Swarm. They fit my spam tactics perfectly.
I’m presently on Vanilla GSB. If I picked up a first expansion, should I grab Swarm, according to the results of this poll? :I
[Vader breathing]
If that is your destiny.
[/Vader breathing]
The Swarm is really fun. Their smartbomb is the ultimate point defense, and their ships a joy to behold.
especially the converging superlasers. drools while watching them
Gah I’m caving in!
Swarm it is!
Edit: 5 hours later. Wow, what does Disruptor/Beam/EMP combo fall to, if anything?
Not a whole lot Pandarsenic. But you might want to consider swapping out the disruptors for something else, as cool as they are they put out pants dps. Plasma breaks through shields better at the same range, then goes on to do nice hull damage too. I do use a similar fleet though. A line of cruisers with a strong shield tank armed with beam lasers, one smartbomb and the odd EMP. Behind them is a line of cruisers with no tank (enough armour to bounce fighters, piecemeal shields) armed with heavy long range firepower.
I think the disruptors really need to hit significantly harder, given their horrific rate of fire. Or perhaps take away all their damage and make them literally disrupt shields instead of damage them. That’d be a mean weapon.
If you have a really strong fleet why don’t you try the SAC challenge http://positech.co.uk/forums/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=4392 and find out. I already know you have some good fighter designs.
Because the third challenger is Order, which I don’t have. :I
And I suppose I should replace the Disrupters with plasmas, like I have on my old Rebel fleet, but… but… SO SHINY. AND THEY LOOK SO COOL. :I
I think the Swarm is overpowered. A speed bonus AND a cost reduction AND Smart Bomb Shield AND Disruptor Lasers?
That -5% to defenses and toughness is supposed to be a disadvantage? I think -10% to each would make it more well rounded.
Bleh…I vote Rebels due to hull names. They also have some of the best fighters I’ve used in the game.
I haven’t voted, but so far my favourite is Federation. I haven’t voted because I haven’t tried all the races yet. I have enjoyed the game well enough so far, though I don’t currently have plans to get any expansions (unless I see them on special on Steam.) If I did get any expansions, the Tribe and the Swarm sound more interesting than the Order, though I understand the Swarm may be somewhat overpowered at the moment, which is a bit of a turn-off. Hopefully that will get rebalanced if needed, they sound like they might suit my cost-conscious playstyle well.
Federation has a very nice Fusion beam, and the Panther cruiser hull makes a great little ship. It’s small so it gets hit less often, it’s got a lot of hardpoints relative to standard slots so you can make a strong midline or backline weapons platform out of it, and with the sacrifice of a couple weapons for extra speed and/or defenses it makes a relatively cost-effective frontline combatant as well. If you need an armour tank, or have lots of money to sink into front-line units that don’t have to sacrifice firepower for strong defenses, that’s where the other cruiser hulls come in. If you’re looking for fighters, the Leopard is a pretty decent and flexible platform, though obviously not quite on the level of the rebel fighters. The Feds in general have average to excellent hulls in terms of balancing firepower with defenses and can do so on-budget.
I skipped the rebels for the moment, because I understand they are pretty decent overall, with excellent fighters, so I’m planning to look at them last of the original 4.
I tried looking at Alliance next. Their fighters were at best average, as were their frigates. I saw only one cruiser which looked at all appealing, which is the one with 9 hardpoints. That makes for a very powerful gunboat, but typically an expensive one relative to how easy it is to defend, though of course you can leave some slots empty if you need to scale back on the cost a bit. The other Alliance cruisers have the opposite problem: not enough firepower relative to the cost. I found it difficult to make satisfactory designs with any of the other cruiser hulls, even using EMP as an extra weapon, and found them to be entirely too inflexible for my taste due to the lack of hardpoints. Either you end up with well-defended but undergunned paperweights or you defend appropriately to the monetary investment in weapons and wind up with eggshells. What’s worse, their faction-specific weapons are all strictly underperformers relative to standard weapons you could get instead. A 9-hardpoint cruiser and a largely irrelevant armour bonus isn’t enough to motivate me to play these guys, I’m afraid.
I’m looking forward to trying the Empire next. They look to have a lot of similar problems to the Alliance, but at least their faction-specific weapon does have a point to it, and the imperial weapons platform might convince me that frigates in general are useful for more than just to be a decoy. Hopefully I can finangle a few decent cruiser designs out of their 7- and 6-hardpoint hulls.
Rebels probably have the best rounded ships. I love the rebel bomber hull. 2 weapon hardpoints, 3 other module slots, and its fast. Extremely flexible and versatile hull.
Rebel frigates come in a large variety, including a 5 weapon hardpoint version if you want to cram a lot of guns onto a frigate.
Rebel cruisers aren’t anything amazing, but are well rounded and suitable for almost anything.
And because of all these things, this bumps the rebels down from being my favorite to my 2nd favorite race. They’re too easy! Empire is fun due to the significant limits in their hull designs. Gigantic shield bubbles mean cruisers are vulnerable to simple laser fighters, and their cruisers don’t carry many guns.
WTF?! What happened to all the scores?! Bah… everyone who voted, please re-vote.
so thats what happened
i have to say, i really like the swarm when i want to win (which was why i chose it), but to be honest, oddly enough, the order is after my heart.
It is only after i started using the swarm that i realized the benifits of speed. However, before that i just loved the order for a: the nukes, and b: they are slow, lumbering behemothes of death. much like the Tau’ri excalibur mod.
anyway, the swarm is cheap, fast, has awesome anti-shield weapons, and none of their drawbacks are large enough to break them
Go SWARM my countleess followers! SWARM!!!
haha, that’s my favorite race too. THEY’RE FRIGGIN’ AWESOME!
Voted for Rebels and they are now in the most popular…
So Why them… First of all fighter i love their fighters, the cruiser and frigates look so fine, their speed boost and camouflage… They have a magic inside something that makes me love watching battles with them or against them ot maybe i have an Rebel soul and heart inside me…
Swarm, purely because I can have more of them. I do not particularly like their looks.
that, and who said you cannot spam cruisers? because with the swarm…
I picked the Federation because the Fusion Beam in combination with Cruiser Defense Lasers just kills! Honestly, mounting 3 fusion beams and 2 cruiser defense lasers on my Buffalo class Cruisers has won me every battle I’ve ever played. At least, in the pre-loaded battles. Fighters and Bombers just can’t do anything to my ships at all, and they eventually get shot down by the defense lasers anyways. In combination with Leopard class fighter/interceptors and Anti-fighter Puma class frigates, they’re amazing! Fighters can’t touch me and other ships get ripped to shreds.In fact, I might get rid of the defense lasers altogether and just have fusion beams. I wonder how that would work out? Nah, my frigates don’t last long enough for that. Oh well. One good thing is my cruisers can actually keep up with my frigates instead of being left in the dust. So, Federation, I choose you, because I hate commies!
that sounds nice… care 2 send me a challenge?
I liek the ships of the federation, BUT I do not know anythang about the other expansions. I do however like the few ships that i seen of the swarm. If its ok with cliffski can we have a thread that posted each ship in the game with its name underneath it in the picture. OR If someone will send the pictures to me and I can edit the ship names into the pictures of the ships.
This ALL depends on word form cliffski if we are allowed to do such a project.
Lonestar
3 . . . 2. . . . 1. . . Have a nice day!
Thanks !
BOOOOOOOOM ! !
ahhhhhhhhhhhhh
(planet fall)
Eh gahs whats that comeing outa her nose.
Spaceballs
oh sh** there goes the planet.