Is there a way to make the Tiamat better?

[Hieuro]

The ability to crew 8 soldiers is nice and perhaps the only viable method to get to Antarctica, but:

IT. IS. TOO. DAMN. SLOW.

IMO unless you're dealing with a Pandoran Nest/Lair/Citadel, the Tiamat will literally not make it to any engagement with a timer attached to it.

[Phoenix7786]

Originally posted by Hieuro:

The ability to crew 8 soldiers is nice and perhaps the only viable method to get to Antarctica,

Luckily a Phoenix Point base is guaranteed to spawn at the tip to ensure that, with a Satellite Uplink enabled, you'll be able to reach Antartica.

That being said, Anu research will eventually give it even more range. The only way to boost its speed is through another faction that passively boosts the speed of all your aircraft.

[Whatever100500]

Nope.

I checked if it could be to used as 1-time hop between australia and antarctica, because these are pretty much opposite ends of the world map (with 2 helioses on both ends to actually carry the team), but even with extended range Tiamat wasn't enough. And even if it was, that's basically a small travel time optimization I might need only once during the campaign.

I can't invent any other scenario when I'd want to use a Tiamat for anything more than exchanging it for Manticore via Gift or stand still and collect ancient resources. Which is a pity, because Tiamat is the easiest craft to steal. If only they weren't so useless...

[ElPrezCBF]

You could also use it for special missions without any time limit (5 soldiers plus 1 vehicle is decent for that purpose). This frees up other aircraft types to respond quickly to emergencies like base/haven attacks. Or just moving it around with excess vehicles to trade resources although that's be a waste of capacity.

[Artek [General]]

If you have Festering Skies DLC - you can research and create a raw +100 speed upgrade, which in tiamat's case means +40% to movement speed and puts it just 30 speed below Thunderbird.
Unfortunately, depending on which research NJ will share with you - it can take half a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ game, like in my last playthrough.
And at that point you might as well just rush to research Masked Manticore, which is just Manticore that can carry 8 soldiers.

Other than that - no. Tiamat is not a rapid responder. It's main advantage is the range of it - the damn thing can move between Australia and South Pole without having to use South America as a hallway like all others.

The 8 soldiers carry capacity is a worthless advantage once you learn that you can send 2 aircrafts to the same mission and make a cross-team from them both.
One of the tricks i did in my last playthrough - i stole a Helios from Synedrion, named it "Reinforcer", put 2 soldiers and a vehicle on it and effectively made it part of the my main manticore team.
They would explore the geoscape together within reasonable range of each other, and if a mission came up - they would only deploy together for that overwhelming 8 man squad, unless ambushed (which thankfully never happened).

If you want overwhelming firepower for haven defenses - just get Thunderbird instead.
7 people is enough. Or even better: 4 people with a vehicle vehicle upgraded with Kaos Engines DLC gear, applying patented Drive-By tactics.
Just do mind that TB is still fairly slow too, so take that into consideration and give it appropriate positioning.
I find that TBs are perfect to lockdown Australia and both Americas if placed in dead center of one. Africa and Eurasia are too big for them.

[ElPrezCBF]

The 8 soldiers carry capacity is not a worthless advantage. How many helioses can you steal/manufacture in one game? By not being picky about what type of aircraft you steal as long as you can manage missions efficiently, the tiamat can still play a limited role for non-urgent missions.

[Artek [General]]

Originally posted by ElPrezCBF:

The 8 soldiers carry capacity is not a worthless advantage. How many helioses can you steal/manufacture in one game? By not being picky about what type of aircraft you steal as long as you can manage missions efficiently, the tiamat can still play a limited role for non-urgent missions.

Eh, that's way too narrow a purpose. Sure, you can do that, but that's an entire aircraft (and an entire squad) incapable of saving havens unless it gets lucky to accidentally be passing by one.
Once all story missions are completed - it becomes trash and we can't even disasemble it to relocate resources somewhere else.

The way i handled aircrafts in my last game was something like this:
A-team: Manticore + Helios tag team exploring the geoscape and dealing with high priority operations.
B-team: Manticore with exceptionally agressive 6-man squad with overhwhelming firepower, permantly stationed in the middle of Africa to respond to any haven attacks there (Thunderbirds are too slow to cover the entire continent, but at the same time it's too inefficient to use 2 of them, so Manticore it is).
C-team(s): Thunderbirds carrying mechanized teams with Scarab / Armadildo / Kaos Buggy support, patroling small continents like Australia and both americas.
Once i get Masked Manticore - my A-team moves there, and i can send Helios back to Africa to reinforce the B-team, and Manticore becomes a merchant ship, unless i can find a better job for it.

[Whatever100500]

In a well-run campaign, aircraft are a less limited resource than soldiers with high mission count (=stacked SP).

Using Tiamat is horrible for soldier utilization efficiency, you want as many fights as possible every day, doing raids/ancient sites/story when nothing more immediate requires attention.

[ElPrezCBF]

Originally posted by Artek General:

Originally posted by ElPrezCBF:

The 8 soldiers carry capacity is not a worthless advantage. How many helioses can you steal/manufacture in one game? By not being picky about what type of aircraft you steal as long as you can manage missions efficiently, the tiamat can still play a limited role for non-urgent missions.

Eh, that's way too narrow a purpose. Sure, you can do that, but that's an entire aircraft (and an entire squad) incapable of saving havens unless it gets lucky to accidentally be passing by one.
Once all story missions are completed - it becomes trash and we can't even disasemble it to relocate resources somewhere else.

The way i handled aircrafts in my last game was something like this:
A-team: Manticore + Helios tag team exploring the geoscape and dealing with high priority operations.
B-team: Manticore with exceptionally agressive 6-man squad with overhwhelming firepower, permantly stationed in the middle of Africa to respond to any haven attacks there (Thunderbirds are too slow to cover the entire continent, but at the same time it's too inefficient to use 2 of them, so Manticore it is).
C-team(s): Thunderbirds carrying mechanized teams with Scarab / Armadildo / Kaos Buggy support, patroling small continents like Australia and both americas.
Once i get Masked Manticore - my A-team moves there, and i can send Helios back to Africa to reinforce the B-team, and Manticore becomes a merchant ship, unless i can find a better job for it.

Didn't I say using them for non-urgent missions? If you use an assault in a sniper role, he'll fail. Just like if you use a tiamat with the purpose of rushing squads around, of course it'll fail because that's not optimal use of its features.

I don't know about harder difficulties. But on veteran, 3 tiamats, 3 helios, 3 thunderbirds and 1 manticore is often enough to move around efficiently if you place them in strategic locations. In my game, all the above except the manticore were stolen and I'm doing fine. I'm not saying this is the only config that works and there's some flexibility in how you want to make your aircraft composition efficient.

[Artek [General]]

Originally posted by ElPrezCBF:

Didn't I say using them for non-urgent missions? If you use an assault in a sniper role, he'll fail. Just like if you use a tiamat with the purpose of rushing squads around, of course it'll fail because that's not optimal use of its features.

I don't know about harder difficulties. But on veteran, 3 tiamats, 3 helios, 3 thunderbirds and 1 manticore is often enough to move around efficiently if you place them in strategic locations. In my game, all the above except the manticore were stolen and I'm doing fine. I'm not saying this is the only config that works and there's some flexibility in how you want to make your aircraft composition efficient.

I'm sure tiamat works for that purpose, but it's too narrow a purpose which makes Tiamat suboptimal is what i'm saying. The purpose of it itself is a problem.
A squad like that is stuck in a limbo of having only to do slow missions - which there aren't many meaning they'll never become an SP-rich A-team, and in turn they steal SPs from an actual A-team. I guess you could use them to brute force Scavenging missions?... But Thunderbirds with mechanized teams do that just fine already.

And once all the time-insensetive missions are gone - tiamat truly loses its' purpose. Your best bet is to place it in a tight cluster of havens, something like western europe where it has a chance to reach havens in time. That's what i did in one of my playthroughs. Initially i wanted to make the thing a defender of Australia, but even there the thing felt suboptimal. No havens were lost, but ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ were they close.
Eventually i moved the thing to western europe where it stayed for good and Australia watch was given to somebody else.

As far as flexibility goes - Tiamat is just the clear loser and its main strength can be replicated with 2 of any other far more flexible ships.
Or you know... Just take the L and use a Thunderbird. 7 people is more than enough to beat all but the hardest missions and it's 50% faster than Tiamat.

[Midknight22]

With the Cruise control upgrade the tiamat goes from trash to good enough to use, not as a fast responder but for those stationary missions that you know you'll always need a full 8 for, excavation sites for example, especially if you don't have a busted melee terminator in the group.

Not my first choice of aircraft at all but they aren't as bad as most people say they are, or maybe people just aren't lucky when i comes to the order they get the tech from NJ. Yes, the thunderbird is generally better most of the time but the margin isn't as much as you'd think, the tougher the mission target the more i ended up wanting the full 8 man crew on the job without wasting a second aircraft to reinforce.

[Muton]

Tiamats are awful and I've never used them. It takes way too long to get anywhere and Manitcores/Helios should always be used instead. If you use a Tiamat for a stationary mission, well you have to get there SLOW, and then return to your base SLOW. This game can throw lots of missions at you in an area at once and so Tiamats are worthless IMO

Even with cruise control and moon mission your tiamat goes 412 speed while a Helios goes 912 speed

[MysteriousFawx]

If you need the manpower but hate the speed, you'll have more flexibility running 2 Helios in convoy to big missions. Gives you a choice of 8 soldiers from a pool of 10 (or you can roll with a vehicle in one if needed).

By the point you've got that many bases you'll be getting 2 aircraft slots per expansion so it makes it very easy to field that many, the only issue is cost. Just wait for a Citadel on the map, steal a ship from Syn and then fix the reputation damage by going and destroying the Citadel.

[CthuluIsSpy]

Nah, tiamats are slow by design. They're supposed to be used to attack citadels, Ancient Sites and quest locations, especially if those areas are really, really far from your bases.

Personally I think they're a little too slow and wish they could have at least given the Tiamat the ability to heal and allow your troops to rest. I mean, they're on an airship.

Apparently in Festering Skies you get a better manticore that can also take 8 units, which would render the Tiamat redundant.

[CthuluIsSpy]

Originally posted by MysteriousFawx:

If you need the manpower but hate the speed, you'll have more flexibility running 2 Helios in convoy to big missions. Gives you a choice of 8 soldiers from a pool of 10 (or you can roll with a vehicle in one if needed).

By the point you've got that many bases you'll be getting 2 aircraft slots per expansion so it makes it very easy to field that many, the only issue is cost. Just wait for a Citadel on the map, steal a ship from Syn and then fix the reputation damage by going and destroying the Citadel.

Two helios are pretty expensive though. That's like 3k materials.

[Artek [General]]

Originally posted by CthuluIsSpy:

Originally posted by MysteriousFawx:

If you need the manpower but hate the speed, you'll have more flexibility running 2 Helios in convoy to big missions. Gives you a choice of 8 soldiers from a pool of 10 (or you can roll with a vehicle in one if needed).

By the point you've got that many bases you'll be getting 2 aircraft slots per expansion so it makes it very easy to field that many, the only issue is cost. Just wait for a Citadel on the map, steal a ship from Syn and then fix the reputation damage by going and destroying the Citadel.

Two helios are pretty expensive though. That's like 3k materials.

Not if you steal them. They also make great buddies with manticores you get from base activations.
6 people on manticore, 2 people and a vehicle in helious. Consistant 8 people for any operation or a vehicle if for some reason you can't or don't want to field the men.
And vehicle even joins in during base defenses.