General Cade Smart, on Apr 28 2005, 09:05 AM, said:
Its odd that a Strange Asteroid should have almost infinitely negative shielding. So, how does that work? Does it instantly blow up? Cant it stand one hit? Because according to a website, it has 0 shielding but 40 armor. So, does this happen when you pilot totally unshielded ships? Because Kris Hausers Star Wars plug-in has a buyable totally unshielded ship, TIE Fighter. It has only 20 armor. Oh, and does having negative fuel mean it cant jump? That means it makes the game useless. Or perhaps it means it has infinite fuel.
Oh, and I havent flown any of them. I wish to fly the En. Arada though.... if its as good as you say. And the Beam Igazra... I think it caused 5 damage, quite good.
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The Strange Asteroid has zero shields and zero fuel, according to the EVO data files. In-game, however, when you pilot it, those stats show up in the player info dialog box as I stated. It does not instantly blow up, and the mission in which it appears requires the player to disable it.
The Enhanced Arada has an amazing shield recharge rate of 1% every 5 frames, which is 6% per second. It has 800 shields (which displays as 80 in game, because Override shows all ships' shields and armor as one tenth of their actual value), so it recovers them 48 shield points per second. That means anything dealing less than an average of 48 DPS (damage per second) to shields cannot kill it. A blaze turret deals 30 DPS if every shot hits, so a UE Destroyer could conceivably deal 90 DPS and defeat the Arada; except, of course, for the fact that the Enhanced Arada completely outflies the destroyer, and can easily escape from the crossfire for the few moments required to recover its shielding.
When you fly one as your own, you can buy a shield generator to further improve the speed of your defense-recovery. That outfit has a ModVal of 10, which I believe means you recover 3 shield points per second. If you also buy 4 shield enhancers as well, each of which gives you 50 shield points, you then have 1,000 shields that recover at 63 points per second. (Unless I'm wrong on the generator: it might make you recover 3% per second, which would mean with that and the four enhancers the Arada would replenish its shields at 90 points per second.)
However, what really makes it great, is putting Dospect Armor on it. Then you have 600 armor in addition to 800 shields. You can then either buy a couple of turrets (phase and blaze are the most space-effective) and a couple of cannons (same as with turrets), or max out on engine upgrades and the like, and get four cannons.
If you choose the former route you end up with a veritably invinsible light destroyer. Earlier today I took down the U.E.S. Incontrovertible with that setup, going toe to toe the whole time and without any help from escorts. I had 100% shields almost the entire time. (When a rocket hit me they dropped to around 97%, but they were immediately full again.)
If you choose the latter you get a heavy fighter with the mobility of a crescent fighter and the same survivability as in the previous paragraph. The only downside is that you lose some of your firepower. Swivel Phase Cannons help you hit your target when you are moving rapidly.
In both of those setups I can survive indefinitely against the Council Station defense fleet while my escorts pile heavy fire onto them. My escorts are Voinian Dreadnoughts.
I also have a pilot flying a Dreadnought. I made a simple plugin so that I could keep the stock weapons when I capture it (all I did was make outfits for them, and none of the outfits are salable so I can't just empty everything for inordinate free space to use.) After I ran out of Salvo Rockets (which I gave a mass of two tons each, just like every other Voinian rocket,) I filled up what free space I could muster with neutron turrets. After the usual shield, armor, mobility, and fuel upgrades, I finished off with 8 Miranu Defense Systems and 165 Defense Pods. That ship can last a long time against Council Station, and even longer when I cloak, but not forever the way the Enhanced Arada can.
Coraxus, on Apr 28 2005, 09:20 AM, said:
You also missed the prototype azdara which has one point of shield and no armor because on the mission to escort it, it was meant to be destroyed.
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That ship cannot be captured by the player though. There is also an Enhanced Azdara with the fastest possible shield recharge rate, 1, but that too has zero armor and thus cannot be disabled and so can't be captured.
Many ships in the game have no armor, meaning that even though they are common enough and not mission-specific, they still cannot be captured. The Crescent Fighter, Krait, and Azdara, for starters, but they can be purchased, so their uncapturability is trivial. The Zidagar and Zachit fighters, though, can never be flown by the player in the stock game, which I consider to be a flaw.