Officer Spotlight: Sol Helmsman

The whole evasion vs maneuvering is kinda weird. Smaller ships tend to benefit much more from the mobility and getting out of range/line of sight, thus reducing chance to be hit significantly or entirely vs 30% evasion. Larger ships that cannot move nearly as much (unable to gain great distance or break LOS) and are more than 1 tile away from an attacker (avoiding the arbitrated 95% chance to hit) will benefit much more from evasion than smaller ships or a few extra movement points.

I've said for a long time that this dynamic needs a revisit

PS- Vesuvius, I've been lurking for quite awhile, reading a few things here and there. I need to go get really caught up. I noticed that my JIRA account went inactive. It took about 2 months, but I made up with my gf!

Last I checked, maneuvering was +5 10 15 20 30% 10 20 30 40 60% bonus (finally got that rounded up thing working right) based on remaining power, which power boost also finally works right and rounds up (I think). Stacking Power Boost + Maneuvering can really get you places. Or if you REALLY wanna move, get the stress engines 2 with power boost 3, but that's only good for 1 round of active skill use and costs you an overall 15% extra power from missing those last 2 ranks of passive boost. Then there's the whole return to station to recharge abilities.... I'm never going to use actives!

I was worried about a fleet of 3 corvettes per each of 2 players going berserk and wrecking a Class X in 1 double-turn alpha strike, but with the reduction in firepower and the fact that AI controls additional fleet ships, that's not a worry anymore. I kinda hate that AI controls fleet ships and support ships.

 

Barring from what is said above, I think evasion is especially critical for the higher tier ships, since they will very likely be getting concentrated fire from all sorts of player ganging up on them. If you're going to put that much XP into purchasing a ship that expensive, you'll want to make sure you can get out of trouble too + dark matter astro.

 

It is. Thought smaller ships will tend to go point blank, which makes evasion useless. Evasion is useful for tanking stations, especially considering that movement will be mostly useless and to a minimum anyway.

I've gone into great detail about the evasion vs maneuvering problem and how each greatly benefits one side of the spectrum

DMA will be very useful when pvp starts. Annoyingly useful... Leaving a fight in a hurry will be a critical ability.

As is, nothing can stop some of the fastest or all of the corvettes from leaving. If they are on the border and click leave, they have full power to movement and cycle very early in the combat phase because of their initiative. Only a higher engine/maneuvering corvette could possibly hope to catch them... and then 1 turn is possible, but difficult given that you have to spend power, which takes away from init, reducing the likelihood of going before an exiting ship.

It's way too easy to blow up a huge investment with one or several cheap ships.

For example: A Liverpool Class IV with 19 hull or some of the class V's with ~30 hull...

A SINGLE corvette with overload can take them out in one turn or a dual-turn strike.

-If you cant beat them in the first turn + you aren't sure you will make use of the overload, save the overload for the second turn of an alpha strike.

AF unloads 15 damage to ship.
Leningrad or Swordfish goes 'ouch that hurt but I'm ok I have a few repairs and can raise shields this allocation phase'

Next turn, OVERLOAD +12 damage! Now the AF kicks in 27 to an already wounded ship. It's gone.

AF risk? Probably a Free starter, so only risking officer upgrades

The other guy? Risking a ~10k ship + much more expensive and precious officer upgrades because of the potential of the ship and other factors.

Even if the Leningrad had DMA and could warp out from anywhere on the field in 1 turn, the corvette will still cycle before him, dead during warp out phase before turn comes up

Once you get to Class VII and above, it will take a few corvettes in a dual-turn-alpha strike to kill you.... literally, just a few with the damage potential of each pushing from 30 upwards to 42 depending on the corvette!

 

The helmsman is starting to become my go-to officer character for upgrades. Playing with evasion and maneuverability, I get the extra MP (which is always a critical benefit no matter how you play it), and the less chance you get hit, the longer you survive. A maxed-out helmsman is something I've yet to get to though.

 

I agree with the helmsman is important. However I tend to increase all officers the same. Don't forget engineer power boost, normally one more MP for every upgrade, at least tier 5 and up. All the officers are important, With the exceptions being marine officer on ships with no marines and sol medical, until the emergency escape is available.

 

If I knew I would have my Helmsman reach level 5, I would pick evasion. But starting, I'd have to say maneuverability at this point.