On Outfitting: Further AX Observations
04 Aug 2022Kissamies
Like many others, I have been participating to Salvation's showdown in HIP 22460. Not because I really believe in his designs. I'm just a simple man in this regard: When I see an opportunity to shoot Thargoids, I shoot the Thargoids. We are not strong enough to beat an AXCZ alone, but we have been carrying our weight as a part of bigger impromptu fighting forces. I have had a lot of opportunity to take notes of the efficiency of the builds and tactics I commonly use and have tried some slight variations. First the Salvation modified weapons, I already touched on a previous entry.Gauss. I don't have much to say because I rarely use them. They may be supreme at taking out exerted hearts, but the others are better at exertion and have more ammo, which is important in AXCZ.
Plasma Charger. I still think it's the best AX weapon at the moment, the medium one which has better armor piercing value than the small. It is the best exerter, but you need to go close, so this weapon is best used for fast and nimble ships that can go close and slip away if the situation gets too hot. Hitting hearts is easy too, especially if you use the trailing gunsight. This feature is useless for normal weapons, but ideal for these 6km/s puppies. Unfortunately, they are pretty hard on the distributor too. Ship with big distributor, or going shieldless might be necessary if you want to boat these.
Shard Cannon. I might previously have sold these short, claiming they are a bit weak. I wrongly assumed that they have no damage drop and tried to use them at range. Also, while their damage per shot might not be as impressive as the PC, they can empty their clip fast, giving good burst damage for short time. The reload time is still annoying, but you can spit them to 2 groups and stagger them. Fire the other while the first reloads. This helps with the heat a little too. I would say this weapon is the better option for the bigger and clumsier ships, or clumsier pilots. The effective range is within 1.5km, so you don't have to get as dangerously close as with plasmas, and you don't need to charge. The target won't drift off your crosshairs while you are charging. If you fire at distance, you are likely to hit hearts at least a little bit. Ammo is worse than plasma, but still better than gauss.
With the main 'Goid killers listed, there is also some auxiliary weapons to mention:
Flak Launcher. Still the essential weapon for dealing with swarms. However, in the confusion of AXCZ you might count on the swarm going after something else. Also it seems that the presence of capital ships have made the swarms completely passive. Nevertheless, my policy is to always have this weapon.
Laser. Long range beam laser with thermal vent experimental effect. Very useful to have for depleting the interceptor shield while keeping myself cool to avoid the caustic missiles. If I have spare hardpoints after the more essential weapons above, I'll definitely always have the cooling laser. I have also experimented with the healing type mods for more support oriented builds, but nothing definite has come out of it yet.
Then there's the utility mounts. This has become quite simple. It seems having 3 high capacity heat sink launchers is in my comfort zone, and the xeno scanner is just too convenient not to have. Getting a scan on a hostile interceptor is too hard to bother with, but even without the scan the scanner gives you all sorts of useful data, like the scout variants, or the interceptor's current health, so I know if I should take one more shot to exert it or run now. That covers all the mounts on my medium ships. The Cutters also get some shield boosters and shutdown field neutralizer, which can also cover my wingmates.
Some AX pilots prefer to go shieldless. When I started my own AX career, and long time afterwards, I didn't think this was for me. I can't fight with FA off and cold orbit like those people do. However, I discovered that I can sort of cold orbit, and those new plasmas take so much juice it might be nice not to have to worry about SYS so much. Now I think that is probably better to go shieldless unless you have distro size 7 or better. Also if you use bi-weaves, slap the lo-draw experimental on them. It makes them easier to manage. A shieldless build might just benefit from the 5% caustic resistance the Guardian hull reinforcement offers, since all damage the Thargoids do is caustic, except the one that phases through shields. That is absolute, as usual.
Some module resistance is always necessary, but especially for the shieldless builds. And of course you need AFMU to repair them. My most recent estimate is that 3A would be the optimum size. Maybe size 2 is enough for a shielded build.
Finally, I reveal my AX ships and how they are currently built.
My main AX ship, the shieldless Chieftain. 2 medium and 1 small modified plasma chargers on top centerline, flak on chin and 2 beams on remaining smalls. Turreted, because I happened to have those already engineered. Turrets are a little dumb, but they are pretty nice when they work. The 2½ medium plasma array is still powerful enough to one shot a Scout and will exert a Hydra given enough time, but it's very slow going. I wouldn't want to try it alone. Most importantly, it's nicely manageable by the distributor. The ship can outrun the Basilisk and is nicely nimble. Maybe a little weaker hull as one might expect because the largest optional internal slots are taken by a cargo rack and repair limpet controller, but I don't usually feel I can't manage the damage.
The protegé's shielded FAS. 3 medium modified plasma chargers at the bottom. Usually a flak on top, but currently, temporarily a gimballed beam laser for the CZ conditions. It takes a lot of juggling the distributor to operate this ship. The WEP can't keep up sustained fire, just a handful of knock out blows. The biggest flaw, however is that the ENG fills out painfully slow and needs to be nearly full to boost. This has caused many tense moments and even some ship destructions. If I were to build this ship now, I would make it a shieldless build. Not changing it now, though I'm considering switching to enhanced low power mod, so it'll be even faster and nimbler. Can arrange the Guardian shield reinforcements to compensate.
Cutters for both. We liked these in the gauss era before Salvation weapons. We had a nearly full wing of these when we were bit more inexperienced and struggling to take down a Medusa. Now they have fallen out of fashion and veering toward support roles. Having 4 modified shard cannons firing 2 by 2 is effective enough weaponry, but the ship is so clumsy. Boost away from the Thargoid about to lightning attack you and you are 6 kilometers away. Always has 2 flaks on the wing hardpoints, and the huge nose one usually has the laser, though I sometimes experiment with turreted lasers on the top large hardpoints. I'm holding out hope that Ram Tah, Salvation or someone comes out with a huge AX weapon. If not, these ships will be firmly entrenched in the support role. Regeneration and concordant lasers, possibly universal limpet controller and perhaps even a fuel scoop. Definitely not front line material then.