.

The Teladia Frigate is a Drone carrier. With a massive 15 Defence drones (with 1 cargo and 1 repair as well) it is the ruler of all Frigates when it comes to that.

The Argon Frigate is a load of trash. Near darn unflyable by the player because the crazy Argon engineers thought it was a good idea to put the bridge behind the flight deck so most of the view is obscured by the flight deck and any landed craft. It is also slower than the Paranid one and has fewer drones than the Teladi one.

[Thunderpunt]

That's the balancing act. It has better turret placement than both other frigates. The paranid one literally has all of its firepower on top. It is significantly faster than the teladi one as well as more shield strength than the paranid one. It kind of hearkens back to the argon ships in X3AP where they weren't the best in any one field but were well rounded.

The one point I will give you is the bridge placement is kind of annoying especially if you have something docked and sitting on the pad. That being said it isn't near unflyable.

[Aieonae]

Yup cerberus is a rough cut on the cockpit vantage but all arg/ant capital have the same trend if you had not notice a frontal docking area...

And I agree this is very troubling, how many time you had a botch launch when launch off a colossus and ended up in that upside down mast of itself.

Behemoth 2 prongs sometime cost its field fighter shield damages.

So if you ask me I agree there are issue with the arg/ant designers.

But their fighter fielding capabilities in the destroyers class is still unmatched speedy compare to counterparts.

[SpaceToast]

A proper light carrier frigate similiar to the X3 shrike, cerberus, deimos or panther would be awesome. They would be slightly smaller than a destroyer and require the L ship docking ports. With a fighter capacity of 2-3 wings of fighters with multiple launch pads (much prefer launch tubes but I digress).

[Thunderpunt]

The landing pads are kinda lame tbh but I'll take them. The bridge location is a lot less impactful on the larger Argon capitol ships as the fighters are far enough out of the way as not to obstruct vision. Argon ships tend to lean towards carrying capability which is pretty cool.

I'd agree that a semi dedicated in between sized ship with two or three launch pads and a capacity of maybe 15 or 20 fighters would be cool. I think the scale in the game is kind of thrown off though because of what everyone is used to in X3AP. The frigates in this game are about the size of corvettes but the capitol ships are actually comparable in size to the old AP ones. I'd like to have more variety but we won't get that until they do some crowd pleasing bug fixing.

[lock]

I have a few Cerberus and they can have defense fighers inside the ship, but if there is a smaller ship inside or on top of the deck and its not in the wing, only those defense fighers that are not blocked by the smaller ship in dock mode can get out. The others will not leave until the smaller ship moves off the deck or out of storage.

Another note to other Captains, is NOT to fire the present captain while you are in space, as you will then be the captain and if you go out to the deck and hire the deckhand to be the captain, he will not leave his post to fly your ship, even if he is the captain named after the captain has been fired. (The other captain was a dunce at flying and there were other things I thought were more stupid then me renaming a deckhand a captain of the flightdeck, long story shorter)

[DrSuperGood]

The paranid one literally has all of its firepower on top.

No most of its firepower is forward facing. The turrets are just a little bit extra (less than 1 M Mk2 gun).

The Paranid one also has considerly longer maximum range for its guns thanks to its insane flying speed. To put it in perspective at full flying speed M Plasma Mk2 guns will travel over 12km from point of fire. Seeing how this can over double the speed of Torpedoes, this makes it very powerful (the AI will likely not be evading a 700+ m/s torpedo, even in something small profile like a defence drone).

But their fighter fielding capabilities in the destroyers class is still unmatched speedy compare to counterparts.

Yeh Paranid are completly unmatched due to bad balancing. Not only do their Destroyers have the most turrets, but their turrets and guns rotate faster than all the other factions and their destroyer can dock up to 10 M ships as well as the 40 S ships making it a far better carrier than a Behemoth or Phoniex which lacks any sort of M docking capability. The M dock also acts as an extra 4 turrets for even more damage over other faction Destroyer equivelants.

Destroyers are not meant to have 40 internal capacity for fighters. The Paranid one especially should have very little internal capacity, and not the same as a XL Carrier. These are all clearly place holder numbers.

[Thunderpunt]

I'd agree on capacity for the destroyers, I'd expect their main role to be actively fighting and less carrying. However going back to the paranid frigate; it has four turrets, all of which are on top of the ship thus giving it bad coverage, and it has two forward guns last time I checked same as every other frigate, with the exception of the paranid corvette. The turrets aren't the main weapons nor are they nearly as strong as they could or should be but they can plink away at a fighters shields and hull and if you don't have any facing underneath or at the sides then anything flying there won't be taking damage. The Cerb has two forward facing with one underneath and two next to the bridge. It's blind spot is behind and slightly underneath but the paranid and teladi for that matter leave the bottom of the ship exposed.

[DrSuperGood]

However going back to the paranid frigate; it has four turrets, all of which are on top of the ship thus giving it bad coverage, and it has two forward guns last time I checked same as every other frigate, with the exception of the paranid corvette.

The point is those 4 turrets deal so little damage anyway compared with the 2 M guns that they are not a selling point. One could even say its an advantage since with Combat Thrusters you can roll so your top is always facing the enemy so all turets can fire.

The Cerb has two forward facing with one underneath and two next to the bridge. It's blind spot is behind and slightly underneath but the paranid and teladi for that matter leave the bottom of the ship exposed.

Frigates are agile enough that blind spots are not really an issue. In any case my recommendation for the Paranid one is as a bomber since with the best top speed of any M ship (you cannot fire torpedoes in travel mode so flying speed is all that matters) and with a massive 100 missile capacity (twice that of the "bombers") it should make a pretty mean and tough bomber.

[Aieonae]

It is true, paranid destroyer is indeed powerful.

But the catch for behemoth is the portion on rapid deployment and rapid clean up.

Odysseus scores 2 smal pad one medium pad greatly kills the deployment and "clean up" speed for S vessels on a paranid vessel by literally doubling the time needed to deploy the full compliment of S vessels, all with the compensation of 10 more M vessels.

To me sure the destroyer value proposition for both Odysseus and Behemoth are slightly different for me I pilot Behemoth any day over Odysseus was simply because it "cleaned up" a lot faster when compare to the Odysseus trumping but slow power project.

Yes the entire ordeal of docking and "clean up"(recall, which do not work for the moment) is just a horrible wait, and to have it doubled was really doubling the pain for both the enemy literally and me mentally.

[ImHelping]

When turrets, docking logic, wingman logic, patrol logic, and- *mile long list* get sorted.

I'd like something closer in intent to the old MT ships, something that can carry 4-6 small ships for your bargain bin Starfox teams that isn't some turbo murder ship that would solo destroyers anyways.

Though with how all docking capable ships need an entire space station style docking platform, that would be real ****ing awkward even if you didn't care how ugly the ship was to have 6 docking platforms without being a huge space fatty.

Though it could have more aesthetic/economy of size potential if the AI was polished enough to handle angled platforms on ships. (How does the AI handle angled docking platform stations? Kamikaze into the rear wall from the outside until they noclip through half the station, fly through and exit the docking area, then U turn back through the entrance to finally dock). By having docking platforms line multiple sides of the ship, or even a ring arrangement.