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[WealthyRadish]

Oh, I always pick 'Did something else' in character creation, which limits it to a Hound and Shuttle. Didn't know the other choices change the starting ship... pretty neat.

[Flying Dice]

Yeah, it sort of bones you if you go with the options that force you into a Hound. 


That aside, I do almost the opposite, Aklyon. I usually only add other ships once I start flying my first cap ship, and then only because I hate getting into dances. The thing which has always been completely reliable for me, though, is to outfit my starting Lasher with good gear, grind straight to a Hammerhead and sell the Lasher, grind to a Medusa and sell the Hammerhead, then grind until I can outfit an Odyssey and use the Medusa for backup.

And by grind I mean have fun dancing around pirates and indies going "Arr, matey, ye skills be lesser than me own!"


Actually, sometimes once I get cruisers and cap ships I continue to use a good destroyer build so that I can go for targets of opportunity and chase down runners while the enemies focus on my big lumps of metal.

Another tip for once you've got your Medusa or equivalent (Oh, who are we kidding. We all know the Medusa is hands-down the best destroyer.  ) is to go for indies whenever possible. They tend to have better ships than pirates (or Hegemony, if you're stupid) so you get better loot, but they also come in relatively small numbers. As a bonus, autofighting them once you've got a cap ship tends to result in a decent chunk of surrenders; I got my current destroyer-sized tanker and four wings of Gladius fighters just from autofighting two small indie trader convoys.

[Aklyon]

Well, AI backup tends to be 'Buy a talon wing and hope it doesn't die immediately', until I've obtained funds. Less covering up my misaim and more just for the sake of pressuring their flux at that point.
Like a second lasher, or something that actually has a flight deck to prolong the talons use.

Or, as I've found out, start with carriers. With enough fleet points, supplies, PD, and a bit of luck, you can kill a lot of things with just a cheap swarm of talons, a carrier, and whatever attack ship of your choice that you can fit in.

[Flying Dice]

Talons are honestly not worth the metal they're made of. I'd rather throw paper wads at enemy ships. :x

Hence the reason I tend to go for maximum sustainable flagship DPS over everything else until I have the spare space and cash for other ships, carriers, and fighters: anything else loses you ships, which loses you money. If you come out of a fight at 20% hull but with a victory, that's all gravy; the captured supplies are pretty much always more than enough to repair you. If you spend cash on fighters and frigates that get killed, you lose profit, which in turn means that it takes longer to get a better flagship.


All IMO, of course.

[Tellemurius]

Lv. 22 in the game, so far i have a laser destroyer, a ballistic destroyer with enough missiles to rain hell on a Onslaught, one carrier crusier with missiles, wasps, broadswords, and gladius frighters. i have enough to buy a capital ship but imma wait till i can get odyssey status, so far no strike force has put a large dent into my ships and im gunning for the armadas soon, soon..........

[Flying Dice]

Just remember the first rule of SPEHSS: lack of preparation will fuck your shit up. You can tackle a max-size pirate fleet with a cruiser and a pair of destroyers and not take any major damage; taking down a full-strength Hegemony fleet can take upwards of 120 fleet points worth of ships. Onslaughts do what they do with sheer mass and weight of fire: it takes a shitload of damage to beat them down, and with Hegemony fleets you'll have three of them (plus a swarm of destroyers, frigates, and cruisers-lesser threats, all) bearing down on you and actively working to surround you.


Or you can play an older version and get them to surrender to you by running circles around them and dinging their armor with a grav beam for a few minutes. 

[Flare]

Snippity

snip snip

What are you guys setting out to do, and could you give me a little more detail on why you keep blowing up?

Talons are honestly not worth the metal they're made of. I'd rather throw paper wads at enemy ships. :x

I share that sentiment. I never buy them for their offensive value at all. All I ever use them for is as sheep herders against pirates. Against hounds in a slow frigate, sometimes I don't feel like feinting a retreat to get them to run full speed at me, and they're also quite useful in shooting up ships trying to get away (not that blown-out engines would slow the ship down). And if that doesn't work out, I could always use them as bait .

[Aklyon]

Or you can play the current version with the fleet control mod with omega's minimash, and have a chance that one of the factions will send a shipment to one of your fleet buildings. I got a (unarmed) free Paragon out of that , and enough money from the other ships left there by said shipment to trash the (rather pointful) idea that a fleet of talons is rubbish when you have the money for otherwise, and instead get a smaller fleet of Wasps and Longswords, the former having a numeric advantage and the latter being a fighter wing with only half as may ships as the wasps, but armed with an ion cannon each. Don't remember which carriers I was using, but it was enough to cause the (very) slow death of a thousand laser cuts of a capital ship due to it not managing to swat all the wasps before they retreat for refit. I had more ships than it had weaponry.

[WealthyRadish]

I just beat a full defense fleet with an Apogee, a couple Ventures, and a few Wasps... just sayin'.
Though one Onslaught did get away, as well as some random fighters... towards the end, two of the Onslaughts deployed at the same time, with one ramming the other from behind, which was pretty hilarious.


I actually find Paragons more annoying than Onslaughts, because of their shield ability. It makes it a lot harder to get them to overload with burst damage, whereas with an Onslaught it's fairly straightforward.

[Tarran]

Talons are honestly not worth the metal they're made of. I'd rather throw paper wads at enemy ships. :x

Yeah, I agree. I never buy them even if I have the free space. Just seeing how fast they get swatted and how little effect they have when fighting them makes me pretty much sure that they're all but worthless. In addition, I think I tried them before and was sorely disappointed. Doesn't help that they cost the same amount of FP as a Hound, which can do far more.

[alexwazer]

What are you guys setting out to do, and could you give me a little more detail on why you keep blowing up?

I fail at maneuvering my ship and I'm awesome at shooting space, but can't hit anything else. So, I blame the guys at the helm and weapon control stations. It's infuriating how something apparently so simple is completely out of my grasp.

Besides, it doesn't really matter what I try to do, it's the same results no matter the situation; even 1 vs 1, any starting ship against any other ship. Only Talons didn't succeed, but they did escape.

[Xotes]

Yeah, I agree. I never buy them even if I have the free space. Just seeing how fast they get swatted and how little effect they have when fighting them makes me pretty much sure that they're all but worthless. In addition, I think I tried them before and was sorely disappointed. Doesn't help that they cost the same amount of FP as a Hound, which can do far more.

Are you kidding me? Talons are freakin' awesome when you've got a couple squadrons of them, man. Five squads at once tear through frigates and carriers like nobody's business, for example. You've nobody to blame but yourself for their destruction if you toss them at cruisers or capital ships, though.

[Tarran]

I don't toss them at capital ships, I just let them do what they want. If that results in their deaths, it's not my fault because I have limited Command Points. I'm pretty sure it wasn't even capital ships that resulted in their deaths either. Probably just better fighters or... well, frigates.

[Xotes]

I don't toss them at capital ships, I just let them do what they want. If that results in their deaths, it's not my fault because I have limited Command Points. I'm pretty sure it wasn't even capital ships that resulted in their deaths either. Probably just better fighters or... well, frigates.

There's your problem. Even with limited command points you can get away with a single Engage order on light destroyers or anything lower-tier than that. It gets them to focus their fire and hit a target all at once instead of trickling in one at a time to get slaughtered, and that upgrades them from paper toy planes to a legit threat on whatever you just sentenced to execution. They're even better when you've got a Condor or similar carrier hovering outside the action to repair them.

[Tarran]

So... you have to babysit them and level up your command points skill in order for them to be useful.

Ehhh, certainly not my cup of tea. But if it works for you, then good on you.



Edit: Also, wow, I just died by being pushed to death by a friendly ship running from missiles...