The 'Deadly Dozen' DLC introduced the familiar bounty hunting system from the earlier installments in the series, as well as three familiar ships. While two of these can be found at Concordia HQ ready for purchase the third one requires you to hunt down all 12 bounty targets.


Bounty Hunting Basics,

While this guide is primarily focused on the actual fighting of the targets, here is a refresher course of how to track them down in the first place. If you open up the menu you should find a new section listing the twelve. While the majority can be hunted down in any order, the last few requires all the previous ones to be hunted down before their location is revealed. Speaking of which...

When looking at each individual target you should note their listed location. This corresponds to a region of Gemini space. It is important to note that region is not the same as a zone: each region can be made up of one or more individual zones. To find out which region you're looking at, you can select a structure or fleet in a zone and it lists which region the are in. Alternatively you can zoom out a fair bit on the map screen and the region names become visible.

Once you've identified the region, the erhm... boring... bit of the DLC starts. You simply cannot go there and hunt down the target directly, you have to find and fight their henchmen first. The henchmen are a random spawn (like "Pirate"-type fleets that randomly spawn inside of a zone to clash with the "Security"-fleets of whoever owns said zone) inside of the zones in the region. So what you simply have to do is fly around until you encounter them. I suggest mapping a route using the waypoint system on the map screen. Then... just fly and pray. Thankfully the Bridge Officer will inform you when you encounter them, so you can watch a movie or something on the side.

Once the henchmen fleet is encountered and blown to bits, a skull marker appears on the map with the actual location of the bounty target and the actual fight can begin.

The Deadly Dozen pilot ships ranging in size from Gunship to Carrier. They also possess a set of attributes making them very, very powerful. Don't go into these encounters and expect anything like the enemies you meet during Job Board missions - they put even the Warmasters to shame in terms of power.


Damage
Kind of a given, but these ships can put out DPS like no other. Don't be surprised if that Frigate takes out half your fleet before it goes down in a blaze of glory.

Tank
Also a given, but of course they're tankier than a regular ship of their size. In addition to higher shield - and especially - hull numbers, they also possess a passive hull regeneration which in the later targets puts Wolverine to shame.

Abilities
Like enemy Warmasters, the Deadly Dozen are assinged either Marauder, Vanguard or Sharpshooter class with matching abiliites they will use against you and your fleet.

So let's get down to it - the actual fight. Make no mistake, these are without a doubt the hardest encounters in the game. Depending on your progress in the game, such as character level, build and ship-size/equipment they might even be impossible until you progress. Here are a few helpful tips I've learned from my escapades with the Deadly Dozen:


Hull Percentage Weakness
Each 25% hull points (i.e 75%, 50% and 25%) lost weakens the ship causing their hull regeneration and damage output to go down. This means that your top priority in each fight should be to get them down to 75%, and then to 50% - if you're bringing enough dakka to get them to this point, the fight is basically won at 50%. Sounds easy right? Well, trust me it is a lot harder than it sounds!

If you cannot reduce them down to 75%-50% quickly enough, they will probably have blown up most of your fleet and with it your chance of winning the fight as you're not going to have enough damage on your own to beat their hull regeneration and you cannot do anything but watch their hull slowly but surely go back up to 100%.


Keep Your Fleet Safe
So, since we've established that bringing their hull down to 75% is your main objective here, how do we do it? Well, keep as many guns alive and pointing at them as possible of course! This means bringing the biggest fleet you can muster, but also keeping them alive as long as possible. Each of your ships the Deadly Dozen pilot blows up means less DPS, which means less chance of you beating their hull regeneration and winning the fight.

So you need to keep your guys alive as long as possible. Well, your important guys at any rate. Usually this means the bigger the ship, the better. Remember all those crappy, but free, Gunships, Frigates and Corvettes that you keep getting from alliances? Using them as cannon fodder for your bigger ships is a viable option.

You can also try drawing aggro yourself (AI aggro seems to favour targets that are closer to them, which is why the short-range Gunships are usually the first to bite the dust) so with some careful back-and-forth of your ship, you should be able to attract and drop aggro. Just be beware of the damage output of these ships as mentioned.


Character Build & Arsenal
While the game overall is very flexible and allows for you to win it with pretty much any skill build, as mentioned these are some of the hardest fights in the game and certain skills are kinda required to tackle the final Deadly Dozen on higher difficulties (and as such helps greatly on lower difficulties):


Class: While any class does well here, I would advise against Marauder in favour of Vanguard or Sharpshooter. The latter two seem to have more potent class passives,but which one you use is entirely up to your own preference.

Skills: The first two skills are the 'Disable'-skill from Marauder and the 'Ram'-skill from Vanguard. Unfortunately neither will disable the passive hull regeneration, but they will shut down their weapons. Considering the importance of keeping your Fleet - your DPS - intact, the usefulness of these skills cannot be matched.

The third skill I'd suggest you pick is the 'Expose'-skill from Marauder. When your goal is to basically win the "DPS-race", a skill that enhances the damage inflicted on your target is an obvious choice, eh.

Lastly, once again from the Marauder class, I'd recommend the 'Execute'-skill. Not really for the purpose of finishing the Deadly Dozen off (although it can certainly do that too, to spare you the grind of finishing them off manually!) but to try and hit the hull milestones. Are they at 85% and refusing to budge, or going down too slowly? Hit them with the skill and it might just bring them down to the desired hull level.

Honourable mention goes to the 'Decoy' skill from the Sharpshooter class. Sharpshooter is my least played class, so I am not familiar with it enough to recommend it over the Marauder/Vanguard skills I mentioned but in theory anything that can be spammed to attract aggro should be a useful tool in these fights. Should.

Perks: Familiarity with the biggest ship you can fly as well as the weapon-specific perks for whatever tool of destruction that catches you fancy are given. The ships of the Deadly Dozen cannot be boarded, so if you're respeccing solely for the purpose of fighting them you can give up your boarding perks should you want them elsewhere.

I would also recommend the 'Minelayer' line of perks. If you can get yourself a few SETH-turrets and activate them during the fight, boosted by these perks they will provide some extra dakka. These can be found for purchase in Military-type stations as well as any with the word "HQ" in them.

Weaponry: The best you can afford, naturally. Due to the hull-centric nature of these fights Beams are unfortunately out of the question. Railguns and Plasma Cannons are more tailored towards hull damage so they're your best options. The best researchable variant of each will do in a pinch, but if you want - and can afford - the best of each, I have written a previous guide detailing where to find these:

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=951858608
Enchantments: The best 'Artemis' tier you can fit on your Light Weapons. Research and buy the best enchantments possible for your Shields -and if applicable for your ship size - your hangar. Bombers may not break any DPS records, but any extra DPS is still extra DPS. These are the 'Halo' and 'HAAN' enchantments respectively. Same thing with Heavy Weapons and their 'Artemis' enchantment - not a top priority, but get them if can afford it.

Here's a video of me fighting the last of the Deadly Dozen, 'Diana Daze'.


Unfortunately I hadn't switched out 'Cloak' for 'Ram' in order to shut her down more. Thngs would've probably gone way smoother if I had as the damage to my Fleet would've been lessened. Live and learn, eh?

Also, notice that at around 3:50 I use 'Execute' in order to bring her down from 60% hull to around 40%, which allows me to reach the >50% hull weakness stage in an instant rather than painfully wittle her hull down from 60% to 50%.

As you can see, the final 50% of her hull goes down way, waaaay faster than it took me to get her there - despite the fact that at this point she had blown up a good chunk of my fleet. Taking her down from 99% to 90% is a slow painful crawl in comparison - and at that point my fleet hadn't suffered any losses and were laying into her with all their might.

Shows you just how the hull regeneration drops off as you hit these very vital 25% hull stages!

And that's it. I think. If I can think of anymore more, I will update the guide accordingly. I hope this has been to some help to you.

Thank you for reading, and happy hunting!