The Erlking is worth it.

[Faptor]

Holy, this is the first time ive fully upgraded it and it absolutely dominates.
I feel bad for crying so much about having to find the vaults, the reward is definitely worth the hassle.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2936718367

[Rejected Spavvn]

Erlking alone would have made me buy Avarice, feels like the rest of the DLC is just a cute little cherry on top. Btw the one single weakness it has is going against more than 100 defence drones at the same time... but getting a Jian with beam turrets (don't forget slasher upgrades on them!) and parking it on that M dock is a massive help, anything tiny the Elrking can't hit will be pinpoint torched in short order.

Have to admit reading Wikipedia what the name "Erlking" actually means creeped me out but wow that was one of the most fitting names for anything ever, given its eerie vibes and how it can suddenly appear from far out of sight and nearly instantly kill an unsuspecting target with turrets that get deadlier the closer you are...

[Faptor]

Rejected Spavvn님이 먼저 게시:

Btw the one single weakness it has is going against more than 100 defence drones at the same time... but getting a Jian with beam turrets (don't forget slasher upgrades on them!) and parking it on that M dock is a massive help, anything tiny the Elrking can't hit will be pinpoint torched in short order.

You know, until you mentioned it I had absolutely no idea that ships parked on you can kill stuff with their turrets. Is that a new feature? >.<
Thanks to you I also looked up the wikipedia page for Erlking/Erlkönig and was not disappointed! I just assumed Erlking was german slang for something like "Big Boss" and now I have even more respect for it :D

Holy, after 1000 hours im still learning things. I don't know if that's really good Game wise or really bad on my part haha

[Rejected Spavvn]

Heh, X4 takes only a couple of hours to get the hang of but even after the 5000 hours I have in it there's still the occasional fun little thing to learn. Bonus protip for "point guard" ships riding on your M docks; cram a radar booster mod on them and they provide extra view range even while docked, the "Shroud" (tier 3 mod) additionally makes the M ship veeeery hard for enemies to spot so it can jump off temporarily and drop satellites and stuff relatively safely even in the midst of hostile sectors. Be warned that while docked ships can't be targeted directly (even if all turrets of the mothership are blown your M will still hold out) they can still be damaged by shots, worst of all are missiles with large blast radius.

[fade7777]

also dont forget to place your yacht on it with fully upgraded sweet yellow laser beams defense. its like a laser show.

[Faptor]

fade7777님이 먼저 게시:

also dont forget to place your yacht on it with fully upgraded sweet yellow laser beams defense. its like a laser show.

Im just starting to work on that :D

[Sol]

the most annoying part of getting the Erlking running is getting the BP for an XL dock/yard to refit it, which is usualy 20 Rep and a ton of credits.

the vaults have multiple methods of being found with a minimum of stress and the Erlking itself just needs a Shukyakus worth of VIG Marines (VIG and RIP marines ordered from their shipyards are more likley to have extra marine stats than basegame races and terrans, i think split have a boost too).

the biggest investment and time is getting the rep and credits to get the
Erlking armed then, although theres no reason to not pirate it as soon as you can, the Erlking can still fit a few flak turrets and toss on some TER drives and with its large cargo hold you can use it for trading and transport until you get it armed.

If your not aware Terran engines have a much higher travel drive accelleration, their usualy best in slot for L and XL ships because of the time saved from them getting to top travel drive speed faster, theres a few youtube videos where this was tested.

Erlking engines are best in slot for the Erlking tho, so TER drives are just until you can refit.

[Rejected Spavvn]

Something of interest regarding travel drives; Terrans have better time-to-top-TD-speed than any others but that is really the only advantage, and only an actual advantage in very specific conditions. The AI is still changing with every major patch but for the time being it's incredibly tedious to obtain those precious 5 star pilots that actually even *use* their travel drives correctly. (generous to call the usage "correct", more honestly "they suck noticeably less but are still trash") Please note that I call it "tedious" and not "difficult" because it really isn't hard, the game currently (pre 6.00) has very few avenues of obtaining high tier seminars (every single one requiring nothing but abundant sheer luck and persistence, the mission system depends far too much on randomness) and the only other options are convoluted live exercises and terraforming endgame training programs which both are too far down the road to even be relevant to any but the most persistent players.

The most useful approach is 9 times out of 10 to go for highest cruise speed engines and even stack the "Nudger" mod on top, not because it makes sense for travelling long distances but primarily because it makes survivability of ships skyrocket when combined with default orders of fleeing or even ignoring attacks. The Erlking can solo the entirety of Vigor in the hands of a player with this if you have its unique engine, simply because you fly so fast that the only major threat to the Erlking which is massive clouds of torpedos gets left trailing and never catches up. Merely fly in big circles and they'll never reach you, while the turrets wipe out pursuers slowly but surely. I've taken on up to 100 fighters and 20 Barbarossas at the same time and come out on top with ease multiple times, at more than 150 fighters though I run into troublesome lag due to my PC being midrange so that's harder, might still be plenty doable on a better PC... Anyway there's also the Rattlesnake that can actually pull of nearly the same feat using a Split engine, though it is nowhere near as good at destroying enemies it can often literally just "fly away" from a fight if you find yourself outgunned and that way you can slip out of combat to watch for another opportunity to strike. Admittedly takes forever to take out stations with the Rattlesnake, expect at least 90 minutes to clean out a dense Xenon sector, but with hit-and-run tactics and its high speed you can survive nearly any situation as long as you very literally watch your back.

Ended up being a bit of a long post but all in all Terran L engines are ONLY good for those few and far between moments of "I need to cover exactly this one single 70-130km distance" and they suuuuuuuuck at any much longer or shorter distances and are pure suicide in combat. Frankly they all feel like they're intentionally absolutely horrible at all sizes only to make it possible for Arg/Ant to stand up to the Protectorate if the player triggers a conflict...