Exactly what does the stealth ship have to reccomend it?

General discussion about the game.
ShadowDragon8685
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Re: Exactly what does the stealth ship have to reccomend it?

Postby ShadowDragon8685 » Tue Sep 18, 2012 12:06 am

Titanium System Casing does not mitigate 15% of all hull damage. If it did, then it would be an acceptable trade-off.

It only gives you a 15% chance to resist system damage; if you get hit, you are taking hull damage. And frankly, a 15% chance to avoid damage to a system is pathetic; if it were a passive bonus, it might be worth it.

It's not. It eats up an aug slot. I sold mine for an automated reloader aug.



The point is that you can turn a Kestral - or, indeed, literally any ship capable of mounting a cloaking device, which as far as I know means every ship except the Federation cruiser - into everything the Stealth can be. But you cannot, not even cheating your ass and with the RNG smiling on you, turn the Stealth into everything the Kestrel can be.


The Fed Cruiser loses something - it loses the potential to mount a cloaking device. But it gains the artillery beam. That ain't nothing; that's a valid trade.

The Stealth trades Shields for Cloak, and loses out, and it takes it up the aft in that it only has four weapon slots.
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Eyjio
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Re: Exactly what does the stealth ship have to reccomend it?

Postby Eyjio » Tue Sep 18, 2012 12:46 am

Oh, my bad, I thought it did negate hull damage. Even so, the starting guns on the Stealth are amazing. For the first 2/3 sectors, unless you get screwed you aren't going to be taking more than 3 damage. If you target their weapons, then drag the beam over the weapons again, you almost always do 3/4 damage to their hull and shut off their weapons. When I use the Kestral I rarely find myself using all 4 gun slots at once - once you get 2 burst mk II and a reliable way to pierce their systems (or heck, another burst) there's very little point getting another gun unless you're funnelling all power to weapons. You can make the Kestral very defensive or ram in a bunch of weak 1 power guns, sure. However, if you go drone heavy, you're beaten by the Engi ship. If you go boarding heavy, you're beaten by the Mantis ship. If you go gun heavy, you're beaten by the Federation Cruiser. If you go evasion heavy, you're beaten by the Stealth ship. Why do these "beat" the Kestral? They can ALWAYS get to the things they need to function. Heck, anything the Kestral does, it's layout B, the Red-Tail beats in every way.

As for the Federation Cruiser, do you really think that the Artillery Beam, an uncontrollable, slow firing beam, is a fair trade for never getting 100% evade? Heck, the Federation Cruiser basically depends on defence drones to stall for time and even then it struggles against the 2nd bit of the final boss.

I just think you're being overly critical of a ship that's not only functional but fairly easy to play due to its starting arms. I certainly don't struggle to get it to the final boss and I suspect you don't either, so I'm not sure what all this fuss is really about.
TJJ
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Re: Exactly what does the stealth ship have to reccomend it?

Postby TJJ » Tue Sep 18, 2012 1:10 am

Eyjio wrote:As for the Federation Cruiser, do you really think that the Artillery Beam, an uncontrollable, slow firing beam, is a fair trade for never getting 100% evade? Heck, the Federation Cruiser basically depends on defence drones to stall for time and even then it struggles against the 2nd bit of the final boss.


I think the biggest problem with the artillery beam is that it doesn't benefit from crew experience, weapon reloader, or preignitor augs; this leaves it a poor option late-game.
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Zironic
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Re: Exactly what does the stealth ship have to reccomend it?

Postby Zironic » Tue Sep 18, 2012 8:18 am

I'd also like to note that the Stealth Ship appears to get the Stealth Weapon augmentation, the augmentation that lets you shoot your weapon without losing cloak, for free without taking an equipment slot.

However I find that the Stealth Ship performs really poorly in the later sectors when that missing drone/gun slot makes the offensive power suffer and while the weapons it comes with are super efficient, they're a poor use of the very limited weapon slot space when fighting the Flagship.
ShadowDragon8685
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Re: Exactly what does the stealth ship have to reccomend it?

Postby ShadowDragon8685 » Tue Sep 18, 2012 8:32 am

TJJ wrote:
Eyjio wrote:As for the Federation Cruiser, do you really think that the Artillery Beam, an uncontrollable, slow firing beam, is a fair trade for never getting 100% evade? Heck, the Federation Cruiser basically depends on defence drones to stall for time and even then it struggles against the 2nd bit of the final boss.


I think the biggest problem with the artillery beam is that it doesn't benefit from crew experience, weapon reloader, or preignitor augs; this leaves it a poor option late-game.


True, but it does enable the freaking amazing three or four teleport bomb build - with four shields and maxxed-out engine/piloting/engineer evasion, you can tank the boss's superweapons and telefrag his systems, letting the artillery beam slice him apart.

It's a fair trade. The cloaking device is awesome, but getting it from the start makes up for losing a gun slot and starting without shields? No way, no how.
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Zironic
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Re: Exactly what does the stealth ship have to reccomend it?

Postby Zironic » Tue Sep 18, 2012 8:57 am

TJJ wrote:
Eyjio wrote:As for the Federation Cruiser, do you really think that the Artillery Beam, an uncontrollable, slow firing beam, is a fair trade for never getting 100% evade? Heck, the Federation Cruiser basically depends on defence drones to stall for time and even then it struggles against the 2nd bit of the final boss.


I think the biggest problem with the artillery beam is that it doesn't benefit from crew experience, weapon reloader, or preignitor augs; this leaves it a poor option late-game.


The Artillery Beam completely toasts the Rebel Flagship though, with 3 upgrades you're guaranteed a dead Flagship in 60 seconds, so all you gotta do is survive that long.
Eyjio
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Re: Exactly what does the stealth ship have to reccomend it?

Postby Eyjio » Tue Sep 18, 2012 11:03 am

Well, I'll agree that the Stealth ship is probably harder to use/win with than the Kestral but that's okay I feel. I mean, it may be a bit weaker against the final boss but it's loads of fun to play.

As for the 4 bomb build on the Fed Cruiser, I've never tried that, so I'll give it a whirl. I suspect I'll need a drone controller and luck but it sounds like it should work. Mainly because I think fire bombs are cheap as hell but there we go (it kills crew, spreads quickly, you need to put it out before repairing and it can do hull damage). Sounds interesting if nothing else.
SeemannTheAssamite
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Re: Exactly what does the stealth ship have to reccomend it?

Postby SeemannTheAssamite » Tue Sep 18, 2012 11:57 am

In my case the answer to the op's question is - immense fun factor.
I didn't feel it weaker, either, although I must admit I'm probably just a tadbiased because I beat the game on my first try with this baby. :P

Now for some "number crunching":

1) Amagawd less weapons!
The -1 weapon slot is not as much of a gimp as you might imagine. You can't get more than 8 maximum weapon system power whatever you do (bar the artillery for Fed Cruz, but he can't cloak in return as was said a few times already). So, while you can't mount 4 weapons, your firepower remains the same. You just have to use different weapon combos (energy wise) like , just as an example, 4e burst laser mk3, 3e ion gun (4s cooldown) and 1e starter duals. Or some other 3 weapon combo. Hell - if you can get it - you can use two Burst lasers mk3 or one mk3 and the strongest beam (glaive or sth? don't remember). And I know that other ships can use it as well, but my point is: You are not limited in power, only variety of guns you can have at once. And, scary as it sounds, it ain't that bad, really...

2) Zomg no shields! (Disclaimer: Remember, we're talking the beginning of the game)
One thing I learned from my first playtrough with it was that you can and should use cloak reactively. E.g. cloak right after the enemy shoots his first volley, or if he has different timers on weapons, whenever he fires the more damaging one. This allowes you to actually take less damage than in Kestrel. Your shields would be useless against missiles anyway and the cloak allows for a +60% chance of dodging them. And the enemy is usually kind enough to fire all his weapons at the same time, or in short enough succession, that you can dodge them both/all.

Those are the two main points from the top of my head. Might add something later. ^,.,^
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Eyjio
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Re: Exactly what does the stealth ship have to reccomend it?

Postby Eyjio » Tue Sep 18, 2012 3:23 pm

Okay, so it turns out the Artillery beam DOES benefit from automated re-loaders. 17 second recharge artillery beams are fun, especially when you get 2 re-loaders randomly in the first 3 sectors. I actually timed it to see if it worked and it does. Pretty crazy against the last boss, the hardest part was actually the last bit with the millions of projectiles and super shields. First time I've beaten the game without stealth! It's not too bad really, as long as you have top shields, high engines/decent+Mk II drone and a way to get through 4 shields+defence drone. I mean, you'll take hits, but you should survive and kill it.

So yeah, if you're gonna use the artillery beam as your main anti-boss, get bombs, keep 2 lasers to get through super shields and then aim for re-loaders. Then turtle. I did it with the Type B, though I imagine Type A works almost identically.
ShadowDragon8685
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Re: Exactly what does the stealth ship have to reccomend it?

Postby ShadowDragon8685 » Tue Sep 18, 2012 6:14 pm

The bombs will take down the super shields. It's not the fastest way in the world to do it, but they will work.

Having a couple of Anti-Ship Drone 1s in the air helps too.

Myself? I like to bling the Fed Cruiser out with four Small Bombs (only 1 energy each, they do 2 system and crew damage and recharge fastest of the bombs,) and have two anti-ship drone 1s to knock out enemy super-shields, and for general hull fragging. (Or an anti-ship Drone 1 and a hull repair drone, if you can get one.)

Then just use the bombs to frag the enemy's rooms. Start with their damn medbay if they have one, or - for the boss - the weapons.

I seriously fear that Stalin's Organ triple-missile-launcher far, far more than I fear the superweapons. That thing is numero uno on my frag list, every single time.
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