Cruiser? Battleship?

[rchgns]

Hi I am still a noob at this game currently playing on challenging. The best ship i've seen so far is a Steel Scimitar. How do I go about getting better ships? Thank you

[gearheadwhat]

Either save up and buy them,or claim a damaged enemy vessel if you win combat without destroying them.

[Tenebrous Pirate]

Well, see...first you get a goat, and feed it a lot of easter candy. Then, once you have it nice and fat...

[Cory Trese]

Buying them is the fastest and easiest way, for sure. You can find lots of ships at large planets. If you are promoted in the military of a Faction, you can also visit the Military base and commission a Rank Ship.

[ro0k]

i'm kinda new at this game, only been playing it for about a week now with about six hours of play time.

Everytime i go to a military base i only see four ships, and i only usually see one new ship plan at a starport at a time. Is there a reason i have such a small selection? or does the selection expand with game time?

[slayernz]

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.

[susanexpress1]

Hello, a new member to this forum. hope you all have a good day

[ro0k]

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.

My god, i feel like such a newb. Thank you. This is worse than the time i found out you could change classes mid match in call of duty.

[slayernz]

WHAT?!? you can change classes in CoD? Oh crap, that'll explain why I keep getting creamed ...

... but glad you found my advice helpful all the same

[leuthesius]

I'm waiting for there to be real warships for military ranks. Best is the BattleCruiser. I want a bloody Dreadnaught! Makes the battleship look like a tinkertoy.

[cbbrowne]

Aug 9, 2011 19:56:56 GMT -5 leuthesius said:

I'm waiting for there to be real warships for military ranks. Best is the BattleCruiser. I want a bloody Dreadnaught! Makes the battleship look like a tinkertoy.

I don't see a problem with this not being the case...

If you want to operate a Major Ship Of The Line, you're obliged to take orders, as opposed to taking off to pirate ships whenever you like.

[Cory Trese]

I don't understand the meaning of this post...

[slayernz]

Ah ... basically you get access to a powerful military ship (at high rank), BUT you are
(a) obliged to do contracts that may occasionally be put forward by that military's command structure
- this means you can be given contracts without requesting them.
(b) if you attack interests of the faction (through piracy or breach of alliances, etc), then the ship can actually be confiscated by the military.
- you find yourself constantly having military encounters with that faction and each one asks you to surrender.
- surrendering will mean you get taken to the nearest faction planet that has a star port. You also get demoted by a rank, and you lose the major ship of the line. (you must buy a new one).

IF you don't surrender to the military ship, then you get to keep your major ship of the line, but become a renegade and stripped of all rank and RP for that faction. Definitely not a good thing.

Okay - I might have read into cbb's post a little too much, BUT it does make for an exciting twist
1) Unbalanced ships, but with ownership comes responsibility
2) Contracts that can be given to you without asking - "You're important now, so we've got an urgent mission that we think only you can do)
3) Dire consequence for abusing your military power.

[phantum]

That could take an interesting new path for missions. For someone with high military rank, the missions from military base could include special high risk kill or capture missions of an enemy (or an alien even) well above you in level but the military offer to 'loan' you the ship for the job. After the job you have a certain time to return the ship to complete the mission or you begin to loose rep+rank each turn, to discourage steeling.

This could be a way to let players try out special new ships. Could one of the rewards be increase in rank, and be the only way to get to the highest ranks, rather than being able to buy your way with money?

I could even see one day an equivalent 'guild' for merchants which had ranks and missions to try out merchant ships ...

Maybe after we get the 3d you mentioned

[cbbrowne]

Aug 10, 2011 17:34:18 GMT -5 Cory Trese said:

I don't understand the meaning of this post...

The captain of the HMS Illustrious, the notable British aircraft carrier, is an active, serving member of the Royal Navy, and if he musters out, he doesn't get to keep his ship.

I wouldn't think it makes any sense for Star Traders to involve capital ships.

slayernz did "read a little too much" into it, but he does suggest some directions that would make it more sensible to give out some "big guns" on temporary basis.

• I like the "give it out temporarily" idea
  
• Yes, indeed, you have to do something hard with it.
  
• If you succeed, then there's lots of rank to be had, and, I'd think, access to some kind of extra gadget that changes the rules a bit.
  
• If you fail, you need to return to base pronto to return the ship, lest they warn all factions of your rogue nature.
  
• Piracy shouldn't work out well with these ships; they should pretty much "shred" any normal ships immediately, so you can't actually capture anything else of value.
  

This strikes me as being the way to make the "Alien War" a more prominent part of the game. The reason to get so heavily armed is that there's an alien fleet needing to be destroyed.

Phantum points out that this sort of thing might express differently for different classes of players. Fighting "arms" of the different classes would participate in this differently.

• Military Officer would be as described, pretty obvious.
  
• Spies and Explorers might get missions to do special surveillance, requiring special craft that's no good at fighting, but very good assortedly at hiding and watching.
  
• Merchants and smugglers might get stuck doing runs carrying special cargo in craft combining high speed and heavy armor.
  
• Bounty Hunters should get sent out with "capture" gear to capture some aliens