Hello pirates - I've been doing a bit of travelling, and then when I got back I was having a bit of connectivity trouble on my main computer so blogging has been a bit difficult. This game has also been pretty time consuming lately ... I'll get to that. But right now I want to catch up on some of the FM Prizes. I'm not going to give them a full treatment since I'm about a week and a half late, but I'll share a few thoughts on each.
Mimicus System
I was really looking forward to this special for Hellwraith builds, and I wasn't disappointed. Although its stats aren't quite as good as the specialized Cat Drive or Battery when those are retrofitted, I like this quick-building combo special. It lets me use Hunter special to increase torpedo damage on my Hellwraith build.
https://www.dahippo.com/bp/ship/#!B0ZZ0NK0292A292A386S6T066EAQAQAQAQAQAQAQAQAQC000C00NK0292A292A386S6T066EAQAQAQAQAQAQAQAQAQC000C00NK0292A292A386S6T066EAQAQAQAQAQAQAQAQAQC000C00NK0292A292A386S6T066EAQAQAQAQAQAQAQAQAQC000C0dC
Although I show 4 subs in that fleet, I only have one completed right now. The single sub was able to beat this latest set of Reaver Holdouts with about 40 min repair time per target. Who got a Ghostcrawler blueprint completed today? THIS GUY.
Blunderbuss
This weapon in in a similar class as the Frostbite & Scattergun turrets we have received lately for frontline base defense, however it is a ballistic weapon. This is quite interesting because both the Vendetta and the Retribution (even at full bloodthirst) have no ballistic deflection - the only Conqueror hull (right now) with ballistic deflection is the Revenge.
As a ballistic turret, the first special that comes to mind to mount on these is Depleted Uranium Shells. That special gives +50% damage and +40% accuracy bonus. However, this is a splash weapon, not an aimed weapon, so the only advantage from that special is the 50% damage. My Blunderbuss build looks like this:
Instead of DU Shells, I used the Supercharged EM Rails. This special gives me a 25% chance of a 300% damage bonus. This effectively adds 75% to my DPS, instead of the 50% added from the DU Shells. For my other special, I used the Expanded Concussive Charge - the +60% splash should help against moving targets. Possibly Eruption Pyre wouldn't be a bad choice either, but I liked the much larger splash vs. the Pyre's projectile speed.
Anti-Missile Proliferation System
This special seems pretty specialized for Switchblades. The extra accuracy with the extra shot makes the Switchblades more effective since they can have multiple shots at a single incoming missile... this makes it much less likely you will be overwhelmed by incoming missiles - always a risk with Switch.
At a second look, I compared this special to Countermeasure Equipment 3. When retrofitted to R15, that special gives the same range and accuracy bonus to anti-missile, does not have the multi-shot bonus, is 1% lighter, but it has about 12 hours extra build time. So even for a Phalanx-only countermeasure build, this special might be a good value worth considering.
Corrosive Draconian Armor
This armor series isn't too different than the other Draconian armors we have seen lately - but it is the first armor we have to improve corrosive defense.
It might be very useful if you are still tooling up to fight 91 Mega Hull targets. And even if you have collected your Gantry shards, and then collected your Hyperion shards... you still aren't done with those targets.
You could build something like this for 91s:
https://www.dahippo.com/bp/ship/#!B07902G2G0U2G00386U350C032E2E2E2E2E2E2E2E2E2E0ZZ0ZZ0ZZ0ZZdC
This ship would be quite effective with other Apollos or as a lead for Rhinos. Would I spend the nearly 4 weeks of build time on this? Probably not (Remember - I won a Ghostcrawler today). But if you are considering a Zoe Apollo... there you go.
I finished my Mega Hull very recently and found they are very Titanium hungry - once you have a Mega, if you want to keep adding weapons and upgrading it, you will quickly find you need to keep collecting titanium to continue. You get 8000 titanium from beating a 91, but adding weapons or specials to your mega modules will eat that up quickly. Manufacturing the resources to upgrade or add new Mega modules is also pretty Titanium intensive... so what I'm saying is two things:
- you're not done with those 91s once your Hyperion is started
- My Mega Hull build guide is coming soon (and not like Kixeye "coming soon")
Yeah, I'm late. Been playing this game... Battle Pirates. You might have heard of it...it's kind of a grindy game right now.
But I really don't have any unique insight for this raid. The S sets were MUCH harder than last time, so many players who had been hitting S sets before are now grinding away at A sets. The pre-raid word from Kixeye was that the targets were going to be pretty much the same, so many players were pretty upset when they discovered the big increase in difficulty to the S targets.
Like many other players, I shifted my focus to the A targets. Like most players with Apollo or mixed Apollo/Rhino fleets, I can do them fairly cheaply. They take me about 15 minutes per set (going carefully). Since I wanted about 89 million points... you can do that math on playtime at 2.7 million points per set. Although I would like to be able to do these targets faster or higher end targets cheaper, I do understand the reasoning behind the change. For the previous few Civil War raids, the only reason to go after the A sets would be if you didn't have sufficient countermeasures to stop the missiles from the Mega. Just about every other player would have faster time and lower costs doing S sets... they actually were too easy from a balance perspective.
Players that are having success with the S sets in this raid are tending to use Disciples Of Skullduggery (Legendary) or Bulleye Brigade (Rare) crews.
By the way, I'm not going for the Vassago Punisher - I may be sorry about that later, but I'm just not feeling it right now.
The short answer on the changes to the S is that the Zoe Rhino got a very high damage missile (10,500 per hit), and the Heavy Cruiser got a long range corrosive cannon (1000 damage per hit). More information is available at: http://www.thedarkalliance.org/forum/threads/988-August-Raid-Trickery
I tried using a Vanquisher to tank/spot in the S targets - it did pretty well against the HC, but still got torn up by the Zoe missile. Yes, Bullseye Brigade can be used with countermeasures to mitigate that one, but I also had some trouble with entry points. When I entered at a point where the ships started off screen (then they jump into screen when the battle starts) the Vanquisher would not spot for my Rhinos, even though it would fire & take damage. Yes, one more bug for the list. Between that problem, and wanting to enter out of range of the land turrets and the mega's fields... I didn't pursue that strategy too hard.
I've seen a lot of questions about builds for the Hellwraith. I'm planning to build 2 like this by the VXP weekend:
Those will be free (using raid tokens too), and I should be able to finish them by September's raid. A few torpedos will help them deal some damage & rank faster.
If you follow the Huggy's link on the picture you can see where I would go with this build TODAY. But I'm not going to think about it too seriously until I see the new Mimicus System special coming in the Forsaken Mission post-raid.
The other thing to keep in mind about this new equipment is that the Fire Twister Torpedo is a non-aimed weapon (some call it "dumb fire"). It fires at a spot instead of following the target & using its accuracy attribute. The blueprint for this weapon shows accuracy of 100% and no spread attribute, which I think indicates that it always ends up at the exact spot the target WAS at when the torpedo fires.
This attribute makes it difficult to use these torpedos against fast ships, even when accounting for the speed bonuses of the hull & special. It seems to me that the plan of "build the Hellwraiths for the raid and keep my Tigers untouched" would have been best - I did refit the AA3 & Magnus 2 on the Tigers, and probably won't use them in the raid if I have 2 Hellwraiths done.
So Pirates, keep grinding, use your crews, and stay salty!
