First time seriously taking on thargoid interceptors
14 Aug 2018Thunktone
3304 August 14, ThursdayFighting thargoids with Fighter Club
Before the meetup
I headed out to the Pleiades on Wednesday in my Diamondback so that I could get my Challenger delivered to Asterope ahead of time. The long term plan is to leave my Challenger out here somewhere and use my Diamondback or Orca to get to it. I've flown my T9 out to the Pleiades in the past too but I wound up trading in scrap and hydrogen fuel. Might be worth bringing food or medical supplies out now that it's fitted with an FSD booster though. Or not.
Anyway, my Diamondback is a research vessel with a range of scanners fitted, including a xeno scanner. So I decided to go out and do some field work.
I scanned a couple of Cyclopses and a Basilisk and ran away from a lot of angry scouts. And since I fitted a class 3 beam this week I picked up a few bounties from chancers who interdicted me. It's a nice weapon and is making me consider buying a python or something for bounty hunting. The Viper is great in combat zones and at taking on small to medium ships but it really lacks some punch when it goes up against big ships with shield cell banks. Sometimes i get too bored to beat them.
By Thursday morning my Challenger had arrived. I realised too that Donar's Oak, just a jump away, were offering extra bounties for returning escape pods. I always try to pick them up when I have a cargo hold so I already had a couple from Wednesday. I signed up to help.
But I was in an anti-xeno ship with cool new guardian tech so I couldn't resist picking some fights. The pair of class 2 gauss cannons make short work of thargoid scouts. A couple of solid double hits is very nearly enough to smash them. From there I can either do one more gauss shot or zoom in and finish them with the class 3 shard cannon. It only takes a few minutes to defeat four marauders now, but I'm still taking significant damage.
Speaking of the class 3 shard cannon, that thing is great at softening up the interceptors. Three good hits on a Cyclops opens the first heart. If only I was a better shot with the gauss cannons I could probably go toe to toe with one. As it was though I had to flee after wounding them.
I also carry a remote release flak launcher for the thargon swarms but they move so fast that the targetting reticule is rarely ahead of me. I guess if I start to calm down in these fights then I could look around a bit more and thin out the cloud with it. But I'm tempted to swap it out for something else. I have a long-term plan to kit out a T10 to fly with a crew. That might be a better platform for the remote flak. But I'll see what an extra crew member can do from the Challenger before I give up on it.
After these experiments I did rescue some pilots. I should get a bonus of four and a half million or so, but I guess I didn't really do it for the money.
Winging up with fighter club
As I got back in my ship last night for the meetup the club was scattered around the Pleiades a bit. One pilot was looking for AX fighters, another was still heading out from the bubble. But before long we had met up at Donar's Oak - the station in Asterope being under repair and unable to patch us up and rearm us.
We spent a couple of hours taking on Cyclopses. Once more my shard cannon was very effective at forcing the 'goid's hearts open. And once more I struggled to hit those hearts with my gauss cannons. They do impressive damage when they do hit but I was very dependent on the rest of the wing to hit them where it hurts.
Through the evening I got rather better at running away after a heart was destroyed. But I never got the hang of using the shutdown field neutraliser. And I still can't hit the swarms with that remote flak.
Still, between us we took out four (I think) interceptors. And a bunch of scouts.
Next moves against the 'goids
I want to take those cyclopses on without help, and be more use next time I wing up to fight them. So that either means lots of target practice with the gauss cannons or swapping them for something else. The AX multicannons would be fixed too but I could spray-and-pray with them. I might try gimballed burst lasers. Not sure they'd do any damage at all, and I'd certainly miss the gauss cannons when I'm fighting scouts.
No, it's got to be target practice.
So do I make any changes at all? If extra crew don't get far with the remote flak then that's going out for a third gauss cannon. And next time I'm flying with bigger wing-mates I might swap both the scanner and the field neutraliser for extra heat sinks.
The other change I could make is to ditch the challenger for another ship entirely. Power requirements for the weapons I'm using are relatively low, so maybe a vulture? I could take a class 3 AX multi and a class 3 shard cannon. Smaller target but those class 3s would probably still draw focus. The interceptors were turning right on me every time I hit them with my shard cannon.
Or a Federal Assault ship with class 3 shard and beam, and 2 class 2 gauss? Maybe AX multicannon in place of the beam? I really need to test lasers against the 'goids. A Python could add a second beam or MC, or even AX missiles. Actually, the Python looks pretty good, no power issues at all. Let's not talk about the Corvette or the Clipper. I don't know why but I just don't want to fly them.
Edit
Class 1 and two lasers do nothing to the hearts. I just got a hit with my gauss cannons and knocked one down to 54%. Not sure if that was one or both. If it only takes a couple of hits from a trio of them then maybe I can afford to get really close.
I'm not going to drag this thing back to the core just yet, but I had a couple of AX multicannons which I have sent for. I definetely prefer the gauss for scouts, but I want to try these against the hearts.
Edit again
Just broke my first thargoid heart. My ship was broken in return. Hell hath no fury like a Thargoid scorned. I'm naming the replacement Heartbreak Hotel to mark the occasion. That's classical music, old Earth, just like I'm naming my other ships now.