egosoft.com

IS most carriers lack the laser energy regeneration for sustained firing making the Odin/Woden good while OOS the Xenon J is hard to beat due to the low price and 48 weapons.

In TC the only big differences are how some ships are obtained. You can get the Enhanced pericles and Medusa Prototype from the plot line given at Dukes HQ.

My preference continues to be the Boron Pike M4+. Get the pre-outfitted L version, which comes with full shields 4 PAC's and is surprisingly cheap.

At full speed outfitting, it's fast enough to catch just about any fighter you might need to engage, tough enough to tangle with M3's, and short front to rear, which encourages more misses than longer slimmer fighters like Solano's or Split fighters. 4 PAC's are enough to drain the weapon capacitor banks on a single pass, without wasting it on fewer shots from HEPT's, or doing nothing but tickle damage from IRE's.

Can be additionally armed with missiles if you have them, wasps will give additional punch and distraction for example.

why pay 797.068 Cr for Pike if the Solano only costs 411.056 Cr and is much better.
you can get a Solano fully tuned + software + 6 PAC + 3x25 for less than a million.
The Pike L still need 2 PACs and tuning + software and has only 1x25, and already costs more than 1mil.

Boron Drone Hauler is better than the pike in my opinion.

That's what the numbers say, yes, but the two additional PAC's miss often enough and shorten the attack run sufficiently that they don't add damage. So you burn an additional third of your energy before the enemy is in guaranteed hitting range.

On paper the Solano's stronger, but in practice the Pike takes fewer hits, hits more consistently and survives longer.

I can confidently send ten Pikes to swarm down a Xenon P, with one loss for every two P's. Solano's take at least two losses per P they engage. Partially due to bouncing off of one another and slamming to a stop as well as damaging their own shields. At which point the P shreds them into space debris.

Pike is epic.

Made a visit to Heretics End. AP, war, and Terrans are red. Called in enough troops to invite RRF.

Had 60 Nova Raiders in a Wing. Lost 13. Two killed by the Terrans, 11 by my Nova Raiders. Are we lethal or what?

Lol.

jlehtone wrote:Made a visit to Heretics End. AP, war, and Terrans are red. Called in enough troops to invite RRF.

Had 60 Nova Raiders in a Wing. Lost 13. Two killed by the Terrans, 11 by my Nova Raiders. Are we lethal or what?

Nice, medals and cocktails all round for your brave boys


For the OP, may I suggest the script CODEA by Lucike? A wonderful carrier command and control script.

Triaxx2 wrote: ↑

Fri, 13. Jul 18, 01:22

That's what the numbers say, yes, but the two additional PAC's miss often enough and shorten the attack run sufficiently that they don't add damage. So you burn an additional third of your energy before the enemy is in guaranteed hitting range.

On paper the Solano's stronger, but in practice the Pike takes fewer hits, hits more consistently and survives longer.

I can confidently send ten Pikes to swarm down a Xenon P, with one loss for every two P's. Solano's take at least two losses per P they engage. Partially due to bouncing off of one another and slamming to a stop as well as damaging their own shields. At which point the P shreds them into space debris.

Pike is epic.

I was checking out Pike's in AP. They can't use PACs. Am I missing something?
I'm new to X3 so I'm confused about nearly everything the game has to offer. I wanted to see about getting a little carrier fleet going but not sure which fighters I should use. To be honest I'm not sure what I will use a carrier for but just figured it was the thing to do.

You could have posted the question as new thread, perhaps linking to the old, rather than pulling up an old thread.


The OP did ask about X3TC. Triaxx2, presumably, did reply accordingly.

X3TC Pike can mount IRE, PAC, or IonD.
X3AP Pike can mount HEPT, PRG, or EBC.
Astonishing development, isn't it?

Well, in AP they have significantly stronger hulls on big ships. Seems they did not care enough for their military before.
Now giving a light ship weapons it's energy banks probably can not handle is the next thing where soldiers are just for the meat-grinder

jlehtone wrote: ↑

Sat, 20. Apr 19, 18:11

You could have posted the question as new thread, perhaps linking to the old, rather than pulling up an old thread.


The OP did ask about X3TC. Triaxx2, presumably, did reply accordingly.

X3TC Pike can mount IRE, PAC, or IonD.
X3AP Pike can mount HEPT, PRG, or EBC.
Astonishing development, isn't it?

A real friendly bunch here in the X3 community

The friendliest. Just don't go around necroing dead threads, moderators do not like it.

I think the issue here is that the OP's older thread turned out to be about X3TC and the new poster thought that what they were seeing in X3AP (essentially a quite different X game with different ship characteristics) would be the same for X3TC too. Anyway, let's move on now.

To be honest, I was genuinely surprised by the changes in Pike, for I had not noticed them in action. The already mentioned ship hull strength is well known and advertized feature of X3AP. I do know minor tweaks of some ships between TC and AP, but Pike has escaped my gravidar.

It should now be apparent that each game (XbtF, X-T, X2, X3R, X3TC, X3AP) is different in details despite their common elements.


Irrespective of which game is looked at, there are two invariants:

• Combat in the sector, where the player is currently ("in sector"), differs significantly from combat in all the other sectors ("OOS")
• Human pilot can behave very different from the AI pilots

From that follows that there are usually three optimization targets:

1. Ship and weapons of the player
2. Ship and weapons of AI pilots in sector
3. Ship and weapons of AI pilots OOS

However, "carrier fighter" implies that those ships are not flown by the player. That leaves two targets and "optimal solution" is different for them.

Furthermore, one can prefer different aspects: to go for near invincible fleet (almost impossible), to select the most maintainable (easiest to rebuild), or something else.

The Fleet Guide by Black_hole_suN is about X3AP and IMHO very useful.


There is one more thing to consider:

Know your enemy

What will the carrier be used for? For example:
Small Pirate fighter groups do occasionally attack my property. I want to respond quickly. That calls for small, but very fast fleet.