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A few skills aren’t going to make the starting wolf kill destroyers easily.
Erm, yes, they do. The starting wolf without skills should take down any pirate destroyer just fine. With skills it can take down a well equipped destroyer with a bit of time (though for something with heavy shields like a Medusa you do need to use those 'risky' jumps and take advantage of weaknesses).
Not that you really need skills for that either
The starting wolf does not do well against even pirate destroyers (except Buffalo's) unless you have allies and so can get behind them. Plus, you know.. the bolded
I do not appreciate how you've twisted my words by not giving a full quotation. This is what I actually said:
Erm, yes, they do. The starting wolf without skills should take down any pirate destroyer just fine. With skills it can take down a well equipped destroyer with a bit of time (though for something with heavy shields like a Medusa you do need to use those 'risky' jumps and take advantage of weaknesses).
This is not counting missiles, because a nice simple sabot + reaper + expanded racks autodeletes two destroyers or one cruiser (choosing burst damage over sustainability of course, which might be a good decision or a bad one depending on enemy fleet comp.). Not that you really need skills for that either, but it does make it easier.
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Saying you don't need skills for it was specifically about the sabot + reaper + expanded racks combo, and I even pointed out that having skills makes it easier. It actually makes it a
lot easier.
To your point: you are wrong. A default loadout Wolf with no skills can take down pirate destroyers, and one with skills can take down fully equipped destroyers. (This is even leaving blast doors on and basically wasting 5 OP.)
I just did tests in the simulator against the pirate Hammerhead, and while I needed to use about 3 harpoons, it didn't need any fancy maneuvers. Considering that real combat is always easier than 1v1 for a maneuverable ship like the Wolf, I think its just fine.
I used the same loadout and put my skilled character in (still a 55OP loadout + blast doors, so basically 50). With those skills I killed the Non-pirate Hammerhead using 2 Harpoons, taking only light armor damage. Thats one of the toughest destroyers, having railguns, ITU, Expanded missile racks, and a really powerful offensive ship system. If I was more patient I wouldn't have needed the missiles. The star of the show was the Impact Mitigation (didn't even have 3, so just 1 and 2) Evasive Action, Advanced Countermeasures combo that let me tank the railguns on the armor when I couldn't dodge them (which skills also help) and only take tiny amounts of damage (2 points per shot to start). An unskilled Wolf cannot tank railguns for more than a few shots without losing its armor and dying.
I killed a Medusa using 1 Harpoon (I did need that to force its shields to stay up while I vented, it wasn't just impatience) again with only light armor damage, though that one is tricky as it can really jump and kill you fast in the start of the engagement if you screw up because Pulse Lasers are energy rather than kinetic damage and their damage to armor is only cut by 40% by skills instead of more.