(May 19th, 2015, 16:54)T-hawk Wrote: I think Mantis C belongs in the top tier. It's the only 4-man boarder that can deal with all situations (autoscouts, zoltan shield) right from the start. 4-man boarding is that good that it automatically bumps any ship up to top tier. Clone bay is better than med bay since it makes run-ending disasters less common, including rendering Lanius self-asphyxiation not a problem.
I would disagree; certainly, the Mantis C can deal with a lot of things, but it certainly can't deal with them well. Getting rid of a Zoltan shield takes 3 bombs minimum, while your ship takes a pounding with its bare minimum defenses, and the early boarding party of a mantis and a lanius is a lot slower than you think it would be, doubly so if one of them dies and has to revive (commonly occuring with the lanius who you can't asphyxiate and revive before each battle). Throwing the engi in makes it more lethal, but then you're a sitting duck with 0 evade and one measly shield bubble. Yeah, it can snowball if you find extra crew early, but if you don't, you'll certainly be taking a beating. In my opinion, that makes it solidly mid tier.
Quote:Fed A is decidedly not top tier. The artillery beam stinks. Just like ions and drones, it takes way too long to not break any important systems. It wins but you take a pounding meanwhile. Newbies like it because it wins brainlessly and they don't realize that the 5 damage taken per fight while waiting is not acceptable. I pretty much just turn it off around sector 3 and leave it off. And of course its worst sin is occupying a system slot that blocks out something of hacking or cloaking or drones, all of which I'd always rather have.
I'd bump Fed B down a notch for the same reasons.
It's true that the arty beam is far from a top tier system, but I'd still prefer starting with it then nothing at all. Firstly, having it means you have an option of damaging ships whose shields you can't penetrate, should you not find any weapons. Certainly not an ideal option, but an option nonetheless. Secondly, having it gives you a system to upgrade in the end game if you haven't found any other systems. Sure, it'd be better to have hacking or something in its place, but if you have enough scrap to consider buying those systems in addition to actually finding them in stores, you were probably going to win whether or not you had hacking over the artillery beam, whereas a struggling run that found no extra systems might have that extra system mean the difference between life and death vs the flagship.