As25 wrote: ↑Sat, 2. Apr 22, 01:30
As for the Gladius, I don't use it, because it's too slow for a player ship and I don't like the way it looks. But if this game had pvp, Gladius would be meta. 4 guns, 2 shields, Terran weaponry (protons and mesons). Ships like Chimeras would get straight one shotted with mesons (if they land) while terran pulses and protons are harder to dodge than any other weapon in the game except tau/shards in your face (and beams, if you want to count those). Takobas (best interceptor atm) are better for interception, but straight fighting the only fighters who have superior raw stats are the Ares and the Shih (which is just a better Ares lol).
It doesn't matter how good your stats are when you're dead. And the Gladius slow speed makes it a sitting duck to pretty much any anti-fighter weapon, so the accuracy bonus from TER weapons at best evens the field.
Except there is no amount of S shields that will turn an S ship into a tank. If you can't dodge you die even with 4 S shields.
That sounds like you having a problem with fighters, cause if you think Gladious is bad then nothing else is going to be good. As I said only 2 fighters in the whole game beat Gladius in stats and if you have a human vs a human. Both using fighters and both with literally the same skill level, equally good at dodging, same reaction, same tactics, same everything but the ship itself. Then all it goes down to is dps/tank ratio. That automatically discards any fighter with less than 4 guns leaving us with Gladius, Ares, Shih, Eclipse, Chimera, Moreya and Pulsar. Moreya has 4 guns 1 shield, out. Chimera brings an extra gun and more hull but still only one shield, out. Pulsar has the weapons, but really low hull and only 1 shield, out. Eclipse brings the same guns and shields than the Gladius but no Terran weaponry, out. Ares is just a worse Shih, out. We're left with the Gladius and the Shih as the only contenders for the best fighter in the game. Which one is best comes down to whether or not the terran weapons make up for the extra shield the Shih brings.
Then if we make it about AI. Like say Player A vs Player B fleet (both using fighters). We have 2 scenearios: OOS and IS. In OOS, once again nothing matters other than dps/tank ratio. So same results as above. IS we have both equally r******* AI, which loves to do jousting and to fly in straight line. You tell me how glass canon ships like Chimeras, Moreyas and Pulsars are going to perfom when they decide to joust agaisnt a Gladius or Shih.
As for Mesons they're a complete waste in fighter battles. They overkill massively (if they don't miss, which they do often) and then do nothing for 30+ seconds while costing more than an entire fighter wing.
They're good OOS if you ignore the fact that you could've bought 4-5 more fighters instead of one Meson Stream but IS they're just a waste of mats and weapon slots.
I was talking about pvp. Mesons in the hands of humans, not AI. A good player with 1 meson is going to be a huge threat to you, cause unlike AI, they can aim, and if they land the shot, you are dead. And they still have 3 proton barrages which are harder to dodge than whatever you decided to bring.
For these reasons Gladius (and Shih/Ares) would be meta fighter if this game had pvp (which was the entire point of my argument).
