Need help dealing with spire railclusters

[Bognor]

Railcruisers are ununusal in that their triangle ship counter, the fighter, is what the railcruiser is strong against.

The previous setting was an experiment to see what happened if a unit was a counter to the triangle ship (fighter, in this case) that counters it.

However, this choice seems odd when you consider ... [t]he Spire Railcluster has a 3x bonus to light hull types, meaning they are good at countering their own counters.

It's funny that so many people have been saying things like this.  MLRS, Raiders, Teleport Battlestations, Munitions Boosters, Vorticular Cutlasses, and Deflector Drones all get bonuses against their triangle ship counters.  Cutlasses in particular have 64% higher cap bonus DPS than Railclusters, and until recently Fighters only got a 2.4x bonus against them.  And Vampire Claws and Eyebots are immune to their would-be triangle ship counters.

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Chris: Your name is in the patch notes :-)

[chemical_art]

It's funny that so many people have been saying things like this.  MLRS, Raiders, Teleport Battlestations, Munitions Boosters, Vorticular Cutlasses, and Deflector Drones all get bonuses against their triangle ship counters.  Cutlasses in particular have 64% higher cap bonus DPS than Railclusters, and until recently Fighters only got a 2.4x bonus against them.  And Vampire Claws and Eyebots are immune to their would-be triangle ship counters.

Most of the unusual ships, spirecruiser down, are beaten pretty badly by defenses except the vampire claw and eyebots (which are countered hard by tachyon abilities or a military station)

None of those units are straight up strong ranged combat ships though. The MLRS, raiders, teleport battlestations, eyebots, and deflector drones stat wise aren't that impressive for one reason or another in straight up fleet fights (power creep, non fleetfight specialization, or teleporting). The munition booster has neither the dps nor cap to make it much a threat.

Both the vorticular cutlass and vampire claw are fearsome, but are horribly, horribly impaired if a player kites them.

In addition, none of these ships until the spirecruiser were ultra-low cap craft. The spirecraft's low cap makes its damage decay much less, meaning it gets a very large edge over fighters in cap fights.

The spirecruiser's combination of being a strong ranged combat ship and an ultra-low cap in a fleetfight is what makes it fearsome.

[TechSY730]

Basically what chemical_art said.
Most of those other examples have decent to pretty large weaknesses in combat effectiveness to offset their "mutual counter" or "immune to the usual counter" dynamic. The Spire Railcluster did not.

[keith.lamothe]

Yea, the railcluster is the first and only of the spire "low-cap bonus fleet ships" to be purely about being awesome in a fight.  All they can do is bust down the front door.  And the only way to kill them is to bust down the front door.

[Bognor]

Mmm, makes sense.  Thanks for the comments.

[Martyn van Buren]

I'm curious to follow up a bit about exit-wormhole defense strategy --- I'm just playing a game where I've wound up wanting to take two 6-wormhole worlds, which makes focussing on entry-wormhole defenses kind of impractical.  I've been trying to focus on defense that can cover a lot of the planet at once --- mines, missile turrets (also helpful against Neinzul ships), spider turrets, and a mil station (presumably a fort as I get farther into the game) --- but I'm having trouble with ships escaping to become threat.  Is it worth spreading my tractor turrets as thin as they'll have to be to cover like twelve wormholes? 

[zoutzakje]

Sure, tractor turrets are always useful. I even unlock higher marks of them because I run out so quickly. Just ask yourself if you have enough tractors left to defen the rest of your empire.

[KDR_11k]

In addition, none of these ships until the spirecruiser were ultra-low cap craft. The spirecraft's low cap makes its damage decay much less, meaning it gets a very large edge over fighters in cap fights.

The spirecruiser's combination of being a strong ranged combat ship and an ultra-low cap in a fleetfight is what makes it fearsome.

So much this, a railcluster has several million HP, at MkIII they hit 10M. Killing even one takes a significant amount of effort. At least now the missile frigates can pound them more effectively from afar, fighters didn't live long enough against that kind of front-loaded damage to do anything with their multiplier. Railclusters have enough offensive power to break forcefields and turrets through sheer base DPS and they have no problem with overkill (amplified by the instant hit nature of the rail weapons). Obviously they also ignore your mil command's knockback shots so even a single RC appearing in a lightly defended system (a few 5er groups of turrets, miniforts, mil command) can destroy everything.