festering skies

[wicked lester]

All of the threads i could find are very old. What are the best weapons/ships to fight the Pandodran scouts? I didn't do very well in my admittedly small sample size of 1 fight using the default Aurora.

[Artek [General]]

Aurora? You mean Manticore?

The way the game wants the air combat to go is that its a rock-paper-scissors of what your enemy has for weapons VS the one defensive module you have.
Ideally it should counter the most powerful weapon the opponent has, then you aim for the other weapon to disable it, then you aim for the main ship.
If your defensive module cannot counter any of opponent's weapons:
"Too f*cking bad, LMAO" - (c) The game, probably.

But there is also another, way superior strategy: HIT'N'RUN.
The damage you deal an encounter is carried over to the next one if you disengage (except for maximum difficulty, which sucks).
So what you do:
>ENGAGE
>Take potshots
>The SECOND you get into effective range of opponent's weapons you just DISENGAGE
>Your aircraft will automatically escape to the closest POI available
>After this it becomes controllable again and... You can just send it right back.
>Rinse and repeat until enemy carrier is dead.

Personally i developed a meta of acquiring long range weaponry and dual-wielding it.
First i acquire NJ tech and make two of their long range gauss cannons.
Then i also produce one of EACH defensive module.
I memorize what different enemy weapons do and before going to intercept something - i check what weapons it has, predict which one is gonna suck the most and equip appropriate counter-module.
Later on i realized that when battling the weakest enemy scouts - you can just skip disabling their weapons and just aim straight for the ship itself and just take it down immediately. This is also the reason why long range weaponry is the ♥♥♥♥ and close range machine guns suck ass.

Later into the game you will gain access to Phoenix-produced Thunderbolt HC-9 cannons.
They are crazy expensive, but they are equally as over-powered.
Just make 2 of those, dual-wield them, aim straight for the enemy aircraft and you will win every battle. I think enemy scouts just die in 4 direct impact hits, so literally 2 shots.
Don't even need any other weapon in the game, unless you want to have some fun with experimenting. You can make others work but its just... Not worth it, really.

And whenever you start experiencing issues with the opponent - just revert to hit'n'run strats.
Syn's Helios is particularly good at that due to speed.
Slow ships will have to stand their ground and fight for as long as they can.

[wicked lester]

Aurora is the name of the ship I got when FS is triggered. Might be from the TFTV mod.

[wicked lester]

That's working, thanks. Helios and Hit and Run for the win. I lost a few havens but it's under control for the time being.

[redfire42791]

If i disable Festering Skies DLC is the doomsday clock disable as well?

[Artek [General]]

Originally posted by redfire42791:

If i disable Festering Skies DLC is the doomsday clock disable as well?

No, doomsday clock is the default feature of the game.

[jorvinn]

The air combat in Phoenix Point is an utter dumpster fire. Sure, the extra modules on aircraft can be fun, but there is no real answer to the larger flyers like the Abaddons with their 6 weapon slots.. the only thing you can do is using Zap Brannigan tactics and send wave after wave of your own aircraft at it plinging it once or twice with a long range weapon before disengaging.

They really should have added some sort of a dedicated fighter craft to keep the progression somewhat linear and to make sure you had a snowball´s chance in heck to stop the Abaddons from pulverizing haven after haven.

All in all, the air-to-air combat is my least favorite feature of the game - by far.

[XelNigma]

I came back to try out the Void overhaul. and im already ready to shelf the game again sololy because of the requirement of festering skys. I cant describe how much I hate this DLC.

[Ignosius]

It's pretty terrible. I think the biggest problem is that the fights are primarily based on engagement range, but you have no control over the position of your ship.

Short range weapons are completely worthless because you have no way to quickly get into close range. By the time you get close enough to use them, the enemy has been launching attacks at you for a while and probably destroyed your weapons.

The rock-paper-scissors element doesn't even work properly, since you can only have one defensive module, while the enemy can have multiple types of long range weapons equipped.

This leads to the only viable tactic being the long range hit-and-run, which basically ignores the entire gameplay system.

[Artek [General]]

Originally posted by Ignosius:

It's pretty terrible. I think the biggest problem is that the fights are primarily based on engagement range, but you have no control over the position of your ship.

Short range weapons are completely worthless because you have no way to quickly get into close range. By the time you get close enough to use them, the enemy has been launching attacks at you for a while and probably destroyed your weapons.

The rock-paper-scissors element doesn't even work properly, since you can only have one defensive module, while the enemy can have multiple types of long range weapons equipped.

This leads to the only viable tactic being the long range hit-and-run, which basically ignores the entire gameplay system.

This is an observation i completely agree with as i came to the same conclusion: close range weapons is useless.

In XCOM:EU aircraft weapons had range too, but their selling point was that while it took an extra 2 seconds for the plane to get into fighting range - in return it got a far better and reliable DPS.
The planes started with rockets that they could shoot from range, but at very low fire rate and like 70% hitchance
Then you upgrade to machine guns that had like 90% hitchance and fired at 3 times the speed, so not only it dealt more damage - it dealt it in a reliable manner at the price of downtime-on-approach.
Then you upgraded to lasers which were just the same thing, but they hit harder...
And THEN you would upgrade to plasma which would trade some fire rate for an ability to start shooting as soon as engagement starts, with fair accuracy and great damage to the point that your basic planes are guaranteed to win unless they are fighting the top 3 largest alien UFOs.

In PP I just found close range weaponry to be largely inconsequential. I do not think they are weak or anything - i actually made some for laughs and they did well once in range.
The problem is inherently that... Enemy planes have them too. And very powerful ones: flamethrowers, ramming modules... You basically immediately start losing if they activate even once.
The idea the devs seemed to have is that you slowly crawl towards enemy aircraft, with your long range weapon harassing opponent's close range weapon, while your defensive module shuts down their long range weapon, so by the time you get in range for close combat - the opponent can't return fire.
The problem with that is that the Hit'n'Run "Disengage" spam completely solves any problems arising from stacking long range weapons. So why would you ever? It is THE way to fight. Then you unlock Thunderbolt HC-9, make x2 of them for 400 Tech and basically win every encounter by aiming straight for the cockpit.
They made a mistake of allowing you to pick ANY weapons for the aircrafts. Maybe if aircrafts were forced to equip exactly 1 long and 1 short weapon - then there would be at least some consideration to the air strats, but nah... Just play sniper while everyone else is forced to waste weapon slots on their 250 range ramming modules or whatever.