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HULLS

Fighters

Awazem - +10 speed, and -10 cost that is offset by the huge overhead cost of 46. Probably the only usable Nomad fighter hull.

Duwasir - The most self contradicting hull I ever seen. Armor bonus without the slot to use armor, power bonus offset by the 2 starting power. It’s like a ship with no bonus at all.

Majali - -22 speed + 25 HP. The penalty is greater than the bonus, making it fairly useless. But it is the only nomad fighter with 2 hardpoints.

Frigates

Makki - +22 speed, which does not come out to much due to how speed cost grows exponentially. It’s 100 size isn’t helping either.

Mawasi - +10 armor, +10 speed, and 5 hard points. It can be use for anti air frigates, in the rare occasion that anti air frigate actually has use.

Ummur - +11 power and +10 speed. With the power boost it can much better utilize the nomad only engine, giving this ship more speed than Makki at lower cost.

Cruisers

Abbadi - Less bonus than Hajaya and enormous size, it even have less hardpoints. So why use this over Hajaya?

Bagara - Shield bonus but enormous size. Reminds me of why empire sucks.

Hajaya - +11 HP, +10 speed, 175 size, 8 hardpoints, 9 modules. The one good Nomad cruiser hull, and while I wish it is smaller, it is good enough for Nomad to be usable.

Hareed - +11 armor, +8 speed, 256 size, 6 hardpoint, 12 modules. This ship makes good armor wall, which significantly improve Nomad’s long range game.

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MODULES

Dogfight Laser - A significantly weaker laser that cost and weights a lot more? No thanks.

Nomadic Frigate Engine - This is pretty good in providing speed for frigates.

Nomadic Armored Power Plant - 18 more credits for 40 more HP, a decent trade off.

Nomadic Beam Laser - Exactly the same as regular beam laser, except 30 more range but significantly lower DPS. Better off sticking to cruiser beam laser.

Nomadic Missile Launcher - Probably the reason why Nomad is chosen over Order for missile spamming with armor wall. It will outperform MWM between 1150 - 900 range.

Is the Nomadic beam laser pretty much the same thing as the Alliance and Imperial beam lasers?

Nice analysis 1223stw.

If you’re suggesting that tanks and Nomad Missiles are the way to play these guys, I’d say you’re right.

The Mawasi might be my new favourite aa frigate in the game, I love the armoured power plant. I haven’t had much use for the Nomad frigate engine yet though, although that’s probably down to my designs - I’m terrible at designing fast frigates.

For giggles I made a 1.5 speed frigate; they’re fun, but I didn’t get enough weapons on it to make it a threat without either being horribly expensive or slower than I wanted.

Nice overview, it captures the essence of the Nomad in game stats- a few shining points of excellence in amongst mediocrity and the downright pointless.

I like the Nomads and have been enjoying using them over the last few days, and long may Cliffski’s ongoing expansion of the excellent original game continue. That said there are too many hulls which don’t make sense to use in a competitive environment as there is basically one prime choice in each class - all the races* have at least some turkeys in the hull pool, but the Nomads are like the poultry isle at Tesco’s the week before Christmas. It would be good to see a better spread of capability across all the hulls (particularly the fighters and crusiers) to make for more varied fleets and also because, in my opinion, the ships are very fine looking and it seems a shame to waste the artists hard work!

The dogfight laser is not a weapon you would choose to use - firstly compared to the other fighter lasers available and then even more so in the context of the hulls available to the Nomads (the Rebels might almost find the gun worthwhile with their high-stat fighters). Race-specific modules are great additions to the game but the last two race-specific fighter weapons (e.g. this and the Swarm Fusion Gun) don’t serve a functional purpose. Surely these need to be carefully rebalanced to give them an advantage that warrants deploying them?

Well, time to go back to configuring the Hajaya’s and Ummer’s…

*Empire excluded - they are Bernard Matthews 100%

– "Is the Nomadic beam laser pretty much the same thing as the Alliance and Imperial beam lasers?’
– “Nomadic Beam Laser - Exactly the same as regular beam laser, except 30 more range but significantly lower DPS.”

I like that the Nomad’s Volley Laser front loads the pulses to when the target is entering the extended optimal range.
It also gives three times the chance of an armor critical hit and to hit pesky frigates.

Swarm disruptor beam is so underrated. It is one of the most powerful long range weapon in the game after adjusting for hit rate, and outperforms cruiser plasma even against stationary targets.

That doesn’t answer my question. Both the Alliance and Empire have race-specific beam lasers. I was wondering if the Nomadic race-specific beam laser performs the same as the Alliance and Empire ones, not the default beam laser.

Someone will have to update the “gsb_weapons.xls” spreadsheet so we can see the crunched numbers.

On the bright side, the Nomad sales rep said that each burnt out Volley Beam laser core can be returned for a full refund!

How’s that? Can you extrapolate? It seems to me that plasma has better unadjusted DPS (without accounting for speed). Not only that but plasma has much lower power/crew reqs, IIRC.

Just look at the difference between the hit rate against stationary targets at the end of battle. You can isolate each weapon to see how often a gun hits.

That, and disruptor actually hits moving targets.

As far as the Nomads beam laser goes, it shoots in quick volleys of three with a long reload between volleys as opposed to one large beam with medium reload.
I find it very advantageous, considering that even if the first shot misses, the next two bursts can still land, and if all three land then its damage is pretty significant.
Although the recharge between volleys is larger than normal lasers…I’m not sure if it pays off or not numberwise, but I like knowing that I have two extra chances to do damage.

Ah, to clarify I was refering to the Swarm race specific fighter gun as opposed to their crusier laser, as you say that is a good weapon.

Why is there a difference in hit rate against stationary targets? I submit to your superior knowledge of game mechanics, but there doesn’t seem to be any type of “accuracy” stat that could explain the difference.

Expected hitrate vs a 2.65 rebel fighter of 12m length:

Laser: 2.8%
Pulse: 4.5%
Dogfight: 7.6%

vs a budget 2.14 speed 9m tarantula

Laser: 12%
Pulse: 13.5%
Dogfight: 16%

The operational stats are comparable to that of a pulse laser; using it is thankfully less clunky than the 10% swarm fighter target booster, but you’re still going to be a slug.

You of course lose out on the obscene damage of massed pulse lasers, which was most of the appeal.

If only the dogfight laser let us hit rocket fighters, it would be absolutely gamechanging. As of now the weapon is a weak alternate approach to an uncommon problem.

I remember when I first started using fighters. I made an Order fighter that was about 1.65, and I thought that was fast…

Despite its problems, I am finding the dogfight laser extremely effective vs fighters…far more so than the other fighter weapons. If you are going against someone else with lots of fighters, it is more than worth it to use dogfight lasers. If you are going against someone with very few fighters then stick with the normal fighter weapons.

can we get ship pics up for us poor souls who haven’t bought it yet?

viewtopic.php?p=35518#p35518

Clickable pictures in the second link.

I guess I wasn’t clear on why I wanted pictures. I want to be able to associate hull names with what they look like. Those pictures do not tell me which one is the “Bagara” cruiser and which one is the “Hareed”.