Help me choose a ship

[ddttor]

So, I'm a good gunship player, wouldn't call myself ace, cause real aces kill me often and horribly, but I frequently score 15+ kills in games.

 

But if you play Mangler too often, you'll start to hate Mangler. And I want to love Mangler, so I need some kind of secondary ship with different playstile, but still damn effective.

 

*I've tried Sting and it just doesn't sit well with me. Perhaps, bad ping and weak PC are partially to blame.

*Razorwire and Legion are too boring.

*Blackbolt, Rycer and Quell are just useless and don't stand a chance against Sting/Mangler

*Bloodmark is a ship I simply don't understand. And even if I've wanted to play support, I would choose Legion.

 

Which leaves me with only 2 choices: Decimus and Imperium. I've already tried them in few games, but they're far from mastered and I'm not yet good with minelaying/combat slicing to decide. I want to hear opinions on those two ships, preferably from long-time users.

[Verain]

You should really learn the scout, but whatever. If bombers are boring, you probably need to be more pushy with them. Do consider the type 3 gunship, the Jurmorgenwhatever, which is a different playstyle than the mangler, and still quite good. Asking "which of these two mediocre ships should I play" is not even what your title says, btw.

[Ramalina]

So, I'm a good gunship player, wouldn't call myself ace, cause real aces kill me often and horribly, but I frequently score 15+ kills in games.

 

But if you play Mangler too often, you'll start to hate Mangler. And I want to love Mangler, so I need some kind of secondary ship with different playstile, but still damn effective.

 

*I've tried Sting and it just doesn't sit well with me. Perhaps, bad ping and weak PC are partially to blame.

*Razorwire and Legion are too boring.

*Blackbolt, Rycer and Quell are just useless and don't stand a chance against Sting/Mangler

*Bloodmark is a ship I simply don't understand. And even if I've wanted to play support, I would choose Legion.

 

Which leaves me with only 2 choices: Decimus and Imperium. I've already tried them in few games, but they're far from mastered and I'm not yet good with minelaying/combat slicing to decide. I want to hear opinions on those two ships, preferably from long-time users.

 

A Blackbolt is fully capable of systematically and repeatedly destroying gunships. Indeed, that's the primary role of its strongest build. Not quite as strong as a quads and pods Sting, but very close.

 

Bloodmark is all about having Tensor Field to get your team to sats before the other team (or at least no later than the other team if they have a tensor scout) in Domination matches. After the first 2 seconds of the match what you do with it is up to you. Goof off, or crash into the spawn ship to respawn into a stronger ship.

 

The Decimus, well, it pretty much sucks. I call it, "very much like a strike fighter but without any of their good points." On the other hand, strikes are so short on good points that that doesn't make much of a difference. Think of it as a Rycer, but slower and with less damage output.

 

The Imperium is the strongest strike, mostly on the strength of it's defenses and self healing. It's very hard to kill, and pretty useful if you want to get the Grease Monkey Lizard achievement. Not much good at killing anything other than noobs though. It can defend sats fairly well through sheer damage soaking.

 

 

If you want to be competitive with a Mangler in performance, then really your options are either a Sting for offense, or a Minelayer in domination or a Dronecarrier in TDM for defensive roles. Or you could try the Jurgoran as a more mobile gunship.

 

If the choice is Decimus or Imperium, I'd definitely go with the Imperium. It's not competitive, but it's also not that far from competitive. To be clear, both of these ships fail the, "dam.n effective" test.

 

Offensive scout builds, and high level bomber piloting can be quite interesting, but it involves a fair amount of skill.

 

"Fly around the sat and poop out mines," is boring, but it is not high level bomber play.

 

In the same vein if you can't make life miserable for a gunship using a Blackbolt, the issue is some combination of skill and latency(if latency is over 300 ms), not the ship.

Edited February 13, 2017 by Ramalina

[Verain]

Decimus: Better than the strikes at being a strike fighter, the Decimus has good components that don't come together that well. You need a nest, but can't make one (but can capitalize off of an existing one), you can't easily get around (but better than a normal bomber), and you are perfectly good at intercepting other bombers in open space. Power dive is a pretty big deal for you, but you need to be good at it for it to help a lot, and you need to be near objects such that your power dive can let you act like a bomber for a bit when a scout swaps to you. Strike fighters will actually be good against you in this ship, which is interesting, but unless they swap to you heavily and are controlled by good pilots, you should have an ok time with them. Scouts are worse at dogfighting you than they are other bombers, but you will still get erased by a good scout. Gunships you need to line of sight if they are at range- you totally lack the ability to close that gap effectively and repeatedly, and your lack of defenses makes you get hurt real bad by them. A fun brawler with good stuff that doesn't end up having a real role.

 

Imperium: The best of the strikes, the Imperium can effectively bring heals and ammo to players at most parts of the maps. Make sure to fill up the rocket pods of your allied scouts. You are very poor at dealing with players with armor. You are better than other strikes at diving gunships, but not very good at closing the deal, or dogfighting with them. If you go charged plating, you can help a type 1 bomber hold a node pretty well, and also be mobile enough to charge incoming threats. Your armament is mostly good for intercepting bombers in open space, and like all strikes, you are pretty devastating in those cases. These are rare cases though- bombers will normally approach in an unlemminglike manner, and a bomber on the node is totally invincible against you. You can survive against a scout for awhile, but you will need to dance him in front of a gunship, boost to a nest, or, most likely, get a peel from a scout. The Imperium plays slowly and dies seldom. It has several systems to choose from, of which you want repair probes. Combat command requires a giant ball of fighters to really be worth using, and giant balls of fighters are better handled by many other things in the game, such as a seismic mine, or an ion railgun. Remote Slicing can lock out aspects of enemy play and force the landing of a thermite, but this still requires both a lock, excessive expenditure of boost, and the long cooldown to make work- after which, you will be out in the open, and hopefully have scored a kill- but that is far from a guarantee. It won't work against players past a certain skill level, so like most strikes it is relegating to farming foodships in this mode.

[Ramalina]

Should we mention Inderdiction missile - Cluster missile Jurgoran builds? It's pretty much what you'd get if you took a BLC-Cluster Sting, cross bred it with a Quell and flew it through molasses. Needs to stick fairly close to cover, but not a bad choice if, "just for fun," is what you're after. Again, not really super effective, but around a sat with close cover like Kuat B or Lost Shipyards C it can hold its own against anything but a battlescout or minelayer.

[Verain]

I mean, maybe. It's a good point that that particular build gives a playstyle that no one else has, and isn't bad. But I'm not willing to assume he's playing it just for fun.

[OscarDivine]

I would urge you to try the other ships periodically. I actually just looked at some 3 year old screenies and literally found my first flash fire match 100% Stock and in the chat box I wrote "I can't stand flying this thing." Now it's my primary ship and I do love it.

 

There are lots of options available to you, but don't discount the Blackbolt. It's actually extraordinarily effective as LC Pod, and only really differs from Quad Pod on a flash fire defensively, as FF gets a secondary shield component. And some minutiae of differences between LC and Quad. (I actually prefer LC, don't ask me why bc I really don't know why)

 

Regarding Decimus and Imperium, they are both sluggish difficult to kill territory guards, but can make effective satellite assault vehicles as well. Check out the guide for builds, but overall, I would say that they are considerably less effective than other options you have available to you. I personally like the Quell over the Imperium because it gets an engine component and the non-stop missile harass of Concussion Cluster is endlessly entertaining for me. HLC is also available to you on Quell, which is easily second best Canon in the game behind BLC.

 

Edit: HLC Shield piercing makes it extremely effective against gunships at low HP for quick killing and the longer range allows you to surprise attack them more easily. They're highly accurate at max range too, but don't try to dog fight with them. Jousting isn't bad though

 

Just my 2c

I hope you find what you're looking for.

Edited February 13, 2017 by OscarDivine