Special things to keep in mind


The Engine Shield Bonus

The ES-bonus generally helps the smaller, lighter ships. What it does is add a certain percentage of the cost of one engine to the ship's hullmass when the ship is in battle. By default this ES bonus is off, but if you're lucky your host has decided to turn it on. How does it work?
Let's say you have a Diplomacy. Nice ship, with a mass of 180 KT's not one of the heavier ships. We're assuming you've put transwarps on it. With an ES bonus of 50%, half of the cost of ONE engine is added to your hullmass in battle. A transwarp costs 300 MCs, so 150 KT will be added to the mass of your ship in battle. Combined with the Fed crewbonus of 50 KT's this brings your ship's mass at a grand total of 380 KT. Which is double it's original mass. Needless to say this heavier ship can take much more hits before it is destroyed.

There is one huge advantage however: the ship's mass in battle is now over 320 KTs. And 320 KT is the magic line. To ships with a total battlemass of 320 KT or higher fighters will do only one percent damage per hit to the shields and hull, while they inflict 2% damage to ships up to 319 KT, even more on lower-mass ships.

From this example we've found that at least one of your ships benefits greatly from the ES bonus. But there are more, ofcourse all depending on the rate of the ES bonus. Assuming 50% and transwarps on all ships, here's what happens to your shiplist:
-Nebula now totals a weight of 370 KT. Very nice.
-Arkham comes to a total mass of 350 KT. Pretty good, but it still only has three tubes.
-Missouri already had a very high hull-mass (now totals 595), but is now way too expensive because:
-Diplomacy has the same amount of tubes and also reaches a mass of 380 KT. For far less minerals and fuelconsumption than the Missouri.
-Thor reaches a total mass of 372 KT. Fires eight torps per salvo and is hard to kill. Deadly ship to go in first.
-Kittyhawk also totals 372 KT now. A very strong combination with one or two Thors, but still runs out of fighters too soon.

With the ES bonus on your ships become very strong in battle, and since you can now build cheaper hulls (Thor/Kittyhawks, Diplomacies) and have a better chance of taking down the large carriers this benefits you greatly. There are some other ships that can benefit greatly from the ES bonus, the most important ones being the Bird's Resolute (180 KT becomes 330), the Crystal's Emerald (same story), the Rebel's Guardian and ofcourse the dreaded Patriot. There are some other ships that get lifted over the 320-limit as well, but with limited weaponry. Ofcourse any ship that gains weight becomes stronger in battle, even when it's weight still doesn't go over 320 KT. And since you'll mainly be using torps it's just plainly the higher the mass, the lower the damage you inflict per torp.

A second advantage for you is that with a nice ES bonus enemy ships tend to get captured sooner. Using the default weaponry of Mk7 torps and disruptors, I've captured myself many an MBR and some Rubies. Patriots are best fought by a Nova with disruptors, not using any torps. It will nicely shoot down all the fighters, only suffering minor shield-damage, and then capture the Patriot.


Getting the right side of the battle

Host/VCR has a couple of odd things, one of them being the inequality of the left and the right side in battle. In short here's what it comes down to: Carriers fight better from the left. They somehow launch their fighters sooner and faster when fighting from that side. To compensate this disadvantage for the torpedo-ships Tim has come up with the following: when a torpedo-ship fights a carrier, with the carrier fighthing from the left side, the torpship has a 60% chance of gaining an extra 360 KT in hullmass. This applies only to ships with a mass already above 140 KT For you, those are the same ships already mentioned in the ES-bonus part, and the Arkham.

I won't bother you with statistics here, just this short example: A Thor going in first against a Biocide, fighting from the left, doesn't get to fire a single torpedo unless the ES bonus is on. Fighthing from the right it will still get toasted 40% of the time, but will be able to fire four full salvos of torpedoes when it gets the bonus mass. Four salvos of Mark 7's from the Thor's eight tubes take down the shields from the Biocide and damage it up to 30%. (Mk7's and Mk8's have the same result here)

So how will you get this to work in your advantage? Obviously you want your torpedoships to fight from the right if you're facing a carrier. There is an easy way to control this: ships with the lowest FC fight from the right side. Very handy indeed, because ships with the lowest FC also fight first. If you have a Thor/Kittyhawk combo you want to fight another ship with, you'll want your Thor to fight first, and you'll want the Thor to fight from the right. You also want the Kittyhawk to fight from the left. So the Thor gets a friendly code with a low number like 118 , the Kittyhwak will have an all letter - FC like 'jle'. Now the Thor will fight first and from the right (unless your enemy has set an even lower FC), after that the the Kittyhawk fights from the left. If both you and your enemy are trying to get the left side by setting an alphanumerical (all letters) FC, the ship with the lowest ID fights from the right - or better said: the highest ID gets the left side, lowest ID gets the right side.

Two things to keep in mind: Friendly codes lower than 100 don't always work correctly, so it's best to start somewhere above 100. This would ofcourse run you the risk of facing an enemy who is using codes below100. There are also some pretty common friendly codes, like 101, 102 etc. And when both you and your enemy have the same FC, there will be no fighting. This can be very hurtful for you: your Nova set to fight after the Thor will probably get blown to bits if the Thor didn't strip the enemy of his shields because his FC was matching that of the enemy ship. Even when you both have eachother set as primary enemy and mission to 'KILL', matching friendly-codes overrule this. So you want to avoid these.

There can be situations when you actually want to match your enemy's friendly code, so his Rush for example won't make mincemeat of your Diplomacy. You can try setting one of the common friendly-codes (maybe he has set his Rush to fight before the Iron Lady he has there, so when you match the 101 he just might have set on that Rush you won't fight the Rush but you will toast the Iron Lady). You can also try using some of the more common alphanumerical special friendly codes like 'mkt' for torpers or 'lfm' for carriers to prevent a battle you're about to lose, or use an 'alm', 'alt' or 'ald' friendly code to avoid wasting torps on the Merlin in orbit of your enemy's starbase. If your enemy knows what he's doing it won't work and you might even lose a ship surrendering to a base, but it's worth the try.


Warpwells

Warpwells can be very useful in saving fuel. After checking the host settings ofcourse you can set your waypoint three lightyears short and the warpwell will pull your ship to the planet. This way a LDSF for example burns 3 KTs of fuel less. May not be an incredible amount, but with all your ships doing this every turn you'd be saving quite some fuel - something you're probably rather short of anyway.

But gravity wells have more uses: they're a pretty safe place to be. The point is you can only move at warp 1 within a gravity well without getting sucked onto the planet. So an enemy ship flying around in that well is very hard to catch. He can fly three lightyears away from the planet, and he can fly all around the planet. If you intercept your enemy with, oh, let's say warp 4, you intercept the enemy alright, but then the gravity well pulls you back. This happens right after movement but before combat. So you'll have burned some fuel and still be back at the place you were. So the only way to intercept the enemy is at warp 1. Means you'll only fly one lightyear per turn, and so does the enemy. Catching up at the same speed doesn't really work, so you're gonna need a lot of patience and probably multiple ships to catch this one enemy ship. And most players don't have the patience or free ships to do this. Especially when the ships you've put safely in the warpwell aren't much of direct threat (freighters, terraformers). But what if you wanted to use this gravity well for warships?

Gravity wells are a great place to have ships doing minesweeping/minelaying in hostile space. It will be a bit hard to enter a gravity well when flying in from a position other than the planet itself, because you'll have to stop just a bit more than three lightyears from the planet, and then fly into the well at warp1. If your first stop was more than four lightyears from the planet, you won't reach the gravity well the next turn and will have to fly one more turn at warp 2 or so very close to the planet so you can be intercepted and will probably get toasted. If the first stop wasn't more than three lightyears from the planet at all, you're pulled to the enemy planet where some hostile enemy ship is probably waiting for you.

You can also use the wells as a sanctuary for ships low on fuel. You can easily move about without running out of fuel in a gravity well. You can use them as a storage area for damaged ships in hostile space. Dump your damaged ships in gravity wells and your enemies will have a difficult time killing you off or recapturing you - in the case of freighters and such. Gravity wells could also form a sanctuary for ships carrying colonists and resources off worlds threatened by attack. You may not be able to outrun the enemy due to fuel or drives but you can play hide'n'seek in gravity wells and keep your stuff instead of leaving it for them to destroy or seize. Merlins and Neutronic refinery ships are fine ships to ship off into the gravity well if their planet is under heavy attack: load them up with as much minerals and clans as possible so you'll leave next to nothing for your enemy.

If worse comes to worse, you can always dump everything if it appears you're going to be captured. Another use for gravity wells: Alchemy processing area in hostile space. Use captured alchemy ships to process resources ferried in by other ships. Fuel making is the most logical, but I suppose other minerals could be created as well. This might take some practice, reaching the ship from deep space at warp 1 if you can't fly to the planet anymore.
Lokis are nice ships to park inside the warpwells as well. They decloak everything within 10 LY, so the planet is still secured, but it's gonna be very hard to kill that Loki. The only downside would be that when you do this in your own territory everybody will know you're there and that you have a Loki.


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