I’ve been doing a lot of online challenges with the Nomads, and my friend and I love sending each other one-on-one challenges to test out our ship designs, but the more I play them, the more I question how I’m actually suppose to use the Nomads.
Rebels have amazing speed. Swarm have numbers as well as a bit of extra speed, Tribe are all freakin’ meat shields, etc. etc., but I can’t really pinpoint the Nomads biggest strength…
Does anyone have some insight, or some tips to using them?
I managed to make a few good ship layouts, but I’m having trouble finding their “thing.”
I’ve been playing with the Nomads quite a bit since release so here is my take on them.
The Nomads have the potential to make the fastest frigates with fairly high hit point scores through the use of the Nomadic Frigate Engine and Armoured Powerplant. The Ummer is the pick of the bunch as a skirmisher - I like a variant armed with an Ion Cannon and EMP II and a speed of 1.02. The Mawasi can make an impressive heavy frigate in the rare instances when deploying the type is worthwhile and is equally strong in the equally marginal armoured anti-fighter role.
Crusiers are generally decent with the Hajaya being the best choice for most situations- 8 hardpoints is high for a cruiser with 17 modules and 175 metre size means it is not barn door sized like the rest of the hulls (although it’s appearance suggests otherwise!) The beam laser’s offensive advantages are modest (get some damage in early on in an exchange?) but it has high hit points compared to the standard cruiser beam and requires one less crew. The missile system will (according to the number buffs) out perform multi-warhead missiles at extreme range so missile boats are king. In theory Nomads are the race of choice for extreme range missile combat, but they don’t have overall dominace as they lack a bargain basement cruiser hull with lots of hardpoints (e.g. Fenrir or Sekhmet).
Fighers are adequate, again with only one really good option, this being the Awazem. The dogfighting laser is a great concept that should give the race an offensive edge if the stats get re-balanced. Currently the weapon is inferior to the generic fighter lasers in every practical regard.
Overall I like the Nomads as they encourage a balanced force make up - the frigates can hold their own on the front line in a way other races can’t quite match and can be used to play havoc with an opponents battle line while the missile boats lumber up and do the real damage.
Wow…1.02 frigate speed? I have to look into that now and make my “Shredder” frigate faster.
I agree on the ballance issue…when I did the scenarios that came in-game with the Nomads I got a s#itload more points compared to everyone else I used, and I had a lot of fun making my big fleet in an actual formation as opposed to cornering and spamming.
But when I play online I have this huge feeling that the Nomads are very vulnerable to all sorts of different spamming…corner deployment, Cruiser Laser mass, Missile mass, etc., moreso than the other races.
I also find it harder to spam the Nomads because of their cost and size, although I hate spamming, and only resort to it if I can’t find my own way…but there’s a loooot of spamming online…
The 2 advantages they have are the nomad missiles and Hareed armor walls. That’s about it. From there on it’s all disadvantages when compare with the two “balanced” race (Rebel and Fed). The smallest hull being 175 and the lacking a good dual hardpoints fighter hurts this race pretty bad.
Is this sentiment that Fed and Rebel are balanced generally shared?
I guess that Tribe and Swarm are considered overpowered in comparison to Fed and Rebel, but other races are underpowered to various degrees? Is there an informal ranking somewhere?
I am shopping around for a new race to try and am interested in avoiding excessively OP ones. So far Alliance and Imperial have failed to impress, and Order seemed ok but overall a bit worse than Federation, despite rad guns (at least when not facing Tribe.)
I’ve found that Imperial fleets are fairly easy to kill for my Rebel Missile fleets with minimal FT cover, or just a pure big FT spam. Most races except the Tribe tend to be vulnerable to extended-range missile fire, and that is in turn beat by fast short-range lasers.
So yes, i would say the Rebels and the Feds are good, balanced races