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Title: What is the point of my small attack ships? Post by: Ariscol on June 21, 2006, 05:35:02 pm Very early in the game your flagship becomes very powerful. Why would you ever want to use your small attack ships in combat? I don't understand their use except that I can store extra crew in them. Help?
Title: Re: What is the point of my small attack ships? Post by: Anthony on June 21, 2006, 05:58:27 pm If you mean just using your precursor ships to fight every time, then the reason is that it's more expensive (ie. A ion cannon is 2000RU) to use your precursor ship, than to have smaller ships. You'd have to balance crew pods, cannons, dynamos, fuel containers, thrusters etc.
Plus, if your crew becomes damaged, you'd have to go back to the starbase, and replenish your crew, but with small fighter ships, you can simply use another one, or use crew from your precursor ship and put in the fighter ships. If you can manage to fight your battles well with the flagship, that's good, but if you die, you have to start all over again. With the fighter ships, you can at least slug it out, and escape in a bad situation after... Title: Re: What is the point of my small attack ships? Post by: Censored on June 21, 2006, 08:24:31 pm I don't know if you were cheating, using walkthroughs or such, but I assure you if you don't do either of those your ship does *not* become powerful enough 'very early in the game'.
or, you might've not met any of the stronger Hierarchy members. Title: Re: What is the point of my small attack ships? Post by: Ariscol on June 21, 2006, 09:08:24 pm Well, I talked to the melnorme guy, he taught me how to make plasma cannons instead of ion bolt guns, i bought 2, and a dynamo...are you telling me I won't have space for that later on? Are there any upgrades for my little earth landers? they seem to just get demolished. Maybe I dont know what I'm talking about because I haven't fought anything real yet.
But is the bottom line that you don't have SPACE in your flagship to make it formiddable? or later on will i get better fighters that will fight better than my flagship? Title: Re: What is the point of my small attack ships? Post by: Anthony on June 21, 2006, 09:52:36 pm Are there any upgrades for my little earth landers? they seem to just get demolished. Maybe I dont know what I'm talking about because I haven't fought anything real yet. But is the bottom line that you don't have SPACE in your flagship to make it formiddable? or later on will i get better fighters that will fight better than my flagship? There are upgrades for your earth landers (and they're worth it) that you can buy from the Melnorme. For me, I spend more on thrusters and turning jets, and crew for my fighters. Perhaps you can take a screenshot of your "outfit starship" screen at the starbase, so that we have a better idea of what kind of configuration your flagship has... Title: Re: What is the point of my small attack ships? Post by: Draxas on June 21, 2006, 11:41:01 pm But is the bottom line that you don't have SPACE in your flagship to make it formiddable? or later on will i get better fighters that will fight better than my flagship? Eventually, you will find some high-quality escorts that can do quite a lot of fighting for you... And despite the fact that they will be expensive to purchase, they will still cost less than a single fusion blaster (which aren't even the best guns for your flagship anyway). Mind you, with some additional purchases from the Melnorme, and quite a bit of time spent mining resources and upgrading your flagship's components, it will easily become the most powerful vessel in known space, able to singlehandedly take on entire fleets of alien ships with minimal risk. However, you're not even close to that point yet, if you've only just acquired fusion blasters. As someone mentioned, you probably haven't met any of the tougher Hierarchy races yet, and when you do, you will probably quickly understand why it is a calculated risk to use your flagship 100% of the time for combat. Title: Re: What is the point of my small attack ships? Post by: Lance_Vader on June 22, 2006, 02:10:45 am The flagship will also often take more crew damage than some attack ships. For example, I can usually destroy a probe (one of the earlygame's most plentiful enemies) with a Spathi eluder and only take a few points of damage, if any. If I use my flagship at the same stage, I will still destroy the probe (after all, it takes a long time to do 50-100 points of damage!), but I will take more severe damage.
Learn to use the smaller ships, and learn when to use which ship. A Spathi ship is 'better' and more expensive than a human cruiser, but against some ships, I'd rather have the cruiser. The Arilou ship is almost expensive as a Spathi ship, but useful in very different circumstances. As for your landers, until you have bought more protections from the Melnorme, seek planets that have tectonic ratings under 4-5 and weather ratings under 3-4. And that aren't too hot, either. This will help your landers to last longer. Title: Re: What is the point of my small attack ships? Post by: Shiver on June 24, 2006, 09:09:41 am The 5-8 Druuge Maulers you fight late in the game can inflict total agony on even a top of the line precursor service vessel, yet many of the escorts (Cruister, Orz Nemesis, Yehat Terminator) can breeze right through them. Umgah Drones will deal like 20-30 damage to the flagship if they catch it in their anti-matter cone which is just down-right expensive. The Yehat loyalists, Ur-Quan and Kohr-Ah are pretty tough too.
Oh yeah, and escorts are a lot more fun to fly than an upgraded mega hellbore deathtrap. |