I like big ships and I can not lie...

You other Pirates can't deny...

By: George Argyropoulos

a/k/a Dragon_Bane

OMG, Becky, look at her hull!

This past Wednesday, while perusing the release notes and the Mega-Hull information we received, my brain went a bit into overdrive with regard to questions about the Mega, mainly because mine is not done as yet and I had zero hands-on exposure.

In addition to this, I was already rather disheartened in the whole ‘Mega’ idea after speaking with several players that have built them and played with them. (Shout out to BP Prof and the The Battle Pirates Crib and Dirty Harry and Battle Pirates on BV for letting me pick your brains!)

Me being me, and loving to harass and geek out on occasion, I decided GD Raikan was the poor soul who was going to have to suffer harassment and an excessive amount of stupid questions… OK., not really, I only slightly bugged him… I promise!

It turned out that he had some time and decided to do a sort of ‘pre-show’ with the TFC crew to answer some of these questions (and a few concerns I had) and that meeting took a bit of a turn because of the varied perspectives of this fantastically eclectic group. There, there’s the intro...

I am going to try and impart as much of that information that I can in this article. Most will be about the Mega hulls and some other info that trickled out during the meeting. Much of this is to whet everyone’s appetite for a LIVE TFC interview scheduled Wednesday September 28th with Liam interviewing GDR. You can expect the information to be posted on the TFC Facebook Page as the date approaches.

[tl;dr] Liam is interviewing GD Raikan for the TFC on Wednesday September 28th @ 2pm PST – All about Mega-Hulls, what you need to know from the beginning and why they don’t suck as bad as we thought!

36-24-36, haha, only if...

Let’s first quickly go over some very, very, basic info of the Mega:

In order to build the Gantry, you need:

- Your R&D level to be at or above 20
- 120 Gantry Shards (Drops from a 91 Mega-Hull
- 42 Days build time
(Gantry fragments can be found on level 91 Mega-hull targets. They spawn only on the hour and half hour once the Sector Threat reaches Orange.)

In order to build the Hyperion, you need:

- A completed Gantry
- 120 Hyperion shards
- 49 Days build time
(Hyperion fragments can be found on level 91 Mega-hull targets. They spawn only on the hour and half hour once the Sector Threat reaches Orange. Hyperion fragments do NOT drop until you have begun construction of your Gantry.)

Let me also be very, very clear about the following; Mega-Hulls are an Alliance-centric mechanic. If you are not in an alliance, you are essentially going to be an alliance of 1. There are zero plans to make any sort of Rogue Player mechanic to allow un-tagged players to hive their Mega-Hull.

That said, Here are some resources I have found that go a bit further than the first blush I have written above.

So, we should start off with the original briefing that Kixeye released that DoomRooster posted. On the positive side, while it is chock-full of information, the negative is that it is SO chock-full of information that it became an inordinate amount of information to process in one sitting. So… Open at your own risk, and be prepared to spend a LOT of time absorbing this.

https://www.kixeye.com/forum/discussion/648737

Next, we have the BP Professor’s blog that is essentially a beginner’s guide to building one of these behemoths. Again, a dearth of information, but I don’t know that it can be helped given the content of a completely new aspect of the game. Pretty sure I’d have been hitting the rum if I tried an article like this. Great walk through, be prepared to invest some time.

http://bpprof.blogspot.com/2016/09/mega-ship-builders-guide.html

Then we have some questions that were submitted through the TFC guys to GDR for further clarification. Mark, a/k/a TSM was kind enough to provide a PDF of those questions and GDR’s responses.

PDF DOC

[tl;dr] There is a LOT of info currently out there in a few places that you should think of perusing and catching yourself up on for the Mega-hull experience that is seemingly inevitable.

Baby got... info?

This part may seem, in fact may even be, disjointed at best. The reason is I don’t exactly think linearly so, they were asked, and now written, more in line with free associative writing…

First, some rules on the Mega-hull:

- You can not leave a Hive if you are going to ‘orphan’ or break off other Megas of your hive. (Even if you leave your alliance, you can NOT leave unless you are destroyed or the hive breaks open enough for you to leave.
- You can not leave a hive if the hive is under attack.
- When a Mega-hull is attacked and dies, it loses all its links to the hive.
- You can not be attacked if you are locked in the middle of a grid in the hive.
- If the hive is being hit by multiple Mega-hulls, linking abilities, if they can reach both, can only go to one battle, not both concurrently.


Ok, so now, we get to random points:

- Hives DO have an upper limit to the amount of Mega-Hulls that can hive around it. Currently (literally at this moment) that limit is planned to be around 40-60. THIS has not been finalized!! I hear one iota of complaint about tentative info not being 'accurate' and I will not share early info. Please don't make me regret trying to help.

- Linking abilities are planned to have range limits within the hive to encourage strategy. These linking abilities (like the drones) will allow one Mega to help another Mega with support during a battle.

- Attackers can still choose from what direction they want to attack. Defenders can not limit this regardless of placement in the hive, in other words, your position in the hive does not dictate, nor limit, in any way the attackers choice of attack entry point.

- If you attack a hive and select a Mega-hull to attack, you still only are attacking one actual Mega in the battle. You may have to deal with any linking abilities, but you only face off against another Mega, not multiple Megas.

- Drone modules have a ‘priority targeting’ geared towards attacking fleets FIRST.

- This is, first and foremost, an alliance feature. I can not emphasize this enough. Mega-Hulls are an Alliance-centric mechanic. If you are not in an alliance, you are essentially going to be an alliance of 1. There are zero plans to make any sort of Rogue Player mechanic to allow un-tagged players to hive their Mega-Hull.

- I said this on the TFC show on Wednesday, and I will reiterate it here. The mechanics of this, by their very nature, can not be tested by a handful of employees on a closed server. I urge some patience by the community as this game aspect is rolled out.


Now, that you have a good basis for reference, I would urge every player to tune in on Wednesday September 28th @ 2pm PST for the TFC's Interview with GD Raikan hosted by Liam. If all works out as planned, they are going to cover everything going all the way back AND the audience will have a chance to submit questions via the chat. Watch the TFC Page for the details to be posted up!!

Dial 1-900-Mix-A-Lot

PLEASE keep in mind a LOT of this is tentative info. It is absolutely going to change, but I'd rather give you guys a semi-heads-up.

- The next three hulls slated for release in the Oct., Nov., and Dec. raids are 2 Conqueror hulls and a Defender Hull. Will this change? Likely. I'm still hoping for our new Siege hull in December...

- Which is a perfect segue into this cool list that I have lying around:

Sept. - Dec. Raid: Skirmish
Jan. - Apr. Raid: Siege
May - Aug. Raid: Garrison

- And last but not least... The probability code for shard drops in a DUB were checked and the code itself has not been altered. That being said, since there are still reports of people hitting a large number of targets with no drops, they are going to continue looking into this issue.