So how good are the Voth Heavy Fighters?

momaw

Eyeballing the Bastion to see if it's worth the grind to get one. A big part of whether it's a good buy is how effective the heavy fighters are since they are unique to this ship. It looks like you sacrifice a lot of firepower compared to fighter spam on other carriers since they don't get any new weapons as they go up in rarity.

questerius

On paper they should be pretty good with EptS and transphasic torpedoes. Survivability with the possibility of hitting hard with the AP weapons.

Cannot say if they're worth the investment until someone parses the damage though.

momaw

Well, I got a fleet mate who owns a Bastion to fly a mission with me and parsed it. They only had the basic pets, but still: Results are... Not impressive.

The rear mounted torpedo launcher is a joke. The voth fighters managed to launch 21 torpedoes over the course of 449 seconds. That's one torpedo per 21 seconds, or, one torpedo per fighter every 80 seconds (since there's four fighters). Pet AI has been improved for front-mounted weapons but a rear-mounted weapon with 90 degree firing arc is apparently still beyond its grasp. The damage per torpedo hit is also feeble at a base of only 1400.

The antiproton arrays are pet-standard laser pointers, with an average damage of 280.

Total damage output for the voth heavy fighters came in at an average of 882 per second over the mission almost entirely due to their beam arrays. Which puts them behind basic To'duj/Peregrine spam and not even playing in the same league my Elite Scorpions who cranked out more than twice as much damage.

The thing is, voth fighters don't get added weapons as they go up in rarity. They get beam overload when maxed out, which, combining their pet-standard feeble base damage with pet-standard rubbish recharge times... Isn't going to do much.

They did stay alive better than the elite scorpions. They took half as many casualties. But being that STO is 90% about overwhelming damage output and killing targets before they become a threat, and your pets being completely disposable, I don't see this as much of a feature. Fighters gaining higher levels of experience while deployed cannot make up THAT much lost ground in the damage department.

From an outside observer, what these guys need is:
* Torpedo launcher moved to front mounting and upgraded to 3500 base damage like other pet torpedoes.
* Give Auxiliary To Structural ability at "Advanced" to improve survivability.
* Give dual beam bank and beam overload at "Elite" to improve firepower.

warmaker001b

Yeah, on paper, they look survivable, one of the few non-fighters that have EPTS as an ability. But their armament sucks at all levels. Yes, it has EPTS, EPTW, and higher tiers have BO. Unless higher tiered versions fire off BO every few seconds, Voth Hvy Fighter firepower is terrible (fighter/frigate "BOFF" abilities don't have short cooldowns like players do). So, it seems the Voth Hvy Fighters have the survivability but no firepower.

Which sucks for a carrier, IMO. Except for the JHDC and to an extent, the Kar'Fi, carriers draw their firepower from their 2 hangar units. The Voth Hvy Fighters suffer even more when you consider that they can only be used on a FDC that has only 1 hangar.

You're better off with green quality Peregrines or To'Duj Fighters.

madmopar

How about the fleet swarmer pets, how do they stack up?

starfallarmada

Swarmers are highly disposable but they do good fast damage, and the BO ability procs about as often as the Voth fighter, but since you are constantly replacing them you end up with a lot of BO. I have a Bastion, and the Voth Fighters are the toughest non frigate hanger pet period. I almost never lose one so they will almost always be top rank for most of whatever match/mission you are in They also seem to keep up with full impulse most of the time). They dont do great DPS compared to other fighters (especialy versus the almighty scorpion) but they are fantastic for Elite STFs and other Elite missions where most fighters dont live long enough to do any damage. They live a long time and allow you to concentrate on busting out abilities. So I still like them and find them usefull for top tier content, but yea in a regular fight like fleet alert ill take a scorp or widdow. Or elite swarmers which are sooo worth the dil and creds

cosmicsunwind

With Beam Overload critting always now, how are http://sto.gamepedia.com/Hangar_-_Voth_Elite_Heavy_Fighters now compared to Scorpions?

I have both, and the Voth ones rarely if ever die, with the Scorpions I'm constantly seeing them popped as soon as something sneezes in their direction, plus if you lose 1 or 2 from a wing and re-deploy, then you lose 3 soon after, you've got 25-30sec cooldown on launching any more and now you are down to one wing or less on the field, surely this constant death and having to deploy more loses way more dps than having 4 voth frigates nearly constantly deployed, reaching 5 stars etc?