pirate typical ships

[sovereign]

Pirate Transport eats other transports for breakfast. For morning tea it snacks on Light Fighters whose pilots broke their strafe keys, and lunch consists of the odd VHF. Dinner would be the delectable Gunboats, all high and mighty and not noticing their powerplant drain/dps ratio. Supper might be a bomber that missed an afternoon SNAC.


And don't get me started on the Armored Transport. Its a light gunship for 2 mil, 3.5 if you count full kit. Eats fighters like you wouldn't believe, and can put the hurt on anyone that doesn't have dedicated shieldbusters.


Transports do a wicked amount of damage, and their gun firing arcs usually aren't as carefully adjusted as Gunboat ones are. They have shields almost as effective as GB shields (to fighters, anyway) and they have the weirdest hitboxes you'll ever see. Plus, if push comes to shove, they can mount capital ship armor upgrades and it takes no less than four CDs on average to hit a train once... and they're back at cruise after ten seconds.

The things are like turtles with laser turrets. They don't move very fast unless you run out of CDs, but with anything smaller than a VHF (or a Loki), you can't kill them before they've completed their route. Even dropping the shields gets messy for LFs- remember that they have dinky powerplants, using guns designed for VHFs.

In groups, pirates relish the chance to let out those LFs. Solo, going out with less than a VHF (or, perpetual exception, Loki) is asking to be laughed at, and even the Loki only works until they realize you don't have a CD since you mounted the torp. VHF vs transport means that if they run, you have to have a Train CD with full ammo and 2 shieldbusters, plus not miss while they pelt you during cruise cooldown. If they fight, you have no worries about time, but those turrets are painful and they don't stop coming. Plus, there's twice as many of them as there are on GBs so if they stagger their shots, it can be a right pain to dodge. Its doable, but it isn't easy. Bombers are workable because of the second CD slot, but if you're typing and they start blasting... I've died to that once or twice.

GBs even have to watch their tread sometimes- energy is a real issue, unless you're kitted for anti-fighter... in which case have fun beating up something just as resilient as you are.



To be fair to transports, those bombers are a right pain, and their hullbusters will sometimes be able to drop your shields in time for a nice SNAC to the face. That's probably the toughest matchup, unless they have Inferno + SNAC; in which case you just run. Hardest part of being a transport pilot is "When do I run, when do I fight, when do I deal?" I have never had more trouble soloing with multiple opponents than with a transport; gunboats do plenty of burst damage to make fighters want to shield camp, and with missiles you can solo a fair score of untrained opponents. Fighters can just not joust and have a fair time, and bombers vs a pile of gunboats just means stay on your toes and hope they don't have missiles. Transports don't have burst damage, and they don't have missiles (thank God); they have decent dps that can knock out one guy.



</rant> since I forgot what I was trying to say.

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