A lot has changed. Nearly a year has passed since my last posts, and Kixeye has continued to unbalance then rebalance the game in a never ending crusade to get coiners to buy new techs and fleets. Apparently it's working. The sector numbers change, but the players are much the same. I'm a bad guy for hitting in sector, and there's usually someone around that can take out my base and fleets.
I stopped writing because I wasn't intending to continue playing. I even quit for a few weeks but picked it back up because... for all its faults, the game is just plain fun. There are a lot of new hulls, and new strategies to FvF and Base hitting. The raids keep changing so the strategies do too. Right now it seems the best fleet for raiding is spectres.
But to catch up, I'll go down the list of ships we have and their strengths/weaknesses.
Corvette, drac hull. Really fast, but cant carry enough weight to be used effectively in combat. It's best used as a submarine flagship, since you can have a submarine for a flagship, or to attack a base to keep the player trapped in baseview while your attacking fleets arrive.
Destroyer, drac hull. Another small, fast ship that is best used in the same way as the corvette. It has 3 armor slots, but those are pretty well pointless since the ship cant carry enough weight to carry big guns. It has high resistance and evade, as well as high speed. It can carry a torpedo and surface weapon.
Light Cruiser, drac hull. These are like drac barges. I built a few with firestorm rockets a while back, to use during the typhoon raids... but they were too slow to be of value. I don't like this hull and don't currently have any built.
Battle Cruiser, drac hull. Badassery on parade. It's as fast as as scorpion, but has 3 armor slots, 3 special slots and 4 weapons. It also has 50 submarine detection range... the same as the Stalker submarine. With sonarpod, this bad boy sees submarines at 75 range (+10 submarine visibility). I use a high evade BC flagship with 4 missile scorpions (laser/sfb3) to hunt submarines.
Battle Ship, drac hull. Battleships are very good hulls, with bonus range to ballistics, 4 armor slots, 6 guns and 3 specials. They are a bit too slow for FvF, but have enough armor and resistance to push a fleet of seawolfs to the edge and sink them. High resistances and zero evade, like the BattleCruiser, make this a champion ship.
Strike Cruiser, drac hull. Kixeye was getting a little ridiculous with this hull. It's a fast moving base hitting fleet, with bonus to spread and splash. Mortar fleets should work well on it, because it is fast moving and can creep forward to escape mortars... but its mostly used for siege cannon blitz fleets, because of the splash bonus and speed. Most bases fall apart when blitzed by Strike Cruisers with a large pinch. I call it pinch blitz.
Interdictor, drac hull. Better than average submarine detection, but still not as much as a BC. it has 3 torpedo bays, as well as 4 surface/submerge weapon slots. 2 armors and 3 specials. As it turns out, this is the most poweful FvF fleet right now. High resistances, including torpedo (concussive), fast hull with high evade.. it's versatile and lethal. D35S, D63V, D4V with Engine3, GuidScram3 and AutoReload3 make this short range ship into a speedy devil.
Goliath, base guard. Too slow on both the map and in combat, to be effective in FvF, it's main use is a base guard. Once they gave us the ability to put ships inside the waters of our base to protect during attacks, they soon gave us a nasty ship to do it with. 7 guns and 7 armors with 2 specials. It has bonus to ballistic range, but very little resistance and terrible evade. It's basically a floating turret platform.
Spectre, submarine. Basically a floating fortress underwater, with 3 armor, 6 weapon and 2 special slots, its a formidable weapon. It's best attribute is the extremely long underwater time, which can be extended with Battery special. Battery3 spectre can stay underwater for almost a minute and a half. Long enough to take out most guardfleets if they arent protected from submarines.
DreadnaughtX, drac hull. Kixeye unbalanced the game considerably when they put this in. Its a beast hull, with bonus to mortar fire rate, splash and spread. Shockwave dreadx with speed and resistance are nearly invincible on base hits and are the most commonly used base fleet now. Ive seen players that dont even have DU4 yet, run thru bases twice their size with dreadx and win. Yawn.
Juggernaught, drac hull. Big ship, with a proper name. It has 8 armor plates, 3 specials and 4 guns. Its relatively slow but with 8 armor slots, its very versatile if you use the drac armor bonuses effectively. With only 4 guns though, it's better suited as a flagship than a base hitter. The best thing I've seen them used for so far is a prep fleet, to take out guardfleets.
Arbitor, tactical ship. This ship can be fitted with a variety of different special modules that you research in the tactical lab. They emit a field that boosts your ships while harming the enemy, if you can get the enemy inside it. There are a few useful ways to use this ship, but it is very limited because of the range of the field. Makes a good base guard, to slow down enemy fleet.. surface enemy submarines and other debuffs that are handy.
Super Fortress, forsaken. Basically a Floating Fortress but with extended cargo capacity and 4 armor slots. Best used as a salvage pickup fleet, or a sniper fleet cargo holder. I use 3 of these with large cargo and hull streamlining in my 2 scorpion fleet. I use the two scorpions to take out warehouses that people leave within range of missiles, and I can carry over 30 million resources home.
Draconian Armor. There are 3 tiers. D2 armor is small plates, D3 armor is medium sized and D4 armor is close to DU4 strength. Ton of ton they are about the same as the forsaken armors, but lighter so theres less plating. V armor increases combat speed, N armor increases map speed, T armor increases turn speed, E armor increases evade %, X adds explosive resistance, C adds ballistic resistance and M adds missile resistance. S armor is supposed to reduce submarine visibility, but I've yet to see it work right. There is a reduced effect to these bonuses when you stack more than one together.
Guard Fleets can now be used inside the base, and they are just like normal fleets, with weight limits and use a fleet spot from the academy. You can position each ship and give that ship a range that it can travel within during base hits. You can control these fleets when you are online. This feature changed the game dramatically.
They finally got rid of the buddy bubble system, so players cant sit there and stay in permanent bubbles without taking actual damage. Good job kixeye, bout time.
Enough shop talk, time to go raise some hell.
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