Shrike wrote:
Possible. But this does raise the question of exactly how much booster and martian nori went into the designers of the darned thing.....although missile pods (VS more versatile and effective internal launchers) are the sort of bad idea that militaries tend to jump at (or bought to fix the fact that their heavy gunship is useless),
Theoretically, missile pods could be re-loadable, just not at facilities that aren't purpose - built for doing so. There's got to be some reason weapon stations are willing to buy empty ones off you. They could also be quicker to swap out in - universe than reloading an internal launcher, as well as easier to maintain.
building a state-of-the-art heavy gunship with fewer weapon slots than the EI500 is....an interesting decision.
The versatility of the player-ships is somewhat strange no matter how you look at it. I tend to assume that the player is in possession of a heavily modified variant of their ship designed specifically for the pilgrimage, and that the ships seen in use by NPCs are off the line models that are less easy to alter the loadout of.
At the very least, this would explain the fact that AI ships of the same class seem to all use the same set of weapons, even in areas where they're vastly outclassed by the local threats, as well as why Korolov hasn't armed all of its ships with particle beam weapons or flensers for a fraction of what it costs to keep them escorted.
This is probably true. The downside being that the CSC defensive guns are the later-game equivelant of Turbolasers.....and can quite easy take on chasms and sandstorms (tundras tend to block incoming fire with their micronukes).
If you keep the Tev9s firing, micronukes are usually destroyed before they can detonate. It's a useful tactic with all omni weapons, and could probably keep CSCs alive quite a bit longer if they learned to use it.
And the britannia itself is optimised for swarm-clearing as well
They're certainly useful in the anti - Sandstorm mission, but that's partially a side effect of the AI's poor handling of gunships. I'd say their most likely role is as a strike fighter, given their ability to quickly destroy the defenses around Ares Communes, drawing off their fighters with long range weaponry beforehand.
(the centurion seems optimised for dying very quickly).
I'd say that this is more the AI than anything else. Their weapon's range is rather good, and their shields aren't awful. A well piloted squadron of them could probably clear out an Ares or Ranx Outpost.
It may be that ingame, the fleet is just caught on the back foot....they optimised against small swarms of gunships (and the odd cometfall squad), and then the Ares started using Phobii and they haven't been able to adapt to that yet (except with Lamplighter).
The Lamplighter is a rather poor weapon against the Phobos, as I learned somewhat painfully in my Phobos farming run. The Fleet's best weapon against the Ares capital ships is their Katanas, which out-range the lightning turrets, and the missile pods, which can be used for hit and run attacks.
...Speaking of which, Lamplighter would be an awesome endgame weapon for a few units to use, if the timeline allows it. The Aquila in particular since Decker mentions that it's being installed on them.
I agree. It could use a buff in both games, though. In Transcendence, to compare better with the shorter and better rewarding path of protecting the Antarctica. Once part 2 comes out, the Lamplighter will quickly go from a fairly good specialty weapon to outright obsolete, whereas the Gem of Sacrifice will remain a means of easily winning a difficult fight. In CSC America, to give the player a weapon that can serve as a counterpart to the APA, and wouldn't be a downgrade from the Katana or NAMI heavy in too many aspects.
The brits use the NM900 pod...which is rubbish (XM900 is bugged against big stuff, and the NM900 has both a small ammo pool, and cannot swap away to the KM550 to do damage against large targets).
