Hey everyone. Just got into GSB about a week ago and have been having a blast. I ended up nabbing the Tribe right off the bat as I had heard they had autocannons and yeah, that was a selling point for me. I’m lame like that, lol. Anyways… I’ve actually taken quite the liking to them in general as their additional hull strength, racial repair mechanism and rapid fire kinetic weaponry plays quite to my personal preference for combat… however I’m starting to get to the point where I am taking a serious look at how to construct my vessels for a long term engagement so I was hoping to get some advice from everyone on a few matters.
First and foremost: Defensive modules. With shields and armor at half strength on all my mods it’s a bit difficult to find a decent way to protect my vessels. Armor feels like an absolute waste of space and I’m not sure how to mix and match shield modules or how many to use on average.
Second: Fighter craft. I’m a big fan of fighters so far due to their ability to engage vessels much larger than themselves. I have a particular setup I use which combines a cruiser which fights at short range with a flight of rocket equipped fighters using the 5/1 hull. I’ve heard that the Serenity hull used as a mixed weapon fighter (Pulse Laser + Rocket for example) is popular… but it seems a bit slow for my liking. Any advice on Tribe fighters?
Third: I have a vessel design that I’ve been using as of late that I’ve become quite fond of. Like most of my ships it’s still very much in the works and is constantly being retooled and updated, so I figure I’ll throw it out there and see what folks think of it and what changes they’d make to improve it’s performance.
Tribe Freedom Cruiser Hull
3x Cruiser Lasers
4x Cruiser Howitzers
1x Reflector Shield
3x Multiphasic Shields
1x Powered Armor (placeholder for the slot, nothing more)
2x Level 3 engines
1x Level 3 power core
1x Level 2 reinforced power core
1x Reinforced Crew Bay
1x Tribe Auto-repair
The cruiser is designed for the express purpose of engaging enemy frigates and cruisers up close with multiple rapid fire weapons. It always operates with a full escort of rocket equipped fighters and often forms the driving wedge of any of my formations. It’s also usually the first thing enemy cruisers target and tends to be an expected loss.
Anyways. Thank you all in advance for your advice and critiques, and it’s good to join the community.
If you want to use shields, then you should use a single reflective shield and as many multiphasics as you can. The trick is to get so many that when the damage is split between them they can recharge quickly and make it so it takes a ridiculous amount of firepower to damage them. The reflective blocks most beam weapons. I have used this with my rebels and parasites very effectively. 4-5 modules is what I use on my cruisers.
When playing Tribe, I suggest you forget about shields and armor. Your racial repair modules and double hull integrity IS your defense.
Besides this, EMP weapons will help mitigate damage and scramblers will help when you go up against missiles.
With the Tribe you want to damage them more than they damage you and just overwhelm them with guns and hull points that never seem to go down as long as you have enough repairs.
Instead of wasting points on shields or armor, get more ships and more guns and get MOAR repair modules.
As for fighters, pulse laser = slow. Slow = dead. Tribe fighters have a lot of hull points…think about putting them on cautious orders escorting a ship and have a carrier bay nearby to repair them. I like fast rocket fighters which won’t kill a lot of enemy fighters, but they will keep the enemy fighters tied up so that they leave your cruisers alone. Have your frigates and cruisers kill the enemy fighters as your fighters tie them up.
Why do you have only 1 repair in your cruiser? No no no no no. MOAR repair.
Okay, so I’m trying to take the above advice. But even with six repair modules, I still have cruisers going down on a regular basis! Do cruiser howitzers just stink or something?
Tribe is all about offense. You just have 1 reflective shield on the Utopia hull to block lasers and fighters and let the HP bonus do the rest. That means no armor, no repair, and lots and lots of guns and ships.
If your Tribe Cruiser ever cost more than 2500 credit, you are probably doing it wrong.
0.2 speed is use for retreating in campaign. You don’t need that much speed for online challenges.
Keep your ship at 700 range and don’t move in any closer.
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Tribe CL
0.3 Cruiser Laser Rush. Beam ship in the back to break armor tanks. Notice beam ship has 0.31 speed to avoid getting targeted first, allowing it to trim on the shield for more firepower.
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Tribe MWM
The MWM is best for high resource maps. Sprinkle in some cruiser target painters and beam lasers around the fleet for best result.
