Shipwright Archive

Guess who's back and ready to dish out more punishment to unsuspecting professionals? That's right, the nightmare from Beta is back and ready to dump some dish starting with the majority of what I have finished on the Alliance Chassis testing. Now, for those of you who weren't in Beta, my name is Ach'leigh. My rules for the posts are pretty simple. Keep tactical considerations to the Piloting boards. This is for Shipwrights, not pilots. Second, if I mess something up, DO NOT HESITATE TO POST THE CORRECTION! Unlike the boys, the silent majority of we, the better sex, can take a lot more ego thumpin. Anyways, correct away, but make sure your info is correct. We won't be having a test, but we will check your work.

Okay, without further ado, Alliance Chassis:

With all of the flight physic and the big mass change towards the end, it became kinda difficult to do extended testing on the smaller chassis, but lets just put it this way. Until you can get to the X-Wing, the rest is kinda just what you're stuck with. The Z95, Stock and Longprobe Y-Wings are starter ships at best. Anyway you want to look at it they're just fodder when you get to the X-Wing. The only things you really need to know is that the Longprobe can take a gunner and unless they corrected it, the Ion Cannon turret on it is bugged. Of course, that could have been fixed, but at that point I was making suicide runs on the Corvette (oh, just wait...=).

X-Wing : Incom's only worth while production model, and yes, we have the Imperial Navy to thank for it. It can mount all the normal bells and whistles along with 3 weapons. While this sounds just super coolie, it does have it's drawbacks.

Pros: More firepower, harder chassis, higher mass than the A-Wing.

Cons: Effects the speed of your engine (at least it did, might not anymore), no weapon convergence, capacitor drain.

So what's that crap mean you say? Simple. You make things go boom faster, can take a few more shots, but until you get used to it, you're going to find your self watching your capacitor recharge. And as we all know, if you're not shooting, you're being shot at, which isn't good. Even if you're running a high end Capacitor (1100+), three weapons firing almost constantly is going to drain the capacitor in about a minute, and since most of y'all aren't used to the combat yet, it turns into the "most shots wins" attack style. There are some ways to avoid this.

- Don't load 3 weapons until you're comfortable. That's more of a tactical thing, but it might benecessary in this case.

- Experimenting: If you're going to be "happy-go-blasty", you need to find weapons with low energy per shot ratings

andcapacitors with high recharge rates. You're still going to fry your capacitor with the extra payload, but instead of

waiting 10 seconds before you can effectively fire again, you can cut that time in half. Problem? Yeah, you're going to

fire slower and do a little less damage. It's a trade off, sure, but shooting is better than being shot while you wait. Just

ask postal employees.

- Weapon variation: You've got three weapons, sure, but just loading 3 blasters and holding the trigger down isn't going

to do you a bit of good. Try varying the weapons you load (one of each, or a disruptor/Ion combo).

Now, the one thing about the X-Wing that makes it more favorable than the A-Wing is the extra mass. Sure, that might not seem like a big deal, but think of it this way. You can spend the extra experimentation points that you would be dropping into dropping the mass of the components into more important things, like your recharge rate, eps, refire and armor ratings. Keep track of your mass though. You might find out about half way through your experimenting that you're going to come up a bit high. Just fair warning...

A-Wing - Ah, yes, my baby. Sure, it's got armor a little thicker thanvynock skinand only one weapon port, but when you get good, the extra maneuverability is going to make you all gigglie.

Pros: Extra speed, extra maneuverability.

Cons: Lack of firepower, low mass, weak chassis hps.

Okay, this is a style ship, not a brute force ship. You have to know how to fight, be fairly sound in your tactics, and it never hurts to have some friends with you. The A-Wing gives you that little extra slip and slide, and the extra speed is outstanding for strafing runs. The problem? Oh yeah, just wait til you slow down too much and the gunboat decides you'd look cute as a chunk of armored swiss cheese. All the button slamming in the world won't move you quick enough to avoid the impending death. In the Shipwright sense, this ship poses a bit of a problem though...

It's only offense is missiles and one lonely weapon. However, if you can't hit anything, you shouldn't be flying it anyways. The other consideration is the low mass (65k at last I checked), which really puts a strain on your experimentation points when it comes to components. You need to be able to balance experimenting the stuff that matters with experimenting the mass down a bit. There are ways around this, of course, but when it comes right down to it, there's really no good answer that will work with every case.

The best advice I can give y'all is use Reverse Engineering. It's only one weapon, so the recharge and energy per shot rates on the capacitor and weapon aren't going to be a huge concern. The main advantage to RE weapons is that they have higher vs Shields/Armor rates than your run of the mill crafted stuff, and RE will lower the mass automatically. Get a good taste for it, cause it's going to help you out in the long run. Anyway... I skewed... If you can force yourself to whittle your mass down on the components that can handle it (reactor, droid garbage, missiles, your armor... carefully), you can still push your experimentation points to the max effectiveness. It's a feel thing. If it feels good to you, go with it. If it needs tweaking... tweak it.

Okie... B-Wing is next, but I'm going to let you soak this stuff in and get some comments going first.

xoxo,

Ach'

Princess of the Derik'hur Highlands

/bumpatooey

Ach'

Princess of the Derik'hur Highlands