[Spoilers] Best ship/loadout to fight the Alphas in the Wanderer campaign

[zeroxoneafour]

Right now I'm at the Find the Alphas point in the Wanderer campaign. I know where there base/Carrier is, but I can't fight them because my ship doesn't have good enough things. Right now it's a Dreadnought with a very large amount of alien tech (mostly Remnant and some Wanderer) stuffed into it. I'm working on getting the Bactrian, but I looked at the stats of both and I think the Dreadnought is the best ship for it right now. I can't win against them though, and I'm looking for a better ship to fight them with. It/the fleet needs to meet these requirements -
Cannot have a total required crew over 100 - My salary is 10,000
Cannot be a fancy Wanderer ship - I have not reached that point in the storyline yet
Cannot be slow and fat - I just dislike that style
Price does not matter
I'm working on the Remnant military license and the City-Ship license right now.

[jafdy]

You should be able to get Wanderer light warships at this point (I think those are unlocked after first contact), they will be about on par with a human heavy warship. Failing that something like the Hai shield beetle could work, or you could try to capture one or more of those automated ships in the area.

[Terin]

A shield beetle with proton guns and heavy anti missile is enough to do it, yeah. You'll need to run when you first jump in, take down all the fighters and wait for the carrier to run out of missiles. At that point, get in range so you pelt them with the proton guns, but not close enough so their beams can hit you, and you should be fine.

[HuskyDynamics]

I believe I used a pair of Dreadnoughts with primarily human (and a little Pug) gear to do this. The best way to do this, as Terin said, is to take out the fighters first. They'll chase you much faster (and sometimes farther) than the Carrier, so make sure you are fast enough to lead them away and destroy them one by one if things start to go poorly.

Also, if you're like me and didn't capture any Republic ships during the FW/Republic war (I was still new to the game and was having a hard enough time not dying already), it might be worth grabbing the Alpha's carrier. You can either keep it as a prize (it's honestly not that capable of a ship against some of the later enemies), or just sell it, but either way you get something out of it.

[zeroxoneafour]

Originally posted by HuskyDynamics:

I believe I used a pair of Dreadnoughts with primarily human (and a little Pug) gear to do this. The best way to do this, as Terin said, is to take out the fighters first. They'll chase you much faster (and sometimes farther) than the Carrier, so make sure you are fast enough to lead them away and destroy them one by one if things start to go poorly.

Also, if you're like me and didn't capture any Republic ships during the FW/Republic war (I was still new to the game and was having a hard enough time not dying already), it might be worth grabbing the Alpha's carrier. You can either keep it as a prize (it's honestly not that capable of a ship against some of the later enemies), or just sell it, but either way you get something out of it.

For some reason, I thought it would never run out of missiles. I just used the singular dreadnought with two point defense turrets, and baited all the missiles out of it. From that point on, it was a easy fight (and I got some Disruptors out of it, too!)

[zeroxoneafour]

Oddly, it never launched any drones/fighters. Sometimes it did, sometimes it didn't. It might be a bug but I just thought maybe a Korath ship blew them up

[Zarinthal]

shield beetles are great with their stock engines, but you can replace the forward thruster with the ones on korath raiders for a nice boost. That with system cores, kor AM, dual Hai large generators (or whatever wanderer generators you decide are affordable) dual large heat shunts and plasma/sunstroke turrets. I try to have around 30 or more shield beetles by this point in the game

[Goose]

lol i didnt pay attention to suggested loadouts, i just loaded a dreadnought with nuclear bombs and blasted bfg division and memed that thing

[zeroxoneafour]

Originally posted by Goose:

lol i didnt pay attention to suggested loadouts, i just loaded a dreadnought with nuclear bombs and blasted bfg division and memed that thing

Did reconciliation FW campaign, no nukes for me

[DroopingPuppy]

At this rate Shield Beetle is the best one you can get. You are yet to have Hurricane at that point so don't bother to buy a ship - Just 'negotiate' it with Unfettered Hai. All Human ships, include Dreadnought and Kestrel, are nothing but outdated ships compared by it so don't bother to stick with them. Only Bactrian is worthy Human ship to have if you started to access for higher tier ships, for it is the capable combat freighter as well as marine ship which is the most important point as the flagship.

Prakacha'a is the best place to farm Shield Beetle; before the full-scale invasion all jumpable enemy ships on there has Jump Drive. I don't remember the truce with Unfettered Hai still stands at that point, though.

[DroopingPuppy]

For my Shield Beetle's loadouts;

Guns
-Ion Cannon x3
-Inhibitor Cannon x3

Turrets
-Pulse Turret x3
-Point Defense Turret x1

Systems
-Outfits Expasion x7
-Quantum Keystone x1 (Important!)
-Jump Drive x1
-Fuel Pod x1
-Cooling Ducts x1
-Large Heat Shunt x2
-Systems Core(Medium) x1
-Small Heat Shunt x1
-Wanderer Ramscoop x1
-Dark Storm Shielding x2

Power
-Yellow Sun Reactor x1
-White Sun Reactor x1

Engines
-"Bondir" Atomic Thruster x1
-"Bufaer" Atomic Steering x1

Although I do think that change medium system core and one Dark Storm Shielding by one large system core, but when I am about to think it I can get Soilfuge and eventually Hurricane so I didn't bothered to upgrade old Shield Beetles. Cooling Duct is only there for filler. Fuel Pod is there for making its fuel capacity to 600, and as playing Wanderer campaign you will know the difference of having fuel capacity of 500 and 600.

If you want to against Unfettered Hai it is recommended to replace some Pulse Turrets by Point Defense Turret - Hai Tracker is one of the deadliest missile in the game and it is really annoying to face.

[HuskyDynamics]

Originally posted by DroopingPuppy:

All Human ships, include Dreadnought and Kestrel, are nothing but outdated ships compared by it so don't bother to stick with them

The Kestrel's pretty decent if you can get your hands on enough of them and have the right setup. I've got eight and they can currently take on basically anything. It's important to have multiple though so they can protect each other as you can only give them so much shielding.

[Zarinthal]

would be neat if after all the wars, drones included, all the human ships and equipment got like a 20-30% stat increase to reflect partnerships with new species (or just the stuff we buy and sell in human space). Wanderer, friendly Kor, Remnant, Hai, Heliarch. Maybe some of their equipment becomes available in human space

[DroopingPuppy]

Originally posted by HuskyDynamics:

Originally posted by DroopingPuppy:

All Human ships, include Dreadnought and Kestrel, are nothing but outdated ships compared by it so don't bother to stick with them

The Kestrel's pretty decent if you can get your hands on enough of them and have the right setup. I've got eight and they can currently take on basically anything. It's important to have multiple though so they can protect each other as you can only give them so much shielding.

With the same effort, I think that Bactrians can do the same - it is basically the freighter, not the warship, though, but it does have some fixed gun ports as well as turret mounts enough to put Anti-Missile works as well as support fire. Else put an another Shield Beetle is an another solution as well. Durability do matters when you against powerful enemy such as Unfettered Hai.

Aside some more weapon capacity Kestrel have no advantage over Shield Beetle, especially against the opponent's Shield Beetles that rush through your line and alpha striking the missiles. Even if I had over than 60 ships some of them try and unleash at least one salvo before got destroyed. I have tried to use some of them, but end up with just use the others. Up to 12 gun ports is not that bad, but how to actually use it? Inhibitor Cannon is the only suitable weapons, but that's already light enough to carry by most other ships. Also it is light enough to be squeeze in besides of some Ion Cannons as well. Also it is not the only ship that able to use Inhibitor Cannon.

Not to mention about the required crews - Shield Beetle needs 47, but Kestrel needs 64. Running a fleet of Shield Beetle costs less compared by Kestrel.

Also Kestrel comes too late and you have to buy it individually, while you can capture a dozen of Shield Beetles in some days. Only if it comes earlier, you may have some chance to replace your fleet of Marauder Leviathans by a fleet of Kestrels. But it comes too, too late, and if you have explored enough then you can have a fleet of Shield Beetles already when you are starting the quest for Kestrel.

[Zarinthal]

really starts to depend on playstyle, since the bactrian is not super fast by comparison, and a gun kestrel has more forward gun mounts I think

[HuskyDynamics]

Yeah, that's true that Shield Beetles are far easier to get and require less crew. I tend to stick with mostly Human ships though out of preference (with the exception of my fleet of Deep Rivers). Plus I think the Kestrel is aesthetically superior to the SB (or any of the Hai ships for that matter. They're just kinda weird).

If you were wondering, my Kestrels are fitted with Sunbeams for the guns (I have the Shields variant so there's only 6 gun ports), but entirely Ka'het stuff for the turrets. It packs a good punch but is light on the energy requirements.