But those bonuses don’t affect the race as a whole.
Federation: This one DOES, however. It makes ships tougher to kill. Fighters see not much impact from this bonus, though.
Rebel: They have the best Fighters not only because of the bonus but because their fighters generate the most power as well. They can be, however, overwhelmed by Swarm Fighters which get a speed bonus and are cheaper. Frigates and Cruisers see little effect from a speed bonus, however.
Alliance: Obvious one. They get bogged down from that heavy armor. Sure, you can make nice anti-Fighter frigates but they’re sitting ducks for Plasma Launchers.
Empire: Huge shields and the bonus requires a fairly heavy hand in shields to get anything from it which also requires a heavy hand in generators.
The Swarm’s speed bonus with addition to the cost reduction allows them to have extremely powerful Fighters. Not Rebel powerful but they can afford many more fighters than the Rebels can and ultimately, overwhelm them like Fighters do.
Their cost reduction affects the entire fleet as a whole in ways that none of the stock races (except Federation) can. In addition, those Disruptor Lasers are broken as well since they have a large range, high tracking and can pierce shields. Once the shield falls, what’s stopping the Swarm from coming in with 3 or 4 Beam Lasers and cutting through enemy ships? They have the speed that allows them to close the gap quickly, the Smart Bombs to deal with longboats and the cost which allows for easy swarming.
That may be true but the Tribes main weakness from what I’ve played against is…well…swarming. Once those weak shields fall, a large group of beam laser happy frigates can gang up on the larger ships and cut it down in no time.
There are two limiting factors in a GSB challenge - money, and pilots. In virtually every scenario I run out of pilots first, so a cheaper ship does nothing for me.
The speed bonus only matters for fighters and close-range cruisers, and I have not found Swarm fights to be any harder than Rebel fighters to swat away. As the Swarm fighter weapons are the standard types, and extra armour module still keeps them at bay.
Perhaps it is a matter of playing style, but I have not found the Swarm overly easy to play with, or overly hard to defeat.
The balancing tweak I still yearn for is an improvement to point defense - they are so cool, but so useless.
the problem i have with the swarm is that you can pump them out for cheap, they are barely weaker than other ships, and they have speed boosts to rival the Rebals. I have gotten a cruiser to 0.37 speeds before!
For me, unless the pilot limit is ridiculously low (like, don’t even bother with fighters low) and there’s more than 3500 points/pilot, I’ll usually run out of points before pilots (unless I’m spamming fighters, and even then it’s a iffy thing).
Now, my cruisers usually run about 3000 points, or 2000 with the Swarm, so I do benefit from the cheaper ships; which makes it ironic that I can’t make a better than halfway decent Swarm cruiser to save my life, so I usually just spam frigates and fighters with them. FYI, the fighter selection for them sucks.
Swarm gets incredibly cheap and fast fighters. With that speed bonus, fighters can dogfight other fighters without getting killed. They lose out to Rebels for less power but win in cost. A typical Rebel Fighter I have has a speed of 2.65 while a Swarm Fighter of the same design goes for 2.58 and is about 20+ credits cheaper.
I think that the big deal with Disruptor Beams is they have penetration to break both shields and armor, from a very long range. It might not do as much damage, but it doesn’t have plasma’s tracking issues or missiles’ ability to be shot down. It’s not terribly overpowered, though.
which is good, because i have a terrible tendency to fall in love with OP things. seriously, my txt files are f’d up giving my swarm ships like -80% to cost. i have a backup but i am delaying fixing it so i can get that tiniest extra honour. anyway. disruptor beam+ regular beam laser=firey destruction
I agree that the swarm cruisers are good. They don’t lend themselves to missiles, and I’m not a fan of plasma, so I tend to build them fast and full of cruiser lasers - they close rapidly, then win the brawl.