VXP Weekend - New Reavers

With this VXP weekend, we've seen some new Reavers that are much harder to kill.  We've also been told that those are a preview of the targets for the next raid.  I'll leave my thoughts on that for the a bit later in this article, but first some numbers that might actually help you.

As you should know by now, the standard way that VXP are awarded to each ship in a battle is:

• Up to 10 VXP for taking damage.  10 VXP are awarded for losing all heath, and less are awarded if you survive the battle, in proportion to the damage taken.
• Up to 10 VXP for dealing damage (to ships).  10 VXP are awarded for dealing damage equal to or greater than your ship's health, and less are awarded (in proportion to damage dealt) if you do less damage than that.

Salty Dog crews will multiply those numbers by 2 or 3 depending on the type of crew.

It has been theorized (and I think mostly correctly), that the increased VXP targets will award experience in the same way, but with a multiplier applied, so that the "10" in the description above becomes some other number.  

I wanted to find out that number for this new crop of targets, so I took some hulls that had very few weapons on them and ran them into these targets.  

Here's what I found:

The third column in the table above is my actual data, and the 4th column is my best guess on what the base VXP number (instead of 10) is for that target.  The real interesting thing is that the level 80 Legion target paid more VXP than the level 112 Reaver.  Don't ignore those.  

The 114s are real wicked.  The Scouts have thermal that outranges your torpedoes and they fire deadly explosive torpedoes of their own.  I predict utter and complete disaster and revolt if those show up in the raid unchanged.  

So what's the best strategy for getting VXP?

If you have subs with weapons: Hit 114s

To maximize your VXP in the 114s, you will want to deal some damage.  One thing I've been doing is to make a hole in the ring of scouts (hint - take out the ship without thermal at the bottom), then you can pick off drones for a while and do your damage.  If you can't get to the drones and do any damage, it may payoff a bit better if you hit 112s and do some damage.  You'll have to experiment for yourself.

If you have surface ships with weapons: Hit 80s

Hit the Legion 80s and do some damage.  If you can, retreat occasionally to kill it in stages so that you don't hit the "dealing damage" point cap.

If you have ships without weapons: Hit 114s

Go die in a 114.

If you have a Ghostcrawler:

Damn it's expensive to level those.  They don't do well in these targets.  A single hit on a 114 put me up 3 ranks, but costs a bit over 22 coin (no armor, no GM) to repair. I saw a comment that buying rank would be cheaper, but I did check the price and a single rank cost 86 coin.  My plan for the Ghost is to put on a Salty and grind out URFs.. we will see how that goes.

Edit: On hitting URFs with a Ghostcrawler:

I've hit a couple (points are without taking damage, without Salty Dogs & without armor): 

Threshers/Avenger (86 VXP): The Avenger does have thermal with decent range.  Come out of Deep Dive  in range & kill it.

Mercuries/Sea Scorpions (86 VXP): The Mercs have some thermal, but you can kill them from outside thermal range.

Cudas/Banshees (64 VXP): You'll see them, they won't see you.

No matter what (Hopefully most players know this already, but I'm saying it anyway):

Use a Salty Dogs crew... Rare triple Salty Dogs if you have it... roll for uncommon double Salty Dogs if you don't.  The double Saltys aren't that hard to get from 1000 Uranium rolls.  If you are repairing ships to grind out lots of VXP, use a Grease Monkeys on a fleet slot in your base and repair back there.

Hopefully this helps you out.  I think the info on the 80s isn't really well known, so I wanted to get this article out in front of you pirates.   Stay salty!