What is your favourite ship - and why?

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Ourosboros
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Joined: Sun Mar 10, 2013 3:18 am

Re: What is your favourite ship - and why?

Postby Ourosboros » Mon Mar 11, 2013 6:20 am

EngiB.

Love 3 x drone to start with. 3xattack drone and 2xion and gg.
kilnborn
Posts: 13
Joined: Sun Feb 17, 2013 7:51 am

Re: What is your favourite ship - and why?

Postby kilnborn » Mon Mar 11, 2013 7:54 am

Welp, let's go ship by ship, shall we:

Starting ships:

Kestrel: Great layout, great starting weapons. Balanced ship. As is, runs into a wall around sector 3. Need to get some offensive firepower upgrades before that.

Red-Tail: Worse layout, better starting weapons. 100% Win rate (2 out of 2) for me. Can branch out into anything. Ideally, you find/buy 4x heavy laser mkIs, and some drones.

Stealth ships:

Both the A and B play about the same. The B version has the advantage of a seriously good weapon.

Mantis Ships:

The A version is the last remaining ship I have to win with. The B version is on my top-5. Effective, but I have the most restarts with it, as well. First jump a zoltan? Second jump an auto-scout? Restart, etc.

Engi Ships:

The A version is an incredibly balanced, well designed ship. The B version is hell. If the Vortex started with sensors, it would still be the worse ship in the game, with a hardcoded wall around late sector 2 where your starting weapons are of absolutely no use.

Fed Ships:

Boring. You can win with no weapons, only shields, engines and a def mkI. The two versions are functional identical.

Slug Ships:

If there was no Engi-B, the Slug-B would be the worst ship. The Slug-A is playable, barely, if you simply never use the anti-bio beam. The Slug-B is based around boarding, without capable boarders.

Rock Ships:

The Rock-A is awesome, until you run out of missiles around your 4th jump in sector 2. Extremely frustrating. Not sure of a method to eliminate the wall of running out of missiles besides pure luck in finding a non-missile based weapon or three before you run out.

The Rock-B is a boarding ship, even though it starts without a transporter. 4 rockmen, and a fire bomb? And most stores sell transporters? Yeah, approach it as a boarder and it's basically an auto-win. Fire bomb their weapons, board it with rockmen, and laugh.

Zoltan Ships:

The A is ho-hum. Good, but not notable.

The Noether, however, is an incredible ship, in that it starts with weapons capable of beating the flagship. You don't actually need weapon upgrades in this ship, although a halberd or hull or a second pike is a great addition. Plus, 3 zoltans gives you another 3 energy.

Crystal Ships:

The Crystal ship A is my least favorite ship, by far. It has a terrible layout, with terrible starting weapons. OH!, you might say, THEY PIERCE SHIELDS, you might say. That's nice, but they fire every third Tuesday.

The Crystal B is good. It has better starting weapons than the A, for one thing, and all the advantages any 4-teleporter ship has, with the advantage of being able to use it from jump one.

So, my list:

1. Noether. Zoltan shields, guaranteed 28 power, starting weapons capable of taking down the flagship.

2. Shivan. Fire bombs + rockmen = giggles

3. Red-tail. Flexible and powerful.
UltraMantis
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Re: What is your favourite ship - and why?

Postby UltraMantis » Mon Mar 11, 2013 9:08 am

Stealths do not play the same at all.

Nesasio has a fast attack and the fastest beam weapon in the game. You have to practise a bit before you can squeeze it into hitting several rooms and some enemy layouts are easier to deal with than others, but you have a good chance of taking out several systems at once on your first attack. Combined with cloaking this allows it a better chance to avoid damage early on. Sectors 1-3 are where this ship is particularly effective, unfortunatly it loses steam quickly after that and you need some luck landing a good weapon mix.

Exactly the opposite is true for the DA-SR12. It's biggest advantage is having a great late game weapon from the very start. Unfortunatly it is a super slow weapon, and for all it's overwhelming power it's very cumbersome to use in the beginning as the long recycle leaves you exposed forever. It also doesnt help that a single hit in the weapons bay can spel game over very quickly. It costs 50 scrap to upgrade the weapons bay to allow for some damage without knocking the power hungry weapon out. That's costly since you desperately need to upgrade the cloak and save some scrap to buy shields.

The B-type is a tough ship to fly out of the early sectors, and one of the most difficult to play imo. The feds are also slightly different, with the Nisos being a crapbox with no good thing about it really.

The Adjudicator i'd say is the strongest starting ship in the game (not counting secret ships). Agree about Noether's weapons, that's a sweet mix, and the lack of shields barely noticeable. It's room layout is a hidden danger though.
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kilnborn
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Re: What is your favourite ship - and why?

Postby kilnborn » Mon Mar 11, 2013 9:23 am

Stealths do not play the same at all.


True, not in details, but overall they play the same, except that the A has replaceable weapons and the B does not. The immediate goals are the same. Get shields up, get some additional firepower.

Both have hard-set limits on how far the starting weaponry can take you. It's essentially the same, for both variants of the stealth ship: 3 dots of shields is you shall not pass.

The Adjudicator i'd say is the strongest starting ship in the game (not counting secret ships). Agree about Noether's weapons, that's a sweet mix, and the lack of shields barely noticeable. It's room layout is a hidden danger though.


The Zoltan-A is a great ship, simply because... hey! zoltans!. I dont find the B layout to be a problem.

The great thing about the game is that we can disagree on how to go about the bidniz of winning, and still both be effective.
UltraMantis
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Re: What is your favourite ship - and why?

Postby UltraMantis » Mon Mar 11, 2013 10:19 am

kilnborn wrote:The great thing about the game is that we can disagree on how to go about the bidniz of winning, and still both be effective.

Absolutely. There's many different ways to play, and many weapons, upgrades or enemy sector preferences. For example, you won't see me replacing the Mini-Beam. :mrgreen:
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kilnborn
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Re: What is your favourite ship - and why?

Postby kilnborn » Mon Mar 11, 2013 10:59 am

UltraMantis wrote:
kilnborn wrote:The great thing about the game is that we can disagree on how to go about the bidniz of winning, and still both be effective.

Absolutely. There's many different ways to play, and many weapons, upgrades or enemy sector preferences. For example, you won't see me replacing the Mini-Beam. :mrgreen:


Good lord, do I love beam weapons.

Image

and

Image

But the mini-beam? I'd replace that with a pike or halberd first chance.

(edit) Both shots are flagship kills, giving my weapon preferences, beam-wise ;) If you right click each image, and copy the image URL, you can see the full loadout.
UltraMantis
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Joined: Thu Sep 20, 2012 3:17 pm

Re: What is your favourite ship - and why?

Postby UltraMantis » Tue Mar 12, 2013 12:46 am

Halberd and Pike are superior. Halberd is one of the perfect weapons trifecta with Burst Laser 2 and Ion Blast 2, with the Ion Bomb and Breach Bomb squabbleing over 4th place.

As for beams however i would rate Mini-Beam 3rd best because of it's low power consumption and speed. It can clobber so many rooms for it's size, and is especially usefull against Rebel Riggers. Pike is better because it can potentially hit numerous rooms and deal great damage, and it's not even that slow or power hungry. It can also reach shields and weapons even when they are further apart. Halberd is slowest of the three but also best. It's power to damage ratio is better than BL2 and it cannot possibly miss, it does however need a buddy weapon to knock down shields.

For all the weapon combinations, i have found the best possible one. Though all are fun to have or try, nothing in this world or the next can beat BL2 + 2 Halberd Beams.
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secret759
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Re: What is your favourite ship - and why?

Postby secret759 » Tue Mar 19, 2013 8:58 pm

Ourosboros wrote:EngiB.

Love 3 x drone to start with. 3xattack drone and 2xion and gg.

HAHAH... That was funny! ...What do you mean you wern't kidding?

Whatever moving on.
My best "win ship" is probably crystal B. The lockdown ability makes it crap easy, and starting with cloak ios basically a instawin.

My favorite regular ship has gotta be Kestrel B. Its weapon system is flexable, it starts with a mantis and a zoltan, and the layout isn't half bad either.

Stealth B wins the award for most satisfiying, if you manage to get shields in time. That chance is what makes it fun.

Most unconventional fav goes to Slug B. I know, most people hate it, but I like the healing bursts. Makes for some fun boarding tactics.
DragudoFire
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Joined: Tue Nov 20, 2012 1:23 pm

Re: What is your favourite ship - and why?

Postby DragudoFire » Wed Mar 27, 2013 5:13 am

The Slug-A is playable, barely, if you simply never use the anti-bio beam.
The whole point of the slug a is to kill crew with it, and can quite easily can help you on the final battle with killing off some of the crew

But id say that crystal b takes the cake, mostly for the fact that you can invade, lock down weapons room and break it quite easily, nets you some more scrap than normal from invading, the crew can easily repair in a no oxygon room, stealth right off the bat making missles miss quite often.
bengoff69
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Re: What is your favourite ship - and why?

Postby bengoff69 » Sun Apr 14, 2013 1:05 pm

Am I the only one who likes the stealth ship???

Here's why it's my favorite:

with the long range sensors, it's easy to find ships to fight to farm HARD in the first two or three zones. Farm at least 150 and buy the shields right away. Don't buy anything else until you get those shields. once you buy the shields, you are almost set. max that out to lvl 4 by the end of the game and you'll be in great condition. missiles are also good but if you can get a breaching mine (II is my favorite) (or any teleporting mine that can destroy systems at the very least) your are almost definitly gonna win (assuming you dont run out of missiles). I'd save your missiles for the end btw. you almost dont need them the whole game.

in fights, its easy to win without taking a scratch in the first couple areas. just wait until they shoot a missile and cloak before it hits you and you'll evade the missiles and if you're lucky, the lasers too. beams are your nightmare until you get the shields. you'll want to buy some sort of missile too. preferably the mines actually. teleporter helps if you run out of missiles at the flag ship, otherwise i never use it unless i have to or im just dicking around. Oh and the drones with 2 defensive drones are also very helpful. they'll defend you against the missiles, especially at the final boss but believe it or not they aren't essential at the end if you can take out the missiles quickly enough. they will also save you from boarding drones at the end. this all seems expensive, but with the long range sensors, you'll be able to farm plenty of scrap for everything that was mentioned and some.

if i can get to the flag ship with:

1)lvl 4 shields, breach mine (or something), defense drones x2(for missiles and boarding drones at the end), and maybe a teleporter I'm almost guaranteed a win (with of course the built in cloak).

2) it's hard but try to replace either your dual laser or your beam. both if you can but if you're lucky enough to decide, replace the dual laser. use the mines, to take out the shield and use the lasers to keep them down. then, even your small beam, will be able to take out things like weapons O2 and engines.

the cloak saves you if you cant destroy the missiles in time AND if your shields are ionized, they'll have time to recharge before you phase back.

:mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: