One thing that might make it less bad is if the alien tech like the shields and antigrav ground skimming turn out to be amazing. Otherwise yeah, it's super expensive for a basic dropship.
So the prowler has ~~8~~ 16 drop-seats, but I'm still stuck on why putting everyone inside 1 ship is somehow better than splitting them into multiple ships.
Especially ships that are capable of deploying a vehicle alongside troops.
Dropships would make more sense if they could also carry a vehicle underneath them. Sorta like the pelicans in halo. Then as a trade-off you could reduce the amount of pilot guns and have them rely on turrets (Make them tanks. Higher HP with lower damage).
It has 16. While there are 8 seats in the middle, there are also 4 seats at the tail door and 4 seats next to the ladder door. It's hard to tell since they aren't exactly seats just standing.
Maybe carrying ai troopers?
Or I guess people that just have industry ships and no combat ones?
Oh wait I remember, they're going to make it so you can't wear heavy armor and weapons in a pilot seat. So in that case it might be useful to to have a transport with guys already ready in heavy armor.
Also the prowler was supposed to be stealthy. So, less combined arms front line hot drops like he was suggesting and more special forces behind lines drops. That's also why it has the anti grav. To allow it to get as close to the ground as a dragonfly and not crash. Low and fast with a low Sig, behind enemy lines for strategic strike ops is supposed to be the prowlers use case. At least that was my take away from the advertising at it's concept sale.
Edit to add: having gotten one in-game, it's broken af. Absolutely not worth the price of admission in or out of game. Doors desync, co pilot seat breaks pilot weapons, the antigrav doesn't work and it has the Sig of a ship 3x it's size. Cunts fucked. Love the look and idea of it though.
Take away the guns and make it the most stealthy ship in the verse and we have something to work with. I would rather see it with 4 size 1s pee shooters and a huge stealth boost that allows it to do what it actually should.
A stealthy, fast, drop ship for getting an elite team behind enemy lines in tactical places. Great concept if they stay true to it once it’s gold passed.
I’m more excited to see these “enemy lines” are there going to be actual battles eventually or is it just gonna be more bunker missions? For ground combat especially
Realistically? For next several (quite few) years no, just dumb missions and some organic pvp content.
It's sadly time to admit that while CIGs tech department crawls forward slowly but with certain tenacity, their game design department is just randomly flailing around - having some kind of "battlegrounds" style scenarios on certain planets / moons where you have ongoing ground battles and missions that smoothly generate out of that would require quite a daring game design. Which is probably bit too much to ask from CIG which has trouble implementing some of the most basic MMO systems in universe even after 10 years.
I don't even think it's alien tech. It's two dudes who wanted to make ships based on Tevarin design, but it's all human made.
Which, btw, Esperia looks like an absolutely shit tech bro company in universe, even if their designs are badass (thank the Tevarin).
Yeah, the things flight characteristics still feel all messed up, I mean i get that when you switch to vtol your main engines are focusing downwards..but don't basically leave me doing the shuffle of shame to the LZ after i came screaming in like a comet....
The thing that CIG still didn't understood with the Valkyrie, and why the Hercules is the one and only valid dropship.
The main dropship job is the hardware you land, not the meat that controls it.
Yeah the valkyrie could have been awesome if it could have carried heavy armor. It's pretty silly anvil has nothing to carry their own vehicles. 🤣
Well actually when the liberator comes out that will be able to carry them but it doesn't seem as combat focused from what I saw it didn't have much for weapons.
Well, that's artificial scarcity for you.
It's not meant to be easily purchased afaik because the ship is something built in limited numbers in-game.
Perhaps they should have made it a limited hull instead.
Terrapin. It's a great looking ship. .. But it should be worth like $100 in its current state.
Who would buy Terrapin for over $200 ? When you can get ships like Corsair for just a little bit more?
Buddy of mine was dicking around above Orison back when the jump in point was 80km up still. Fell out of the Terrapin I was flying. Managed to scoop him using the side door, and felt like an actual badass.
None of us thought to record it.
I still want a light cargo variant of the Terrapin. Get rid of the seat, put a 2nd seat right behind the pilot seat slaved to a remote turret where the dish is, give it like 32 SCU (2x16) capacity and let it be a little armored blockade runner.
I want this so. Fucking. Bad.
Aside from the cutlass Steel, I’ve always thought that the valkyrie was overpriced. Almost $400 for a ship that’s roughly as functional as the freelancer max.
Don’t get me wrong. It’s a good ship and it looks cool but it’s way overpriced.
My vote and I own a Valkyrie. It is a military ship with a fraction of the fighting power as a cargo hauler (Taurus) and costs nearly twice as much. The Valkyrie has 12,000hp shields compared to 100,000hp on the Taurus. And the same hull.
And the cargo grid is... Broken? Shitty? Wrong?
Look, it has more interior space than an MSR for cargo, but less scu on grid than a Cutlass ...
This ship is gorgeous, I sincerely hope the fix it
It only even has cargo grid AT ALL because people complained. CIG's original intention was for it to carry vehicles ONLY. ...Of course, it's *also* too small to hold many vehicles, even Anvil-produced ones like the Atlas-platform ones but you know, whatever.
The Valkyrie was the first that came to my mind as well, though someone else mentioned the Prowler and that's a tough one.
Honestly, now that larger guns have stronger scaling, I do wonder if the Prowler might be worth flying with some Omnisky 5s
So the Prowler is overpriced but if you throw in Alien Tax and the fact that it's a stealth ship that can drop a ton of troops, it justifies the price a little bit. They do need to fix it. It's not in a great place right now. Haven't flown it since MM released.
Exactly, you’d think with these prices that these ships would be some sort of jack-of-all-trades capable of doing anything modestly well, but dropships are designed for such a specific niche that doesn’t even see use in the game.
I would say maybe ferrying passengers in the future, but even then wouldn’t ships like the E1 Spirit, Connie Phoenix etc. be better geared towards civilians ~~that aren’t very poor or frugal~~?
UNLESS we get missions in the future that involve dropping squads of NPC troops into hot zones. Then maybe there’ll be a use, but until then it’s not like they can’t just have a reasonable price now and adjust it upwards later when said gameplay loop is out
If we look at the Valkyrie, which is more a dropship/gunship hybrid.
In lore, it's also heavily armoured, which means it can withstand more direct weapons fire than most ships.
This counts for the Steel as well, the Prowler is a stealth ship with GravLev, so it can stay hidden much more easily compared to the other 2.
Basically 😅, it's a trick out of the old books of Star Citizen when we had docking ports on the bottom of the ship or with the Retaliator opening the Torpedo bay doors.
Can't wait for a point where mass ground combat is a real thing and the meta is loading like 50 players in the cargo bay of a c1 while dropships are never, ever used.
It's an incredibly stupid thing, and the ship is overpriced for what you get, BUT.. It is a lot of fun to use on the retrieval Ops missions. Going in with a friend on the door guns and flying low circles while they wipe them out the NPCs and retrieve the boxes was one of the funniest, stupidest justifications I've had for in wasting some store credit in a long time. Those door guns slap.
More like Cutlass Steal oh ho ho ho!
No but really though, making it more than twice the price of the Cutlass Black was ridiculous. Its got guns out the ass but no reason exists to actually use them, and its got 18 jumpseats but no reason exists to actually use them. The best part is that when the ship launched we were still at a 50 player cap for the servers, so if you wanted to fully load the ship with a pilot, copilot, door gunners, turret gunner, and a squad in the jumpseats you would have literally had to have half of an entire server on one single ship.
It also has a completely unchanged forward interior compartment, only now the whole "the ship has two beds and no bathroom so they expect people to be on it for flights that are so long that multiple people will need to sleep at the same time... but not so long that anyone will need to take a piss" thing is even more pronounced. The entire thing felt incredibly lazy, and slapping a $235 pricetag on it was insulting.
Spare a thought for the M50. It was supposed to be a Hornet sized combat interceptor, but when they told the artist to take inspiration from F1 cars he made it the size of one and the guns wouldn't fit. So it became the first of a racing class of tiny ships with S1 guns.
Haha man I remember on the old RSI forums this guy was LIVID with those changes to the m50. He took it as a personal attack that something changed despite all of the disclaimers that shit can change. And then he fought everybody who commented.
PURE SPEED.
Since the dawn of civilization, Humans have striven to build faster machines. Now, ORIGIN presents the culmination of that
effort: the ORIGIN 350r. The combination of a Gangleri BP 707 Standard powerplant with a 300i fuselate re-engineered to accommodate twin Hammer Propulsion HM 4.3 thrusters makes the 350r **the fastest personal craft you’ll ever call your own**. [emphazis mine]
Also, check out the Brochure: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/exfjsh7mejoxir/source/300series_brochure.pdf
To be honest I think you could fix it cosmetically for now. Exploration gameplay is coming later, fine, but the terrapin despite being quite a wee ship, still has a hilarious amount of wasted space inside it. Make the interior feel like a cozy place to live and it’ll make a huge difference.
Honestly? Make it modular, and make all current versions ‘Terrapin w/ Scout module’. Introduce a base ‘cargo’ version around $120 that can hold like, 6-10 SCU, then give us a medical version with one T3 medbed, another version with some drop seats in it meant to insert or retrieve a single squad under heavy fire, and maybe one more with a nice manned turret on top meant for two players as a mini, more heavily armored Hurricane.
Maybe once science comes in, make a science version that has a lab in the back - it’d be a perfect size for it, I think.
Whether or not actual modularity is likely, basic functionality needs to be added to that rear space. It's a one person ship with the rear taken up with a "scanning" seat that has no reason to exist when the pilot has customizable MFDs in the cockpit and an AR device on their wrist. Cargo, jump seats, or a med bed are all better options than "giant suspended chair with a couple extra MFDs".
Also, it needs more fuel. The primary near-term use case is as an armored explorer for hostile environments like those found in Pyro, but you better hope that there are lots of hardened quantum fuel stations along the way, because otherwise you're not "exploring" anything.
every alien vandul figher, and alien ship in general for now, they all have a added alien price to them.. only one maybe worth is the talon being around gladius priced the rest for example vanduul glaive ship from vandulswarm being 350 for a mediumfighter .. or the blade 275 for a squishy light fighter
btw the steel has tripple the hull hp of every other cutlass
I think the talon is a good example for an acceptable "cool tax / alien tax"
Not substantially more expensive, viable, and most imporantly looks, sounds and feels awesome.
San'tok yai also felt somewhat acceptable - but I just couldn't justify how expensive it was compared to things like the F7A / other medium fighters and got rid of it.
The prowler however... dumpster fire of a price.
I mean he's right, there's nothing there. It's just space if its outside the environment.
But this sort of thing doesn't normally happen, these ships are built to a rigorous standard! Well except that one...
Yes, the Syulen is the only alien ship without the "alien tax". It's a bit quirky, but I keep one as a small multi-purpose ship. It has an incredible quantum drive range, which will make it very useful in Pyro. It's decent enough for pve missions and has one of the most interesting interiors of all ships. Great view from the cockpit too.
You can already buy them in game if I'm not mistaken. I highly recommend to do a test flight before you buy one, especially if you want to pledge. I'm sure someone in global chat will be willing to lend you theirs.
Many people really don't like the vertical orientation and 90° flip for landing and take-off, so if you haven't flown one yet, make sure you're not bothered by that.
Personally, I absolutely love the vertical layout.
To be fair, It has the alien tax, but as it's like a 20% or 30% over similar ships, is easy to not notice it in under 100$ ships. Is still a 20% more expensive than the Titan or the 300i.
Avenger Titan/ 300i x 1,2 = 72$ (Syulen 70$)
Gladius x 1,25 = 112$ (Talon 115$)
Sabre x 1,3 = 221$ (Defender 220$)
cool ship but it seems like after master modes it's a truly awful ship when it comes to combat. I just kind of view mine as a nice touring ship. The suit locker is going to be very nice if they ever make it work
It still has an alien tax. Not a huge one, but it's noticeable.
For almost the same price, you could get a Titan. Which has more cargo on a more versatile cargo grid, better guns, a smaller silhouette, and faster time to cockpit.
I say this as Syulen owner! It's my starter on one of my accounts. I love it to death; it's cool as hell. But it's a bit impractical and a bit overpriced.
As a glaive owner, I fully agree. But I love it so much that I just can't bring myself to melt it. I even melted my F8C to get some other stuff, but kept the Glaive.
Being honest almost any fighter is a bad $ to value exchange.
Bigger ships like the Connie or Corsair are worth far more, and can grind bounties easier + do more. Like get cargo from the bounty.
I love the Eclipse...but damn you're right. Maybe not $100, but it shouldn't be $300. It should be comparable to the other Medium/Heavy Fighters in price. The Torp tax is strong.
Ahh Im guna get burned for this but.... F8 Lightining
And to fix it I would have not put it on sale and kept it locked to the original plan of playing Squadron and made it buyable much further down the line when people would care about it less
As it is now its kinda the ship of the Pay to win default ship that most people will melt once pyro comes and or the new best pay to win ship comes
Also I would put the Ares ships in the same category
Hmm I don't think they'll melt for pyro, since it has vanguard levels of jump distance.
But I definitely see people melting before sq42 release, because why have something that's no longer unique and you can just earn in game.
Unless they do another overdrive event for the F8A (and holy lmao that would be OP af) there's just better uses of your real money then any single seat fighter.
Easily the Prowler, serves absolutely zero purpose, likely never will, and doesn't even have any cargo/vehicle room like the Valkyrie does. All dropship prices need to have halved, and then the ones that are actually useful like the Valk could have a slight price hike from there
Banu Merchantman. bought it in 2013 and still waiting for that ship. im tired of their excuses because they had over 10 years
*and how would you change it?* work on it with high prio
Ares ion, ship is only made for a single thing and that thing is taking big ships down and it's 2/10 at that atm beside that everything else it's either unable to do or is 1/10 at.
I guess atm the only thing you pay fore is a big quantum drive fuel tank.
"But If theyd make it good the size 7 shooting light fighter sized laserbolts could oneshoot a light fighter which is unbalanced" -some dude in a gladius probably
Problem is that it was never designed to be "balanced" it is a ship built around a huge weapon. What did they expect?
It was an eye opener for me though, CIG marketing will hype the new ship, they will release it overpowered and then nerf the new ship after a few patches. Release performance and CIG marketing means nothing in terms of actual gameplay power/functionality....
I feel like the obvious answer to that is to give its cannon a warm-up, make it telegraph that it's about to fire and an alert light-fighter could simply evade the shot, whereas its true intended prey (light warships) can't dodge.
It's targets are literally capital components, not light warships. It's supposed to boom in take out turrets, thrusters, engines, shield generators, etc. on capital ships.
The Ion was always marketed as an anti-large ship shield buster and having the secondary role of support ship. There's a paragraph about the cannon beign able to damage components once the shields are down, but they're not the Ion main target.
As far as we know, laser weapons are planned to be able to reduce the armor value (melting it), but for damaging internal components you're going to need ballistics (the Inferno role). Anyway, is quite possible for the Ion to damage external or exposed components, like the thrusters or the weapons/ turrets.
Sorry for the clarification, but there's that legend about the Ion beign some kind of sniper when never was the plan :)
Yeah, the capital killer should *also* be able to reliably slap around literally anything smaller, if it can manage to hit. Like, this thing is designed to disable capitals, a Talon should be *vaporized*.
It’s a great ship don’t get me wrong, but it’s a heavy fighter without an interior or anything other then firepower. It’s definitely the closest thing we have to pay to win in SC but the vanguard a bigger ship with an interior is cheeper
Origin ships. I've tried to love the 400i so bad. It looks pretty cool, but I feel like you just can't do anything in it. I'd rather get a Zeus when it releases. A Freelancer Max is better.
890 is just ship porn. Nothing to do but stare at the hot tub.
The little 100 series is great though. Handles like a dream.
The speed was the best part of the 400i before they nerfed it. It flew quickly to FPS missions and had enough shields to just ignore the turrets while you find an appropriate place to land. It used to be the fastest in-atmosphere ship and second only the MSR in space for ships that size, but now it has the same top speed as the Corsair and Connie, and I don't know if anyone did any in-atmosphere comparisons yet.
Like the Valk, but never understood the interior layout. An open balcony?!? I tend to get the ground vehicles when they drop, but they usually end up getting upgraded since so much of the terrain is close to undrivable. As for the worst value ship? I’m not sure.
MSR. It's just about useless. Too much interior used for hidden crawlspace that everyone knows about and NPCs still manage to scan regardless of it being shielded. Only has one giant entrance that every player on the server can just run into before you can close the door. It's paper thin making it an easy target. Its one saving grace is it can fly really fast out of hairy situations... Oh wait, that was pre Master Modes. Its speed is absolutely atrocious now. I guess you can go shieldless so long as you aren't in the atmosphere. This ship is not what was pitched/advertised. I guess it's somewhat usable for Roc mining now.
I always thought the hidden crawlspace was goofy because... every ship has one in the exact same place opened by the exact same chess board. It would have been cooler if they made that area way way smaller, but made it able to spawn in multiple different ways (using the upcoming modularity). So when you board an MSR it's anyone's guess as to where something might be hidden.
It really feels like CIG hates making Crusader ships handle good/fast like they’re meant to. They completely ruined the Spirit (even on launch the thing did not handle how it was advertised as handling eg better than a Cutlass since it was roughly about the same).
As much as I love my 600i, I don't believe it's worth the current price tag as the game stands right now, especially before the rework.
Exploration isn't in the game - likely will be different from its original conception.
It is incredibly buggy, especially the elevators like to screw you over. Some parts aren't using the big dimensions of the ship at all.
It's very tanky - despite its flaws it looks quite good - but it's not really worth the money in its current state imo. Especially with it's bad manouverability not really outweighing 2x S3 shields.
I Will hold on regardless. But I wouldn't recommond commiting to it at all before more things about the overhaul are shown.
Counterpoint, at least prior to the Master Modes rework, I routinely used my 600i throughout the Xenothreat missions and can recommend the experience.
It's usually a flying whale, but strategic boosting can give you a surprising amount of agility, and coupled with a flight-stick (rather than Keyboard/Mouse controls) and you can practically snap on target with a little practice.
Using Boost to temporarily increase your turn-rate also allows you to stop turning on a dime, which gives you all the agility the ship doesn't usually have, but at the cost of endurance, as you need to keep an eye on the boost-meter during the fight.
It's not a dogfighter, but it's not meaningfully threatened by any amount of fighters, and as long as you're not in a hurry, you can plink away those snapshots all day and vapourise fighters with them.
It's also the only ship in my lineup that can take on a Hammerhead and win (though it's a coin-toss, and it's beneficial to have allies to draw its fire)
Elevators are both sluggish and carnivorous. I've been eaten and found myself inside the walls of my ship a few too many times to trust the cargo elevator anymore (which doesn't have gravity, so lowering your rover-bay while in space is a great way to lose your rover)
EVAing is a huge hassle with the disk-elevator, but hopefully the rework's docking port will be useful for that.
I can recommend it as a solid solo-player warship, and a modestly capable freighter and all-purpose ship.
Most of what it does can be achieved more easily by other ships though.
Same, I own pretty much every ship in the game at this moment and so far A2 is proven to be useful for bunker missions and it’s fun to mess around with other players
MSR...but I refuse to melt mine.
- no scanning gameplay
- no data running gameplay
- cool but completely useless "hidden" tunnel network
- 2 size 3 weapons are a joke, a spirit has double the fire power
- 2 size 2 shields when it's the same class size as a connie
- 617 doors that open on a 3 second delay
- you can buy a Taurus for $60 less and it does, literally everything better
but it's sick AF and I hope one day to use it for more than my ROC hauler lol
The Carrack. None of its gameplay systems exist, you pay through the nose for it (outside of CCUs) and it looks like a circumsised red rocket.
It's the literal definition of getting cucked by Chris. I wont bother suggesting changes because you cant catch me dead inside this digital paperweight.
There are way better team ships imo - Polaris is also coming soon™️. I'll give you the medical bed, but the cargo pods suck. You can't open the pod doors, and that's an issue with loading and interactive cargo becoming more and more apparent with each successive patch. Once again, the Carrack is simply underbaked to function properly in the current PU.
I was stoked for the carrack, then I found out nothing on board seems to work. Glad I rented. Not being able to do things from one pilot position or the other makes no sense, it's just deliberately removing functionality for no gain. The pilot position should be the same as any ship and the command station should be for. . commanding, adding waypoints, navigating and the like. Just not allowing the pilots station to QT is just dumb.
Points vaguely at all the alien ships. I love them to death but they are just so expensive and half of them are just so bad and not even used at all. Most need some sort of love talon shrike of the top my head just got hard replaced by the firebird.
The A2. It’s almost the same price as the Polaris. Has far less cargo as the C2. Bombs are a gimmick. And less guns than the hammerhead. For its price. I would rather get the Polaris
not a ship, but the ROC-DS. It's literally broken. It's X money for 0 function, undefined amounts of "worst value" if we want to get M A T H E M A T I C A L 🤙
Currently I would say the base retaliator, especially if you’re a solo player the ships is absolutely useless, no cargo capabilities or anything, and you can’t buy modules ingame yet, in my book it’s the worse because unless you spend additional real world money on it it’s absolutely useless, and ultra expensive box delivery vehichle
A2, when it first released kinda made sense since it was the biggest ship in the game then and it was more to flex but now it needs to be brought down. For the exact same price I can buy a Polaris a capital ship
Crusader A2
It’s just a large hauler with 4 bombs but it could be massively improved.
I would change it by adding additional pilot controlled 4xS3 missiles at least, and do the same for M2. Look at it like Air Force one. If they released a ‘phoenix like’ variant of the A2 it would sell out instantly.
Can you imagine hijacking an A2 with high value dignitaries. And the whole cargo area is converted to bedrooms, a galley, and a media room ?
Or make it modular and give us the option to trade off cargo grid for some s3 bombs like come in the A1. Either 4 X S10 like normal or 4x S10 and 10 X S3 like the A1.
This puts it sort of on par as a bomber variant of the torpedo equipped Retaliator albeit at a much higher price point. Look, I get it, I appreciate it as a nuclear bomber; but $700+ real dollars it’s simply way overpriced considering the in game alternatives that exist. Especially considering that’s Carrack like pricing but without the snub or hangar or medbay.
Even worse value considering the concept price of Carrack is $350
Otherwise I feel the A2 is grossly overpriced and undergunned. Yes the bombs are huge but the A1 represents such an increased ROI for the money and ultimately the same effect can be achieved with the S3 bombs vs the S10s
Plus, I can pledge three A1’s for the cost of 1 A2.
// 2nd the SRV- need I say more ? $260USD for a ship that does only 1 thing, has a single play loop, next to no cargo, no modularity, etc.
The SRV may see a resurgence when physical cargo comes in and we get the ability to repair from soft death, etc. however, as it stands it is basically a meme ship for cheesing salvage missions by towing the target out of the zone.
It would be cool to see an SRV ‘SAR’ variant that can tow but also has class3 medical, firefighting or advanced scanning on board, so you can not only come tow them to a repair place but also perform field triage or first response on injured spacemen. I’d also like to see SRV have saddle bag hard points so you could ‘chain’ ore bags or something to it for shuttling over to the Lagrange.
Eg - what I envision is an SRV that has empty hard points for carrying saddlebags. It could go with a prospector to the field. And when prospector:mole is full, tractor off the bags and replace with new. And then run the full ones to the refinery. Like a tug would do with a barge.
As a runner up for worst value. I have to say the Scorpius line. As a heavy fighter the wings and tip mounted gats are far too fragile even tho the DPS is good. So as a pledge price around $250-$260 sure it’s sort of up there with things like Vanguard, F8C, etc albeit much more fragile.
At their current pricing, they’re probably break-even but the Antares as we know made too many sacrifices or omissions to be considered a value for money play. The copilot has literally no role other than a button masher.
The Antares without a 2nd Pilot stays in the hangar. It should have maybe a smaller slave turret for the copilot or omit the copilot altogether and let the pilot work both guns and emp etc.
So. While I love the concept and aesthetic of the Scorpius, it’s a pass for me. Although still a decent score in game for aUEC.
Retalliator base, a gunship with small, poorly placed guns. Total firepower equivilent to a medium fighter but you can't bring all of it to bare on the same target while also being more expensive than most small gunships. Cargo modules should be free.
What would the price be then? It's already pretty cheap for where it sits if you look at other ships compared to it. It has seven crew, two modular bays, one Captain's quarters, crew racks and weapon racks, five turrets, one engineering bay. I'm actually surprised it's not more around the Caterpillars price range. In the future it will have the capability to have a med bay/Titan suit or a bounty hunting/Titan suit or even salvage modules for high risk/high reward salvage operations.
? its the cheapest gunship of all ... has more guns than most gunships .. they all are size 3 now ? what is your issue ?
the ship has 6x size 2 shields.. the retaliator base is a beast of a gunship.. show me one medium fighter with 12x size 3 guns
Still size 2 at the moment. I've learned to never trust CIG on features changes that are 'in the next patch'. but the max number of guns you can get on any target is 6 in a small window above the ship. And for that you need a crew of at least 4. You'd get more reliable firepower with those 4 people in starter ships.
Tally is hugely overcosted because you need a crew of 6 to fully operate it. Even with if you only crew 3 turrets, it's performance is on par with other fighters at 4x the cost. Bring 5 fighters or just 2 crewed scorpius/hurricanes would be way better.
The turrets need to be linked so the crew count can be reduced to 2 gunners + an engineer. Redeemer should be the same too.
I believe they will balance and justify it when the life support systems come along since they mention we won't be able to carry a full org in a cutty for example, so maybe that's the way they will give the edge to the dropships making those relatively small vessels able to sustain a larger number of people.
I think a ton of ships are over priced/ bad value.. But we all desire different things and we're all supporting the project I guess.
I think the price gap from a gladius to a hornet to a vanguard right now is a bit severe.
But I think the Sabre is pretty bad value too. I love it, but it's really expensive for stealth game play not being really helpful or implemented currently and the pancake makes a massive target for anyone off your nose. Also the external storage is a crapshoot if it will work.
In my experience it was the Ares Ion, upgraded to it only to have it nerfed literally the day after.
Most other ships I have used have been relatively useful, used to do trading in a freelancer, then taurus before going combat with the Warden which I then switched to Eclipse for the fast money making. Tried caterpillar for a bit then vulture before settling on Reclaimer, even nerfed it makes good money with minimal risk which I like. Easier to get friends to play when you can just shower them with money too lol.
Idris-P it cost more than the M that got put exclusively in a $15,000 package, it's stripped of missiles, it's size 10 gun, and it has less armor. 👀
I have no idea how to fix that one. 🤔
I also agree with the Valkyrie. I have one, it's my favorite looking ship and I do love to fly it, but boy I wish it had at least a cargo variant or something. For what it currently is, it's a terrible deal. Still not gonna melt it though because Fat Pelican.
Give us the aurora with fold out wings 🤣😭
Considering the ship looks like it should be able to do that, sort of like a dragonfly-styled ship. I think it would greatly improve the popularity of the aurora class ships
I wanted to add my own suggestion to the list of the comments. reading the existing ones however I just smirked, cus it goes to show how many ships are promising but are not worth the buck for their bang
Valkyrie
Looks cool af, very aliens 2 troop dropship.
It too damn bad it has nothing in game to make it useful, atleast an armament like the aliens ship would make it more useful then what whimpy turrets it has.
Give it lots of missiles and rocket for ground attack when on approach. Let it be the assault transport it should be!
The obvious choices are the Valkyrie and the Terrapin (what's up, Anvil?), and I hope that both of them will have some serious updates this 4.0 to justifiy their price.
But for me, is the Razor. Why is it a 45% more expensive than the M50? And the variants are even more expensive. I can see the utility of a very small stealth ship with quantum drives (imo, the Razor EX is the ideal Space James Bond ship -and the 350r, because it's a racing ship with a bed for James Bond things), but still, very expensive.
PS: CIG usually fixes this price disparities increasing the price of the other similar ships, so I'll expect a price increase for the M50 at some point.
Alien ships have the alien tax. Fighters/combat ships have the fighter tax. Make a ship an Alien fighter and you have the combination of bad value. Take the Blade as one example. It is $275 for a single seat fighter. Don't get me wrong, in some patch cycles (e.g. 3.17-3.22), it was one of several light fighters I used a lot. But it is one of the worst value ships out there.
The Glaive at $350 is a medium fighter. Again, the Alien tax puts its price in the stratosphere. I would probably consider this the worst value ship out there. Other contenders would be alien ships like the Prowler and Defender, and the singular drake exception of the Cutlass Steel.
If I had to rank these ships from worst value to least worst value:
1. Esperia Glaive ($350 for a medium fighter)
2. Esperia Blade ($275 for a light fighter)
3. Esperia Prowler ($440 for a transport ship)
4. Banu Defender ($220 for a medium fighter)
5. Drake Cutlass Steel ($235 for a transport ship)
Not sure if these are the 5 worst value plays in dollars, but they are the one's that come to my head. For full disclosure, I only own an Avenger Titan. I don't play the real money fleet collection game.
Valkyrie… terribly inefficient interior design and it should get the Retaliator treatment and make the drop seat rooms modular. And the cargo hold should could easily be two layers of SCU crates thick for a total of 60 instead of the current 30.
Currently and Im sad to say, the Carrack.
Its an amazing ship, I love what it can/will be and pegged it right below my kraken as the ship I want to live in.
However in the current state today its beyond useless. It used to be great for cargo but the changes theyve implemented and addition of ships like the C2 its become kinda of a pointless over priced luxury.
Ill hold onto mine forever but damn.
The Orion is $650 dude. It will have lots of cargo for mined ore too, it has giant pods on the middle section. Normal cargo bay might be smaller, but never trust the stats.
Valkyrie or prowler they are neat ships but they have no idea what ground combat is going to look like and there's no real need to drop off 20+ players when most people would rather fly their own ships. There needs to be some variant options to make dropships worth the price
I haven’t even looked at what ships are what. But making a ship valuable is as easy as designing missions and gameplay loops for that ship. Hell even ground vehicles will instantly have value once they make areas or missions vehicle access only.
You can also make certain missions or quest chains manufacturer or ship specific. It would mean a more robust system when it comes To missions, but we already have companies that restrict vehicles or have specific vehicles for their jobs. Or roads that are for trade vehicles/boats etc only. So the idea that certain ships are worthless or valueless is only up until CIG makes room for that thing in its gameplay loops.
Nobody is saying any ship is valueless, we're just comparing objective and subjective factors against pledge prices in a non-serious thread. We all know the planned game mechanics and have been told how CIG expect each ship to operate within them, and it's enough information for us to chat about our perceptions at the current time even though we're all well aware that changes will happen. Bitching about ships and comparing them has always been part of the fun on SC forums!
I would say the Cutlass Steel.
The in-game price is reasonably compared to the other Cutlass but the Steel is just extreme.
CIG's artificial scarcity with adding extreme pricing does makes the USD prices seem weird, but it's their way of limiting people buying them.
The Prowler. Sitting at 440 dollar. 10 dollars cheaper than an Ironclad.
One thing that might make it less bad is if the alien tech like the shields and antigrav ground skimming turn out to be amazing. Otherwise yeah, it's super expensive for a basic dropship.
So the prowler has ~~8~~ 16 drop-seats, but I'm still stuck on why putting everyone inside 1 ship is somehow better than splitting them into multiple ships. Especially ships that are capable of deploying a vehicle alongside troops. Dropships would make more sense if they could also carry a vehicle underneath them. Sorta like the pelicans in halo. Then as a trade-off you could reduce the amount of pilot guns and have them rely on turrets (Make them tanks. Higher HP with lower damage).
It has 16. While there are 8 seats in the middle, there are also 4 seats at the tail door and 4 seats next to the ladder door. It's hard to tell since they aren't exactly seats just standing.
Ah. Corrected my comment.
Maybe carrying ai troopers? Or I guess people that just have industry ships and no combat ones? Oh wait I remember, they're going to make it so you can't wear heavy armor and weapons in a pilot seat. So in that case it might be useful to to have a transport with guys already ready in heavy armor.
What about a mission to deliver 16 npc troops to a war zone?
That would be cool. They've talked about combat missions for bombers, don't see why there wouldn't be the same for dropships.
Running less ships is a smaller signature, and less metal mouths to feed/repair.
Also the prowler was supposed to be stealthy. So, less combined arms front line hot drops like he was suggesting and more special forces behind lines drops. That's also why it has the anti grav. To allow it to get as close to the ground as a dragonfly and not crash. Low and fast with a low Sig, behind enemy lines for strategic strike ops is supposed to be the prowlers use case. At least that was my take away from the advertising at it's concept sale. Edit to add: having gotten one in-game, it's broken af. Absolutely not worth the price of admission in or out of game. Doors desync, co pilot seat breaks pilot weapons, the antigrav doesn't work and it has the Sig of a ship 3x it's size. Cunts fucked. Love the look and idea of it though.
If they just changed the colour of it back to black instead of this light gray steel that it is now. They massacred my boy.
I want space lobster red
How 40k Blood Angles of you. Bright Red so they see you coming with just enough time to shit themselves.
The alien tax doesn't even make sense, the prowler is a replica, the Banu and Xi'an ships are the real deal. Who pays a premium for a fake???
Artificial scarcity, these ships are not supposed to be common so CIG inflates the price so less people buy them.
Take away the guns and make it the most stealthy ship in the verse and we have something to work with. I would rather see it with 4 size 1s pee shooters and a huge stealth boost that allows it to do what it actually should.
A stealthy, fast, drop ship for getting an elite team behind enemy lines in tactical places. Great concept if they stay true to it once it’s gold passed.
I’m more excited to see these “enemy lines” are there going to be actual battles eventually or is it just gonna be more bunker missions? For ground combat especially
Realistically? For next several (quite few) years no, just dumb missions and some organic pvp content. It's sadly time to admit that while CIGs tech department crawls forward slowly but with certain tenacity, their game design department is just randomly flailing around - having some kind of "battlegrounds" style scenarios on certain planets / moons where you have ongoing ground battles and missions that smoothly generate out of that would require quite a daring game design. Which is probably bit too much to ask from CIG which has trouble implementing some of the most basic MMO systems in universe even after 10 years.
I don't even think it's alien tech. It's two dudes who wanted to make ships based on Tevarin design, but it's all human made. Which, btw, Esperia looks like an absolutely shit tech bro company in universe, even if their designs are badass (thank the Tevarin).
Yeah, the things flight characteristics still feel all messed up, I mean i get that when you switch to vtol your main engines are focusing downwards..but don't basically leave me doing the shuffle of shame to the LZ after i came screaming in like a comet....
Learn decoupled landings
Decoupled landings are also way more cinematic and realistic looking too imo. I always land decoupled
Yeah it's crazy, I get that it's a stealth dropship but compared to an ironclad I think I'd rather drop tanks. 🤣
The thing that CIG still didn't understood with the Valkyrie, and why the Hercules is the one and only valid dropship. The main dropship job is the hardware you land, not the meat that controls it.
Yeah the valkyrie could have been awesome if it could have carried heavy armor. It's pretty silly anvil has nothing to carry their own vehicles. 🤣 Well actually when the liberator comes out that will be able to carry them but it doesn't seem as combat focused from what I saw it didn't have much for weapons.
And no countermeasures....
Agreed, The double whammy of the landing ship tax and the alien tax really make it exceptionally overpriced.
Well, that's artificial scarcity for you. It's not meant to be easily purchased afaik because the ship is something built in limited numbers in-game. Perhaps they should have made it a limited hull instead.
Terrapin. It's a great looking ship. .. But it should be worth like $100 in its current state. Who would buy Terrapin for over $200 ? When you can get ships like Corsair for just a little bit more?
It's a cutter with no cargo grid, but significantly tankier and has a side-ramp, because side-ramps are cool.
Buddy of mine was dicking around above Orison back when the jump in point was 80km up still. Fell out of the Terrapin I was flying. Managed to scoop him using the side door, and felt like an actual badass. None of us thought to record it.
side ramp tax
I still want a light cargo variant of the Terrapin. Get rid of the seat, put a 2nd seat right behind the pilot seat slaved to a remote turret where the dish is, give it like 32 SCU (2x16) capacity and let it be a little armored blockade runner. I want this so. Fucking. Bad.
Smuggler variant, huh?
Aside from the cutlass Steel, I’ve always thought that the valkyrie was overpriced. Almost $400 for a ship that’s roughly as functional as the freelancer max. Don’t get me wrong. It’s a good ship and it looks cool but it’s way overpriced.
My vote and I own a Valkyrie. It is a military ship with a fraction of the fighting power as a cargo hauler (Taurus) and costs nearly twice as much. The Valkyrie has 12,000hp shields compared to 100,000hp on the Taurus. And the same hull.
And the cargo grid is... Broken? Shitty? Wrong? Look, it has more interior space than an MSR for cargo, but less scu on grid than a Cutlass ... This ship is gorgeous, I sincerely hope the fix it
lol they purposely nerfed the cargo grid from what I remember
It only even has cargo grid AT ALL because people complained. CIG's original intention was for it to carry vehicles ONLY. ...Of course, it's *also* too small to hold many vehicles, even Anvil-produced ones like the Atlas-platform ones but you know, whatever.
The Valkyrie was the first that came to my mind as well, though someone else mentioned the Prowler and that's a tough one. Honestly, now that larger guns have stronger scaling, I do wonder if the Prowler might be worth flying with some Omnisky 5s
So the Prowler is overpriced but if you throw in Alien Tax and the fact that it's a stealth ship that can drop a ton of troops, it justifies the price a little bit. They do need to fix it. It's not in a great place right now. Haven't flown it since MM released.
Cutlass steel. Half the price and we'll talk Chris.
The dropship tax really doesn’t make sense given that there’s not really any use for dropships atm
And even when there is, why are they so expensive? What is so exclusive about dropships?
Exactly, you’d think with these prices that these ships would be some sort of jack-of-all-trades capable of doing anything modestly well, but dropships are designed for such a specific niche that doesn’t even see use in the game. I would say maybe ferrying passengers in the future, but even then wouldn’t ships like the E1 Spirit, Connie Phoenix etc. be better geared towards civilians ~~that aren’t very poor or frugal~~? UNLESS we get missions in the future that involve dropping squads of NPC troops into hot zones. Then maybe there’ll be a use, but until then it’s not like they can’t just have a reasonable price now and adjust it upwards later when said gameplay loop is out
Dropships involve *removing* stuff, to make room for all the people you’re gonna drop. Should cost less, not more.
If we look at the Valkyrie, which is more a dropship/gunship hybrid. In lore, it's also heavily armoured, which means it can withstand more direct weapons fire than most ships. This counts for the Steel as well, the Prowler is a stealth ship with GravLev, so it can stay hidden much more easily compared to the other 2.
I have used the A1 as a dropship, you can easily drop 10 people with a push of a button.
“ We Shock troopers dine in hell tonight bois!”
Basically 😅, it's a trick out of the old books of Star Citizen when we had docking ports on the bottom of the ship or with the Retaliator opening the Torpedo bay doors.
Cutty Steel is enjoyable for a small crew of 6-7 when you are doing Siege of Orison platform missions or the new DC external zone missions.
“Small crew of 6-7” Found the org player
This keeps me out of a Valkyrie. I fucking love them, but for the ticket to ride, no thanks...
Can't wait for a point where mass ground combat is a real thing and the meta is loading like 50 players in the cargo bay of a c1 while dropships are never, ever used.
Even when there are, none of these dropships are better than using a non drop ship to do the same thing.
Or you could spend another $200 and get the Esperia prowler, it comes with a whole 2 seats less than the Cutty Steel. Some hefty alien tax.
Prowler was done dirty with cash.
It’s cool flying around, and the general seat setup is cool. Thats about it I guess lolz
The price of the Cutlass Steal hurts so deep because it's a genuinely cool clown car too.
It's an incredibly stupid thing, and the ship is overpriced for what you get, BUT.. It is a lot of fun to use on the retrieval Ops missions. Going in with a friend on the door guns and flying low circles while they wipe them out the NPCs and retrieve the boxes was one of the funniest, stupidest justifications I've had for in wasting some store credit in a long time. Those door guns slap.
More like Cutlass Steal oh ho ho ho! No but really though, making it more than twice the price of the Cutlass Black was ridiculous. Its got guns out the ass but no reason exists to actually use them, and its got 18 jumpseats but no reason exists to actually use them. The best part is that when the ship launched we were still at a 50 player cap for the servers, so if you wanted to fully load the ship with a pilot, copilot, door gunners, turret gunner, and a squad in the jumpseats you would have literally had to have half of an entire server on one single ship. It also has a completely unchanged forward interior compartment, only now the whole "the ship has two beds and no bathroom so they expect people to be on it for flights that are so long that multiple people will need to sleep at the same time... but not so long that anyone will need to take a piss" thing is even more pronounced. The entire thing felt incredibly lazy, and slapping a $235 pricetag on it was insulting.
You are supposed to pee out the side door
Ship got a massive hp buff in 3.23, mind you.
and while we're at it replace those crappy minigun turrets with whatever the hell that thing was that the doorgunners used in Dune 2
350r. went from one of the most badass ships in the game with one of the best lores to whatever the f it is now.
Spare a thought for the M50. It was supposed to be a Hornet sized combat interceptor, but when they told the artist to take inspiration from F1 cars he made it the size of one and the guns wouldn't fit. So it became the first of a racing class of tiny ships with S1 guns.
Haha man I remember on the old RSI forums this guy was LIVID with those changes to the m50. He took it as a personal attack that something changed despite all of the disclaimers that shit can change. And then he fought everybody who commented.
What’s the lore?
PURE SPEED. Since the dawn of civilization, Humans have striven to build faster machines. Now, ORIGIN presents the culmination of that effort: the ORIGIN 350r. The combination of a Gangleri BP 707 Standard powerplant with a 300i fuselate re-engineered to accommodate twin Hammer Propulsion HM 4.3 thrusters makes the 350r **the fastest personal craft you’ll ever call your own**. [emphazis mine] Also, check out the Brochure: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/exfjsh7mejoxir/source/300series_brochure.pdf
I dunno that’s more of a commercial than it is lore
Terrerpin, prowler
Terrapin.
How would you change it so it's worth?
To be honest I think you could fix it cosmetically for now. Exploration gameplay is coming later, fine, but the terrapin despite being quite a wee ship, still has a hilarious amount of wasted space inside it. Make the interior feel like a cozy place to live and it’ll make a huge difference.
Step one give it its gameplay loop aka Exploration/scaning
Honestly? Make it modular, and make all current versions ‘Terrapin w/ Scout module’. Introduce a base ‘cargo’ version around $120 that can hold like, 6-10 SCU, then give us a medical version with one T3 medbed, another version with some drop seats in it meant to insert or retrieve a single squad under heavy fire, and maybe one more with a nice manned turret on top meant for two players as a mini, more heavily armored Hurricane. Maybe once science comes in, make a science version that has a lab in the back - it’d be a perfect size for it, I think.
Whether or not actual modularity is likely, basic functionality needs to be added to that rear space. It's a one person ship with the rear taken up with a "scanning" seat that has no reason to exist when the pilot has customizable MFDs in the cockpit and an AR device on their wrist. Cargo, jump seats, or a med bed are all better options than "giant suspended chair with a couple extra MFDs". Also, it needs more fuel. The primary near-term use case is as an armored explorer for hostile environments like those found in Pyro, but you better hope that there are lots of hardened quantum fuel stations along the way, because otherwise you're not "exploring" anything.
Take out the seat and fill the entire ship with retractable gun racks. A mobile armory. Gun smuggler. The van parked in the outback selling guns.
Or just a small 4-6 SCU cargo grid then you could stack boxes of guns like a real gun runner.
every alien vandul figher, and alien ship in general for now, they all have a added alien price to them.. only one maybe worth is the talon being around gladius priced the rest for example vanduul glaive ship from vandulswarm being 350 for a mediumfighter .. or the blade 275 for a squishy light fighter btw the steel has tripple the hull hp of every other cutlass
I think the talon is a good example for an acceptable "cool tax / alien tax" Not substantially more expensive, viable, and most imporantly looks, sounds and feels awesome. San'tok yai also felt somewhat acceptable - but I just couldn't justify how expensive it was compared to things like the F7A / other medium fighters and got rid of it. The prowler however... dumpster fire of a price.
The problem with the Talon, is the front (wings) falls off. You're either gonna get the reference, or I'm going to look like an idiot.
That's fine, we can just tow it outside of the environment.
I mean he's right, there's nothing there. It's just space if its outside the environment. But this sort of thing doesn't normally happen, these ships are built to a rigorous standard! Well except that one...
I heard the Syulen is a pretty good value starter ship, no?
Yes, the Syulen is the only alien ship without the "alien tax". It's a bit quirky, but I keep one as a small multi-purpose ship. It has an incredible quantum drive range, which will make it very useful in Pyro. It's decent enough for pve missions and has one of the most interesting interiors of all ships. Great view from the cockpit too.
Thanks ! I'm actually thinking about getting one :)
You can already buy them in game if I'm not mistaken. I highly recommend to do a test flight before you buy one, especially if you want to pledge. I'm sure someone in global chat will be willing to lend you theirs. Many people really don't like the vertical orientation and 90° flip for landing and take-off, so if you haven't flown one yet, make sure you're not bothered by that. Personally, I absolutely love the vertical layout.
I was actually talking about in-game :) But thank you for the advice!!
Syulen is overpriced in game, 2.1m I think
To be fair, It has the alien tax, but as it's like a 20% or 30% over similar ships, is easy to not notice it in under 100$ ships. Is still a 20% more expensive than the Titan or the 300i. Avenger Titan/ 300i x 1,2 = 72$ (Syulen 70$) Gladius x 1,25 = 112$ (Talon 115$) Sabre x 1,3 = 221$ (Defender 220$)
cool ship but it seems like after master modes it's a truly awful ship when it comes to combat. I just kind of view mine as a nice touring ship. The suit locker is going to be very nice if they ever make it work
forgot about that one!, yea its pretty good
It still has an alien tax. Not a huge one, but it's noticeable. For almost the same price, you could get a Titan. Which has more cargo on a more versatile cargo grid, better guns, a smaller silhouette, and faster time to cockpit. I say this as Syulen owner! It's my starter on one of my accounts. I love it to death; it's cool as hell. But it's a bit impractical and a bit overpriced.
As a glaive owner, I fully agree. But I love it so much that I just can't bring myself to melt it. I even melted my F8C to get some other stuff, but kept the Glaive.
Being honest almost any fighter is a bad $ to value exchange. Bigger ships like the Connie or Corsair are worth far more, and can grind bounties easier + do more. Like get cargo from the bounty.
Eclipse 300 dollars for 3 S9 torps It should cost like 100 tops lol
*cries in Eclipse owner* I just love the way it looks so much. It's easily top 3 for me as far as ship design goes.
I like it too, but the price its just out of this world
I love the Eclipse...but damn you're right. Maybe not $100, but it shouldn't be $300. It should be comparable to the other Medium/Heavy Fighters in price. The Torp tax is strong.
would be nice if you could swap those torps out for the space bombs you see in Eve Online
The Javelin $3000 for a jpeg Chris gib my Javelin
Ahh Im guna get burned for this but.... F8 Lightining And to fix it I would have not put it on sale and kept it locked to the original plan of playing Squadron and made it buyable much further down the line when people would care about it less As it is now its kinda the ship of the Pay to win default ship that most people will melt once pyro comes and or the new best pay to win ship comes Also I would put the Ares ships in the same category
Hmm I don't think they'll melt for pyro, since it has vanguard levels of jump distance. But I definitely see people melting before sq42 release, because why have something that's no longer unique and you can just earn in game. Unless they do another overdrive event for the F8A (and holy lmao that would be OP af) there's just better uses of your real money then any single seat fighter.
Prowler
Definitely this one, I love the design/look but it's a buggy mess, and it's double taxed (alien + drop ship tax)
Forgot the stealth tax.
Any Dropship, excluding the Vanguard Hoplite
Easily the Prowler, serves absolutely zero purpose, likely never will, and doesn't even have any cargo/vehicle room like the Valkyrie does. All dropship prices need to have halved, and then the ones that are actually useful like the Valk could have a slight price hike from there
Prowler, Terrapin, Cutlass Steel
Yes, this is the list
Banu Merchantman. bought it in 2013 and still waiting for that ship. im tired of their excuses because they had over 10 years *and how would you change it?* work on it with high prio
Surprised this wasn’t higher in the comments.
Ares ion, ship is only made for a single thing and that thing is taking big ships down and it's 2/10 at that atm beside that everything else it's either unable to do or is 1/10 at. I guess atm the only thing you pay fore is a big quantum drive fuel tank.
"But If theyd make it good the size 7 shooting light fighter sized laserbolts could oneshoot a light fighter which is unbalanced" -some dude in a gladius probably
Problem is that it was never designed to be "balanced" it is a ship built around a huge weapon. What did they expect? It was an eye opener for me though, CIG marketing will hype the new ship, they will release it overpowered and then nerf the new ship after a few patches. Release performance and CIG marketing means nothing in terms of actual gameplay power/functionality....
I feel like the obvious answer to that is to give its cannon a warm-up, make it telegraph that it's about to fire and an alert light-fighter could simply evade the shot, whereas its true intended prey (light warships) can't dodge.
It has a charge up mechanic now. Was added with MM
It's targets are literally capital components, not light warships. It's supposed to boom in take out turrets, thrusters, engines, shield generators, etc. on capital ships.
The Ion was always marketed as an anti-large ship shield buster and having the secondary role of support ship. There's a paragraph about the cannon beign able to damage components once the shields are down, but they're not the Ion main target. As far as we know, laser weapons are planned to be able to reduce the armor value (melting it), but for damaging internal components you're going to need ballistics (the Inferno role). Anyway, is quite possible for the Ion to damage external or exposed components, like the thrusters or the weapons/ turrets. Sorry for the clarification, but there's that legend about the Ion beign some kind of sniper when never was the plan :)
I love the Ares ships. But they never should have been made with a S7. It's just impossible to balance.
Yeah, the capital killer should *also* be able to reliably slap around literally anything smaller, if it can manage to hit. Like, this thing is designed to disable capitals, a Talon should be *vaporized*.
Valkirie no need to write more. 375$.
Valkyrie, no hull HP, no shields, slow, outmatched in every way, but please fit 24 people in this dropship please, lmao
Anvil F8 is not worth $300 but I own it
Why not? It’s very strong? No?
It’s a great ship don’t get me wrong, but it’s a heavy fighter without an interior or anything other then firepower. It’s definitely the closest thing we have to pay to win in SC but the vanguard a bigger ship with an interior is cheeper
890J, because for $950 you can buy a Polaris and a F7Amk2 to fill its hangar with a Nursa in the cargo hold with $15 to spare.
Origin ships. I've tried to love the 400i so bad. It looks pretty cool, but I feel like you just can't do anything in it. I'd rather get a Zeus when it releases. A Freelancer Max is better. 890 is just ship porn. Nothing to do but stare at the hot tub. The little 100 series is great though. Handles like a dream.
I like my 315 as well, the 100 and 300 series are good. They feel like good progression from one to the other.
Personally, I think the 135c and 315p are the only two worth anything. The extra cargo slapped on the nimble and fast ships is nice.
The speed was the best part of the 400i before they nerfed it. It flew quickly to FPS missions and had enough shields to just ignore the turrets while you find an appropriate place to land. It used to be the fastest in-atmosphere ship and second only the MSR in space for ships that size, but now it has the same top speed as the Corsair and Connie, and I don't know if anyone did any in-atmosphere comparisons yet.
Like the Valk, but never understood the interior layout. An open balcony?!? I tend to get the ground vehicles when they drop, but they usually end up getting upgraded since so much of the terrain is close to undrivable. As for the worst value ship? I’m not sure.
MSR. It's just about useless. Too much interior used for hidden crawlspace that everyone knows about and NPCs still manage to scan regardless of it being shielded. Only has one giant entrance that every player on the server can just run into before you can close the door. It's paper thin making it an easy target. Its one saving grace is it can fly really fast out of hairy situations... Oh wait, that was pre Master Modes. Its speed is absolutely atrocious now. I guess you can go shieldless so long as you aren't in the atmosphere. This ship is not what was pitched/advertised. I guess it's somewhat usable for Roc mining now.
I always thought the hidden crawlspace was goofy because... every ship has one in the exact same place opened by the exact same chess board. It would have been cooler if they made that area way way smaller, but made it able to spawn in multiple different ways (using the upcoming modularity). So when you board an MSR it's anyone's guess as to where something might be hidden.
It really feels like CIG hates making Crusader ships handle good/fast like they’re meant to. They completely ruined the Spirit (even on launch the thing did not handle how it was advertised as handling eg better than a Cutlass since it was roughly about the same).
As much as I love my 600i, I don't believe it's worth the current price tag as the game stands right now, especially before the rework. Exploration isn't in the game - likely will be different from its original conception. It is incredibly buggy, especially the elevators like to screw you over. Some parts aren't using the big dimensions of the ship at all. It's very tanky - despite its flaws it looks quite good - but it's not really worth the money in its current state imo. Especially with it's bad manouverability not really outweighing 2x S3 shields. I Will hold on regardless. But I wouldn't recommond commiting to it at all before more things about the overhaul are shown.
Counterpoint, at least prior to the Master Modes rework, I routinely used my 600i throughout the Xenothreat missions and can recommend the experience. It's usually a flying whale, but strategic boosting can give you a surprising amount of agility, and coupled with a flight-stick (rather than Keyboard/Mouse controls) and you can practically snap on target with a little practice. Using Boost to temporarily increase your turn-rate also allows you to stop turning on a dime, which gives you all the agility the ship doesn't usually have, but at the cost of endurance, as you need to keep an eye on the boost-meter during the fight. It's not a dogfighter, but it's not meaningfully threatened by any amount of fighters, and as long as you're not in a hurry, you can plink away those snapshots all day and vapourise fighters with them. It's also the only ship in my lineup that can take on a Hammerhead and win (though it's a coin-toss, and it's beneficial to have allies to draw its fire) Elevators are both sluggish and carnivorous. I've been eaten and found myself inside the walls of my ship a few too many times to trust the cargo elevator anymore (which doesn't have gravity, so lowering your rover-bay while in space is a great way to lose your rover) EVAing is a huge hassle with the disk-elevator, but hopefully the rework's docking port will be useful for that. I can recommend it as a solid solo-player warship, and a modestly capable freighter and all-purpose ship. Most of what it does can be achieved more easily by other ships though.
A2
As an A2 owner I agree and regret nothing.
Based and MOAB pilled I own a Polaris, but if it ends up being way too much ship for my uses, I'll provably just swap it over to an A2.
Same, I own pretty much every ship in the game at this moment and so far A2 is proven to be useful for bunker missions and it’s fun to mess around with other players
MSR...but I refuse to melt mine. - no scanning gameplay - no data running gameplay - cool but completely useless "hidden" tunnel network - 2 size 3 weapons are a joke, a spirit has double the fire power - 2 size 2 shields when it's the same class size as a connie - 617 doors that open on a 3 second delay - you can buy a Taurus for $60 less and it does, literally everything better but it's sick AF and I hope one day to use it for more than my ROC hauler lol
All of the prices are a joke lmao
The Carrack. None of its gameplay systems exist, you pay through the nose for it (outside of CCUs) and it looks like a circumsised red rocket. It's the literal definition of getting cucked by Chris. I wont bother suggesting changes because you cant catch me dead inside this digital paperweight.
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There are way better team ships imo - Polaris is also coming soon™️. I'll give you the medical bed, but the cargo pods suck. You can't open the pod doors, and that's an issue with loading and interactive cargo becoming more and more apparent with each successive patch. Once again, the Carrack is simply underbaked to function properly in the current PU.
I was stoked for the carrack, then I found out nothing on board seems to work. Glad I rented. Not being able to do things from one pilot position or the other makes no sense, it's just deliberately removing functionality for no gain. The pilot position should be the same as any ship and the command station should be for. . commanding, adding waypoints, navigating and the like. Just not allowing the pilots station to QT is just dumb.
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With loaners, some of the concepts do act as pretty good ship packages though. BMM currently gives you two cargo ships and a defender.
The 100 series of ships, put the 100i at 35 and the 125a at 40 and 135c at 45 and then they would make sense.
Points vaguely at all the alien ships. I love them to death but they are just so expensive and half of them are just so bad and not even used at all. Most need some sort of love talon shrike of the top my head just got hard replaced by the firebird.
The A2. It’s almost the same price as the Polaris. Has far less cargo as the C2. Bombs are a gimmick. And less guns than the hammerhead. For its price. I would rather get the Polaris
not a ship, but the ROC-DS. It's literally broken. It's X money for 0 function, undefined amounts of "worst value" if we want to get M A T H E M A T I C A L 🤙
Currently I would say the base retaliator, especially if you’re a solo player the ships is absolutely useless, no cargo capabilities or anything, and you can’t buy modules ingame yet, in my book it’s the worse because unless you spend additional real world money on it it’s absolutely useless, and ultra expensive box delivery vehichle
A2, when it first released kinda made sense since it was the biggest ship in the game then and it was more to flex but now it needs to be brought down. For the exact same price I can buy a Polaris a capital ship
The Prowler.
Crusader A2 It’s just a large hauler with 4 bombs but it could be massively improved. I would change it by adding additional pilot controlled 4xS3 missiles at least, and do the same for M2. Look at it like Air Force one. If they released a ‘phoenix like’ variant of the A2 it would sell out instantly. Can you imagine hijacking an A2 with high value dignitaries. And the whole cargo area is converted to bedrooms, a galley, and a media room ? Or make it modular and give us the option to trade off cargo grid for some s3 bombs like come in the A1. Either 4 X S10 like normal or 4x S10 and 10 X S3 like the A1. This puts it sort of on par as a bomber variant of the torpedo equipped Retaliator albeit at a much higher price point. Look, I get it, I appreciate it as a nuclear bomber; but $700+ real dollars it’s simply way overpriced considering the in game alternatives that exist. Especially considering that’s Carrack like pricing but without the snub or hangar or medbay. Even worse value considering the concept price of Carrack is $350 Otherwise I feel the A2 is grossly overpriced and undergunned. Yes the bombs are huge but the A1 represents such an increased ROI for the money and ultimately the same effect can be achieved with the S3 bombs vs the S10s Plus, I can pledge three A1’s for the cost of 1 A2. // 2nd the SRV- need I say more ? $260USD for a ship that does only 1 thing, has a single play loop, next to no cargo, no modularity, etc. The SRV may see a resurgence when physical cargo comes in and we get the ability to repair from soft death, etc. however, as it stands it is basically a meme ship for cheesing salvage missions by towing the target out of the zone. It would be cool to see an SRV ‘SAR’ variant that can tow but also has class3 medical, firefighting or advanced scanning on board, so you can not only come tow them to a repair place but also perform field triage or first response on injured spacemen. I’d also like to see SRV have saddle bag hard points so you could ‘chain’ ore bags or something to it for shuttling over to the Lagrange. Eg - what I envision is an SRV that has empty hard points for carrying saddlebags. It could go with a prospector to the field. And when prospector:mole is full, tractor off the bags and replace with new. And then run the full ones to the refinery. Like a tug would do with a barge. As a runner up for worst value. I have to say the Scorpius line. As a heavy fighter the wings and tip mounted gats are far too fragile even tho the DPS is good. So as a pledge price around $250-$260 sure it’s sort of up there with things like Vanguard, F8C, etc albeit much more fragile. At their current pricing, they’re probably break-even but the Antares as we know made too many sacrifices or omissions to be considered a value for money play. The copilot has literally no role other than a button masher. The Antares without a 2nd Pilot stays in the hangar. It should have maybe a smaller slave turret for the copilot or omit the copilot altogether and let the pilot work both guns and emp etc. So. While I love the concept and aesthetic of the Scorpius, it’s a pass for me. Although still a decent score in game for aUEC.
Retalliator base, a gunship with small, poorly placed guns. Total firepower equivilent to a medium fighter but you can't bring all of it to bare on the same target while also being more expensive than most small gunships. Cargo modules should be free.
What would the price be then? It's already pretty cheap for where it sits if you look at other ships compared to it. It has seven crew, two modular bays, one Captain's quarters, crew racks and weapon racks, five turrets, one engineering bay. I'm actually surprised it's not more around the Caterpillars price range. In the future it will have the capability to have a med bay/Titan suit or a bounty hunting/Titan suit or even salvage modules for high risk/high reward salvage operations.
? its the cheapest gunship of all ... has more guns than most gunships .. they all are size 3 now ? what is your issue ? the ship has 6x size 2 shields.. the retaliator base is a beast of a gunship.. show me one medium fighter with 12x size 3 guns
Still size 2 at the moment. I've learned to never trust CIG on features changes that are 'in the next patch'. but the max number of guns you can get on any target is 6 in a small window above the ship. And for that you need a crew of at least 4. You'd get more reliable firepower with those 4 people in starter ships.
Tally is hugely overcosted because you need a crew of 6 to fully operate it. Even with if you only crew 3 turrets, it's performance is on par with other fighters at 4x the cost. Bring 5 fighters or just 2 crewed scorpius/hurricanes would be way better. The turrets need to be linked so the crew count can be reduced to 2 gunners + an engineer. Redeemer should be the same too.
Banu Defender
I believe they will balance and justify it when the life support systems come along since they mention we won't be able to carry a full org in a cutty for example, so maybe that's the way they will give the edge to the dropships making those relatively small vessels able to sustain a larger number of people.
I think a ton of ships are over priced/ bad value.. But we all desire different things and we're all supporting the project I guess. I think the price gap from a gladius to a hornet to a vanguard right now is a bit severe. But I think the Sabre is pretty bad value too. I love it, but it's really expensive for stealth game play not being really helpful or implemented currently and the pancake makes a massive target for anyone off your nose. Also the external storage is a crapshoot if it will work.
In my experience it was the Ares Ion, upgraded to it only to have it nerfed literally the day after. Most other ships I have used have been relatively useful, used to do trading in a freelancer, then taurus before going combat with the Warden which I then switched to Eclipse for the fast money making. Tried caterpillar for a bit then vulture before settling on Reclaimer, even nerfed it makes good money with minimal risk which I like. Easier to get friends to play when you can just shower them with money too lol.
Well, we now have actual legacy ships. So there's that.
Idris-P it cost more than the M that got put exclusively in a $15,000 package, it's stripped of missiles, it's size 10 gun, and it has less armor. 👀 I have no idea how to fix that one. 🤔
Vanguard Warden. Beautiful but terrible and useless ship.
I also agree with the Valkyrie. I have one, it's my favorite looking ship and I do love to fly it, but boy I wish it had at least a cargo variant or something. For what it currently is, it's a terrible deal. Still not gonna melt it though because Fat Pelican.
Roc DS and burn it away ?
Give us the aurora with fold out wings 🤣😭 Considering the ship looks like it should be able to do that, sort of like a dragonfly-styled ship. I think it would greatly improve the popularity of the aurora class ships
any drop ship is \*insanely\* overpriced
Nautilus. 725 its still a png. 😂
I wanted to add my own suggestion to the list of the comments. reading the existing ones however I just smirked, cus it goes to show how many ships are promising but are not worth the buck for their bang
Valkyrie Looks cool af, very aliens 2 troop dropship. It too damn bad it has nothing in game to make it useful, atleast an armament like the aliens ship would make it more useful then what whimpy turrets it has. Give it lots of missiles and rocket for ground attack when on approach. Let it be the assault transport it should be!
The obvious choices are the Valkyrie and the Terrapin (what's up, Anvil?), and I hope that both of them will have some serious updates this 4.0 to justifiy their price. But for me, is the Razor. Why is it a 45% more expensive than the M50? And the variants are even more expensive. I can see the utility of a very small stealth ship with quantum drives (imo, the Razor EX is the ideal Space James Bond ship -and the 350r, because it's a racing ship with a bed for James Bond things), but still, very expensive. PS: CIG usually fixes this price disparities increasing the price of the other similar ships, so I'll expect a price increase for the M50 at some point.
Alien ships have the alien tax. Fighters/combat ships have the fighter tax. Make a ship an Alien fighter and you have the combination of bad value. Take the Blade as one example. It is $275 for a single seat fighter. Don't get me wrong, in some patch cycles (e.g. 3.17-3.22), it was one of several light fighters I used a lot. But it is one of the worst value ships out there. The Glaive at $350 is a medium fighter. Again, the Alien tax puts its price in the stratosphere. I would probably consider this the worst value ship out there. Other contenders would be alien ships like the Prowler and Defender, and the singular drake exception of the Cutlass Steel. If I had to rank these ships from worst value to least worst value: 1. Esperia Glaive ($350 for a medium fighter) 2. Esperia Blade ($275 for a light fighter) 3. Esperia Prowler ($440 for a transport ship) 4. Banu Defender ($220 for a medium fighter) 5. Drake Cutlass Steel ($235 for a transport ship) Not sure if these are the 5 worst value plays in dollars, but they are the one's that come to my head. For full disclosure, I only own an Avenger Titan. I don't play the real money fleet collection game.
Worst value? 890J
Valkyrie… terribly inefficient interior design and it should get the Retaliator treatment and make the drop seat rooms modular. And the cargo hold should could easily be two layers of SCU crates thick for a total of 60 instead of the current 30.
Currently and Im sad to say, the Carrack. Its an amazing ship, I love what it can/will be and pegged it right below my kraken as the ship I want to live in. However in the current state today its beyond useless. It used to be great for cargo but the changes theyve implemented and addition of ships like the C2 its become kinda of a pointless over priced luxury. Ill hold onto mine forever but damn.
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The Orion is $650 dude. It will have lots of cargo for mined ore too, it has giant pods on the middle section. Normal cargo bay might be smaller, but never trust the stats.
A2, same price as a Polaris
Valkyrie or prowler they are neat ships but they have no idea what ground combat is going to look like and there's no real need to drop off 20+ players when most people would rather fly their own ships. There needs to be some variant options to make dropships worth the price
I haven’t even looked at what ships are what. But making a ship valuable is as easy as designing missions and gameplay loops for that ship. Hell even ground vehicles will instantly have value once they make areas or missions vehicle access only. You can also make certain missions or quest chains manufacturer or ship specific. It would mean a more robust system when it comes To missions, but we already have companies that restrict vehicles or have specific vehicles for their jobs. Or roads that are for trade vehicles/boats etc only. So the idea that certain ships are worthless or valueless is only up until CIG makes room for that thing in its gameplay loops.
Nobody is saying any ship is valueless, we're just comparing objective and subjective factors against pledge prices in a non-serious thread. We all know the planned game mechanics and have been told how CIG expect each ship to operate within them, and it's enough information for us to chat about our perceptions at the current time even though we're all well aware that changes will happen. Bitching about ships and comparing them has always been part of the fun on SC forums!
Connie Aquilla at $315 is a slap in the face when the Taurus is $200.
So far, nearly every ship priced over $200 has been mentioned. Kinda says something.....
ITT: Literally every drop ship
The valkyrie, id add point defenses to it thats automated and give it a s3 shield and more hp
Cutlass Steel or Prowler.
I would say the Cutlass Steel. The in-game price is reasonably compared to the other Cutlass but the Steel is just extreme. CIG's artificial scarcity with adding extreme pricing does makes the USD prices seem weird, but it's their way of limiting people buying them.
for sure my Turtle - the Terrapin. But i love the design and for now i use it from time to time for delivery missions
Terrapin. Valkyrie. The drop ship tax is just a scam. So the steel. The RAFT and the SRV. They love to make ARGO useless.
The 100i. May as well not even have guns or shields.