Cruiser? Battleship?

[blackgauntlet]

By the way, I think reading "rumours" in Spice Halls and Palaces help. I remember seeing a rumour that Cadar Prime's Star Dock was having some kind of thingy... (sorry, can't remember the exact rumour and I have not touched it yet as I'm playing CK for couple of months now). When I got there, Holy Moley! 12 freaking vessels to choose from! Every goddamn upgrade in the game (excluding unlockables which you have yet to unlock) are available! It was like X'Mas!

[fallen]

blackgauntlet - rumors are one of the best way to find sudden surges of opportunity in the game (star dock is booming, there are awesome officers over here, you should explore this planet, this planet will pay ridiculous sums for metal for the next year, etc). The day that I really started watching rumors everywhere I went was the day I went from a poor Star Traders player to a mediocre Star Traders player.

[blackgauntlet]

fallen - Well, at the very least, you're a great Star Traders designer. Give yourself a pat on the back. ;D

[bruceasinger]

I have not done a lot of combat, mostly playing merchants. But how can you target the engines. I did not see a targeting option in the combat menus?

Aug 4, 2011 18:03:59 GMT -5 slayernz said:

The easiest way of acquiring new ships is in the Ship Dock.

In the ship dock you should hopefully see "New Ship Plan" lit up from time to time, especially on planets with high "Econ" or "Secure" values.

Don't fall into the trap that I did when I started out ... I didn't realize that you can select "New Ship Plan", exit, then if the "New Ship Plan" is still lit up, you can select it again and get a different ship. After you have exhausted your new ship list, you can see any ships you want to go back to by clicking on "Review Plans".

The ships are quite pricy until you've built up a chunk of cash, but is much much lower risk than trying to do the capture thing early on in your career.

Of course if you have a military rank you get access to the military rank ships. The starting rank ships are pretty bad to be honest. You wouldn't want to give up your starting ship. If you want to get good rank ships, achieve the Syndicate Hero and/or Clan Hero awards. I can guarantee you'll like the Javat Cutter rank ship if you achieve Clan Hero


With capture - unless you are willing to do the boarding action, you'll probably do as most of us do - shoot out the engines. That will net you a nice new ship, but you'll also have a ship with substantial damage meaning flying back to a friendly planet has a high fuel cost, you'll be extremely vulnerable to any further hostile encounter, and not surprisingly, the costs of repairing your new ship is pretty significant.

[bruceasinger]

OK, I think I know the answer. I never got to short range so I never got the option.

Apr 15, 2013 19:05:04 GMT -5 bruceasinger said:

I have not done a lot of combat, mostly playing merchants. But how can you target the engines. I did not see a targeting option in the combat menus?

Aug 4, 2011 18:03:59 GMT -5 slayernz said:

The easiest way of acquiring new ships is in the Ship Dock.

In the ship dock you should hopefully see "New Ship Plan" lit up from time to time, especially on planets with high "Econ" or "Secure" values.

Don't fall into the trap that I did when I started out ... I didn't realize that you can select "New Ship Plan", exit, then if the "New Ship Plan" is still lit up, you can select it again and get a different ship. After you have exhausted your new ship list, you can see any ships you want to go back to by clicking on "Review Plans".

The ships are quite pricy until you've built up a chunk of cash, but is much much lower risk than trying to do the capture thing early on in your career.

Of course if you have a military rank you get access to the military rank ships. The starting rank ships are pretty bad to be honest. You wouldn't want to give up your starting ship. If you want to get good rank ships, achieve the Syndicate Hero and/or Clan Hero awards. I can guarantee you'll like the Javat Cutter rank ship if you achieve Clan Hero


With capture - unless you are willing to do the boarding action, you'll probably do as most of us do - shoot out the engines. That will net you a nice new ship, but you'll also have a ship with substantial damage meaning flying back to a friendly planet has a high fuel cost, you'll be extremely vulnerable to any further hostile encounter, and not surprisingly, the costs of repairing your new ship is pretty significant.

[morten]

Aug 4, 2011 18:03:59 GMT -5 slayernz said:

I can guarantee you'll like the Javat Cutter rank ship if you achieve Clan Hero

The Javat Cutter is available early. Are you saying the ship gets better with higher rank? Even though it is the same ship? Does this also mean then that there are no more than four faction ships?
Very curious about this.

Sent from my LT15i using proboards

[he]

the ship won't change. The cost drops with increasing rep and rank.
at rank 17 (18?) you get access to a flagship for that faction.

The pride of and honor of awards add additional rank shipa that vary with each faction.

the exemplar contractor or whatever unlocks each Faction's rank templar variant. Most of which are fairly awesome.

all of the ships are balanced so each faction has one awesome ship at least between the four, and they appear to be designed to allow players of any play style to be happy with whatever clan they choose, within reason. Steel song's ships either are too subtle for me to appreciate or kinda suck.

I think slayernz means the honor of javat... which is awesome. second fastest ship on the game and pretty nice all around.
I like the pride of cadar myself, more troops and cargo, on par with most flag ships and by the time I get it, Cheap!

[tierrana]

I've found that some of the independent planets have huge amounts of new ship plans. I don't remember the name, but one of the planets with a very high economy rating regularly returns over 20 new ship plans. I even got 43 once! Of course, most of them are cheaper than my starting ship but I also found one that is my favorite so far. I'm not sure what it's called because I immediately named it Gun Clunker.

Then again, I might be the least experienced player on the forums and maybe the game feels sorry for me.

[BlastGT1]

I recently found 70 new ships for sale on Roavin, bottom row of the map, not far from Steel Song territory. Alas, I still have yet to find my namesake Blast Interceptor.....

_______________________________

"Issue the standard Cadar greeting, Ensign."
"But sir, that's one of our allies!"
"I know that, Ensign. We're confirming that the treaty is still in effect!"

[slayernz]

I think the flagships for each faction are actually quite nice. Okay admittedly I haven't seen them all ... Steel Song hate me so much that I can't actually get into their military base, and they don't seem to fly any of them around at all.

Requirement: You need to be at least military Rank 17 for the faction.

	DeValtos	Cadar	Rychart	Javat	Thulun	Steel Song
Hull	30	40	30	40	30	30
Armour	20	24	20	26	20	20
Engines	32	42	60	50	31	32
Sails	64	42	35	50	61	62
Crew	124	160	120	122	80	90
Hold	124	95	96	120	124	105
Guns	24	20	32	40	24	22
Torps	28	40	15	20	28	24
Wot Slayer wood use it for	Seige/Cargo	Attack	Attack	Scaring Things	Cargo	Cargo/Seige

[contributor]

@blast, that's funny, because I see your ship all the time, but there are others I almost never see. I have yet to buy a Blast Interceptor, but you should probably be glad. Every time I get a Slayernz cruiser I rename it "Judy" or "Nancy" or "Glenda." Especially since I beat him in the Independent Captain Challenge.

[slayernz]

Haha ... but after all that is said and done, I am still alive and able to continue my destructive ways ... and you are dead.

[contributor]

I've moved back to seeing how many aliens I can kill on Insane. I think once I've killed just about every type, the only thing I'm going to have left is Community Challenges. This is probably the longest its ever taken me to play a game to death.

[BlastGT1]

Have you tried being a pacifist merchant yet?

Oh, and does my ship at least look cool and/or intimidating?

_______________________________

"Issue the standard Cadar greeting, Ensign."
"But sir, that's one of our allies!"
"I know that, Ensign. We're confirming that the treaty is still in effect!"

[contributor]

@blast, your ship is the same as the Pirate Shortbow. It's a newer design, all silver with a front end that looks like a shovel head split down the middle. It's a cool design, but I never have reason to fly one.

As for the pacifism thing. I've played a few merchants, but somehow they just don't hold my attention. Getting from 2 million to 10 million credits just doesn't get me that excited. Do you play as a merchant? What do find challenging/fun about it? I was thinking of doing a community challenge based around the merchant character, partly because it would force me to really play it.