Oolite Bulletins

Which is the best combat ship?

The blue one.

No, that's way too subjective a question to even come up with an answer that satisfies. First of all, there's your combat style-- dogfighting? Long distance sniping? Missiles? Taunt and run like blazes? There's no one ship that'll ever be 'best'. Some ships are big and regenerate energy fast, others are small and nimble and can play hob-and-nob with a beam laser. Good 'all-rounders' (and only looking at core ships, not anything OXP added) include the Cobra 1, the Cobra 3, the Asp, and the Fer-de-lance. All of them maneuver prettily and with some pep, and they're small enough not to be a tilting dummy. Some prefer larger ships like the Boa that can drop a swarm of missiles and take some punishment (bit hard on the paint job, if you ask me). Look for a ship with some decent speed, the ability to upgrade to shield boosters and military shields, and a rear weapon mount can be helpful if you need to hold off a pursuit. Oh, and if you see a ship you like that's got a Naval Energy Unit pre-installed at the shipyard, that's worth a look, as that'll give you a better energy recharge rate than you can get with civilian equipment. (It's sometimes tricky to get that repaired if it breaks, though.)

Above all else, remember, it's not the ship, it's the pilot. Even an Adder can be a good fighter with a few upgrades and a lot of practice!

Layne wrote:

Even an Adder can be a good fighter with a few upgrades and a lot of practice!

<nods> I've even taken an Adder into interstellar space and survived - a small, agile, tough little ship! As also said above, it depends on your style, but from the core ships, the Cobra Mk III is easily the best, in many respects. Of the OXP ships, the Wolf Mk II gets my vote!

I'd add the Boa Cruiser for the core ships - faster and a little more maneuverable than the Boa, no real down side except cost and reduced cargo capacity, and pretty tough. If you're expecting to fight and scoop up a lot of cargo it's possibly the best ship.

It depends on you, for example (imho):

- any ship with a  Killit weapon if you play without limits,
- [wiki]WonderWorm[/wiki] if you like uberships,
- [wiki]Andromeda[/wiki] if you like big ships (especially with Base Cannon),
- S8 Sniper for your  escort deck (S8 Escort is playable but 0 cargo),
- Sonoran is a good-looking OXP ship with very small frontal cross-section,
-  Contractor is a superb fighter available in the expansion manager but costly,
- Gecko is a core NPC ship with small size (a big advantage in combat!) and high stats,
- Adder is the smallest core ship with Tardis-like inner-space extender for equipments,
- Boa Cruiser is the core "uber" trade+combat ship (as ninja'd by ffutures).

I do not know if any of these hit your preferences so please give more info about your rules and goals for more specific answers.

I don't really add any non-standard combat equipment to the Boa Cruiser, just military lasers front and back (I'm crap at shooting from the sides) and military shields, naval energy unit, etc. By the time you can afford the ship the rest of it should be reasonably affordable too. It does have Torus drive (I've got the add-on that puts a lot of the suns a long way out so I need it) and some useful odds and ends such as the "Waypoint Here" gizmo you can use to get back to where you left e.g. a few cargo canisters floating during a fight. I haven't even given it extra fuel tanks, because that one really does feel like cheating to me.