Meet the Fleet: Dragonfly
27 Jan 2020Rex-Cramer
I've been helping out with the Thargoid incursions in the Witch Head sector on and off with some mates of mine. The last few times it's been with our heavy fighter "Frodo" which is normally used for security missions but could be pressed into service against the bugs with minimal refitting. It was a good ship and fairly adept at killing scouts, but things got problematic taking on the Interceptors. They are FAST. I mean they move as fast as you can boost and in my case, faster. In a big crowd it's not so hard to escape their attention. In a small group, it's a different story. My only escape was often to high-wake out and return to repair often with canopy near failure and malfunctions everywhere.We had purchased an Imperial Clipper and thus far despite falling in love with it's flight performance, a role for it had eluded us. It made a nice limo for short-range work but just didn't 'fit in' well anywhere. Then it occurred to me (actually my friend was instrumental in getting it across to me). Fighting interceptors is about getting in and out and staying fast, not really going toe-to-toe and slugging it out. At least not in a medium ship. Getting in and making a few hits and getting away is something the Clipper can do well. We named it "Dragonfly", and our AX clipper was born.
Outfitted with 2 Guardian Gauss Cannons below and flack cannons on the wings it can do some damage against even higher level interceptors and with just under 600m/s boost it can stay out ahead of that angry space flower all day if need be. It is not really a solo ship although it performs well against scouts in moderate numbers, it's a little fragile to take when all the attention will be on you but it's proved useful in AX combat zones where the ability to get in and land shots on the hearts and get out has been working very well. I'd still like to personally beat the pompous face of the imperial engineer that placed the hard-points on this ship. Clearly done without a single thought to convergence and firing arc, but for a large ship, it manuvres almost as well as a Challenger and that part I really appreciate. It's also 25% faster which is life.
It's running 7C bi-weave shields, 4D armor (HD engineered), 3D module reinforcements, 2 HD boosters, xeno scanner and field neutralizer. It's not completely engineered yet but it's largely grade 4. Where possible engineering to save weight is used to keep speed and boost as high as possible. Regular overcharged multi-cannons are proving to be adequate against scouts while not ideal but this also preserves defensive capability against human aggressors as well. Plans are to obtain the data needed for Guardian Shield reinforcement packages to fortify the shielding as much as possible which is admittedly lacking here.
So far this ship has taken 1 hydra, 3 basilisk, and a cyclops. Looking forward to further AX operations.