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Extreme ship combat difficulty is brutal, and a big jump from the level
below.
Based on extensive max difficulty play (XP+75%) with my level 222 main in
NG+13, using various ships (as most notes about here suggest) and the
Guardian (highlighted in some notes).
First, be cautious about doing ship combat other than in level 1 or level 5
systems early on, which is similar to the fights over Vectera. Also be
very careful trying to capture that early if you're on XP+75%, because
in-person combat with the crew, especially the elite they typically have,
is brutal without a follower.
Second, be efficient about upgrading the Frontier, or wait until you can
have a different ship with a significantly better reactor (from a capture,
or possibly the Star Eagle, which has a good reactor). That is, buy
final parts whenever you can, like the Obliterators, which you can
unlock almost immediately, instead of intermediate parts you'll toss later.
Third, be sure, while unlocking the Obliterators through joining U.C. and
doing their little quest, to level Piloting up in their simulator until you
can pilot class B ships. Class C can wait a bit, but it's common to run
into a class B pretty early on, and frustrating to have to abandon.
Other notes as the game goes on:
- You should probably be using that B/39 reactor or a C/40 in the long
term, the best free one before is probably the A/29 in the Star Eagle,
from the questline on Akila starting at the bank
- Have Repair Parts, 10 to 20 should be plenty. If you have extra, they
have mass, so you can just drop them by your pilot's seat or something in
case you need to jump up to get them into inventory
- Aneutronic Fusion is great
- Equip your ship thoroughly. As in, about 350k credits worth
- Skill up, and have a crew with applicable skills
- Know that you can underpower turrets at about 50% yet still have full
effectiveness. Turret placement is important, and needs synergy with
your combat movement
- Get the Isolation skill, and when expecting ship combat, make sure you
don't have a follower, so Isolation will be active
- Try to be behind them! Boost to get there when it makes sense, and
definitely have high or max maneuverability on your ship
- Evade missiles with the shortest burst you can, so that you can do it
more often, Guardians are the best at this, even ignoring that they also
break missile lock regardless of your Skills - but good engines like the
3015s are facile at this as well (I think they're not the absolute best,
but the extra speed is nice). Those massive SAL-6830 engines are
terrible at this same thing
- Use maxxed-out targeting whenever possible, take out the shield if you
don't have EM, engines if you want to capture, target weapons if that's
going quickly - any shot intended to destroy might as well go through
their weapons
- If you have a chance to board a ship before the last one, do
that. You get more XP, more loot, a chance to grab Repair Parts from the
pile on your ship's floor, and more
- If you want to fight in a Guardian, go ground capture a tier IV or VI in
the far east galaxy (possibly normally after encountering one over Neon).
I've seen both tiers on Fermi VII-c. [Note that Watchtower used(?) to
make this vastly harder by overriding most random ship landings] You
can also do this in pre-NG.
- If in a Guardian, place your stun torpedoes carefully to manage up to two
enemies while trying to take out the third one - you'll have to restun
them, too. Try to place ships so that you can use the ship you're hiding
behind as a shield
- The Guardian's main weakness is its weapon refractory periods, so to
fight in them you have to build chances to recover into your fighting
style
For groups of 3, I usually try to kill a weak one first, then go for the
strongest one. YMMV, however. Notionally killing them off from weakest to
strongest is a good plan, although Starfield's terrible targeting system
can make this difficult [or impossible, in Watchtower fleet fights].
I've seen a lot of cases of being able to capture multiple ships in one
battle. I don't know why this is, although I wonder if it's related to
none of them having missile lock on me, which might relate to having tier 4
of Engine Systems (does it enhance if one's in a Guardian?). Or it could
be a bug in a mod. Regardless, this did occur rarely when I was playing
pure vanilla, especially if you stumble across a two faction fight and
manage to avoid shooting the wrong side. I noticed once, after capturing a
mid-battle ship and then sleeping in it to recover, that all the other
foes split. Convenient :-) Unless you're trying to capture the big one.
The process required to capture a ship, but return to your original ship
without losing control of the new one, is over-complicated in Starfield
(with one update making it worse), basically forcing you to start a jump in
the captured ship and abort it when it's only mostly spun up. This give you
ship ownership, but lets you redock with your starting ship. Still tricky.
If you want a sane method instead, add the Sit to Add Ship to Fleet mod,
which grants you ownership without having to chase your other ship to
redock.
I have not explored whether some Chem might enhance ship combat, but that's
certainly something to check out.
Everything below here is about Guardians
I spend a lot of time on my main flying a Guardian, which I've found can
capture shockingly well on Extreme. Examples of what one can capture are:
- solo ships up to potentially max level (but this almost never occurs)
- the better of a pair or ships where one is \~65 and the other is <30
- one of a trio of <40 each
- quads are a good time to run
A trio of level 50 ships destroyed my Guardian, repeatedly knocking out my
engines, possibly with EM. So, consider running from trios of level 50s
:-) or any group at all that turns into a problem.
Ground capture of a Guardian means you pretty much have to be at least on
the wing as it's still landing to make it to the "doorknob" plate below
the entry door. While it will go active on its own, I tend to keep
clicking on the plate until it does. You'll basically swap places with the
crew (almost always) when you go in. If you end up in there with the
crew it gets rather exciting, but this is super rare. If your quick at
seizing the ship, you can still jump back out the door and farm the
Starborn for Essences. Once you've seen it work once, it'll make a lot
more sense. The window for entry is short, only a few seconds.
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