Ship Tier List [SPOILERS]

[Luigi9990]

I personally enjoy the Mantis Cruiser B, I find it very fun, and all you really need is a weapon, and some spare crew. I mean, what better joy do you get than going into a small slug ship, and suffocating all the enemies to death .

But anyways, if you can get a crew member combined with a boarding drone in there, you're pretty set. It's very fun to board, and it gets you a large scrap boost at the start. And the level 2 shields will safely get you to around Sector 4, which is one less thing you have to worry about.

And I will agree, Stealth B is hard. I've played about 4 games with it, and I don't think I've made it past sector 2 in any of them. It is very very very luck based, and the Glaive Beam's long charge time is painful.

[Sacrificial Toast]

I've actually won every game I've played with the Stormwalker. Sure, slugs don't make the best boarders, but other than needing a few crew and 150 extra scrap for a medbay, boarding is so ridiculously powerful that it'll have an easy time from thereon. Luckily, crew are generally easy to get, and being a boarding ship, it'll have some scrap to spare.

Still never gotten very far with the Stealth B or Engi B though.

[super dude]

Ok I do not get why so many people dislike the bulwark. I won my first game with it. I know it has quite a boring start but get pass that you quite often can be rocking mantis crystal boarding crew. It also has great air locks unlike the shivan I hate that ship. Also it starts with a airtimes.

[spacecadet13]

While the Bulwark does have airlocks and the Shivan doesn't, the starting weapon loadout on the Shivan is miles better and more than compensates for the boarder/fire disadvantage, especially once you have a teleporter. Rocks + firebomb is my favorite boarding option; firebomb and port in, and you're dealing fire damage to the system in the room AND something like double damage to enemy crew simultaneously.

With the Bulwark, every missile miss really hurts, and from the start you're looking to swap out the hull missile with a non-ammo-dependant weapon ASAP, meaning you have to save extra scrap for that elusive store (and praying the store actually HAS decent weapons...) instead of upgrading your engines/shields etc. And if you don't get a burst laser/heavy laser weapon, you're burning through scrap buying missles.

In my ship tier list, Shivan would be right in the top four, Bulwark is lower middle-ish, at best. Not the worst/hardest ship to play, but awkward none the less.

[super dude]

With the bulwark ammo based weaponry is not your only choice seeing as you start with a very strong boarding crew

[Twinge]

The main reason the Bulwark isn't completely terrible is that it can be a worse version of other ships (Rock B, Mantis A/B, Crystal A/B, etc.) - but boarding is so strong that that's still pretty good. I also feel people tend to be bad at ammo management and rate the Bulwark even lower than it should be because of this.

For me personally, I hate the Bulwark because I don't like super-slow Rock crew and the ship layout is abysmal. It's actually my single least favorite ship - I'd rather play weaker ships like the Engi B or Stealth B over it. I dislike the Shivan for similar reasons, but it gets an extra crewman and a great laser, which more than offset the lack of doors. (That said, I do feel most people overrate the Shivan.)

[super dude]

There are special things that I do with the bulwark to compensate for its slow moving crew. Like placing one in the shield room so you can cover both sides of the ship. Also it has a quite compact layout which helps counter the slow moving crew. Also ammo management is usually quite easy airtimes to its helm negating evasion then two hull missiles two empty rooms and that kills all ships for the first two sectors.

[spacecadet13]

Yeah, except for when your first Artemis misses the helm and your first Hull Missle then ALSO misses; you then realise its gonna cost you at least 30 scrap worth of slow firing, expensive, missles to destroy this ship, and you're gonna be taking damage while you wait for them to load up, and they better not hit your weapons room neither, 'cause you'll be waiting longer and taking more damage and oh goddamn it there it goes I hate this freaking ship.....

Once you get a teleporter & alternate weapon you're sweet, but gimme the Shivan - in fact most other ships - any day

[super dude]

Hey But in the first two sectors there evasion is quite low so that for me is quit uncommon

[Twinge]

I guess if this is going to be bumped again I might as well post my current tier list:

Tier 0 (God Tier):
Carnelian
The Basilisk

Tier 1:
The Torus
Red-Tail
Noether
Bravais

Tier 2:
The Gila Monster
The Nesasio
Shivan
The Osprey
Man of War
The Kestrel
The Adjudicator

Tier 3:
Nisos
Bulwark
The Stormwalker

Tier 4:
DA-SR 12
The Vortex

As always, this assumes a top-level player on Normal difficulty. The differences within tiers are very minor. I'm also still a bit uncertain on The Basilisk; it might only be Tier 1.