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[Thaago]

For the Shrike: its a light ship thats basically a frigate hunter or torpedo/sabot swarmer with good shields/DP, but they aren't worth spending an officer on at endgame so while I'll keep them around I don't seek them out for endgame unless I'm doing a support doctrine swarm (6DP for a good shield, medium missile, light but ok guns, and potentially a fighter). But in the early and midgame they are so economical and good! Their base cost is only 20k and they have burn 10, so for any frigate fleet they are a great way to get more staying power and medium missiles (nothing like a typhoon reaper launcher to crack open those annoying pirate ventures/colossi/enforcers). With the improvements to IR pulse and the OP difference, I think the pirate and normal versions are roughly equivalent: pirate version is better against enemies with strong shields because kinetic, normal version is more flexible and usually has better stats just from the extra OP.

[Nazeth]

Shrike is probably my favorite early game ship.

A simple build with Pilum, Ion Beam, 5x Tac Beam is very effective against most of enemy fleets instead of Remnants (lack of hard flux).
Then build with Sabot/Pilum, Blaster/Pulse, Ion Cannon and 4x IR is a nice support for more advanced fleets.
On such cheap ship that costs 8 DP a converted hangar with Wasp/Spark is amazing source of drone spam with PD lasers

Overall Shrike lack of anti-shield capabilities. Sabots are nice, but soon on later you will be out of ammo, so often i replace them with infinite Pilums.

Medusa with 2x Railguns/Needlers and extra pulse/blaster is more efficient, but require more DP

[intrinsic_parity]

At 8 DP, I just run scarabs. Officered wolfpack scarabs are amazing.

[Thaago]

At 8 DP, I just run scarabs. Officered wolfpack scarabs are amazing.

If I can find them and am building that way I agree with you. The medium missile, large PPT advantage, and ability to mount converted hangar gives shrikes some advantages as a base hull/support doctrine build, but Scarabs have a significantly higher "ceiling" in terms of performance once fleet skills (wolfpack!) and high level officer skills (system expertise!) are factored in, which also fix the PPT issues. I think scarabs are... 30k base price? Something like that, I'm not near a computer with SS installed to check.

[BigBrainEnergy]

I find shrikes can be good in the very late game with cryo blaster + sabot pod. It's got the right combination of shield strength and speed to put them to good use.

[Grievous69]

Why are you all talking about Shrikes lmao? I thought everyone agreed they're good where they're at.

[SCC]

Locking all ships to certain DP numbers is dumb. Ships don't have to be literally equivalent, just viable to a similar extent.
Aurora is... Fine, I guess, in player hands, but I felt better with either Fury, Doom or Odyssey. Fury and Odyssey handle similarly, while Doom is also an elite cruiser. Also, I think Fury should be 19.99 DP.

[Grievous69]

Also, I think Fury should be 19.99 DP.

Ah, the negotiator.

And I forgot to reply to that locking DP part. Likewise I say no that for that, it's not like a ship costing 17 or 22 DP is breaking anything. Granularity is great in these types of games.

One thing about the actual topic I haven't yet mentioned. When Fury was first released, it was my flagship for a while and honestly it felt strong, but not that much for 15 DP as people seem to say. To this day, the ship is closer to 15 DP than 20 compared to rest. It's pretty much 2 Shrikes melted together (not even that), and for some reason it costs 20 DP. Sure it can tank a lot more than a Shrike but it's also pretty big. The profile really doesn't scream light cruiser to me, it feels like it should've been stronger and maybe a tiny bit slower. I'd rather have 2 Gryphons than 3 Furies. Btw come on it's called Fury after all, not Mild Anger cruiser.

[Nazeth]

I have commonly 2-4 battleships, 8-10 frigs for flanking/pursuit and rest are mostly destroyers destroyers, eventually cruisers. I know strength of cruisers, but its so easy to outmaneuver them with numerous destroyers / frigates and keep 240 dp fleet limit for bonuses. Taking a quantity advantage in battles against fleet with bigger ships is just a matter of time. Especially with Wolfpack bonuses. If i will take a Converted Hangars on my 20+ destroyers, then together with 120+ Wasps they can melt any escort and constantly keep advantage even with enemy reinforcements. Sometimes i think its a waste of 23 OP, but its worth that price.

Some of you may say why im even take care about 240 dp from perks? Well. Avoid it make game easier. i need to make it harder. Easy win is boring

My common composition is Wolf, Shrike/Enforcer/Hammerhead, Falcon, Onslaught. Mostly because they costs low DP compared to theirs good possibilities, so i can get quantity advantage with good quality.

[itBeABruhMoment]

To be honest I kind of find that SO eagles actually outclass high tech cruisers. Why spend 20dp on a fury when for an extra 2 dp you can get a ship that has nearly same stats as an aurora. You could argue that the whole no sabot pods thing is a pretty big downside but the ability to mount 3 heavy blasters worth of anti-sheild dps in the form of heavy machine guns still gives a plentiful amount of anti-shield.

[intrinsic_parity]

It's unfair to compare SO to non-SO ships. Compare SO eagle to SO aurora. I would rather have the SO aurora personally, particularly as a flagship.

But I generally don't use SO because IMO it makes the game boring.

[itBeABruhMoment]

The base stats of the eagle are nearly the same as the base stats of the aurora. Basically the only advantages in raw stats the aurora has is 10 more speed, 10 more ordinance points, and 200 more dissipation, which is not much for a ship that costs 8 dp more than the eagle. Also, the eagle can mount flux efficient ballistic weapons and make better use of it's flux than the aurora, so that kind of diminishes the flux dissipation advantage of the aurora.

[Amoebka]

The base stats of the eagle are nearly the same as the base stats of the aurora. Basically the only advantages in raw stats the aurora has is 10 more speed, 10 more ordinance points, and 200 more dissipation, which is not much for a ship that costs 8 dp more than the eagle. Also, the eagle can mount flux efficient ballistic weapons and make better use of it's flux than the aurora, so that kind of diminishes the flux dissipation advantage of the aurora.

Aurora also gets 125 speed from jets, instead of 50 for Eagle, and has 6 times more missiles. The ships aren't directly comparable like that, because the speed difference is much, much more extreme than what you imply.

[intrinsic_parity]

Agree with Amoebka that plasma jets are a much more powerful maneuverability system than maneuvering jets, which on top of the base speed difference makes for a very large overall difference. Higher speed is a big difference for the bursty SO play style.

Also, 200 dissipation is quite a bit, and is doubled by SO. So that's 400 dissipation which is more than a maxed out tempest.

[TaLaR]

Plasma Jets is a good system that AI makes bad use of. It has fairly long cooldown, so it has to be used with correct timing. Otherwise ship ends up unable to disengage/pursue when needed.

Maneuvering jets have short cooldown, so just using them whenever available (as AI does) usually is not punished too much. Eagle also doesn't up in situations when it's shot without being able to shoot back nearly as often as Aurora (due to having decent weapon range) even when it fails to maneuver correctly.

For AI, I'd rather use Eagles. Them being much more available helps too.