New worst ship?

All your guides, strategy discussions, request for help on how to play go here. Please use [SPOILER] if relevant.
spacecadet13
Posts: 126
Joined: Mon Oct 08, 2012 2:10 pm

New worst ship?

Postby spacecadet13 » Tue Apr 29, 2014 8:43 am

Has to be the Fregatidae, right? Worst name by far, just for starters. And really, seriously, WTF? No - useful - weapon to support your boarders with, take out a medbay, or clone bay, or do some damage to the enemy crew. Noooo, what you have is a weapon that can't be aimed, and takes so long to charge up it makes the Glaive look like a powered up Gatling with a levelled up gunner and three autoloaders.

Like any ship, you can make it work on Easy, but Normal is just a damage-fest and I can barely even conceive of the circumstances and flat out good luck that would allow a win on Hard. Second Mantis and Reconstructive Teleport?

So you port your crew over. If the enemy ship has more than two crew you are looking at a minimum of two clone 'cycles' before you can take them out, and if the ship has a medbay or clone bay, or an anti personnel drone, or its own teleporter, forgeddaboutit, or sit there hoping that when the cannon eventually fires it does damage where you need it done, and all the while your ship is not so slowly getting taken apart by the enemy. Hit to the teleporter/clone bay/cannon - Now what? Jump away with only damage to show for your efforts. Yeah, its nice that Zoltans now go boom and you can replace them a short while later- but its not enough, and nowhere near fast enough. Your boarders don't get levelled up to deal out the extra damage that might make the 'boom' a finishing move first time. This ship is always taking damage, which gimps the scrap you have to spend on upgrades and extra gear it badly needs

And yeah Emergency Respirators, you can board Autos and take out the weapons - sometimes. Then what? Stick around, hope the cannon hits?

This sucker makes the Stormwalker look like the Basilisk! Anyway, it's my new worst ship of all, and definitely the worst of the new ones. Be interested for suggestion as to how others succeed with it, or other opinions on which ship is "the worst" - and if any of the new ones are better than the best 'vanilla' ships.
Iranon
Posts: 57
Joined: Wed Aug 14, 2013 7:33 am

Re: New worst ship?

Postby Iranon » Tue Apr 29, 2014 9:34 am

Boarding + Clone bay. A Mantis for general fighting and Zoltans for suicide bombing complements this nicely.
Guaranteed access to respectable firepower (although the beam version works better on its own).
Potential access to truly overwhelming firepower because your artillery actually works well with normal weapons.

I find it a quirky but very respectable ship. Exploding Zoltans are great at taking out enemies on ships with an active medbay, and hurt Zoltans can still contribute to boarding attempts so you don't have to murder your crew that often.
I find Engi B, Stealth B and Stealth C much more problematic.
KomissarBojanchev
Posts: 13
Joined: Sat Dec 07, 2013 7:15 pm

Re: New worst ship?

Postby KomissarBojanchev » Tue Apr 29, 2014 3:32 pm

It badly needs another token weapon like a small bomb perhaps for the fed C to be marginally worthwhile
Merudo
Posts: 40
Joined: Tue Apr 08, 2014 5:01 am

Re: New worst ship?

Postby Merudo » Tue Apr 29, 2014 5:16 pm

I won the game on Hard with every C ship, so it is certainly doable.

In my experience, the Fed C and the Zoltan C are by far the two worst new ships.

Fed C has a lackluster crew - you get one mantis and three guys from the weakest races at fighting. There is a total lack of weapons, so destroying those medbays and clonebays will be a pain (those are everywhere on Hard). The Flak artillery is next to useless - slow, power hungry, cannot be manned or take advantage of augments, it also prevent you from getting another, more useful system.

To get the Fed C going, you need to find new weapons, AND find new crew, AND find enough scrap to upgrade the "weak" weapon system.

Zoltan C is also highly problematic. Getting boarded on the Zoltan C is catastrophic - you'll likely lose all of your crew, which means you'll also lose 4 power. The ship itself needs a better reactor, but upgrading it is ridiculously pricey. The weapons suck, and you'll need to rely on the beam drone, which cannot be aimed.

To get the Zoltan C going, you need to find new weapons, AND find new crew, AND find enough scrap to upgrade the reactor.

The Stealth C is actually not so bad. You get the Long-Range scanner augment, which is one of the best augment in the game. With it you can earn far more scrap, and avoid asteroid fields and other nasty hazards. The Laser Charger + Mini-Beam is surprisingly effective, and can reliably take down ships with 2 shields and quickly disable weapons. The Shield+ drone is alright, and sorts of act as a slow Drone Defense 2.

Really, all you need to get going with the ship is to buy some shields in Sector 1/2 - that is really not that hard, given that the weaponry of the Stealth C can dominate the first two sectors. The Long-Range scanner is also quite helpful to get a lots of scraps early.
recumbentrider
Posts: 19
Joined: Wed Dec 18, 2013 4:20 am

Re: New worst ship?

Postby recumbentrider » Tue Apr 29, 2014 10:45 pm

Since I have not played all of the AE ships yet, I cannot say that the Fregatidae is the worst ship. However, I will not hesitate to say that so far, I am finding the Fregatidae to be absolutely abysmal. On my best run with it so far, I made to Sector 5 on 'normal'. Its main weakness is that its starting weapon is so slow that it is virtually useless, and while your boarding crew is trying to do its job, your ship is getting shot at and pummeled. On my 'best' run with the ship, I found that I had to spend so much on repairs that I had little scrap left over for real upgrades to the ship's weapons and systems. I have beaten the AE game with all of the 'B' ships, including the Vortex, Stormwalker, and DA-SR-12. I have found all three of those ships easier to play than the Fregatidae. This ship is just awful. However, because I am not entirely rational when it comes to this game, I will not let that stop me from trying to win with it.
project_mercy
Posts: 117
Joined: Sat Apr 19, 2014 12:31 am

Re: New worst ship?

Postby project_mercy » Wed Apr 30, 2014 1:15 am

The worst ship in the game has been, and always will be, the Bulwark (Rock A) and AE has only made it worse. This is because most of the terrible ships you can get by with some strategy and skill, but there's no strategy and skill which miraculously spawns missiles for you. The dilution of shops and the filling up of the "open" rooms with extra modules (weakening the hull missile's effectiveness) in AE has just exacerbated its failings. While a lot of starting ships have issues with their starting weapons not scaling well, you usually have till sector 3 (or possibly even 4) to get past it. I regularly run out of missiles at the start of sector 2, and sometimes 1, in the Bulwark. The evasion increases on Hard mean even in sector 1 you're wiffing enough to be problematic. If there's only 1 shop in sector 1, and it doesn't have any useful guns (or is off in some unreachable place due to the new systems), then you're basically done.

To some extent, that's what AE is for me. The hunt for weapons. Everything else is of marginal importance. You can even basically create a "how good is this ship?" graph purely on "what starting weapons/teleporter does this ship start with". The only case where that's slightly off is Stealth B, due to all the penalties it has in exchange for the cloak + glaive beam. The Red Tail used to be my favorite Kestrel variant. now the Kestrel is the best, because it's too hard sometimes to find replacements for the lasers.

I actually don't mind the Fregatidae. If it had a medbay instead of a clone bay, it'd be in my "above average" camp. At least with the starting clone bay you an zerg AI ships. It's the jumpers that suck. There's very little you can do if someone is going to jump away. As far as I'm concerned, it's redonculous that an AI ship can jump away with borders in the cockpit. I haven't figured out a way to mod that out, but it's on my list.

Zoltan C isn't actually that bad. I find it helps if you just keep the bottom half vented (except for the open rooms). If you can get a Lanius crew, plop them down there in the door controls/sensors to man them and fix any damage. I agree the power situation is crap, but that's true about all of them. At least with the clone bay you can leave them at their post till they die instead of cowering in the medbay while you have 2 total power for the rest of the ship.
Iranon
Posts: 57
Joined: Wed Aug 14, 2013 7:33 am

Re: New worst ship?

Postby Iranon » Wed Apr 30, 2014 8:21 am

I don't like the Bulwark, but you need missiles OR other weaponry OR another way to win.
If you can get some wins by boarding/asphyxiation/medbay hacking/mind control/whatever, missiles become a useful and fairly reliable fallback.
This ship is gimped when getting nothing useful over time, overall the risk is probably lower than for a ship that can lose outright in a single fight.
Bloody_Lemon
Posts: 24
Joined: Sat Nov 16, 2013 10:41 pm

Re: New worst ship?

Postby Bloody_Lemon » Wed Apr 30, 2014 12:36 pm

I had so much trouble getting the Bulwark in the AE:
Shield Overcharger enemies in the first sector are ruthless.
Enemies running away and missiles missing because enemies have better engines.

IMHO it needs to start with Explosive Replicator to encourage people to try missile builds (which I avoid like plague since my very first game).
slattikarma
Posts: 29
Joined: Mon Mar 03, 2014 10:56 am

Re: New worst ship?

Postby slattikarma » Mon Jun 30, 2014 7:22 am

Weirdly enough, I have my highest score with Fed C for a win on normal AE. And it could have been higher because I got confused what sector I was in and sold my scrap collector augment too early.. (in sector 6, thought I was in 7 already). Can't remember why my score was so good...
META_mahn
Posts: 197
Joined: Thu Apr 24, 2014 9:46 pm

Re: New worst ship?

Postby META_mahn » Tue Jul 01, 2014 12:56 am

The absolute WORST, MOST USELESS SHIP IN THE GAME AND IF YOU EVER PLAY IT ON HARD EXPECTING TO DO WELL YOU SHOULD UNINSTALL
IS THE STEALTH F*CKING C
Back from the dead. After a two year hiatus.