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[Randy]

is there any good solo ships or a ship to run with just freighters and tankers mods included

[ANGRYABOUTELVES]

Running a single-ship fleet and a single-combat-ship fleet are two very different situations, and I can't recommend doing either of them for long. The vanilla game starts you with two combat-capable ships and throws D-mod junkers at you for a very good reason; you really want to have more than one combat-capable ship in 0.8. Nonetheless, it is possible to go it solo.

A single-ship fleet is going to want to run a hybrid ship, something that can carry cargo and fuel and fight off pirates.  Something like the Wayfarer, the Mule, or the Apogee. Capitals are right out, they guzzle too much fuel to be run without logistics ships. You'll be limited to doing scanning, salvaging, and surveying, as you won't have the combat power to take bounties. In terms of mods, you'll want to look at DME's combat freighter line and the Tereshkova as well as BRDY's Silverfish, Megaceras, and Hawkmoth.

A single-combat-ship fleet is going to want something fast. Something that can pick its battles, easily get out of being flanked, and that doesn't need support. Ideally something cruiser or capital sized. The very best cruiser for this is the Aurora; Plasma Jets lets it move faster than most frigates for short periods of time, giving it unparalleled mobility in its size class, and it can carry quite a heavy loadout of missiles and energy weapons. Two Heavy Blasters in the central medium energy turrets, two Sabot Pods in the medium synergies, and HE missiles of your choice in the four small synergies will allow it to take out anything smaller than a Paragon as long as you pilot it right. If you want to run a capital, go with either the Legion or the Odyssey. The Legion's burn drive, built-in fighter escort, and wide turret arcs make it exceptionally hard to flank or pin down for a large low-tech ship, and it packs a hell of a lot of firepower. The Odyssey is as fast as a destroyer and with very precise piloting can focus three HEF-boosted large energies on a single target. Mod ships you should consider include but are in no way limited to the DME Zelenograd, Kormaran, and Baikal, the BRDY Kumaraja, the DA Maelstrom, the ORA Elevation, and the SRA Charybdis and Mimir.

All that said, I would highly recommend you try running an Industry/Combat/Technology "garbage ball" fleet instead of going it solo. The Industry skills let you acquire a lot of cheap, substandard, completely disposable junker ships to serve as distractions for your Combat/Technology boosted wündership. It's like going it solo in that you don't have to worry that the AI will throw away valuable ships, but you still have friendlies in the battlespace to flank with.

[Megas]

With standard ships, no.  Ships can either fight or haul well, not do both.  Hybrids that try to do both are mediocre at best at fighting (because they lack speed and shot range to hit cowardly enemies), and not that great at hauling (either due to reduced capacity and/or greater consumption of supplies or fuel).  Better to have dedicated combat ships and dedicated haulers than to have hybrids after you find enough ships to use.  However, due to how the AI fights, forcing fights and not running out of peak performance and CR are greater problems once you have the power to crush the enemy.  AI loves to kite, surround, swarm, then kill single ships.  Few ships can defend against that and attack enemy capitals effectively.

For standard ships, Astral piloted a carrier specialist character is probably the closest you can get to a ship that can solo fleets.  Paragon is very strong, but faster enemy ships will avoid it until they can gang up and overwhelm Paragon even if controlled by a combat specialist.  Anything else will probably have trouble either against an overpowered enemy capital and/or swarms of smaller ships.  In any event, most ships will not go very far on the map.  Tankers are required if you want to explore much beyond core worlds.

If you play Templars, Priwen Burst from the bigger ships is very effective because it kills swarms that wreck slow conventional ships.

Clunker fleet is effective even for a completely unskilled character.

[Wyvern]

Aurora or Dominator or Legion - though in all cases you'll want a few freighters along.  For truly solo play, the Apogee is the best you're likely to find - but it won't be able to deal with as powerful an enemy fleet as any of the first three I listed.

However, even for single-ship play, I highly recommend keeping a smaller combat ship around (a Tempest is ideal, but an SO Lasher or even a plain old Hammerhead will do in a pinch).  This isn't meant to be deployed alongside your flagship; it's meant to be an alternative flagship for pursuit engagements or small battles that aren't worth the CR and supply costs of deploying a cruiser or capital ship.

I'll also note that I've got a different suggested loadout for the Aurora: I go with an all-in energy armament.  Pulse lasers in the front medium turrets, a heavy blaster for cracking armor in the front medium synergy slot, 4x ion cannon in the other hardpoints, season to taste with a few burst PD.  Leave the aft-right medium synergy slot empty - yeah, that'll be a hole in your PD, but you can cover that with maneuvering.  Everything on autofire except the Heavy Blaster; its flux costs are kinda absurd, so you have to be careful how and when you use it.

Similarly, my suggested Dominator build is a bit different from what I've seen other people field.

• 2x dual flak is the starting point; that covers forward point defense.
• Small turrets get a symmetric arrangement: 3x light needler up front, 2x light assault gun along the sides, 2x railgun for aft-sides, 2x vulcan cannon for the last two aft turrets.  The needlers will help put flux on whatever you're actually shooting at - or, with a quick re-target, will drive up flux very quickly on any frigate or destroyer foolish enough to approach from your forward arc, even if you can't get your main guns lined up on them.  The LAGs and railguns are there to kill fighters and frigates that are trying to flank you.  And the vulcans, while not great PD, will still kill missiles you're flying directly away from.
• Large weapons: You want a mix, here: one kinetic weapon, one HE weapon.  I suggest a mark 9 and a hellbore to start with; put the Mk IX on autofire and control the hellbore yourself.
• Missile slots are season to taste; I advise mounting at least one salamander (which I usually put on autofire though it's possible to get better results by manually firing these at frigates and destroyers), but past that you can even leave the missiles empty if you need the ordnance points elsewhere.  Torpedos are really nice to have if you can afford to mount them, though.

[Megas]

Aurora, I use pulse lasers if I do not have blasters to spare, but if I have the weapons, I use two heavy blasters in the front turrets, and ion beam in the hardpoint (because it pierces shields).  Burst PD in the other turrets.  I may leave the other hardpoints empty, especially if I get fighters instead of missiles or load up with lots of hullmods, or fill them with cheap missiles.

Dominator, I use flak in mediums only if I have asymmetric heavy ballistics (e.g., Mark IX and Hellbore - good for Open Market builds).  Otherwise, I prefer Mark IX in hardpoints and either Heavy Mauler if I can spare them or Heavy Mortar if Dominator is meant to be disposable (e.g., clunker with four or more D-mods).  I would love light needlers for Dominator, but they are too rare - those get reserved for my elite ships that absolutely need the light needlers (e.g., Sunder with Light Needlers and Tachyon Lance) more than Dominator.

If I really want EMP lockdown with Dominator, Converted Hangar and a wing of Claws is an option.  Dominator has the firepower to melt shields.

[StarSchulz]

I'd second the Aurora, and also offer the idea of a dual-devastator safety overrides Dominator. will tear through your enemies like butter.

[TaLaR]

Or if we extend solo definition to "single ship deployed at one time", you can chain deploy a horde of Afflictors. Which ravage anything except battlestations in vanilla (but fail hard against Templars in modded game)

[Megas]

I would consider chain-flagships a fleet, despite combat experience feeling like solo, if you need to deploy multiple ships to win.  That said, it is effective, and it was the only way 40 DP fleet of frigates could destroy Hegemony System Defense Fleets in the early 0.6.x days.

As for Aurora, it struggles against ships it cannot outgun, due to terrible shot range.  Its speed makes it good at killing individual cowards, though.  The biggest problem with Aurora for me is it is not very disposable (both hull and weapons used are not as common as others), and I prefer to use a stronger (or maybe cheaper) ship as my elite flagship.

[Drokkath]

I've considered Hammerhead, Metelson's Securi and TUP's Hermit good solo-able ships except I also had to have at least about 2 other ship's in the fleet for cargo and fuel, crew and marines. I obviously wasn't entirely content with that and it's why I've invested editing, altering and modding a copy of a Hermit and a Dram for my own personal commando needs along with other types of ships from other mods or from the default game I've felt a need of converting into a heaven for my self invented and achieved pilot-commando-captain rank.

Have had the most solo battlefield mayhem fun with Ulysses (my heavily personalized Hermit, deserved a name of it's own) and Dramlord (my heavily personalized franken-vessel Dram, deserved a name of it's own). The point of why I'm mentioning my own fruits of labor in salvaging, scavenging and basically all-around kitbashing is that one can have the option of creating something new for a new reason. It does need understanding of how to mod parts of the game and the only reason I was able to pick off modding for SS with haste and ease was because I've done similar work in the past in games like Dwarf Fortress, OpenXcom and KSP.


At the end of the day this is just how I tend to do things in SS. Felt like mentioning it because modding, even a minor one has it's own special charm and use. Not saying that everyone for some bizarre reason had to mod first, nah, nope, just nope. That's borderline silly even by my sense of sanity and clarity, I merely made this post to give a glimpse of my perspective since I'm crazy about commando vessels, even more so in .8 versions of the game due to new changes that have made going solo much harder and it's why I put my modding drive into higher gear to compensate for increased difficulty resulting in with me having a Templar fleet blasting doomsday tech, both ship(s) and its weaponry. Ships I can use without any other ship in the fleet other than my one powerful overpowered impatient beast of pure rage and wrath. To kill, to maim, to burn others with, to rip and tear as if they were put a paper.

I tend to zone out in games I like or even love and long periods of not using cheats wears me down to the point and brink of being Khorne himself. It's what drives me to this day to use overpowered means of overkill to see my foes meet a cruel and brutal end and just like Khorne and his berzerkers; I loathe long drawn battles and thus I highly prefer tearing through a battle and ending my foes quickly and very brutally.


Sorry if I seem unusual. I am aware that I tend to go into lengths of explaining something, I've re-read this post of mine about 4 times now and I fail to see much issue with it.