As I figured, and very helpful to know. Thanks.
So yeah, while with my dedicated armor tank I can have one ship sitting there eating all of the fire the enemies care to give it, my back ranks need guidance scramblers of their own to survive because a lot of missiles are aimed at them and make it past. I’ll keep tweaking my layout on Chaos Nebula on Normal, but right now I have 30,050 honor (out of a 50,000 total cost): how does that stack up?
I’m glad that was helpful. Sorry for the earlier omission.
IIRC, Point Defense systems will try to engage any hostile missile, rocket or torpedo within its range while Guidance Scramblers will only engage enemy ordnance targeted on its own ship carrying that particular scrambler. That’s a subtle difference which can wreck your potential strategy. You should confirm that in someplace easy like the Tutorial mission before going on safari to hunt more dangerous beasts.
Well, it’s been two years since I was in the position you’re in now, so the details are rather blurry to me. [-consults the game-] No, the scenario you’re referring to is “The Chaos Nebula”.
If you’re intending to bring a battleforce worth only ~30k credits into a mission where you’re allowed as much as 50k total, you may be in for a really hot fight. I know that you want (and need) to win more honor in order to access more unlockables, but be careful not to show up with too small of a force.
Not knowing what ship systems you’ve unlocked so far, nor the hulls you’ve also NOT YET unlocked, it’s hard to give specific advice. Be advised that not all modules are created equal! Some are highly useful indeed, others are so-so, and several are pointless rubbish. Accurately discerning which is which can be an expensive lesson.
Are you playing the Federation race? If so, do you have access to the Panther cruiser hull? As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, it’s one of the smallest cruisers in the game (which greatly lessens your odds of being acquired by enemy weapons radar) and it has one of the highest turret-slot counts of any cruiser (only the Alliance Python carries more). Unless you’re attempting sophisticated trickery with armor tanks (see: Fed Tiger hull), it’s hard for a new player to go wrong with an abundance of the Panther hull on his side.
And while many veterans are not fond of frigate hulls, the Feds’ Fox hull carries a surprisingly awesome shield bonus (+17%) which actually offers some concrete benefit. The Puma hull is OK in my book. The Wolf frigate is too big & unwieldy and has too few turret slots to be of much utility. The Gazelle’s +10% armor bonus, IMHO, is much too small of a benefit to offset having only 3 slots for guns.
I’ve gotten enough honor to have unlocked everything and then some (about 50% more than needed to unlock everything, so I guess I get to be new while not being a n00B), but the only way I was able to beat the Chaos Nebula (you must have been writing your reply as I was editing my post, because I had looked it up and it was indeed Chaos Nebula) with a 20k fleet is by tucking in the bottom of the map with a couple tanks up front, a row of multiple-warhead missile platforms with an EMP beam, Shield 2 and a Multispectral, and a row of platforms without the multispectral or EMP. Oh yes, and eighty fighters who gladly suicide themselves against the enemy fighters. No engines for anyone but the fighters, but it feels kind of cheap to do it that way. My tanks on my Empire build had the point defense as well as the guidance scramblers, but I thought I saw them supporting each other with their guidance scramblers—I’ll check later as you suggested.
I’ve always liked the Fox, and if I don’t want my own fighter swarm I’ll take the frigate with the armor bonus to provide fighter cover for my defensive formation. What I’m not so good at is making fast frigates to harass the enemy (though I’ve found that a few 0.60 frigates with torpedoes and a Shield 2 are enough to divert a few cruisers away from my formation for a while, they can’t do serious damage considering their cost). One of the first things I learned when doing the campaign missions was that no frigate hulls were worthwhile as dedicated combat craft.
No recharge rate IS affected.
Thanks, 123stw. Good to have that nailed down.