Ackdarian - small craft + Missiles

[Thaiman]

I was playing as the Boskara using the current beta and my take away from combat was that blasters and fast ships appear to work quite well, though I only made it to early mid game before I felt like trying Ackdarian again.

My hangup is that Ackdarian favor small craft and ranged weapons, while my experience with small craft indicate they are less than reliable when it comes to taking out the ships that are hitting yours. I've also tried the missile + fighters approach which seems to work very well against one fleet with grouped ships, because the game does seem to be able to somewhat maintain distance, but that all appears to go out the window when trying to defend a station from multiple fleets or when enemy ships get scattered. That's when it appears to me that the AI becomes confused, allowing enemy ships to close in.

Besides that, I just can't get over the low damage from missiles in the early game, at least until you reach the hive series, and those hangers take up so much space in the early ships that it seems you have no room for weapons, of which missiles are notably quite large.

Is there a way to RP as Ackdarian, using missiles + small craft? Are there engagement settings or fleet sizes that can make it work? Thanks.

[iancmtaylor]

Is there a way to RP as Ackdarian, using missiles + small craft? Are there engagement settings or fleet sizes that can make it work? Thanks.

Do you have your ships set to Evade? Missiles and fighters require staying out of the range of the enemy to win, they have much lower DPS against shorter ranged weapons. Which means you either need to keep moving away from the enemy, or just bring more ships to win a fight.

[Gessie]

If you truly want to roleplay and embrace kiting for fun, as opposed to winning at max difficulty, try max-range weapons (Heavy Missiles IIRC) on the lightest ship which can carry them, plus Ackdarian engines. Empty slots are a feature, not a bug. Unless the enemy also brings high-range seeker weapons, PDs aren't even needed. Because of the lack of support components or varied weapons, tech advancement has somewhat less distractions, letting you specialize a bit more than usual.

If you have trouble defeating an enemy's PDs, consider moving your fleet just out of range, causing them to fire almost simultaneously when the enemy gets in range. As iancmtaylor mentioned, changing the engagement range is necessary.

In theory your kiting ships will almost never get hit unless attacking targets with range bonuses, though you'll need extreme overmatch (and thus economic superiority) to defeat the enemy. You'll take less losses, which further boosts your economic superiority. It's amazing in theory yet kinda meh in practice due to high PD effectiveness against missiles and AI pilot errors, though you shouldn't let that stop you as it's visually gorgeous to see a swam of Heavies bearing down on a slow foe and smashing it to bits in one massive volley.