Federation Frigates

Ships
1

How do you play Federation frigates? I played my first week almost exclusively as an Empire Frigate, and last night I decided to give Federation frigates a go.

 

First thing I noticed: I had a hard time deciding how to outfit my ship. My previous ship had something like 24,000 hull, and 9,000 shield. So obviously it had a lot of hull tank. It was slow as molasses, had 6 pulse lasers, a warpgate, shield regen and hull regen. It had capacitor regen, and everything else was geared towards boosting it’s max shield or max hull. Looking back, it would have been better to increase shield regen rate instead of max shield.

 

Anyways, here I am now, looking at my Federation frigate and it’s an almost balanced mix of shield/tank, with a little more shield. The federation contracts are geared towards using missiles and plasma weapons. The Fed frigate is faster and more agile. It also has drones instead of a disintegrator, so it’s more of an “up close and personal” kind of ship - yet it has LESS health… how do I use this ship?

 

I decided to go with assault plasma, with the weapon mod that increases projectile speed. Coming from lasers to plasma is difficult because I’m not used to having to lead my targets. I went with a missile defense system to help protect my drones from being blown up, but it didn’t work too well for me :frowning: I was using one of the “premium” T3 Fed frigates, so the drones are simply “combat drones” no special repairs or abilities on them. Because an increase of 20% in hull or shield doesn’t mean as much when you don’t have very high hull/shield to begin with, I decided to go with increasing the ships RESISTANCES instead.

 

Overall, I found the ship to move a lot faster and do higher damage than my previous ship, but it also died way faster too. It’s a very different playstyle and I think one of my biggest mistakes was jumping straight to T3 with this thing instead of starting off with Tier 1 and slowly progressing forward, learning along the way.

 

It appears to be a very aggressive ship but it’s also very easy to die in this ship.

 

Anyways, how do you play your Federation frigate? What modules do you use?

2

I’m certainly no master strategist but I tend to play Alligator like a shallow field defender,  I just got Rank 5 and started using the support variant so now I think I’ll get a bit braver and wade into the furball while healing shields/armor.

3

Yeah that sounds like a good way to play the ship.

 

I read some more posts here on the forum and have seen one or two people saying that T3 is an unbalanced tier. Maybe that’s another reason why I was dying so fast. Had I been playing from T1 up to T3, I would have seen the differences.

4

you really need t2 to do frig cqc combat and the fed frig is designed for brawler combat, but at t2 especially t3+ it far outshines the other frigs. working on getting my t2 fed frig due to this (simply the other frigs ability gets quite useless at those tiers.)

5

Get the Support Frigate -> stack as much resi mods (shields+hull) as you can -> use shield/armor regen aoe buff mods + engine inhibitor + missile defense mod as actives -> get rapid fire plasma guns with needler and + projectile speed mods -> STICK WITH YOUR TEAM -> Hug the asteroids (snipers are bad) -> don’t care about kills except for the interceptor fools trying to circle strafe you -> be a great support -> win the game.

 

You will need good mods for this. Either blue, premium or drops. It’s a bumpy road but once your really well equipped, this works pretty well (for me at least).

 

 

 

 

There may be other ways though…

6

Get the Support Frigate -> stack as much resi mods (shields+hull) as you can -> use shield/armor regen aoe buff mods + engine inhibitor + missile defense mod as actives -> get rapid fire plasma guns with needler and + projectile speed mods -> STICK WITH YOUR TEAM -> Hug the asteroids (snipers are bad) -> don’t care about kills except for the interceptor fools trying to circle strafe you -> be a great support -> win the game.

 

You will need good mods for this. Either blue, premium or drops. It’s a bumpy road but once your really well equipped, this works pretty well (for me at least).

 

 

 

 

There may be other ways though…

 

BOOM! Exactly how I was envisioning myself equipping this ship. Only reason I was using assault plasma was because I had a rare drop for my ship.

7

I’ve not actually played with the Fed Frigates yet, but may I suggest instead of going all the way down to T1 that you start in T2?  T1 has very little to offer in my experience when it comes to fleshing out the ships.  T2+ seems to do a much better job of giving you enough modules and weapons to make a solid build with.

8

BOOM! Exactly how I was envisioning myself equipping this ship. Only reason I was using assault plasma was because I had a rare drop for my ship.

 Yeah I got a purple assault plasma drop and thought it would be great. It wasn’t because it overheated way to fast and dps in cqc wasn’t better either. Instead it tricked me into killing stuff, which got me killed more in return -> bad.

9

Flying Scorp, I have the same frig the prem T3 and it is tought to figure where to min/max with this thing.  I’ve just switched from laser to plasma, and I"m not sure it was the right call.  I can say the propulsion inhibitor is worth having on this thing though.  As for the rest of the outfitting i’m open to suggestions.

10

I must say that I don my hat to all FedFrigate pilots. Usually i just select a target and mow it away, then select the next. This works quite well in my offense/command fighters.

 

But when i accidentally select a FedFrigate - which are the only frigs who dare to move out of the spawn - I shoot, and shoot, and shoot, and realize I should better be running away. 

BOOM dead.

 

When i catch one offguard I usually can take it out IF a) i still got my big rocket and b) my special ain’t on cooldown.

They are easier to hit, but take sooo much time to take down… :smiley:

 

I also can’t emphasize as fighter how much i love to have shield/hull regeneration around at the front. Its not much but overtime that adds up to a LOT.

 

Cheers to you, who take Frigates to the next level.

11

Flying Scorp, I have the same frig the prem T3 and it is tought to figure where to min/max with this thing.  I’ve just switched from laser to plasma, and I"m not sure it was the right call.  I can say the propulsion inhibitor is worth having on this thing though.  As for the rest of the outfitting i’m open to suggestions.

 

Good call on propulsion inhibs. That would help a lot with tracing targets with plasma weapons.

12

I must say that I don my hat to all FedFrigate pilots. Usually i just select a target and mow it away, then select the next. This works quite well in my offense/command fighters.

 

But when i accidentally select a FedFrigate - which are the only frigs who dare to move out of the spawn - I shoot, and shoot, and shoot, and realize I should better be running away. 

BOOM dead.

 

When i catch one offguard I usually can take it out IF a) i still got my big rocket and b) my special ain’t on cooldown.

They are easier to hit, but take sooo much time to take down… :smiley:

 

I also can’t emphasize as fighter how much i love to have shield/hull regeneration around at the front. Its not much but overtime that adds up to a LOT.

 

Cheers to you, who take Frigates to the next level.

 

That bonus hull and shield regeneration is ridiculously good.  I build my fighter with a huge buffer/resistance hull tank so having that regeneration turns me into god mode, it takes at least 3 or 4 people focus firing me down with those buffs to actually kill me.  I wish I had a priest frigate on my team every game.  That being said… whenever I see one I mow it down mercilessly because I know what a pain it can be to try to kill an interceptor or someone who can dodge a lot of bullets when they are constantly regenerating.  For that I apologize… but you gotta do what it takes to win.

13

Mines and pulse are good times for anti Interceptors control.

 

Last game as captain I had 5 kills, right now I run shield and hull group repair and pulse, with 10k shield and hull.

14

What makes the fed frigates better for support roles than the Jericho ones (they also get one with support bonuses), apart from the “imma shoot mah missile” mentality?

15

I’m certainly no master strategist but I tend to play Alligator like a shallow field defender,  I just got Rank 5 and started using the support variant so now I think I’ll get a bit braver and wade into the furball while healing shields/armor.

 

Basically this. You fit it with the AOE healing modules and it helps your team significantly (unlike the lolsniper frigates).

 

 

What makes the fed frigates better for support roles than the Jericho ones (they also get one with support bonuses), apart from the “imma shoot mah missile” mentality?

 

One of the fed frigate variants can heal itself with it’s drones, I believe.

16

So I’ve been using shield/hull repair mods and anti missile system with the anti missile drones, I pretty remove missiles heading to the captain or node area.

17

my question is, armada or vanguard drones.  Armada seem to be the go to drones atm.

18

Heal drones for pve, anti missile drones for pvp is what I am doing.

19

I’ve been toying with speed mods on my t3 frig, I’m up to about 326m/s it really helps when closing the distance, then I use eng. inhib, and pulsar.  Quite fun.

20

The regen comes from the vanguard drones. Armada’s are suppose to intercept missles but people have said iffy things about their capability.