The Mutable Nature of the Thargoid War
19 Feb 2023Kissamies
As everyone is well aware, the war against the Thargoids have been in a new phase for some time now. I estimate that with no chance to the current conditions, the war will grind to a bloody stalemate after the Humanity has lost a good portion of the Core systems. We can all only hope that AEGIS, engineers or someone will pull out a Deus Ex Machina, but in a meanwhile we can only try to hold the bugs back. The Aseveljet squadron has been doing our part. Currently, we have sent 2 of our carriers, codenamed Twilight and Darkness and filled with our fines AX forces, to Witch Head Nebula. We figure we shouldn't let the enclave and its access to all the Meta-Alloys go without any resistance.Of course when the Maelstroms hit, I made some incursions with my Clipper that is engineered to be especially cold and has an universal limpet controller for varied sample collection and repairs. There wasn't too much to be found in there yet, so I went back to repelling the invasions. A lot has happened in the AX weapons department to shake up the tried and true loadouts. First off, the enhanced versions of AX Multi-Cannons and Missiles are a great improvement. Add the C grade xeno scanner we finally got to the mix and especially the gimballed MCs are deadly. Equally revolutionary is the experimental weapon stabilizer. I think we should let Azimuth live if it keeps being useful like that. The Sirius heat sinks are not too bad either.
With this new equipment and more experience I have to yet again revise my views on some of the weapons:
Modplasma. Still my favorite weapons. With the stabilizer, I can have even more of them, exert even better and crush scouts at more comfortable distances. It is not great at hitting hearts, so it's best to either mount another weapon for that or have a differently armed specialist team mate to pick off the hearts after you exert.
Modshard. Very popular weapon in these days, but I'm not seeing it. It is a brilliant weapon for hitting hearts and can also do brutal damage in the short term if you are willing to cook yourself and shed heat sinks like crazy. Feels too sloppy for me. It's also not as great against the Scouts as the alternatives.
Gimballed eAXMC. Brilliant against Scouts and work well against lower level Interceptors. I recommend sticking to large variants as much as possible, because the medium's just can't pierce armor well enought. These things shred Cyclops hearts and have no problem with Basilisk hearts either. They can also whittle down the tougher ones' hearts, but it takes time and they definitely need something else to exert them first. In my mind the these make the modshards somewhat obsolete, even. Definitely when fighting only against Scouts, Cyclopes and an occasional Basilisk.
Gauss. Small gauss is the best AX weapon to stick in a small slot, unless you are using small modplasma or modshard to harmonise with the medium ones. One of my protegé's builds has 2 small gauss with 3 medium modplasmas.
Now I have noticed that most commanders prefer to fight near the terrestial ports. It's easy to understand why. Thargoids don't deploy their swarms near the ground. The current flak launcher is woefully inadequate weapon for the modern AX conflict zones. I think the powers that be should direct some of their resources to developing better countermeasures against the swarm.