Ask Specs Anything November 16, 2016

Give us Valiant! Or Give us Death!

by Specialist_AKA_Specs

Most of the questions I get throughout the week center around ship builds, and I have tried not to share those as I want the people that ask me to have their builds unique and only to them. A different thought occurred to me though as I go through my questions through the week and almost all of them are centered around building a fleet for a particular task. Sharing that knowledge should help more than one person and while cooking cutter builds suck in the short term the long term the game seems to be rewarding that thought process. So this week as almost all the questions are on the Valiant I want to go into the building aspect more than the initial posts I presented prior to this article you can find here. I will present you with three distinct builds that have found a way into my personal base defense. I will also share my latest base layout that has held up quite well so far and the most recent video of base hits on my base.

First things first 

I hope those that have been reading me from the beginning did the VXP builds for this coming weekend. I know those new to the blog might not understand what that means so here is my VXP build. You do the Hull, Hull streaming 3 (Special that increases map speed and can be retrieved through level 51+ Cargo) and a thud 1. This build allows you to get at least two hulls built, three or four if you have the tokens before the VXP weekend. You will just send the ship to die as many times as you can from Friday morning until Saturday night. Without coin I use four Salty dogs during that 36 hours and get as much rank as possible usually around 70%.

Slow’em Down Valiant

The first Valiant build I want to discuss is the D33-D(R) and ballistic build. This build will be in the front and one of the first ones the attacker encounters. If you have it next to some more that can dish damage it will give your turrets time to land hits, and also weaken them enough as they get to your better damage dealing ships. You would use either the D33-D or the D33-DR depending on your technology you have. I left one special blank in case you want something else, I put evade upgrade there for now.

Valiant D33-DR

Bash’em Valiant

Now this version is the Missile DPS build. It is designed to meet them as they round a corner and will provide you with a second damage type in the guard. I recommend you use the best missile you have available. For this build, I used the Blade missile, but any missile can help you here, and some might like the Torrent, Scoria, Switch Blade or Trident.

Valiant Blade 

Melt’em Down Valiant

The last one in the build for this week is the Scattergun Valliant. This Valiant is designed for the finishing kill. If they make it through your guard and are heading to the outpost, this is there to help stop them. I used the Calamity in my build I am sharing, but any other Scattergun can help here. You could do half Scatter and half Reciprocator if you wish to get a balance in damage types you are putting into the base.

Valiant Calamity

The most important thing to take into account is that the base turrets and your defense fleet complement each other. It is much easier to customize the defense fleet, so I suggest you put in the turrets you like, or deal the best damage. Then customize the defense fleet to be different damage type and force the attacker to think about your base. IF your base turrets are mostly Ballista and Executioner, then you will want some explosive, corrosive, concussive on your defense fleet. The more damage types you can cover the better success, you will have against attackers. That is the most important lesson that every pirate should learn.

Base Layout as of November 16, 2016

I created that layout specifically to take advantage of the valiant and the aura it provides with the boost to reload and damage to others in the fleet. It still requires two thermal ships for sub prep protection but it does pretty well as of now. It does require the newer turrets with the range to reach the channel. I have Ballista, Dead Eye Executioners, Blunderbuss, 2 Draconian Scatter guns, Glacial Turret, ColdSnap, Mini-Gun, and 2 Draconian Coaxial turrets (to help thin missiles some)

Latest hits on my base

Ask Specs Anything September 21, 2016

Lots of Questions due to Raid week

I took and picked five questions this week hopes they help a few more people 

The First Question comes from Alan Mosley

Curious Question, launch pad requires weapons lab. Tac Lab needs Naval and tac lab, does ad lab serve a purpose once all Prints are done?? Thought process is losing all those mentioned deny’s blood****. Sound thinking???? Would my base be weaker without them?

Hey Alan,

I have not deleted all my labs, but if you remove the weapons lab you lose the ability to build rockets. If you remove naval lab, I did not see anything harmed. I have not removed advance lab, and tactical lab you lose the ability to add new tactical modules to your buildings. The worst case is that you have to build them again if you scrap them, and they release something that requires them :)

Commodore Clambeard had a question

How do the Multi-shot weapons work?

Hey Commodore,

I know that I gave you this answer in a private message, but for the sake of our readers, I will point you all to the newest article that was posted this morning that gives even more, details than my short answer to the Private message.

The next question comes from fojofrekix

Hi Spec, you played on the preview. I have a short question. How long was the stun from the furies? And it triggers every 15K damage taken? Are there a lot of stuns?

Hey Fojofrekix,

Yes, the Fury did stun targets every so often. It was about a 5-second stun (less if you have the right specials) and I saw about 6 per base hit. Since the release of the Fury for the raid, they have reduced that number of stuns per base hit to around four on the last one I hit.

Fojofrekix asked another question later in the week.

Hey Specs,

Hulls with 100% defense handicap are affected by defense reduction auras? IF the field has a -30% ballistic then a hull with 0% ballistic defense will be unaffected, or the final result on the hull will be -30% ballistic defense?

Hey Fojofrekix,

I know I gave you the answer already, but since we spoke, I have had time to talk to the person that created this feature.

The Aura from the aegis does not convey a 40% resistance buff to a hull that has 100% defense resistance reduction. If the hull in question has a 50% defense resistance reduction, then 20% of that 40% would be applied to the defenses of the hull. So what this means is that the Aegis will not help conquer hulls that are 100% or even the Vanquisher. If this happens, it will be a bug and will be fixed eventually.

The next question comes from Randy.Dodson.54

Hey specs,

Is there someplace in-game that specifies what type of damage each target-type delivers? Impacts build now with the shift away from evading….

Hey Randy

Yes, when you go to hit a target you should get a pop up that gives you information on that target. The damage it deals, and what is weak against. If you do not get this pop-up, there is a button labeled info on the target that will present, this information to you. That will give you an idea of what you should be building in your fleet to tackle that target with the least amount of resistance.

Ask Specs Anything September 7,2016

Great Questions, only so much space!

Have a few questions this week, and these questions were all pretty quick answers, and I am going to share them all instead of trying to provide in-depth details for one or two. If you have more questions, feel free to ask in the comments and I will either answer right away or if I am unsure I will seek further clarification through official channels.

The first question comes from Thief

Hey,

Is defense bypass like defense handicap in the sense that 50% will cut down the enemy defense of a certain damage type by half?

Hey Thief,

Yes, and no, it does not cut the damage in half. What it does is reduces the resistance in half on the ship. Or in the case of negative resistance, it can add to the damage done. This ability makes PvE hull useless in base hitting as they rely more on resistance than deflection. The only special that you could add to your hulls to be useful against Turrets and cut the damage done is the Siege Battery, Frontline CM, and Resonance Capacitor (thank you for reminding me of the name in our conversation). The three specials mentioned have the ability to cut turret damage in half or close to half and they cannot have that reduced through defense bypass.

Follow up questions from Thief talked about weapons like the Harrier with a particular damage bypass. The weapons with an appropriate damage bypass work the same in that they lower the target's resistance to that damage type and help you deal more damage.

Thank you, Thief, great questions!

The second issue comes from Lettie and concerns the 109

Hey,

I heard the 107 is going away eventually and will be replaced with the 109, Will my Berserkers work?

Hey Lettie,

Yes. The Berserkers will work and might require a small refit to them so they could optimize the 109. You will want to make your explosive resistance as close to 90% and over if possible. The second resistance you will beef up is the missile resistance stat. Your next course is a good mortar the best choices are Judgment or Firestorm Coaxial. Other mortars can work such as Pando, Siege or Chaos depending on what you have available. The best hull for the target, of course, would be the Citadel, and if you do not have the Berserker or Nova will help you get the frags and shards you need to obtain that blueprint.

Thank you Lettie great question!

The third question comes from NVME007

Hey bud,

What did you have to do to become a mod?

Hey NVe,

You need to show some knowledge of the game. As well you need to be helpful on the forums. I am not sure if some trolling helps, but having the ability to shrug off the insults and verbal attacks others throw at you is helpful too. For me, I was asked when the spot became available. I accepted of course because I came back after my two-week break with a resolve to be helpful to the community and try to share my love of this game. This new attitude I had showed the team I was willing to put aside my snark and trolling behavior at times to be a benefit to the team.

 If you can show these things, you can also approach CM Doomrooster and ask him if they are looking for new mods. This action will at least put you on his radar for a possible mod in the future when a spot becomes available. 

Thank you Nve great question!

The last question comes from Dutchrudder88

Hey Specs,

Does the multi shot from Blunderbuss turret get its critical chance for each projectile, so 12 chances for critical?

Hey Dutch,

Yes, that is how that works. Multishot means that the weapons will fire all the projectiles at once, and that would mean the damage is divided among the shots. This ability also means that if you add EM Rails to the blunderbuss, you could get 12 critical if the RNG god’s love you. 

On my blunderbuss, they are all getting the EM rails three minima just for this chance at seeing some nice damage done to attacking fleets.

Thank you Dutch great question!

Summary

To keep this article short I thank all the questions this last week. I know that I did not answer all of them, and apologize to those I did not select. They were great questions I just felt these four were more important than sharing build advice I gave you. I would like to try to keep your build, your build a little while longer.

If you would like to ask me a question and have it answered, please feel free to contact me through the email link specsworld.co or Kixeye forum. Thank you again for the excellent questions this week you guys kept me busy.

Ask Specs Anything July 27, 2016

This week’s question comes from Letti and it is about the Apollo

Hey Specs,

I finished my Tank Counter Measure build and I am ready to start another Apollo to go with it can you tell me what you are using from the last raid?

Hello Lettie,

Congrats! Getting that one done will make a big difference with the coming raid and Hull store. Now, you can use it with your rhinos if you have to get through A sets. We have roughly two weeks before the raid, it will start August 11th, 2016 I think. Should be that day or August 18th at the latest I am sure we will get that confirmation soon. We will go with August 11th though as that is the closer date.

Your Apollos will want the same specials as your CM tank. The reason for this is that you will have a couple of phalanx on the DPS hulls to help back up the main tank. You will want the same range and same accuracy as your primary countermeasure hull. Next, you will want the same armor value, mostly to keep repair times down and easy to manage. Lastly, you will have eight blades for your damage dealing.

Here is your link to the build

Just so you can see the real build time once you get into game

You will want to get it hopefully out a few days earlier with tokens if you get them in the weekly and rank it as much as you can before the raid. The two of them should help you do the A set, and you might be able to do the elite targets if you can get rank high enough on the two ships.

Good luck and if you have any questions feel free to send them to me!

Day in the life of a new Battle Pirates Player July 25, 2016

How to find those Blueprints; what salvages you should hit

It was a rough week, and time has been short actually to do much on the new account. But, I have made some progress and close to finishing up my Mauler fleet. My warehouses are enough finally to build a Dreadnought in one go. The build I have settled on is the crossbow, and I will share two possible builds that you can choose what you would like to have. Personally, I am leaning towards the auto loader for now until ranked, then swapping to siege bat.

Dreadnought 1

Dreadnought 2

Pro-Tip to finding where to get the Blueprints from

One tip I learned today from Bort is that you can get help knowing where to find individual blueprints by going to your shipyard, designer and clicking the box that shows you Blueprints you do not own. By hovering over them, you get hints of where to go to get them. This step can help take the frustration out of knowing what to hit to get that blueprint you wanted.

Here is the video showing how to get that information.

Future Goals this week

My goals for this week is to finish getting the warehouses to max level for my OP, starting at least 1 Dreadnought so that I can get moving on the higher strongholds. Begin upgrading turrets to level 5 as well as finish walls to level 4 at least.

I want to hit T2 starting next week at least as I am wrapping up T1 blueprints now in the FM this week.

Hope you are all well and that this information helps you moving forward.

A Different perspective from Bort on how to start the game

One more way to approach the game from a new player starting point

I thought this might be helpful for those that might want a different perspective than I have on starting out. Bort on the forums has given me permission to add his thoughts on this process to the blog, and I will summarize it every Friday. I hope that it provides some insight into a different way to go and help the new player make a choice on how to play the game.

The first thing you need to know is that Bort is making a straight move to the Sea Wolves and not going the campaign route.

From his forum posting, you can find his full write up here

Things that are easier

• Buildings are even quicker
• Many hulls / weapons / specials are even faster
• Researched weapons are stronger
• equipping turrets are independent of the building
• the potential for getting decent hulls early through the foundry
• regular vxp weekends (although my first will be the next one)

Things that are harder

• The FM is much tougher, even to get a foot in the door
• Raids are likely to be tougher to start

Mistakes made and shared experience

Which matches with my experience so far, He also made some critical mistakes that I mentioned earlier with not paying attention to what was needed to meet requirements for certain things. So, he got the shockwave morts but did not upgrade the intelligence lab to level four. Not upgrading the Launchpad so he could not use his rockets he researched right way. And the last early mistake was ignoring the fundamental researches so he could not use the mortars even after getting the intelligence lab upgraded.

We both share in not rolling for our free crews daily

Remember you want to do the basic research stuff in the lab this is.

Naval Lab minimum researches

• Iron 1 thru 4
• Steel 1 thru 4
• Titanium 3 and 4
• Depleted Uranium Armor 4

Weapon Labs minimum researches

• Thud I thru IV
• Rapier 1 thru IV
• Cutlass 4 (3 if you want to use it while looking for other missiles in salvages)
• Ripper IV
• Diplomat IV
• Peacemaker IV
• Hydra rockets IV
• Malestorm Rockets IV

Advance lab best researches for early to mid-game

• Guidance Scrambler
• Solid Fuel Booster
• Ablative armor
• Reactive armor
• Harden barrels
• Autoloader

If you follow, that guide for researching. Keep upgrading your buildings to the max level for the outpost.  Your intelligence lab to around 6. It will help you meet the necessary requirements for most things that you will find you need to succeed in the game.

Any questions feel free to comment below, have a great weekend!

Specs view on the September raid preview

Were you one of the lucky 300?

I was not one of the lucky ones that got into the raid preview, but I have watched quite a few videos that others have done and provided for our viewing pleasure. It has left me with a few thoughts.

None of the ones I watched did anything low level, so I am not sure how cuda and spectres will do. However, Nighthawks and Tigers did quite well from what I have seen with good driving. Of course, the lucky ones with a Ghost Crawler will have some fun in the raid series. One guy that I watched a twitch stream of was using Revenge, granted his way was the most expensive I had the pleasure to watch. So, what did the targets seem to have for strengths and weakness?

Weakness

Concussive damage, the corrosive and explosive damage is the way to go. The reavers have the typical weakness to concussive damage at they had the first time we faced them. The one guy I watched used vendettas with vanquishers out front. Did not do bad with the setup and in the Elite target, he took about 5 hours of damage. I would not recommend using mortars due to the speed of the targets. But, the Gatling gun did alright, and of course torps. The best torpedo you could use for the September raid the Charon. Granted it was in the last raid locked behind the 30 million points. If you do not have that torpedo, then B torpedos will be perfect for the range and damage. Also, siege torps should do just fine if that is all you have. You will have less room for mistakes with the shorter range weapons, though. I mentioned corrosive, and the Cobra scattergun was very useful in what I saw. It would dispose of the little drones quickly, and you could get close enough to the bigger ships to hit them with that weapon as well. Of course, the shorter range did not help much to navigate away from the pulsating sub cavitation fields that popped up.  That covers their weakness; you will want to refit your fleets with those three damage types and in that order. Surface fleets will take more damage, but they are doable if you have the right technology.

Strengths

The strengths in the target are concussive and explosive damage. From what I could tell the explosive was the death weapon that has a good range hitting you even while submerged. So, if you are using subs I would see if you could fit the Ablative armor three on them, not sure what slot to give up yet for that special. I would also consider using the new armors we are getting in the weekly. Yes, you might not like them because they did not fit what you wanted. But, the explosive resistance they impart to the subs will be useful in dealing with that death explosion that seemed to hit about 110 range from the target. For surface ships, again I would only use them if you did not have a sub fleet, you will want a mix of good explosive defense and use the concussive armors we got from the FM last month.

Some videos of various players doing the testing.

I hope this helps you with your planning stages, and we hopefully will get the skirmish foundry setup soon. This foundry update will allow us to get an idea of what the game developers feel is needed for the targets to be successful

Have a great day and leave a comment if you have questions!

Ask Specs Anything July 20,2016

How do I build my Vanquisher?

This week’s question I am sure you can imagine goes to the Vanquisher and what should you put on it. My answer to my friend Sirens Sweet Song.

Her question was:

OK got this hull now what?

My answer was as follows;

Hey SSS,

Congrats! I will tell you that you want to avoid anything that adds armor weight to the hull as it starts with a high base. As well it has a 100% defense handicap which does not allow for any armor that might add resistance. So, this leaves us with three choices for armor, evade, bulkhead, and cadmium. You know I am not a fan of the bulkhead so that means I would consider cadmium and evade. Now, Cadmium has some nice armor, but the speed bonus will not help this hull as it does not move. We also know that people will try to use suicide Tigers for the next month or two to take it out. So, this leaves the choice to Evade armor.

Weapons

For the weapon slot, we should look at the hull and see what it gets for bonuses. It has a big bonus to countermeasures. With increase accuracy and range, as well it has a generic boost to accuracy on the hull. It also has a nice boost to launchers, 100% reload and 10% range boost. I hope you took the new launcher as well for this build will require it. You will want some counter measures in the defense fleet so that you can reduce the effectiveness of Vendetta. If you did not get the new launcher, D98 is next best choice.

Specials

Specials, this hull, sports five special slots. We cannot move so we do not need an engine. You will want an evade special; I would go with Agility system so that you can get some pinch resistance. If you were lucky and got the emission generator, you will want to use that. If you were one of the unlucky ones that got hit with the prize redemption bug and got the special for the Apollo, you could use the barrel system 3. You will want to use countermeasure loader for the boost to reload, and of course, increase to our anti-mortar weapons. If you have cryo battery, you can use that to help lower the attacker’s resistance, and you can stack more evade bonus to help increase evade.

Summary

With all that said I would give you two possible builds (5 variants of those two) and depend on how you wish to go in your base, either can help you out. Before I give the builds, I hope you read the article on how to rank your fleets and you will have at least one or two to rank this weekend.

Five different options depending on your technology level

You might be tempted to do five of these for base defense, I would caution against that and maybe go with two so that you can diversify your defense fleet against other possible attackers. Below is the one I think I will go with at this time, and I will go with a second that is mostly gale 3.

I hope this helps and you love the hull.

Rank like a pro without coins

The Vanquisher leaves players frustrated with ranking!

Every day people are complaining about ranking fleets on the forums, these complaints center around the time it takes to rank fleets. This ranking issue is going to be painful with the new Vanquisher hull. Due to the health of the ship, there is barely any targets during regular play that give enough VXP to matter one bit. Salvages might give you 2 VXP for the level 75 elites and 100 elites. That has not been tested, but a 71 cargo provides a whopping 1 VXP to the vanquisher. So, many have asked through private messages in game and on Facebook on how I am going to rank and what they can do to ease this frustration.

It might not be the answer people want to hear but as a non-coiner, there are not many options open to us unless we want to spend mind-numbing hours hitting salvages. This option is called build a blank and wait for the VXP weekend and then go with an alarm to get as many hits in as possible. You can use the zombie method (healing the fleet 250 to 500 health total) and smack the target for a couple hundred to 2K at a time. My way, however, is not as time intensive, and I hate spending useless hours at the computer zombifying fleets.

Build Blanks!

First, you need the blank, and most people will say go with Thud 1 and the streamlined hull 3 (grants 25 map speed). These specials are a wise choice to go with, adds about 6 hours to the base hull time, and cost you about 90 min to remove them when you refit. This hull streamline is great with hulls that have very low map speed; If your hull has decent map speed, you can go with just a thud 1, and it is 2 min to add, and three seconds to remove. For me following this advice I will have a Harlock Citadel, 2x Vanquisher, 2x Vendetta ready go for refit. This list also includes the Apollos that I finished throughout the last month that still have a few ranks to go.

Come Friday evening when I get on I launch my fleet to die in the VXP target with a salty dog (use x3 if you have it). You will want a total of 3 to 4 salty dogs for the day of ranking.  These target spawn for 36 hours and you will need to sleep and such so four times max to hit with a salty dog. I will say that if I am using an x3 salty dog, I will load up 50 coins for that 50 min to get the most out of it. If I do not toss in $5 for coins, I can usually get to 70% rank by the end. While legend rank is pretty and final, that last 5% is not so important. I will finish the rank on these ships the following month as I hate hitting cargos.

Zombie!

I mentioned zombie, as I stated it is right around 250 total armor for the fleet. The more health you have, the more VXP, you seem to earn. At least, if this is the same as the previous month, that means that this can be an effective way to rank if you have time to sit and wish to rank while awake for hours. Doing this method last month earned about the same vxp as hitting 25 cargos. So, if this is still viable this weekend, it could be useful if you have the time to spend and do not mind going back and forth to put 30 seconds or so on each ship.

So recap – 

Build a blank with thud one minimum, add streamline hull 3 to add 25 map speed if you hit enough level 40+ cargo (Think that is where it was).

Get 3 to 4 salty dogs to use throughout the 36 hours

Zombie your fleets while you can, it can help you if you have lots of time and absolutely no money. This method is being discussed at being taken away. Use it while you can!

If you want to drop $5 to speed up the process, it is not so bad with no armor, and I would not do it for more than one salty dog run.

The key is to try to rank without costing you a house payment; there is no reason to coin full fleets and then coin the rank for the VXP weekend. If you do not have the money do not worry, instead of four to five ships done you will have two to three.

Ask Specs Anything July 13, 2016

What should I take in the raid Vanquisher or Apollo?

Today the questions are centered on the raid, been getting asked the last few days repeatedly about the raid and those issues heated up yesterday and this morning when the prize list was released.

This choice is a tough one and one that should not take lightly. If you have not had the chance to get the Apollo yet, I can see how you might want it for at least the August raid as that will be the last in this series. But, you might want the newest defense hull as your base is suffering. The Vanquisher has some fascinating potential and should replace the Enforcer in the majority of base settings.

I feel the Apollo is more of a needed hull in the game. I think that if your focus on the game is doing the PvE stuff, then you have to take this hull. Sure, it might only be useful for the assault map targets after August, but those map targets will allow you to get easily and upgrade the Rhino. I do feel that the Apollo is a must have in the game today, it is crucial for getting pieces for the Gantry and Mega Hulls that will be released later on. So, with that, I am led to believe that they might have the hull in August hull raid. There is a precedence for this by the way, and they have done that with other much-needed hulls in the past. Of course, they have refused to put in these hulls in the first hull store too. We cannot be 100% sure what they will do this far out.

With all that said, I would take the Vanquisher this raid and take my chances with the Apollo offered in the August raid. It might come back to bite me, but I think that it the safest choice this time around as I like to develop my base defense the best I can. With five specials, same range as Enforcer with Launchers, very nice accuracy base boost, anti- weapon accuracy boosts, and 500K base armor at 2-hour repair (1 hour in the defense slot) and all at under four days for a bare hull. You could have one ready by VXP weekend and run it with a gunboat to pull things towards it so that it can die or kill.

Do not get me wrong; I love my Apollo fleet. I think that everyone should have them. But, I feel that it is more relevant to the direction the game is going and that we have a greater chance of having that in the August raid than we do the Vanquisher. As always, keep an eye on official statements from CM Doomrooster and other kixeye employees posting in the forum. Often you can get some inside information on what might come from their postings. They have not stated one way or another on this issue so I am going on what I think is more important in the game and they have a habit of offering things we need in the raids.

Ask Specs Anything July 6, 2016

This week’s question comes from Warhead, and he asks;

Hey Bro,

After a month now have you updated your Vendetta build? I am about to start, and I want to make sure nothing has changed.

My response is below;

Hey Bud,

I have changed a few things from the initial idea behind the build, not much mostly to help combat some weakness I have seen in those bases I have watched being hit by others. So, if I were you, I would look to try to boost evade and use the Agility System 4. The slow resistance will be handy in dealing with some of the issues I have seen. Evade is useful in reducing the damage from the launchers. They might not boom, but those shots can still hurt from a legend ranked Enforcer.
Here is my new updated build and what I am refitting too as soon as I finish the last Apollo.

https://www.dahippo.com/bp/ship/#!30NI01R1R1R6Q34396M5PC2C2C2C2C2C2C20ZZ0ZZ0ZZ0ZZdC

With full retro you will have 39% evade and while that is not great, it is far better than the negative you start with and will help in keeping the vendetta alive against many different ships you might face when hitting bases.

Hope all is well with you and the family and let me know how this goes for you

Feel free to send me a question if you have one, or post below have a great day everyone!

Ask Specs Anything June 22, 2016

This weeks question comes from someone that does not want me to mention them, so I will not. They just got 3 million points in the raid, and they wanted to know what to take and how to have an easier time in the monthly events.

My advice was as follows:

Hey there,

First, you want to take the Rhino, Trident, and D4-M as you have none of the more up to date missiles. You also need to finish the campaign to get Phalanx 2. The campaign you want is Hunt the nemesis, and you can complete it with maulers and missiles that you have received in previous campaigns. Or you can get two of the rhinos I am going to give you here and do it with them.

https://www.dahippo.com/bp/ship/#!906V00K0K0K0K0K3302170K0P1A1A1A1A1A1A1A1A1A1A1A1A0L1A1A06V00K0K0K0K0K3302170K0P28282828282828282828282828282806V00K0K0K0K0K3302170K0P28282828282828282828282828282806V00K0K0K0K0K3302170K0P2828282828282828282828282828280ZZdC

Reasoning

The fleet has the technology you have now, and it will help you in the raid going forward. You will want to aim for Siege Battery to help with defensive capabilities for the DPS ships, and you will want to swap in a Frontline Countermeasure from the FM when you get there for your CM/Tank.

This fleet should do B set targets next raid for you for some damage. Upgrades to this fleet are harriers, blades, D53-D, and even the Switchblade is useful if you take the special on the Apollo side of the tree if you have nothing else.

Also, this fleet will help you do the Assault Map targets to get fragments for upgrading other Assault hulls through the foundry.

Future thoughts

When the hull store comes around you will want to try for a better tank of course. Prime choices are Punisher and the Apollo if you can get the points.

I hope this is helpful and thank you for the question.

A day in the life of new Battle Pirate Player June 22, 2016

Today the Weekly starts, this is the new weekly, and there were some changes made by the looks of it. According to the update notes we will have the following targets:

Level                       Payout
40                          53,000
47                        130,000
60                        420,000
67                     1,300,000
80                     3,600,000
87                     9,700,000
107                 73,000,000

Spawning 

Base level            Target spawned
1-35                     Stronghold 40
36-47                   Stronghold 47
48-63                   Stronghold 60
64-77                   Stronghold 67
78-83                   Stronghold 80
84-94                   Stronghold 87
90-999               Stronghold 107 and 109

The interesting thing here is the 40, is this going to be the old style 40? Or with the rhinos, citadels, and massive mortars? This change does present me with a problem, as I was gearing my fleet up to handle explosives mostly and some missiles. If it is the old style, then I need to switch to mostly missile and a few anti-mortars to take on the mortars in the target. If it is the old style, this is good news for new players as those are easy to build and plan for. Guess I will have to wait a few hours, and plan to do another write up later today once I see these targets.

For now, today is pretty much getting doing warehouses to level 10, well starting them as they are about 13 hours a piece. When I get all three done, I should be able to start Outpost upgrade 5. My weapons and naval labs are still at eight, though, as they are not that important at this stage of the game. You could take them to their max level before going to Outpost 5, but the advance lab is more important right now to get the second tier of engines and the better resistance.

Today building goals

• 2x Warehouse level 10
• The building last Levi diplomat mortar shell – will be ready in time for XP weekend.

I will spend 1 hour this morning hitting salavages, and an hour tonight hitting salvages once I test the 40 strongholds.

Update on the FM changes:

To date, I do not have a fleet that can do the lowest level stronghold. Each of the level 40 strongholds have 3x Dead Executioners, 1x Draconian Mortar, 1x Citadel with looks to be two mortars and one rhino with 2x blade.

I cannot get close enough to the target my ballistic fleet without it dying to the Dead Eye, I lose three of the five before getting to the platform, and another one as I am about to hit the platform and the last as I fire my poor shots. I tried the mortars I have, and the diplomat mortars did a bit better damage wise, I got 426 points with the ballistic fleet and 524 with my mortar fleet.  I did not take out even one turret, though, I have an idea to do the 40, but I am not ready for it.

It is apparent that they do not want mid-level 20's doing week one of the weekly at this point. Which is sad, because there is no way to do the foundry ships unless you have those FM pieces needed from the first and second prize. I will post here as I develop the strategy and build the fleet, might try to armor the fleets I do have up a bit and see how that goes.

Better build ideas for new players for the next raid in July/August

Builds that are ready in time for the Hull raid in August to help lower and mid level players.

As was pointed out by Ex-Machina in a comment the builds I had listed were not helpful to him, and I am sure many others. So, here are some more ideas that are lower down the list of available tech, You still need phalanx II though from the Hunt the Nemesis campaign.

Capable of doing C sets

This fleet is Mercury and a CM Vindicator, the CM is the most important part and should be built first. You could add a couple of missiles on it to help with ranking before adding armor. Total fleet time to build should be around 15 days, and that would give you around ten days to help rank ships before next raid if you started it today.

https://www.dahippo.com/bp/ship/#!9P4C00I0I0I0H02163E3E3E3E3E3EP4C00I0I0I0H02163E3E3E3E3E3EP4C00I0I0I0H02163E3E3E3E3E3EP4C00I0I0I0H02163E3E3E3E3E3E05C00I0I0I0B02163E1A1A1A1A1A1AdC

Capable of doing B sets

This fleet is the great V2-H fleet, it will handle B sets and can do it for a decent repair or coin option once ranked. You could go with a dedicated CM ship like the Vindicator if you need to. The build time for each V2 is around 16 days (without officer), meaning that you could feasibly get two of these hulls built by the next raid, and the other two before the August raid. The ranking will be a bit harder if you add the armor first, without armor you could have all of them built 56 days total without an officer.

You will want to concentrate on any tokens that you can get your hands on to help speed this build up for August raid.

https://www.dahippo.com/bp/ship/#!9PM600J0J0J0J0I03172T3K3K1A1A3K3K3K3KPM600J0J0J0J0I03172T3K3K1A1A3K3K3K3KPM600J0J0J0J0I03172T3K3K1A1A3K3K3K3KPM600J0J0J0J0I03172T3K3K1A1A3K3K3K3K0ZZdC

Reasoning

I looked at the earlier builds and realized that Ex-Machina was correct for those that might not have the Harriers or Blades at lower levels. So, I wanted to make sure I provided something at basic as possible that could still handle the C sets. You could even get by with phalanx one on the C sets if you do not get to prize pack two in the campaign.

Hopefully, this is more helpful and helps Ex-Machina more than the original builds I posted.

Battle Pirates - Escalation raid review

I am enjoying this raid, thanks to those that suggested I zoom out on the mega ships, does help deal with the issues I had last raid. A headache is there today, but not getting sick is a huge help. I will take a bit more time off and try to hit a few targets each day to keep the issues from sidelining me for too much.

I have not tried anything other than A set and the S target, and I managed to get one Apollo finished before this raid. It has a 10% rank on it at the moment and is my CM tank. It is doing pretty good lowering the damage I have taken in these targets considerably compared to last month. I have decided to get at least two more done this next month and worry about the vendetta after.
Watching others hitting the B set targets I see mostly V2-H, Rhinos, and Punishers being used. I have seen others in the 50 level range using Crusaders, Mercury, and Interdictors with varying degrees of success in the C target. The Rhino and V2 are the better choices for the b set, while the Mercury seems to do better in the C sets. I am trying to catch them so I can video tape them, but we appear to have issues with the C target spawning and B sets are a bit overwhelmed with the amount of 86 around the sector.

With all that said;

This raid phalanx is a big reason for success. If you do not have one, you need a dedicated CM ship. Do not put another phalanx on your other ships as this seems to have an adverse effect. My damage was halved when I removed the two rhinos that had some phalanx four on them and just went with 3x phalanx 4 and a CM special. For B sets the Phalanx 2 or 3 will work just fine, you will want about 6 of the three and 8 of the two. Even with no rank you should see a huge decrease in your damage taken.

The best missile to use is, of course, the Blade, but Harriers are working just as good. And arbalest is a bit slow, but they can work if that is all you have in the lower targets.

Combat speed is a big bonus; I am outrunning most of the damage from the Curb/Scattergun stands on my tank as well as the Heavy cruisers. I have 4x Phalanx 4 and 1x Phalanx 3 with my CM loader three special and that is cutting down most of the missiles from the Zoe in the target, especially if I can get them one on 1. I had 3x Phalanx 4 at the start and used some tokens to put the extra 4 and three on and lowered my repair time by 30 minutes on the on all targets.

Of course, if you have rhino or mastodon then making your tank a CM tank is preferred and make it as fast as you can.

So, to recap for this raid series, this is working best for me.

1 Countermeasure ship with almost all Countermeasures, the better the countermeasure weapon, the less you need to put on the ship. Phalanx 2 you will want almost all slots filled, phalanx three you will be looking at six at least, and phalanx four you will want four of them. High missile resistance and combat speed of over 30. You can get by with less in B set and C set targets.

At least 3x DPS ships, preferably missiles and 98 range. Remote targeting is excellent with Rhino or Mastodon as you can use and drive the CM tank to keep them away from the Scattergun turrets and Heavy Cruiser. Again, high missile resistance is good just in case you mess up with driving, armor not o important.

Low level Fleet idea for the C sets

https://www.dahippo.com/bp/ship/#!9P4C00H0H0H0I0317525252525252P4C00H0H0H0I0317525252525252P4C00H0H0H0I0317525252525252P4C00H0H0H0I0317525252525252P5CF0H0H0H2B03170I544M4M4M4M4M4MdC

Med Level Fleet idea for B sets

https://www.dahippo.com/bp/ship/#!9PM600H0H0H0H0I03172T5252525252525252PM600H0H0H0H0I03172T5252525252525252PM600H0H0H0H0I03172T5252525252525252PM600H0H0H0H0I03172T5252525252525252P5CF0H0H0H2B03170I544M4M4M4M4M4MdC

The idea is to have a Dedicated CM ship to shoot down the missiles, and then have something long range to take out the buildings. Lead with one ship only when facing the scattergun turrets so that it is the only thing getting fired at as you approach it.

Good luck with the rest of the raid and let me know if you are able to have success with a different type of fleet than I recommend.

Ask Specs anything week 3

Today’s question comes from Rikki, and it is

What specials do you have on your Dead Eye Executioners?

Great question and one I am sure many are wondering what to do. These specials will also work for the Executioner turrets if you can get them in the raid this week.

First, You will want at least level 6 stand and level 7 to get the most out of your turrets. In the mean time if you only have level 5 you can put Thermobaric Casing 2 on your Deadeye, due to the base power it requires. These two come to 3909 energy usage, and a level 5 stand is 4000. Now when you get to level 6, you get a bit more wiggle room and can go a few different routes.

The first route is the poor person’s path. I call it this because you might not have been able to get the blueprints from the weekly yet, or draconian bases/draconian U base. So, in the advance lab, we can research Scramjet 3 and Thermobaric casing 3. This setup will put you at 5188 power of the 6400 you have on level 6 stand. Other useful specials are Priority targeting, Frontline platform Mc, smart warheads, frontline platform Z. There are a few more I am sure I am missing here, but most of those were in the weekly, and draconian bases (both kinds)

Now, why those? Well if you look at them you will see that they do one of three things. They extend range, boost damage, or focus all fire power on a single ship that is most damaged. Smart warheads and the frontline platform z are my personal favorite. As they boost damage, range, priority targeting and reload.

Level 7 stand you the added option to go with a Defense Transformer, or Offensive transformer both researchable. We will get the third one in the weekly on June 22 that will extend range. These transformers give up something to boost something. The defense you gain defense, losing damage. Offensive you increase damage, but lose defense. The range one will be extending the range of your turret and giving up damage (if rumor holds and this is how it is released).

In this instance, I would go with Attack transformer as that will give me a nice boost to damage over the extra defenses that is wasted (IMHO) on a back turret.

So, to answer the question of what is on mine? I have Smart Warheads, Frontline Platform Z, and I am still working on level 7 stands, but will be going with the attack transformer when I get the base parts or time.

Feel free to ask questions in the comment section and I will answer as soon as I can.

Thank you Rikki for this weeks question.