Disappointingly, it turned out that one of the factions I've been (coincidentally) doing a lot of work for, the beautifully named
Societas Eruditorum de Civitas Dei... is a bit too neo fascist for my liking. So despite being friendly with the Society of the Erudite of the State of God (translated), I've decided to buddy up to one of their "at war" factions;
Ed's 38. At first I thought these guys were pirates (the name is a bit sus), but it turns out they're looking to foster cooperation between factions, which fits better with my internal RP. Interestingly, there's a system where they are one of 5 factions, none of which have more than 23% influence.
So I'm going to be running missions for Ed's 38 out of there for a bit. Yes, it's a terrible one-starport backwater system with no orbital docks, but it is the most likely one to be flippable. So far today, they've gone from 17% influence to... 17.2%. Well, it's a start. I think. I don't actually know if that was anything to do with me
I am of course assuming nobody else is working on this system, because I am but one player and once out of Crimbo Limbo, my time will be very squeezed. The poor facilities and very even %s however make me suspect that it's been left alone, and is ripe for a bit of experimentation.
Need to read up on whether it's worth doing the bonus objectives (aka killing the assassins) on the delivery missions I'm doing. So far they've sent multiple Master Pythons after me, which all have chaff launchers and take a bloody age to kill. If it doesn't actually affect the influence gain, I have no reason to bother with these fights and will evade the interdiction and run away if caught.
To this end, I've finally committed to moving a couple of lighter ships up from the bubble; a cheap Viper mk4, and an Imperial Courier I remember having a lot of fun with. Sadly it's a 61 hour delivery time, but the cost for both was only about 16 mil, so easy to justify. The iCourier in particular can just run away from anything. It used to boost past 500m/s, and pretty much just hold that constantly. For data delivery missions with influence+++ rewards, it is absolutely the right tool, I just wish I'd shipped it 3 days ago
My combat python, the Argent One, is at least holding up
fairly well. I've just refitted the guns so it has 2x3 and 1x2 multicannons, all overcharged, plus one size 3 overcharged beam laser and a size 2 burst laser with the engineering effect to put random malfunctions on the target. Hopefully this will give me better results than the cannon+multi cannon+frag cannon asymmetric mess I had before (which was entirely to unlock a few engineer blueprints). My current concern is that my assassins really seem to stack shields and I plain run out of weapon energy before they're down. Also engineered up my military grade armour to max level, so it's upwards of 300% hull points, which is definitely taking the sweatiness away when the shields go down!
Oh, and a chaff launcher, obviously. Because the only counter to the AI's obsession with chaff launchers is either fixed guns (I have no aiming ability), or another chaff launcher to stalemate them until it wears off.
Keeping one point defence on the underside, but I am loathe to give up my KWS or FSWS in exchange for an ECM, especially as the AI seems to very rarely use missiles. Same problem with shield boosters and heatsinks; I'd like one of each, but I can't justify the slot. So far, I'm surviving the python duels by boosting away for a bit until my shields come back online.
...unless the AI is using fixed weapons, in which case I will dump the chaff launcher, probably for a shield booster.