Need advice with perks and formations
 

Hi all. I need advice from more experienced players for SW3. I forgot to put SW3 in title of topic.

At the moment I got my hero, Ternie and Gray guy. I gave my guy the tactician perk and gave Ternie the defense perk (I am not sure what is the name - the one where is says it gives 30% bonus to avoid attacks for the team). I decided to use Gray as lone wolf (gave him that perk). I took for gray heavy weapons spec and for Ternie Lasers spec.

At the moment I got them set up like this. Hero and Ternie are flying the Templar class 3 ships (that have 4 light+1 heavy slots), and Gray in Tiger (lvl 3 2 heavy +3 system) and trying to get enough xp to put him an a class 4 one I got (3 heavy +2 system).

My hero's ship has the extra fire rate system (35%) for guns and bonus shields, while Ternie has repair 10/s HP and 30 active missile defense one.

Now my combat tactics are as follows. I put my Hero as leader of the group and Ternie as Missile defense while Gray goes alone. Once we close to gun range (and enemy has fired all their missiles) I change Ternie to Attack or Defense (and change to repair when needed).

Is this OK? As others I noticed wingmen act strangely and attack less.
So to make my battles as risk free as possible after the first Missiles Ternie stops, should I:
1) Remove her from Group and have 3 pilots all on their own. I can easily group them again if anyone needs missile defense or repair. Or are the Tactician and that defense perk good enough to keep them in the group?
2) Keep her in group as Defense.
3) Keep her in group as Attack.

I mostly kill pirates at the moment and have no problems against smaller groups but once 1-2 Pirate Captains (with their groups or 3-4 ships) show up sometimes one of my pilots tend to lose the ship (which I am trying to avoid) often even with repair on or before they can go back to hangar.

What is this? 30 views and not one reply?

Come on, don't tell everyone is either less experienced or here because of SW1 and SW2?!

There are too many battles so I've never had enough patience to micromanage every little skirmish. Loosing a ship makes me angry and when all enemies are focused on one of your fighters you can't do anything about it.
I'm mostly relying on my mothership. My main tactic is:
1. pack ms with shield and armor reps.
2. keep fighters always inside ms
3. When battle starts, wait until most of enemies are focused on the ms and then launch your fighters and let them do the work safely. Do not make any groups/teams. Team members (except leader) fire less frequently (or don't fire at all) than when they are all alone.

That sounds like a reasonable tactic. Yesterday I managed to pimp up my ships more and can do this. I got the lvl 3 system firmware for MS and the 20hp/s repair item.

Got 2 class 4 ships now for my Hero and Ternie. Gray is still in Tiger (I don't have another heavy weapons class 4 ship yet, only class 5) who manages to survive all as I gave him the +350 shields and +50% maneuverability as well as the 40 passive antimissile defense items.

I spent a lot of time running around and getting secret stashes (feels a bit like cheating but since the game makes you grind like crazy to go forward in the storyline maybe it is OK).

Now I am debating if I should take the Use Beserk weapons perk with Ternie so I can put Beserk lasers I found on my Hero's ship (he uses light weapons/lots of systems ships). For now I am using the class 4 Autocannons with him with 35% faster shoot speed system.

I use laser type weapons 90% of time. Only exception is near the end of the game when you meet a lot of enemies with laser protection shields.
Lasers have highest dps, range and accuracy. Theoretical autocannons dps may be slightly higher but due to poor accuracy and range they do less damage imo. AC starts to shine when the pilot has improved critical hit chance perk cause every single bullet is computed. This perk really favors high ROF guns.

and.. there is one more advantage of lasers. The beam stays for about second and every ship that crosses the beam during this time get immediate hit. It works especially well with mothership main guns which insta kill every fighter that way.

Berserk mk2 lasers are the best light weapons imo (I like high accuracy weapons). IIRC they are the only laser type light weapons. Alien pulse cannons (don't remember name) have much higher dps but they are like autocannos (explained above).

I am not sure if the Beserk lasers I have are MK2. Are there more then one version? When I check out their rate of fire and damage they seem to do less damage then these class 4 autocannons (and they are medium accuracy).

For Gray guy I have two MK-115 Kinetic cannons installed. As I took heavy weapons perk for him I can either use those or Plasma cannons (and those have low accuracy). Does this perk also work with heavy weapons kinetic autocannons?

This game could be so much better if we got detailed stats of our ships weapons with all the bonuses and penalties added.

Ain't this the truth...

Since this forum is kind of dead let me bore you a little more with my progress.

Now I changed things around. I took the advice and do not have teams anymore.

But now I got Ternie in a Gunslinger (class 4), with two Berserk MK2 and one Berserk MK1. Took criticals perk with her. Also on her ship I put +60% fire rate, +50% turn rate, 40 antimissile and 10hp/s repair systems.

I now got Hero and Greyhair in Puma (I think that is the name of the ship, the one with 3 heavy and 2 systems). Both are Heavy weapon specialists and they got a mix of kinetic cannons and plasma cannons as well as 40 antimissile and +350 shield systems.

My MS is Astarta and I got best Anticapital ship guns (the ones that do 1300 damage), turrets are best laser, best particle and almost best autolaser (also got a best plasma in reserve for when I will meet many antilaser enemies), got +3000 shields (Kali), 400 sensors and 20hp/s repair.

Doing quests for Alex now. Got involved with Triada that got me to almost fight InCo, but managed to survive this by killing a lot of pirates :)

Funny thing when I tried to go back from Inco system by going through the same wormhole on the other side there was like 20 New Empire ships waiting for me and were hostile and I had no chance to survive that. Then I left through another portal that was supposed to send me to another InCo system but instead it took me to Mulcovny :D
Oh yea, the InCo guy told me I can use their shop while I was there but it was completely empty (I could only sell stuff) :D

1 leader with tactic perk - 40% success attack
2 wingman with defend perk - 20% defend bonus
3 antimissile perk - only 1 fighter carry anti missile, other can put something else
4 repairman - same as above
5 anything. missile specialist or attack

simply launch work in normal fight. massive fight need specialize team.

this is number game. increase your odd.

sometimes pilot with fearless go solo. team protect him and he protect defend wingman who always chasing opponent too far from his squad.

in sw3, u get pilot with repairman perk the last one unless you choose tech specialization. which i think the best for sw3 in hard mode.

grey hair tactic perk cheaper than hero. ternie can defend. hero can repair. +antimissile until you get 4th pilot.

if i not mistaken only 1 storyline give you missile perk pilot.

Personally I never put anyone on a team, that way each pilot can target a different enemy.

Also, make sure to get Templar ships over at Charon; a Raptor T is a beast for a 3rd gen. ship (and cheap, less than 70k), and you can easily rake-up experience points (and credits) with it.
My favorite 'raiding' spots are XT-05, XB-15 & XB-19; just go over to the pirate stations and hit the station once to trigger incoming pirate ships.

Also, an easy way to get experience points is to raid those systems I mentioned above after getting your 4th pilot (like Che), but before going to X203 where you're going to meet Phantom or Heretic.
When you have the free time mission and got a mail from either Phantom or Heretic, don't go to X297; you can go as far as Al-Ariash, but that's it.

Why?

Because for some reason the experience gained from every kill is doubled or maybe even tripled during that time, so you can get lots of experience points even from killing novice pirates.
But at this point the Templars are already moving out of Charon and attacked Kronos, so you have to get those Templar ships before you get your 4th pilot.

Get 3 Raptor Ts for raiding in XT-05, XB-15 & XB-19, and after you have enough credits, get some Gunslinger Ts; you can't go wrong with 4 heavy gun slots and 3 system slots, and getting the Ace Pilot rank (those Gunslinger Ts are 5th gen. ships) is easy once you're on the free time mission (though in the mean time you can only drool on its specs without ever being able to use them, heh... =b).

A good 4th gen. attacking ship (if you need something in-between a Raptor T and a Gunslinger T) in my opinion is the Puma.
Not because of it having a missile slot, but because it has better speed and maneuverability than a Panther.