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

Sir Valiant the stout!

Valiant looks great on paper, how does it hold up in the game?

By Specialist_AKA_Specs

The raid is well underway, and I am sure many have been wondering if I was full of it with my piece on why I think the Valiant should be a priority. While I do not have much to go on yet, only found one base with the hull and I built three myself to try to get some testing. I am pretty happy with what I am seeing.

I am going to present to you a video with my base hit on the base I found with Legend Ranked Valiant with the Calamity as a lead ship. The second video is going to be the hit on my base with my unranked Valiants.

In the first portion of the video, you see that I could not outrange the Valiant with the Calamity. That tells me that while the range is not correct in base view, once you enter battle it is the 102 that I expected to see. You also see that once I got into range, it melted me in a hurry. That is what we are hoping to see, and yes it means that it is going to be harder to take bases with this hull and weapon combo.

In the second portion of the video, you see that he approaches my defense fleet in a hope to pick off my one Vanquisher. Once that is gone, he can get by the corner much easier. That gave my Turrets time to finish him off which is what I intended. The claim could be made that he stacked them to attack and if he sent one at a time, he might have faired better. That is fair, and hopefully, someone will do that soonish so I can video it. The last guy that did that to me did get to the OP, but his fleet died before he got me 100%.

I am excited for the possibility of this hull, and I hope that as more players get it built, we can see the benefit to our base defense.