Ship class choices?

[HangarPilot]

Cross-referencing multiple (really old) threads, I gather ship choice is mostly about play-style. With a good high-level crew (and lots of command points) you can do well in ANY hull.

That said, I feel like the 9000-class "7/42" ship is just too much crew to manage so I'm trying to find something smaller (but still really effective). In my research I ran across this statement:

Originally posted by Trese Brothers:

Playing the entire game in a small ship is possible. It is harder and requires a lot more focus.

Small ships have a lot of advantages -- speed, fuel cost, better XP gain but are risky especially on higher difficulties.

Find the right ships and size of your crew and career. Merchants want huge freighters, you can't really be a high profit merchant without cargo space, etc. Mission runners often are scooting in mid-mass ships.

Larger ships and larger crews require higher skill pools and have more difficult tests and damaging failures They also need a lot more Skills like Intimidate and Doctor as the crew head count grow.

Could someone elaborate on that part of the final paragraph that I underlined?

I'm a "mission runner" focusing on space combat at 4/5. Feels like my Fidelis Cutter isn't powerful enough mid-game and the Titan/Sword is just too much!

[Stan]

yeah please experts out there cause this is really good question

[Synopse]

Check this guide about Class and talents (and skill pools).

It has a ship section just because of the fact how skill pools interact with ships.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2819332809

[matt]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3209072989
Here you can see a ship I designed for a peaceful merchant. It's heavy on cargo holds, and it's got lots of defense. It can blow up xeno ships, but I'd prefer to just haul cargo. You can see I pushed the engine safety up really high. We don't really have much trouble entering dangerous quadrants.

One element of the game that sometimes trips up people is that everything becomes steadily harder over time. The target numbers for the skill rolls increase, the rival captains gain levels, the rival ships get better equipment, etc. I made friends with everyone, so I can just acknowledge everyone I meet. The ship itself is designed to sail through radiation storms in danger 15 quadrants.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3209096325
This is one of my favorite captains, who I've been playing for a long time. It's even later than the merchant captain. We have occasional trouble with failed rolls, but I've got so many skill saves that it doesn't matter. This ship is outfitted for missions and ship combat. It doesn't have a lot of defense, but it doesn't matter that much. The captain is a commander, so he gets a free bonus to his defense.

This late in the game, with such a large ship, we get rolls that are tough to pass even for us. For example, we've got 91 doctor and 99 repair, but we still have to rely on skill saves. I wouldn't want to sail through a dangerous quadrant with just a single doctor, or even just two doctors. With space for 42 crew, though, we can afford to have several scientists, doctors, and scavengers.

Yes, it's difficult to keep the ship running without disaster striking, but this crew is very experienced (mostly around level 35-40), and we've got redundancies in case we get trapped in a radiation storm in a sparse quadrant.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3198504781
This is a smaller combat ship that I designed somewhat early in the game for poor, doomed Captain Koraka from the Bounty Hunter Challenge last month. As we entered the second era, I made several upgrades, such as adding a high end Steel Song Scout Bridge ($1 million, ouch) and replacing the fuel tank with a C-Tak so we could attack carriers.

It was early in the game, and we were in a small ship. Skill tests should have been easy. Instead, it was a real challenge. Our doctor died in crew combat, and that loss caused a few key personnel to abandon the ship. We had to conscript several navigators and crew dogs before things stabilized. This is probably the best way to deal with a large ship that has lots of open crew bunkers: attack some other ships and steal their dudes.

I found the Victus Interceptor to be a very fun ship. I continued using it as my Sword Battlecruiser was upgraded in the drydock. We never really had any trouble at all during combat. What I did was attack with both missiles while moving forward. The chaser engine made it possible to do this with just 8 reactor points, and staying at position 3 meant that I had a 29 engine agility. I wasn't going to get hit.

The only real problem was that we couldn't fit explorers, scavengers, smugglers, and other support crew. With 30 crew, we had to specialize in what missions we took. Wilderness missions were possible but tricky to complete, given that we had 9 points of explore and only 1 or 2 card manipulation talents. I also had only two people with doctor saves, so failing doctor saves was a nail biter.

[Gilmoy]

Big Fing Ships Do Big Fing Things

+ Moar crew means moar dice, dice, dice.
+ Also, you get more component slots for more dice, dice, dice.

+ Yes, you do manage 40 crew slots.
(Leave 2 berths open to double-conscript, then dismiss 2 losers)

+ Also, you manage 6 Officer slots! (Your Captain is the 7th, you cannot fire her)
That means you can promote your entire crew-fighting team to 3-4 Officers,
and still have an Engineer/Mechanic (Repair) and a Quartermaster/Diplomat (Intimidate).

+ Smaller ships actually suffer during crew combat because of insufficient Officer slots.

- Your fuel jump costs are enormous. Shrug at $5k to refuel, 1-2 times per quadrant.

+ Your cargo capacity is enormous. Install 2 Cargo IV = 2*45 = 90 cargo. You have room.
Fly a golf course, load up 88 T4s like Small Craft Components, sell for $100k profit.
It can take 5.0 weeks for all travel legs, landings, and sells/buys.
But it's faster than 2 mission steps, with less risk.

Certain vignette missions, like Stash 94 Vudka, become easy(ier).
A subset of delivery/stash missions become one-shot-able.

* In-flight skill tests are scaled to a constant % of your current ship's max skill save.
This is easy to compute. Suppose your ship has 44 Nav dice pool.
Then your ship's max skill save in Nav is 44s+44. Easy, huh?

• With crew skill pool = 44 Nav, you attain "100% Navigation", and your save is 44s+0.
  
• With crew skill pool = 88 Nav, you attain "200% Navigation", and your save is 44s+44.
  
• Being below 44 Nav is bad. Don't be here.
  
• Being above 88 Nav is the same as 88. Maybe dismiss 1 excess Navigator, etc.

Suppose your crew has 90 Nav total = "204% Navigation".
You attain your ship's max Nav skill save of 44s+44, and the excess 2 Nav is useless.
When in-flight skill tests are scaled to 80% of your max skill save, you outdice them.

Switch to a ship with 58 Nav dice pool. Now your max save is 58s+58.
In this ship, your old crew have (90 / 58) = "155% Navigation", with skill save 58s+32.
See how your "% Navigation" went down a bit?

Similarly, if you pour 1.1 pints of beer into a 2-pint mug, it's no longer full to the rim

The same in-flight skill tests are still scaled to 80% of your new ship's max skill save.
But your old crew in the new ship attain less than your max skill save.
So in the small time window immediately after switching, you may fail a few more tests.

+ Work-around #1: Pour more beer in ==> hire +1 Navigator (, etc.)
This is easy. Switch ships, click Launch, Land, spice hall, hire a few more guys.

+ Work-around #2: Play for another decade, everybody gains +4 levels.
That means do #1 as a band-aid, and as you level up, dismiss some excess crew.

Large ships will naturally have +1-3 more crew in each of the ship crew jobs:
Crew Dog, E-Tech, Pilot, Navigator.
You'll still have enough crew slots left over to have +5-10 more crew specialists.

~~~~

I haven't noticed that larger ships suffer more damaging skill test failures.
(Insufficient sample size )

But anyways, the goal of ST:F is to minimize skill test failure hits to(ward) 0.
It's OK, and expected, to fail the test and use a skill save to auto-pass it.

+ You can stroll through a Danger 16 in Radiation Storm, fail 8 of 9 tests,
take all of them on your skill saves, never get dinged, and saunter out unscathed.

Space Becomes Lava, Planets Are Oases, land (or orbit) and make time pass, repeat.

- You might take 7 skill tests in the same skill in a single 2.0-week interval.
That beats your 6 skill saves in that skill, and dings your ship 1 time.

This could happen at any time, but obviously the frequency is very low.
Getting dinged this way 1 time per ~decade is OK. (If it doesn't end your run, it's OK.)

~~~~

Ultimately, in-flight skill tests aren't "harder" in big ships, nor "easier" in small ships.
In-flight skill tests are scaled to your ship('s max save), whatever it is.
In a way, this means in-flight skill tests are neutral, all game long.

+ Small ships have small crew, small dice, and see small tests.
+ Large ships have large crew, large dice, and see large tests.
* Damaged ships can have (temporarily) tiny dice, and see tiny tests

Then upgrading a ship gives you a transient phase in which your crew lags behind a bit.
Fix that in the obvious way, by hiring moar crew.

[HangarPilot]

Wow! Really helpful details. Let me pose a specific scenario:

Fidelis Cutter start, LR space combat, best speed engine I can manage, Elec (well, actually all skills >200%), Commander Captain (Military Officer as second job)...

Almost 100% skill saves. In space combat, I rarely (if ever) get hit and successfully hit the enemy almost 100% of the time. Then the era changes ... suddenly there are carriers, battlecruisers, and large Xenos in the mix.

Now I'm getting hit. That's fine, because with the proper application of abilities I'm maybe getting hit 10% of the time. However, combat takes FOREVER. Even with abilities my attacks are maybe 75% successful but, again, it just takes forever to chew the ship down... That's why it seems the Cutter just isn't powerful enough any more.

Back to the original quote:

Larger ships and larger crews require higher skill pools and have more difficult tests and damaging failures.

I guess I read that in the context of space combat ... but all this info makes it sound like it's referring to "in-flight" skill tests. Is that a fair assessment?

At any rate, upgrading to the Titan works fine ... but just seems too overpowering (and a lot of extra crew to manage). Any suggestions on something "a little bigger" or a way to improve the Cutter's ability to take down ships faster? Two top-tier medium missiles (6RP) + one top-tier torp (2RP) seems the best I can manage...

[Gilmoy]

Yes, that quote applies to in-flight skill tests, i.e. not in ship combat.

Ship combat is a different domain.
Big Ships Have Big Dice (because of crew + slots).
More is Better.

Every ship combat "test" is 1 shot, using adversarial paired dice.
That is, it's always your 1 roll vs. the enemy's 1 roll, high roll wins.
So "failure" is the same as "enemy beat your roll".

Equivalently, in-flight skill tests are also adversarial, but the adversary is space itself.

~~~~

Finally, my favorite tip for ship combat is to sprint to board. But it needs some prep.
Obviously, you need a strong crew-combat team.

Currently, you're using range-4 and range-5 weapons.
I assume you try to stay at range 4 (or 5).

Range-5 torpedoes are notorious for doing the least damage per shot.
They stack debuffs to prevent cowardly Merchants from Escaping you. That's their job.
But any strong enemy is rushing you, not running away.
Then range-5 torpedoes don't fit that entire category of encounter.

Range-4 missiles are very good.
But the strategy of staying at 4 and only shooting might be like ... bailing a canoe.
The other ship probably also has 1-2 missiles at range 4.

+ If you're fine with rupturing hull to win, range-3 railguns maximize damage.
You do need to risk getting to range 3. That means no easy Escape.
(It's OK, you plan to win the fight in the first place.)

+ I prefer to build to Not Get Hit, and then sprint to range 1.
* I love crew combat. I especially love crew combat vs. tissue-soft ship crew.
(Even xeno ship crew are soft, after you beat down their 2 teams of fighters.)

+ Slaughtering crew in crew combat inevitably wins by short-staffing.
+ You can sabotage 1, stack Crippling Dread, and use boarding talents.
+ You can also have 1 range-2 gun and ping them with more debuffs.

All of this lets you win on a clock very different from hull beatdown at long range.
It can sidestep all of the enemy ship's strengths, and reduce them to ... tissue.

You do need to Not Get Hit, and also Win Range Change.
The simplest way is to Get Moar Dice. (Hence we love big ships.)
Many foolish enemies will help you by playing Twitch Surge for you, as you chuckle.

[MasterShake]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3209366966

My last M9000. From the latest toys I've just installed two new top-tier 8 fuel tanks (used tier 4 before), and replaced old cargoi-fuel bay with new top-tier cargo-bay (not nesessary for me really, cause I don't deal with cargo, but it's more than enough compensated by new fuel tanks and it has +2 ship ops, and dice is everything). I was ok on fuel front before (jump cost about 20-25% of tank capacity), bit these new tanks? Oh. My. Gosh. Almost feel like cheating, because that's enormous fuel capacity boost.

This ship is not minmaxed. It was designed up to more roleplay perspective. My vision for it was to be "believable" and "sensible" rather than meta, e.g. to have armor/shield capped and with dedicated shield generator (which is opposite to meta), a top military engine (balanced with +3 safety from modules to not be complete pain), a hangar with a shuttle and a medical block, because I feel and want it be that way, craft evasion capped, and being able to reliably shoot down enemy craft (thus specific modules). Each officer was picked for a specific role (i.e. first mate/tactician, medic, chief engineer, security chief, and wing commando in the Hyperion Launch Bay as seems legit) and given according officer cabin. Again no tactician annex spam. I probably should have included supercargo, but i ended up not dealing with cargo at all, so no 6th officer at all, tho as can be seen I have basically left a spare small slot.

Had to play with ship builder for a while those days, but the load was designed and kept the same from launching point, only component tier was purchased higher as it came possible. Squeezed everything i wanted within 8990 mass, which made me really happy.
The dices always were and are more than enough for comfort endgame based on combat, be it dogfight/boarding or ground crew combat.

42 crew slots provided enough specialists to support not only combat capabilities including massive amount of powerful boarding and post-combat talents, but card games playing as intensive scavenging/exploring/subterfuge, more than average blockade/patrol (prize ship hunting included) and decent spy activity (more than capable to take on 1-2 top-tier missions for gathering intel at a time).
The amout of science+spy intel this ship and crew generate on flyby is... impressive to say the least (that means every conflict is yours by default even if you don't want/have time to intervene directly). And an occasional 1 or 2 missions with passenger+prisoner or 2 prisoners could be managed too, just to spice with a bit of variety of activity.
I say it's pretty damn universal setup fot a combat-in-base ship.

I've noticed new IX 3RP railguns, seems like a good stuff for a medium sized endgame ship. Or a deadly combination of 4 such guns for M8000 destroyer.

[HangarPilot]

Originally posted by Gilmoy:

...
+ If you're fine with rupturing hull to win, range-3 railguns maximize damage.
You do need to risk getting to range 3. That means no easy Escape.
(It's OK, you plan to win the fight in the first place.)

+ I prefer to build to Not Get Hit, and then sprint to range 1.
* I love crew combat. I especially love crew combat vs. tissue-soft ship crew.
(Even xeno ship crew are soft, after you beat down their 2 teams of fighters.)

+ Slaughtering crew in crew combat inevitably wins by short-staffing.
+ You can sabotage 1, stack Crippling Dread, and use boarding talents.
+ You can also have 1 range-2 gun and ping them with more debuffs.

All of this lets you win on a clock very different from hull beatdown at long range.
It can sidestep all of the enemy ship's strengths, and reduce them to ... tissue.
...

Hmmmm... a lot to consider. I've been taking the first round to see if I need to bail. If not, I move up to 4 so the enemy cannot easily bail ... then start chewing away. I guess I initially balked at SR combat because (A) I wasn't a fan of the crew combat and (B) fear of being unable to get away.

That said ... hmmm ... maybe I need to rethink my strategy now that I've upped my crew combat understanding (and crater ammo)!

[davea]

In terms of fastest real world time to win, I always liked closing to range 1 and using large grav cannons, or a whole lot of medium/small autocannons. I don't mind crew combat, but usually there are like 5-6 crew combats for one ship combat since you have to chew through their non-combat crew before reaching the captain.

[matt]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3209558433
Sorry about the small font size, but I wanted to try to fit all the relevant information into one page. This is a very expensive ship, and it would take years to install all these toys. However, it shows what you could do with a medium sized ship if you wanted to. If you're playing on normal difficulty, it'd probably be fine as an endgame ship. Even on hard difficulty, I'd give it fair odds of surviving the endgame.

The problem is that it doesn't really have the fun toys that you'd see on a Sword Battlecruiser or other M9000 ship. They can fit a large number of components that make you harder to hit, increase your damage, and improve your accuracy. On a ship like this, you generally have to rely on talents to do such things. That works fine, but you have to wait for them to recharge between battles.