With the points increase awarded, I am all of a sudden over 9 Million points, which means I could take the Lightning Carrier and be done with it. If you watched my guest appearance on the Battle Pirates on Battle Vortex show, or if you read my previous article going in depth on these new prizes, you may know that I'm not very excited about them. But I thought that maybe a Torrent build on the Kodiak would be decent, so I wanted to put one together and see if it looked good. I'm going to compare a few 3 ship fleets in this article. I understand I'm leaving some weight on the table when I do this, but it seems like the best "apples to apples" comparison.
So here's a Torrent Kodiak build I came up with:
An Achilles Kodiak:
And since I like Launchers, let's see what a Kodiak looks like with Launchers:
And here is a similar build on the NC R5 hull (no Highlander):
And you know a chart is coming:
| Statistic | Torrent Kodiak | Achilles Kodiak | Launcher Kodiak | Launcher NC R5 |
| Open Weight | 554 | 665 | 569 | 3185 |
| Build Time | 57d 15h | 63d 11h | 56d 16h | 48d 13h |
| Fleet Armor | 47,370 | 54,870 | 51,420 | 39,144 |
| Combat Speed | ||||
| Turn Speed | ||||
| Evade | ||||
| Penetrative Defense | 64% | 64% | 64% | 53% |
| Explosive Defense | 55% | 53% | 53% | 53% |
| Ballistic Defense | 53% | 53% | 53% | 46% |
| Concussive Defense | 0% | 0% | 0% | 0% |
| Radioactive Defense | 35% | 35% | 35% | 51% |
| Total Fleet DPS | 7553 | 1485 | 4773 | 7250 |
| Total Building DPS | 12085 | 6600 | 11088 | 12569 |
| Total Hail Shots | 12 | 9 | 0 | 0 |
| Total Phalanx Shots | 30 | 30 | 30 | 0 |
(EDIT 8/16 5 PM: I forgot about the +60% Building Damage boost of the Kodiak in the initial publish... Building DPS numbers above are updated)
DPS was computed with full alliance and zero rank bonus.
The torrent DPS beats the Launcher fleet slightly.
The Torrent Kodiak DPS is near the Launcher NC R5 DPS. A real Nuke Cruiser build with 4 ships would do slightly better, but look at the build time - 9 days quicker for the NC fleet. The Fleet Armor numbers show that the Kodiak can pack in more armor and last longer, but more armor will mean more repair time.
The Achilles Kodiak DPS is in the toilet, and I'm not talking about Goliaths. The launcher build on the Kodiak seems like it would be more effective, with longer range and more than triple the DPS against ships. But why would I build that launcher fleet when the Nuke Cruiser fleet beats it handily?
So back to my original question, if I went with a Torrent Kodiak build, it might have about the same punch as my Nuclear Cruisers, without the shockwaves and with retargeting. It would also be able to take more damage. But I don't think it would be too effective in base hits with a weapon range of only 77.5, putting it in danger of slipping into Coax Turret range. For missions and raids, I don't see how this fleet would be more effective, and for FvF, this fleet would be vulnerable to kiting by a longer range fleet due to its low speed and poor turn radius. I certainly wouldn't risk this fleet against subs. Build time is longer for the Torrent fleet, and longest with the Achilles. The Savage doesn't change things much, because a Highlander will do the same thing for the Launcher fleet.
I've pretty much decided to skip all the new items. I might regret it, but I don't think so. Missiles are going to need a lot more buffing (Enhanced Warhead 6?) before an Achilles/Kodiak combo will be able to keep up with Nuke Cruisers or Carriers.
More tips on Snowblind:
If you don't want to coin at all, your best option will be to hit on the World Map. Just as an experiment, I collected about 200k points in 20-30 minutes on the world map with my Harlock Carriers. They had about an hour of repair after that, so I could have hit for probably an hour and a half with that fleet, then taken a break to repair. Look for the higher numbered targets (points are about 2k for a 21, 20k for a 30, and 2k steps for each numbered fleet in between) to maximize your points per time. Either a fast fleet, or a long range fleet will be your best option, and definitely have good evade.
I've run through the Siege campaign two more times. The second time, my damage was about 2/3 my first runthrough. I used 1 HLNC & 2 NCs with D92Us, and 1 Countermeasure Triton, which definitely had an advantage over the 4 NC fleet with no Countermeasures.
The third time I used two separate fleets, and rotated ships. I used my 4 Harlock Carriers for the first two targets, then the 3 NC/1 CM Triton combo for the last 5. By rotating out damaged ships (I have a 4th NC), and repairing ships I wasn't using, I only had to spend 10 coins to finish the campaign, even though I took 24 coins worth of damage. Now I'm taking a break to repair (and write this article).
The countermeasure ship does a lot of good against the missiles, which are doing more damage than you may think. One tip on placing the CM ship in a 4 ship fleet - place it in slot 3 when assembling your fleet, so that it is "surrounded" by your other ships. You usually do not want your CM ship targeted because it will usually have less resistance and less evade than your mainline ships. In a 5 ship fleet, using slot 3 or slot 4 will have the same effect
On specific targets:
Target #5: I've found that if you enter on the upper half of the U, you can reach all the priority targets by the time you get to the rear of the base, and pretty much ignore the bottom side.
Target #6: I start at the right side, go to the back, and work my way around to the upper left in a serpentine fashion. It seems to work well because I am engaging only a few targets at a time.
Target #7: On my initial writeup, I mentioned that you get swarmed by interdictors at the start. If you stop your fleet and click so they make a U-turn before the battle starts, then you can engage those initial Interdictors two at a time.
No comments:
Post a Comment