Ranking the C ships

[Levgre]

I haven't played the C ships a ton yet, and I'll continue to refine my rankings. Give your own personal rankings for the ships if you want, or comment on these. Note: mine are based on a hard difficulty, the rankings might or might not shift slightly at lower difficulties with more plentiful scrap and easier battles. This is just comparing the C ships with each other, not ranking them against the Bs or As.

1 - Mantis C

Dedicated boarding ship (size 4 teleporter) with weapons which support it, 2 decent boarding crew to start. Not much holding you back, here.

2 - Engi C

Decent weapon systems, plus hacking to start. Your hacking drone also can't be stopped by enemy defense drones due to the scrambler augment, a weakness other ships (like Slug C) have. Not much to complain about with this ship.

3 - Zoltan C

This ship looks fantastic until you notice it only has a level 2 reactor, albeit +3 to start with Zoltan crew if one is piloting, and +4 for 30 seconds with backup battery. Clone bay has decent synergy with the 70 health, exploding Zoltans. Weapon systems of charge ion and Beam Drone are pretty weak, overall, but might get you by.

4 - Kestrel C

Nothing great going for this ship, but it is balanced and flexible, and should be able to easily shift into a boarding or weapons strategy.

5 - Rock C

The weapons on this ship are generally too slow and ineffective after the first two sectors. With the price increase in boarding systems, it is difficult to get one earlier at higher difficulties. Basically, if you go the weapons route this ship will be subpar. However with a crystal crew member if you can manage a boarding system, this ship should do well.

6 - Slug C

At first glance this ship seems pretty good, being equipped with both the new tools, mind control and hacking. However in the early game hacking is basically best used to penetrate enemy defenses, more or less like an ion weapon. The Chain Burst Laser is flat out inferior to vanilla 2 shot lasers in early game (charge up resets to 16 seconds if the weapon is disabled)

7 - Stealth C

The only one I haven't played at all yet, but it's not too promising. Starts with no shield and no stealth, the Shield+ drone isn't going to do it. Offensive capability isn't great.

8 - Federation C

This ship is pretty much defunct. The flak artillery is significantly weaker than the A's and B's beam artillery. The artillery is completely non-supplemental to the boarding strategy, the only other offensive tool on the ship. Since the boarding strat has no support, There really is nothing you can do against enemy ships with medbays, other than pray your artillery hits the medbay at 50 seconds. Or, you'll have to do lots of staggered double boardings, 4 crew members 2 at a time.

Thought... maybe if you board with the Zoltans you'll be able to catch the enemy AI off guard when they explode and kill them before they retreat to the medbay. Will have to try.

[balmung60]

The Fed C is weird, true, but I think you undervalue the Flak Artillery. While it seems like a step back from the Artillery Beam, it actually worked pretty well for me, especially after I got a normal weapon, which it synergizes better with due to kocking out shields.

And it worked fine as a boarding ship for me once I got used to the cloning bay and stopped caring at all about the survival of my boarders.

And I think you're rating the Stealth C too high by giving it only second worst. It has a worse weapons (well, I duess that's debateable, but I'd rather have a dual laser than a small charge laser) loadout than the Stealth A, no shields or stealth, and that silly Shield+ drone is a very bad substitute for real shields. All of the Stealth ships are kinda gimmicky, but I think Stealth C might actually be the worst of the three. Stealth A can hide and its laser is slightly better and Stealth B can hide and has the biggest, meanest beam in the game.

I won't comment on the Engi C beyond that I'm not a big fan of drones, so I don't really care for any of the Engi ships. Still, starting with a crew, a decent (and damage dealing) weapon, and hacking puts it above the A and B in my book.

The biggest strike against the Mantis C that I can think of is that it doesn't really do much of anything that the Mantis B doesn't already do. They're both pretty straight forward boarding ships.

[Levgre]

I'm just ranking the C ships between each other, not comparing them to the Bs or As. Not that that isn't worthwhile, just wasn't my goal as of yet. Stealth C is definitely the worst of the three, my view is that A > B > C, that's probably not debated by many.

As for the Federation boarding, what I was trying to say is that even by suiciding your 2 crew members over and over against the enemy, if they have a medbay you really will not be able to permanently damage the crew or the ship. Sometimes all I could do, other than fleeing, was send my crew over to distract the enemy and stop them from manning their weapons, to give a better chance of survival until the Flak artillery fired.

Every other boarding ship in the game at least has 'some' other offensive tool to assist it (yeah, you do have the flak cannon on 50 seconds but that can miss the enemy medbay several times, even).

I can definitely see the Fed C surpassing the Stealth C on Normal or Easy difficulty, since starting with boarding is extremely valuable (if you can win the boarding fight), and you'll see significantly less enemy ships with medbays in the early sectors. AI ships are not a problem with cloning bays, and Zoltan shield ships are at least beatable with the flak artillery, they probably won't have too much an arsenal in sector 1 to barrage you while you wait.

[balmung60]

I brought up the other Stealths because Stealth B is often considered the worst B ship, and the C is even worse.

For the Mantis C, I mostly brought it up because it kinda bugs me that it doesn't really do anything new. All of the other C ships are better differentiated from their A and B counterparts, even if it isn't always a good idea, such as the Stealth C and Fed Cruiser C.

The Fed Cruiser's stock is pretty bad though, and the Flak Artillery, while actually a pretty good system unto itself, feels like it would work out better on a gunship since that blast of 7 (seemingly) higher accuracy flak shots tears down shields really well.

Hmm... maybe if I knew how to mod ships, I could try to change it from a really weird boarder to a dedicated Flak flinger. Not really a balance thing, more of me musing to myseld.

[r543]

I have no idea on how to play with Stealth C.

I tried to go into a battle and then activate the shield, but that's too slow. Charging the Shield up and then jumping to a beacon removes the shield(I can see why this would be overpowered with 4 shieds+this drone, but on this ship, it doesn't help). The other Drone is very nice and I like the modified shield overcharger drone(that uses 1 bar less energy), but maybe allow it to keep the shield after telepoting(or give the ship a special augmentation for that ?).
The drones are nice, but you can only have up one at a time, which limits the use again.

This ship has the charge laser because it's one of the advanced edition ships, and the ships from that DLC need to show the new content, so I can understand it. It might be very good in some situations to fire one fast shot instead of waiting for the charge, but I don't know how to use it correctly, so I prefer the dual lasers to it.

Mini Beam is ok, a better beam would've been way better but this ship already has a drone system and 2 drones, so there is no space for that.

I haven't tested many other Layout C Ships, but I like the Rock C because it makes it way easier to get the hidden ship.

What did you mean with "increased bording costs" ? Did the teleporter costs go up in advanced edition or in both modes ?

[Levgre]

What did you mean with "increased bording costs" ? Did the teleporter costs go up in advanced edition or in both modes ?

idk about vanilla, but in AE the boarding system price has been increased from 75 to 90. Getting 15 more scrap in early sectors is pretty significant on hard difficulty, if not normal + easy.

[Diet Water]

Oh dear. I seem to have gone and stolen everyone's Stealth C luck for the month.
http://i.imgur.com/PVxugLY.png
http://i.imgur.com/smyBPuI.png

[itg]

Not mine! Although you did get a better score. http://imgur.com/a/hMtFP

[GDK]

I like the stealth C, I did one game on normal and faced the flagship but lost to it due to not having cloaking.

But I see some can beat the game on hard with stealth B and C I'm surprised (seriously I can't get very far in normal with B).

[Merudo]

My ranking is a bit different than yours.

Note that I usually play on Normal. I avoid Easy - unless you use a really terrible ship, a competent player will win Easy more often than not, making arguments about ranking irrelevant. Moreover Sectors 1-3 are a joke at Easy, meaning you can accumulate enough Scrap to get all the upgrades and weapons you want, blurring the difference between the ships.

So, here is the rankings:

Great ships

1. Engi C
Defense Scrambler together with Hacking and Beam Drone is extremely powerful - you can immediately hack the enemy's shield and activate the beam drone to start doing damage right at the start of battle! On top of that you start with Dual Laser, one of the best weapons in the game. The crew is also alright, with Engi giving access to many blue options, and Lanius being rare. Amazing ship.

2. Rock C
Heavy Crystal Mark is an amazing 1 power weapon that dominates Sectors I-II with its Shield Pierce I, and Swarm is very flexible. The starting crew is really good at boarding, and the Crystal guy gives you access to the extra Sector. A strong overall ship.

3. Slug C
Mind Control and Hacking work really well together, allowing you for example to mind control the pilot and hack their shields. Chain Burst Laser is an alright weapon, that gets better the longer the fight goes. The starting crew is sort of mediocre, although having a Mind Slug is always welcome. The lack of sensors is irrelevant given you have Slug vision and mind control gives you vision, while Door II is great at dealing with boarders. A tricky ship to play, but very powerful if used well.

Alright ships

4. Mantis C
A four-space teleporter is always amazing giving how strong boarding is. The Lanius even allows you to board AI drones! The main problem with this ship is that it has both poor defense (contrarily to Mantis B) and no good way to disable the enemy's weapons (contrarily to Mantis A). You'll likely have to rely on the very weak Stun Bomb to disable the enemy's Weapon System and Medbay/Clonebay, or try to somehow destroy these system by boarding and using a Crystal Bomb.

5. Kestrel C
Dual Laser is a wonderful weapon, while Ion Stunner probably won't take out any shield after Sector I-II. The starting crew is mediocre, with 2 humans and a Lanius. An average and perhaps boring ship, without any special strength or weakness.

Terrible ships

6. Zoltan C
With only a reactor of 2 powers, you'll have to rely on Zoltan dancing between rooms and the battery to power the ship. The main issue here is that the battery just doesn't last enough - you just can't power the ship long enough to do critical damage. This is made worse by its reliance on the Beam Drone to do damage, meaning you can't target a critical system and disable it before the battery runs out. To get out of this mess you'll see to both upgrade the reactor (which costs 30 scrap for the first 3 upgrades) and get a more reliable weapon. Getting boarded is painful, with the Zoltan pretty much having to explode repeatedly to kill any creature. The Zoltan Shield is also rather weak while playing Normal and Hard, and likely won't last past a first volley. A very tricky ship to play, that doesn't have any strength to compensate its numerous weaknesses.

7. Federation C
This ship is a mess. The Flak Gun is way too slow and doesn't go through shield, and can't be targeted. Moreover it doesn't support the boarding strategy at all. Boarding itself is a pain - with no medbay on your side, you'll often have to either send wounded Mantis and Human, or send the weak Zoltans. Moreover with no weapon, no drones, and no hacking, this ship has absolutely no way to deal to reliably disable any system - so if the enemy is about to Jump away, has a medbay/clonebay, or has powerful weapons, you are pretty much screwed.

8. Stealth C.
No shield, no cloak, and a silly Shield+ drone that is basically the equivalent of Shield 1 except it recharges much slower, can't be upgraded, can be destroyed, takes 1 drone part per use, and competes for power with the Anti-Drone drone. Yeah, it is terrible. Laser Charge is very good (it's a more flexible Dual Laser) but just can't do enough by itself, and Mini-beam has negligible effects. This ship has the worse defense in the game, and very mediocre offense.