I recently started BSF and I love it.

All the possibilities of ships, upgrades, crews, fight strategies, etc make it difficult to understand but even more interesting.

Thanks a lot for this topic I will refer to as I evolve in BSF. It helps me a lot as there isn't yet a lot of clear and detailed guides like this.

I recently started BSF and I love it.

All the possibilities of ships, upgrades, crews, fight strategies, etc make it difficult to understand but even more interesting.

 

Thanks a lot for this topic I will refer to as I evolve in BSF. It helps me a lot as there isn't yet a lot of clear and detailed guides like this.

BSF??? As in ******** Star Fighter????

Eventually the thread will be fifty pages of advice, discussion, and math, and thirty pages of bumps.

We've posted under suggestions, we've posted here, we've all reported for sticky. Tons of GSFers want it stickied, but I really do guess the community guys won't give us the same type of treatment they give literally any other area of the game. It's better written, better titled, and has much more community participation that most of the other stickied guides in other subforums.

So who cares. It's a bunch of bumps, who cares. I've figured out that we can fix that by editing out our old bumps, or even putting valuable info into that. Think of them as "reserved" tags, or something.

Bumping so some guildies that are starting to fly GSF can find this excellent thread, and to ask a question:

Has anyone tried a Clarion with LLC / Charged Plating / Thermite Torpedo / Repair Probes as a dedicated bomber hunter and had any success? I've tried flying it a few times, though I didn't really get the requisite number of bombers and mined nodes to test it out properly. I prefer a more balanced Clarion, and I wonder if the purpose of this build couldn't be better served with a Rampart.

Why not prefer quads on a bomber-hunter?

LLC has higher DPS and is better up close (under 1.5km). Main problem is it's completely not working with Thermite... and leave you even more vulnerable to cattlescouts.

It might seem counter intuitive but my minehunter consists of:

Tensor / LLC / EMP Missile / Distortion Field

This allows me to get around quickly (usually before the bombers) get in prime position to harass them with EMP missile, and enough defensive abilities to stave off GS and Scouts that would try to attack me. One might be able to argue that CP is better suited than DF (and ive tried both) the ability to eat a mine once in a while pales in comparison to the overall protection DF provides (for me at least, results may vary for others)

It might seem counter intuitive but my minehunter consists of:

 

Tensor / LLC / EMP Missile / Distortion Field

 

This allows me to get around quickly (usually before the bombers) get in prime position to harass them with EMP missile, and enough defensive abilities to stave off GS and Scouts that would try to attack me. One might be able to argue that CP is better suited than DF (and ive tried both) the ability to eat a mine once in a while pales in comparison to the overall protection DF provides (for me at least, results may vary for others)

I'm running a similar build to this except targeting telemetry (gasp!) instead. It only works well on the T2 bomber though. Seismic > close range scouts.

LLC has higher DPS and is better up close (under 1.5km). Main problem is it's completely not working with Thermite... and leave you even more vulnerable to cattlescouts.

LLC has higher DPS up close but quads also pack high sustain and their characteristics are almost ideal for fighting bombers (except the lack of native armor pen, which LLC also lacks):

1. The range difference is a really big deal in picking off mines.
   
2. Bombers are the slowest and least maneuverable targets, which minimizes quads' issue with tracking penalties. Quads love fat stationary targets.
   
3. The longer engagement range also translates into a higher effective DPS because you can start firing sooner (and also have more flexibility in where to attack from).
   

There's a reason that battlescouts usually pick quads or BLC over LLC.

LLC has higher DPS up close but quads also pack high sustain and their characteristics are almost ideal for fighting bombers (except the lack of native armor pen, which LLC also lacks):

 

1. The range difference is a really big deal in picking off mines.
   
2. Bombers are the slowest and least maneuverable targets, which minimizes quads' issue with tracking penalties. Quads love fat stationary targets.
   
3. The longer engagement range also translates into a higher effective DPS because you can start firing sooner (and also have more flexibility in where to attack from).
   

 

There's a reason that battlescouts usually pick quads or BLC over LLC.

I think all he was trying to say is if you're running a charged plating build and orbiting the satelite to detonate the mines on purpose. A gun that has higher dps under those conditions might be better. Personally I still use quads even in the charged plating imperium/clarion as I don't find you gain enough extra dps on the node to compensate for when you are killing anything else.

I really feel it's a player preference choice though, if you really want the best lasers for killing those bombers while you are both on the satelite, then yes Lights are superior then Quads at that exact job.

Bumping so some guildies that are starting to fly GSF can find this excellent thread, and to ask a question:

 

Has anyone tried a Clarion with LLC / Charged Plating / Thermite Torpedo / Repair Probes as a dedicated bomber hunter and had any success? I've tried flying it a few times, though I didn't really get the requisite number of bombers and mined nodes to test it out properly. I prefer a more balanced Clarion, and I wonder if the purpose of this build couldn't be better served with a Rampart.

The thing about charged plating is that it means you're planning on taking out mines by running them over. In general that means being too close for easy thermite torpedo shots.

It's fine if your plan runs along the lines of: lock thermite from a distance, boost into minefield, finish bomber with lasers. Especially if in chat or over VOIP you call out, "Thermite on [bomber_name]," so that after you trigger all of the mines other ships can help finish off the affected bomber.

The downside is that you have to repeat this for every bomber and that means getting away from the sat in domination which has the downsides of making you more exposed to gunships and scouts with AP weapons plus potentially loosing control of the sat. If you have backup from your team, and there aren't too many bombers, it can work pretty well.

If it's a solo effort versus 2-5 bombers on a node, than a CP Rampart is definitely a better choice in most cases. It will need to have it's defenses pretty well upgraded, and will really benefit from having HLCs upgraded to AP as well.

If you change to quads as Kuci suggests, I think you could probably also give up the CP, as in that case you have the tools to stay outside of mine detonation range.

Personally I still use quads even in the charged plating imperium/clarion as I don't find you gain enough extra dps on the node to compensate for when you are killing anything else.

While I totally agree with making domination builds that can handle all ship types, I disagree with you on this one. Even with the versatility of Quads, what are you hoping to hit? BLC, rocket pods, railguns, or HLC are going to absolutely decimate the charged plating build before you can even make a dent with the quads.

To me the CP Clarion is purely a chess piece to push a Razorwire/Rampart off the board, and LLC does that best. Overall it usually feels like a pretty terrible choice though. I think I have a lot more success attacking the bomber from under the node with directional shields, ranged quads, and thermites instead of chasing him around the sat. I still haven't decided if I like reinforced armor or deflection armor here (to eat an occasional mine if you get too close).

To me the CP Clarion is purely a chess piece to push a Razorwire/Rampart off the board, and LLC does that best. Overall it usually feels like a pretty terrible choice though. I think I have a lot more success attacking the bomber from under the node with directional shields, ranged quads, and thermites instead of chasing him around the sat. I still haven't decided if I like reinforced armor or deflection armor here (to eat an occasional mine if you get too close).

Problem here is that you're not using the Clarion's strengths. If you're going to stand off the bomber, the best ship to do so is a T1 strike with HLC and Concs. I would say T2, but the engine manoeuvre choices penalise it heavily. Besides, having Ion Cannon as an option is probably better than having Protorps to fall back upon after launching the Conc.

Wow, wasn't expecting all these great replies, thank you! As it turns out, I gave up on my LLC Clarion experiment. I just feel a lot more useful in a wider variety of environments flying with quads / directional shields / proton torpedoes. I do vacillate between lightweight armor and deflection armor -- I used deflection for a long time, but have switched to higher evasion, which seems to have paid dividends against gunships in particular.

Also the ship doesn't look right w/o Quad Lasers

Sending this one back to the top for newer players.

The "Manual Sticky" method!

I just saw the new damage record and it looks like quad laser + rocket pods. Does anyone keep light lasers on the T2 Scout?

Not really sadly Quads do very similar dps but at further range, and Burst lasers do lights up close better more reliably. While Lights boast the highest dps in the game, they just aren't as reliable as Bursts.

Not really sadly Quads do very similar dps but at further range, and Burst lasers do lights up close better more reliably. While Lights boast the highest dps in the game, they just aren't as reliable as Bursts.

Highest theoretical dps, with every single real-world correction going against them.

Highest theoretical dps, with every single real-world correction going against them.

When you say "dps of a weapon" you are inherently talking about an abstraction.

Lights really will do the most dps in the game versus several targets, even in the real world. But how often do you come across, say, a snared scout?

In fact, everything that deals "the most" damage in this game has a bunch of restrictions on it. I surmise that this is a result of the devs assuming that players will always make the highest dps option work in some regard, even if it is burdened by baggage.

Light Laser Cannon is the highest damage, but the damage drops VERY fast with range and deflection, and requires you to be close- the high dps is only enjoyed in a very small "match flame" directly in front of your nose.

Missile Sentry Drone is the highest dps drone, but unlike the very long range railgun drone or the powerful snare on interdiction drone, all it does is damage, and the missile itself can be countered normally. This generally leaves it as the least popular drone, especially to deploy alone.

Plasma Railgun is the highest dps railgun, but the lack of accuracy, inability to stack the dot, lack of armor piercing, and dot nature instead of burst leave it as the least used railgun.

Seeker and Seismic compete for the secondary weapon mine spot, and seeker is more raw damage, while seismic has the shield ignoring utility.

Concussion mine competes with the utility Ion mine and the utility interdiction mine. It competes pretty favorable these days, but only after a massive gutting of interdiction mine, and only because ion mine is almost entirely worthless.

So we see this "for highest possible damage, pay very high price" quite a bit over components. It's no surprise that lights are overly punished!

I've actually had a hard time explaining why other options beat lights in almost all practical situations. It usually gets reframed as "oh, so you are saying if you are good light laser cannon is best...". No! That is very frustrating. The problem seems to lie with "move X is hard to use" implies that you need to be THIS tall on the skill-peen and then suddenly X beats Y, when what is trying to be communicated is that the situations where the light laser is better than its competition hardly ever arise. The fact that it's also hard to capitalize on them is another thing.

When you say "dps of a weapon" you are inherently talking about an abstraction.

 

(elided: a lot of stuff I basically agree with)

Sure, but there is a much simpler point here. The spherical cow of GSF is a dead-center motionless target with no evasion and no cooldowns, AKA damage per shot times rate of fire times (1 + crit / 2), times accuracy if you want to get fancy. In this model, LLC has the highest DPS. But most refinements you make to this model are going to hit LLC harder than its competitors. Small firing windows? Massive reduction in LLC's modeled DPS, little or none to BLC. And so on.