Hardly ever use it unless the setting calls for a "Flying Brick with a seat glued on" (Armour plated) heavy type fighter.
Even then, only one or two points to give the fighters a chance of surviving a hit.

I think Interceptors should have had a +1 on the hit die and defence used only against other fighters and AFBs.
After all a fighter-exclusive weapon is still a "ship sized" weapon and could potentially be quite BIG! :evil:

Erik, you could always ban defence or only allow a maximum of 3 under the Three M system?
(My Universe, My Game, My Rules)

Paul

This is exactly what we have done (Max 2 in fact), but like I said above, I'm just trying to expand the fighter v. fighter DEF while down-grading it vs ships.
Cheers,
Erik

It looks like the eternal war between armor and sword.
That's one thing I dislike about letting players creating their own fleet this way. It is prone to some abuse and extreme. That's a very personnal view, of course, I accept that it exists.

Marc

Yeah, it was very much a continuous arms race.  We did have caps on stuff, though; range 15, no P+3, Ignores Shields, or Starship Exclusive, no ammo, and probably a few others that I'm forgetting.  It made the game itself possibly less fun, but the real game became trying to predict what each of the other four players would bring to the table.  This was accomplished by theorycraft discussions with them, or sometimes by dropping hints ("Hey, I hear Tim's bringing X.  You might want to develop a counter...") and hoping that they would act on them, thereby letting you predict what they'll bring.  It became an exercise in simulated military intelligence and social engineering, and was fantastically fun in and of itself. 

It wouldn't've worked with a smaller playerpool, though, or if we didn't play in teams - the fact that we randomized teams for each game meant that I had an incentive to have a counter to each other fleet, but also to make sure that no other fleet was horrifyingly unprepared for the current state of the game, because I just might end up teamed with it.

And as for any kind of 'in-universe' consistency, I justified it to myself that each battle was the singular turning point of a major war, with all the smaller, less-important battles skipped.  Then we had another 20-30 years to modernize our fleets, form new alliances, and get ready to do it again.

I can understand about the repeating trait, and also about continuing damage, which can be truly horrifying, the former with a very good ACC, the latter... anytime.
Repeating is almost innoffensive with ACC 5 or more, whilst it can be devastating (and terribly annoying for the target player) with ACC 3 or less. Continuing damage, aside being very chaotic, ensures you to deal 1 hull damage per DMG.
Both these traits shouldn't be removed, just toned dow. It can be done, for example, by limiting the number of reroll (1 for example), or, for the repeating trait, by adding a -1 DRM for each reroll (for example, the initial fire is made on ACC 3, the first reroll on ACC 4, etc.)
Ignore Shields and Piercing +3 seems OK to me, as they are not that cheap. But Piercing +1 (and non-piercing -1) is enough for me.
I'm still trying to understand why a higher tech is better than a lower tech. Giving them the same weapons and other traits, the lower trait will have a bigger ship, thus making it more resilient (and more expensive). Of course, it becomes interesting if you limit the hull size, but otherwise...?
Seekers are not terribly powerful, as per my poor experience. They can be easily dealt with (send cheap fighters, point defense, use terrain...), are expensive, and can be shot down. I fail to see their uber-power, although I don't play Starmada by designing my own fleet.

Marc

To be fair, Repeating actually breaks exactly even at 3+ with its x3 cost.  You get x6 expected hits at 2+, x3 at 3+, x2 at 4+, x1.5 at 5+, and x1.167 at 6+.  Thus, it is only 'super-efficient' when firing at 2+; if you can get 3+, then it's just a swingier way to get the same number of expected hits as three weapons of the same stats without repeating, and at 4+ or higher, it is expected to be inefficient for its cost.  Adding -1 mod for each reroll would complicate the analysis somewhat...  For instance, a 4+ degenerating repeating weapon would have an expected number of hits per shot equal to 1/2(1+1/3(1+1/6(1+1/9(1+1/18(1+1/36))))) = .697ish, meaning an effective multiplier of 1.4 on 4+.  At 3+, it's 1.13 hits for a 2.3 multiplier, and at 2+, it's 1.77 hits for a 3.6 multiplier.

For the following, consider the term 'hyperefficient' to mean "(expected hits with trait / (expected hits without trait * trait cost)) > 1".  x(n) hyperefficiency denotes that the expected hits with a trait or set of traits divided by the expected number of hits without those traits times the product of the costs of those traits is n.

Basically, the trouble is that Repeating is a trait that very hyperefficient under certain circumstances (2+ => x2 hyperefficient), and very not-cost-efficient under others.  I do believe 3+ Repeating, Increased Hits, Inverted Range Mods were the scariest weapons I ever did meet after we banned 2+ base accuracy; Repeating is x2 hyperefficient at optimal range, Increased Hits is x1.3 hyperefficient at 2+, and the Inverted Range Mods lets you hit with that 2+ early for x1.4 cost, which just more than cancels the efficiency of the Increased Hits, leaving you with weapons that are x1.85 hyperefficient at long ranges.  Incidentally, this was why the Grumm Eviscerator was scary; because it was hyperefficient at long ranges (though only x1.4 hyperefficient, compared to x1.85 on the design above).  The problem with assigning a weapon CRAT multiplier to Repeating is that if you assign one that reflects its usefulness is most cases, then it means the trait is very hyperefficient on the 2+ edge case, and if you assign one that reflects its effectiveness at 2+, then it's terribly overpriced at any other accuracy.  For instance, this is why that Arcturan heavy cruiser with the 5+ repeating weapons is just godawfully inefficient; the pricing on Repeating is based on 3+, and paying for repeating on 5+ weapons is just a bad idea from a "payoff per CRAT" perspective.  You're paying x3 CRAT for at best an x2 increase in effectiveness, and more likely an x1.5 increase (or worse if you're up against a fleet with CM or Stealth).  Repeating scales in crazy ways; while things like Range-Based RoF are x1.5, x1, and x.5 efficiency in the different bands, Repeating efficiency does not scale in such a linear fashion against different accuracies.

One possible solution, I guess, would be to assign a price to Repeating based on the accuracy of the weapon it's being added to.  This opens up a whole nest of other problems, though, and isn't something that has been done before, I believe...