With the new Thargoid Invasion, lots of players are wondering; should I be using an AX SLF? I've been using AX fighters for over a year, and experimented with them in many scenarios; I like to think I'm one of the most experienced players using them today. There are pros and cons, but I'd like to argue in their favor! I certainly enjoy using them, and they can be a lot of fun, either in NPC hands or via multicrew!
But why WOULDN'T you want to use them? There are a few common criticisms of Ship Launched Fighters I'd like to cover.
For those who don't want to watch, that's an NPC-controlled SLF solo exerting a Thargoid Basilisk Interceptor! This is something many players can't achieve at all, so it happening at the hands of an NPC without any player input is truly impressive! (for the uninitiated, the beam laser is meant purely for cooling, and is not doing any damage).
Generally speaking, under NPC control, a Guardian Lance Fighter can be considered equal to an extra Class 1 Gauss Cannon. Now, that might not sound like much, but there are several things to remember.
In general, an SLF can easily exert a cyclops, exert a Basilisk given a little time, and can fully counteract the regeneration on a Medusa. That might be the place where they're the most useful; normally a small mistake in your orbit or accuracy can mean a medusa regenerates to full and you're back to starting over again, but with an SLF in the field, it will essentially save your place in the fight. That means exerting instead of starting over, which means killing the heart before it enrages, which means winning the fight instead of losing.
Against a Hydra, the savings have more to do with ammo consumption; in a normal hydra fight, a player will need to synthesize or ram the hydra, plus achieve very high degrees of accuracy, which is why many players use premium ammo. Using an SLF gives effectively the same thing as premium synthesis, but without the synthesis cost!
This one, at least, has a small basis in truth. Swarms target Fighters preferentially, and because swarms do massive phasing damage, if SLFs do come under fire, they will die very rapidly. That only matters, however, if you're not killing the swarm. Most new players are well advised to kill the swarm, lest they risk flying through it, triggering missiles, and taking critical module damage that can end the fight right then and there. Even some of the best players in the game still choose to kill the swarm, such as this video from classic expert Aranionros Stormrage, speedrunning a Hydra;
He kills even a hydra swarm in under 30 seconds, and once the swarm is down, if you are attacking the interceptor personally(even with just a cooling beam, like in the first video), the Inteceptor will never attack the fighter personally, and its damage becomes 100% consistent. So much to the contrary of having low durability, it actually has unlimited durability! In fact, this can be even faster than choosing to ignore the swarm entirely, because the added DPS from the fighter can take the Interceptor's shield down more rapidly than otherwise would be possible, more than making up any lost time.
Things are a bit more complicated in AX Conflict Zones. When the Thargoid first spawns, it will be nearby and unfocused, so fighters will often be targeted by the swarms and die rapidly. However, as fights progress, swarms will often by drawn off by NPCs, and fighters can be deployed. While they do still die occasionally, they can be quickly redeployed and continue doing their job effectively.
Worst case, even if they are attacked by the swarm, that's damage being drawn away from you and other important targets! Especially when swarms can become agitated by NPCs, having your fighter eat a dozen missiles instead of you can be a godsend, with each fighter saving you massive amounts of hull and module integrity. This leads handily into the next misconception!
As always, the question is whether or not this is worth it. Take a Medusa, for example; in normal circumstances, the fastest a medusa can be exerted is in about 10.5 seconds. Having a Gauss fighter reduces that to about 8.6 seconds, or about an 18% reduction. Of course, that's assuming absolutely perfect accuracy, which by no means is going to be the case. Even if you're just 25% less accurate, you're looking at a fighter giving a 33% faster exertion, and that means 33% less damage taken! This more than counteracts any extra damage you might take.
Essentially, having a fighter speeds up the fight enough to reduce your damage taken, more than you would benefit from having the added hull, even with absolutely perfect skill; this gets better and better the less skilled you are.
This couldn't be further from the truth. The first heart is the hardest to exert, and once you break it, you're probably a third done with the fight! You can't learn how to really fight Thargoids if you're always dying to the first heart. It's mostly in the later hearts where you truly learn how to fight, how to be consistent and stay cool. In this, the fighter is perhaps the most helpful of all. It gets you to the point where you can begin to learn!
A Krait Mk2 with 4 enhanced AX multicannons, for example, can do about 16.25 DPS to a basilisk interceptor. In player control, a Guardian Lance Fighter can do about 20 DPS to that same target! Added to that, the mothership gets a bonus pip to engines or weapons, dramatically boosting their survivability or damage potential in the fight. Everyone wins!
Clearly, piloting an SLF can be a viable and effective way of joining the Thargoid War.
1. The first is the old fighter lag bug. Historically speaking, deploying an NPC-controlled SLF in a multiplayer instance could cause massive lag to everyone in the instance. Recent testing has indicated this bug MIGHT be fixed, but players should be cautious, as many players will still instinctively blow up any SLF they see. If you do use an SLF, corroboration that this bug has been fixed would be appreciated; bear in mind that this game is by no means lag free even without SLFs! Beware of confirmation bias, of attributing lag to SLFs that would have happened anyway!
2. The second is the typical costs of using an NPC. NPCs take half your combat rank while active, and if leveled up correctly, 10% of your income. This means they need to improve your kill speeds by at least 10% in order to be worthwhile. Fortunately, as we calculated above in regards to damage vs durability, this should always be worth it as long as they're being used effectively.
3. The third is that NPCs DO require a bit of extra micromanagement, and navigating the NPC panel can be annoying. There is a workaround for this, fortunately! NPC commands can be keybound. I suggest binding 'attack my target', 'attack at will', and 'follow me', at the bare minimum, but you might appreciate having all of them bound, just in case!
But why WOULDN'T you want to use them? There are a few common criticisms of Ship Launched Fighters I'd like to cover.
Misconception 1: They don't do very much damage.
This couldn't be further from the truth!For those who don't want to watch, that's an NPC-controlled SLF solo exerting a Thargoid Basilisk Interceptor! This is something many players can't achieve at all, so it happening at the hands of an NPC without any player input is truly impressive! (for the uninitiated, the beam laser is meant purely for cooling, and is not doing any damage).
Generally speaking, under NPC control, a Guardian Lance Fighter can be considered equal to an extra Class 1 Gauss Cannon. Now, that might not sound like much, but there are several things to remember.
- There is an experimental weapons limit on ships, meaning at most four guardian weapons can be used at one time.
- SLFs have their own distributor and heat! This means that you're not JUST getting the bonus DPS; you're also getting the equivalent of a ~25% bonus to your distributor regeneration, as well, the equivalent of taking your distributor from G5 to G8!
- And lastly, but most crucially, thargoids regenerate! This regeneration can easily counteract the damage of one or two of your weapons, so having a guardian fighter can boost your effective DPS by anywhere from 25% to as high as 50%(or higher!), depending on how accurate you are!
In general, an SLF can easily exert a cyclops, exert a Basilisk given a little time, and can fully counteract the regeneration on a Medusa. That might be the place where they're the most useful; normally a small mistake in your orbit or accuracy can mean a medusa regenerates to full and you're back to starting over again, but with an SLF in the field, it will essentially save your place in the fight. That means exerting instead of starting over, which means killing the heart before it enrages, which means winning the fight instead of losing.
Against a Hydra, the savings have more to do with ammo consumption; in a normal hydra fight, a player will need to synthesize or ram the hydra, plus achieve very high degrees of accuracy, which is why many players use premium ammo. Using an SLF gives effectively the same thing as premium synthesis, but without the synthesis cost!
Thanks to Northpin for asking this excellent question!
Here's an example. Assuming you're using a common '2 medium gauss, 2 small gauss' setup, a fighter will boost your DPS like the chart below, against different grades of thargoid. I also included a column assuming you're not firing precisely perfectly, either not maintaining perfect range or firing at a(humanly-impossible) perfect firing rate. For the average player, that would be a more realistic assessment of their effectiveness.
Against a hydra, a non-perfect player could expect a nearly 50% improvement in their damage! That's pretty crazy. But even a perfect player can still see results on par with using premium ammo. As you can clearly see, they not only don't get weaker, they actually get much stronger as the difficulty increases!
This is another common misconception! Rather than become weaker, they actually become substantially stronger later on! Against higher grades of thargoid, you lose more and more damage to regeneration, and that is multiplied by their increasingly high hardness, which multiplies the value of an SLF.
Here's an example. Assuming you're using a common '2 medium gauss, 2 small gauss' setup, a fighter will boost your DPS like the chart below, against different grades of thargoid. I also included a column assuming you're not firing precisely perfectly, either not maintaining perfect range or firing at a(humanly-impossible) perfect firing rate. For the average player, that would be a more realistic assessment of their effectiveness.
| Interceptor Class | Damage Without Fighter(minus regen) | Damage with Fighter(minus regen) | Extra DPS(by %) | Extra DPS at 75% accuracy |
| Cyclops | 51.8 | 61.8 | 19% | 26% |
| Basilisk | 47.8 | 57.8 | 21% | 29% |
| Medusa | 35.3 | 43.5 | 23% | 34% |
| Hydra | 22.2 | 28.6 | 28% | 47% |
Against a hydra, a non-perfect player could expect a nearly 50% improvement in their damage! That's pretty crazy. But even a perfect player can still see results on par with using premium ammo. As you can clearly see, they not only don't get weaker, they actually get much stronger as the difficulty increases!
Misconception 2: They always die instantly.
This one, at least, has a small basis in truth. Swarms target Fighters preferentially, and because swarms do massive phasing damage, if SLFs do come under fire, they will die very rapidly. That only matters, however, if you're not killing the swarm. Most new players are well advised to kill the swarm, lest they risk flying through it, triggering missiles, and taking critical module damage that can end the fight right then and there. Even some of the best players in the game still choose to kill the swarm, such as this video from classic expert Aranionros Stormrage, speedrunning a Hydra;
He kills even a hydra swarm in under 30 seconds, and once the swarm is down, if you are attacking the interceptor personally(even with just a cooling beam, like in the first video), the Inteceptor will never attack the fighter personally, and its damage becomes 100% consistent. So much to the contrary of having low durability, it actually has unlimited durability! In fact, this can be even faster than choosing to ignore the swarm entirely, because the added DPS from the fighter can take the Interceptor's shield down more rapidly than otherwise would be possible, more than making up any lost time.
Things are a bit more complicated in AX Conflict Zones. When the Thargoid first spawns, it will be nearby and unfocused, so fighters will often be targeted by the swarms and die rapidly. However, as fights progress, swarms will often by drawn off by NPCs, and fighters can be deployed. While they do still die occasionally, they can be quickly redeployed and continue doing their job effectively.
Worst case, even if they are attacked by the swarm, that's damage being drawn away from you and other important targets! Especially when swarms can become agitated by NPCs, having your fighter eat a dozen missiles instead of you can be a godsend, with each fighter saving you massive amounts of hull and module integrity. This leads handily into the next misconception!
Misconception 3: They aren't worth the lost hull reinforcement.
Fighter Hangars do take up an optional slot. The loss of a C5 or C6 optional slot can mean losing around 700 hull integrity, which for, say, a Krait, could be 15-20% of your total hull value.As always, the question is whether or not this is worth it. Take a Medusa, for example; in normal circumstances, the fastest a medusa can be exerted is in about 10.5 seconds. Having a Gauss fighter reduces that to about 8.6 seconds, or about an 18% reduction. Of course, that's assuming absolutely perfect accuracy, which by no means is going to be the case. Even if you're just 25% less accurate, you're looking at a fighter giving a 33% faster exertion, and that means 33% less damage taken! This more than counteracts any extra damage you might take.
Essentially, having a fighter speeds up the fight enough to reduce your damage taken, more than you would benefit from having the added hull, even with absolutely perfect skill; this gets better and better the less skilled you are.
Misconception 4: Fighters are a crutch, that will prevent you from learning how to fight properly.
This is the argument I usually hear last of all, after people accept that yes, fighters do a lot of damage, and yes, they are worth using. "Fighters are TOO good, and they'll prevent you from learning how to fight properly!"This couldn't be further from the truth. The first heart is the hardest to exert, and once you break it, you're probably a third done with the fight! You can't learn how to really fight Thargoids if you're always dying to the first heart. It's mostly in the later hearts where you truly learn how to fight, how to be consistent and stay cool. In this, the fighter is perhaps the most helpful of all. It gets you to the point where you can begin to learn!
Misconception 5: A player in an SLF is less useful than just bringing their own ship.
This is another case of debatable truth. While it's true that a player with a full complement of Guardian weapons will be more effective than a single SLF, many players don't have a full complement of guardian weapons, and in that case, a guardian fighter may well offer very comparable damage, at very low risk and zero upfront investment.A Krait Mk2 with 4 enhanced AX multicannons, for example, can do about 16.25 DPS to a basilisk interceptor. In player control, a Guardian Lance Fighter can do about 20 DPS to that same target! Added to that, the mothership gets a bonus pip to engines or weapons, dramatically boosting their survivability or damage potential in the fight. Everyone wins!
Clearly, piloting an SLF can be a viable and effective way of joining the Thargoid War.
Genuine Concerns
These misconceptions dealt with, there are a few genuine concerns that people should be aware of.1. The first is the old fighter lag bug. Historically speaking, deploying an NPC-controlled SLF in a multiplayer instance could cause massive lag to everyone in the instance. Recent testing has indicated this bug MIGHT be fixed, but players should be cautious, as many players will still instinctively blow up any SLF they see. If you do use an SLF, corroboration that this bug has been fixed would be appreciated; bear in mind that this game is by no means lag free even without SLFs! Beware of confirmation bias, of attributing lag to SLFs that would have happened anyway!
2. The second is the typical costs of using an NPC. NPCs take half your combat rank while active, and if leveled up correctly, 10% of your income. This means they need to improve your kill speeds by at least 10% in order to be worthwhile. Fortunately, as we calculated above in regards to damage vs durability, this should always be worth it as long as they're being used effectively.
3. The third is that NPCs DO require a bit of extra micromanagement, and navigating the NPC panel can be annoying. There is a workaround for this, fortunately! NPC commands can be keybound. I suggest binding 'attack my target', 'attack at will', and 'follow me', at the bare minimum, but you might appreciate having all of them bound, just in case!
Conclusion
Are SLFs worth it? I think the answer is clearly yes, but I'm happy to discuss it with you! Post your thoughts below, and I'll do my best to assuage any concerns. Just remember, in the end, it's just a game, and the point is to have fun! If you don't enjoy using an SLF, by no means feel pressured to use one! But if you want to maximize your performance, you might want to consider throwing on a fighter bay!
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