The Valiant and You

Why as a low to mid-level player should this hull be your priority?

By Specialist_AKA_Specs

November Raid

The valiant is offered for the November raid and as it is set to begin I wanted to take a moment to share my opinions on this hull and why I love the idea behind it. The hull matches or exceeds weapons on comparable ships with their bonuses. The hull can reach reload speeds and damage boosts that meet or exceeds any attacking fleet. The Valiant hull can be built in numerous ways, alleviating the problems with having to have different ships to fill defense needs. The hull has good deflection and nice armor to hold up to the various threats facing our bases. The weakness of the hull is no thermal, meaning that you need two different ships in your defense fleet minimum. The Valiant is this games Swiss Army knife when it comes to base defense.

I will apologize as I am going to post the full stats for this ship as they are on the forum.

Range Boosts

Take a look at the hull stats. It has range increases for every single weapon. And when the bonus to the range is considered every single weapon is at 100 range, this 100 range includes Concussive and Corrosive. The hull also gets the same range boost to launchers as any Conqueror hull and the Vanquisher. What this means for the small to the mid-level player is that this hull will fill in glaring holes in your base defense with a range of weapons that your attackers have enjoyed. This hull even gives us a range boost on mortars, while not the remote targeting range we get from Harlock Citadel the 10% puts your mortars at 100 and allows you to put this hull behind some front line defenders to deliver a devastating barrage of mortars. The last thing to consider with the range boost is that you can diversify your base defense with a single Defense hull. That diversification can be used to take advantage of a unique ability this hull has, its tactical field.

Tactical Field

The hull has a tactical field that can trigger the different capacitors and batteries we have that boost combat ability. Not only this, but this tactical field gets better when you pair it with other Valiants in the range of 45 range. This boost to capabilities means that your calamity weapons will deliver a whopping 8K of corrosive damage, that does not include the 4K damage from concussive secondary. That damage, when compared to the 1800 deflection on a Harlock Revenge/Revenge fleet, is devastating. And it is delivered at 100 range, meaning that the attacker will get a single volley off before you pound them into the abyss. This tactical field and a boost from other Valiants also means that you can get 50% reload for all weapon types for each one that is triggering this particular field. This one unique ability is why I am recommending that you build three Valiants and get them close enough to feed each other. The benefits of this field help make the Valiant the best choice with any weapon in your arsenal.

More Valiants are your best friend

With the bonus to all weapon ranges, the tactical field aura that boosts damage and grants a reload bonus for the valiant. The fact that the tactical field gets stronger with more Valiants is all critical to the successful defense of your base today. The bonus this hull has meant that it can take the place of your Enforcer, it can take the place of that rocket hull, the corrosive dealing hull. It also allows you to put in your fleet multiple weapon platforms without putting much thought in what weapon works best for the situation you might encounter. Do you want to defend with ballistics? This hull gets 50% range boost (matching the Gamma), and  20% damage and 50% reload. Add the capacitor, and you get an additional 36% damage boost to your cannons. You can do this with any weapon; you are going to meet or exceed the range of your attackers. The deflection and armor are only a boon to your arsenal.

The Valiant has 100K armor takes 3 hours to repair and has deflection against all weapon types we have in the game at this time. Yes, it is weaker against missile and explosive, but with this hull, you can boost countermeasure capacity on the Vanquishers. You are going to want some thermal so why not add a vanquisher or two to the defense fleet so that you can take care of the weakness in this hull? At 100K armor and the deflection of 2500, that means the hull will be much harder to rocket out with Daisy Cutter XL than it was on the Test servers. If an attacker wants to take the time they can of course. But, if they want to waste seven rockets to take out one hull then they want your base. The 2000 deflection to Concussive will come in handy when dealing with the HRevenge/Revenge fleets. It will not be the end of base hitting, but it will make the attacker rethink the farm status of your base with a couple of these in there, and some support thermal and countermeasures, making this one single hull your Swiss Army knife.

Summary

I paint a positive view of this hull. I know this, and that is because I do not subscribe to all the doom and gloom that the forums share with it. I had done some math work and got some answers to questions I had before this article was written. I do believe that if you are low to mid-level, you need to get this hull, even above the Harlock Tideseeker. Even if you do not get the 30 million points for all the new stuff, you can make this hull perform satisfactorily with even Tier 3 and Tier 4 weapons at the 15 million point cost. It has all the pieces to help you stand up to those high levels that come by once a week for their easy ally points. With this hull in your base and some Thermal/Counter Measures, you can make your neighbor look the better target, giving you time to build up and enjoy the game without having to worry about repairing all the time.