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« on: February 29, 2016, 03:25:17 PM »
On the subject of the Burchel, I am greatly amusing myself currently with a Maelstrom that uses 10 of them with 3 Glaux and loaded out MM spam. It is very entertaining to see the ship drift into a heated combat zone and liquefy every missile and fighter threat in the area and then turn its gaze upon the unfortunate enemies just behind them. I've used the Glaux as the main weapon on a testbed Hayle for most of this 0.7.1 campaign and short of some flux issues before an officer develops Power Grid experience it does a great job rivaling or besting my more traditional 2 Recson V and 1 Trifire setup.
The Trifire feels like it could use maybe a touch more punch on unshielded hulls, but it's generally in a solid place for a scaled down version of the larger weapon and I'm quite happy with it. Love that it can keep flux pressure up on shields. The Hayles themselves are far more durable in combat now that I can mount 2-4 Magic Box systems on them and keep the worst missile threats at bay.
The Calm has become a much better ship with the addition of the Vortex drones. What they can't shoot down often impact on the drones instead of the ship itself.
Versant is just a damn tough little ship and the Harvest is perfect. I haven't noticed the Heavy ILIS adding much besides its light show that often, but the numbers seem good.
Stratus certainly put the 'combat' in 'combat freighter'. Perfect strategic point holders while my fleet is busy with the worst threats and I rarely worry that any forces that split off to retake objectives will get past them.
The Fractus was my go-to solution for early flight deck acquisition and with a Thrush and Burchels it throws a little firepower downrange into the warzone, while those wonderful beams and its Frost squadron stop any enemy fighters or bombers from trying to disrupt its operation.
I don't do a lot of complicated flying myself and mostly setup fleet priorities and let them figure it out so I'll just add I've seen them use the Banishes mostly pretty competently aside from some rare oddities like launching all of them at once, the target then being too far away and the missiles self-destructing. Generally though against mid-size or larger targets without adequate PD they're taking a large shield blow or devastating hull damage. I wouldn't mind details on what extra status effects they actually deal, but their efficacy is enough for me and the mystery adds to their fearsome nature.
Starting out this last campaign Diable's worse than average shields were a minor concern quickly alleviated by the power of their early long-range kinetics and other powerful weapons. Diable is certainly one of my favorite factions now and looking forward to fielding them again in 0.7.2 once a few more mods are updated.