Outfitting your ship

[Illbleed]

Well, now that I've got some newbiness out from under my belt, it's time to fine tune the ship stradegy. With the very limited mass on Imperial vessels, I'm having a difficult time deciding what to put in my ship. Can anyone recommend specific templates that are know to work very well? I've got 50,191 mass to work with in a Tie/Interceptor. Many of the more powerful weapons are like 15k in mass! That's alot of mass to be taking up in the ship. A few questions that I need to ask:

1. Are there specific templates that work best?( ie high defense/shields at the cost of weapons).

2. What is the difference between hitpoints and armor points? Sometimes the numbers are the same, sometimes not. What is the signifigance?

3. How do weapons groups work? Does this mean that I can load more than one weapon into a ship(ie the Tie Interceptor ) and switch the weapons on the fly?

4. What types of weapons do you find to be most effective against different enemies?

[Seret Sajet]

1. Its all a matter of prefrence but I prefer to build for speed and attack power. When it comes to defense I dump everything into back armor and shields because frankly I rarely get attacked from the front and if so for a very short amount of time. I try to work on keeping the mass down on all parts by experimentation except for the Capactior and Guns. With weapons I max out experimentation in Energy per shot and Max damage while on the capacitor I experiment on recharge rate and overall energy. So far I'm very satisfied with my ship but like I said, everyone has a preference.

2. I'm honestly not sure. I imagine armor points are your first line of defense before you part gets blown to bits. So if you shield fails and the enemy targets your reactor that reactor has some many armor points to go through before the enemy starts damaging the reactor itself lowering the percentage of its effectiveness until its disabled. I cannot confirm this but that is my estimation of armor and part hitpoints.

3. Depending on how many weapons your ship can hold will determine the groups, So lets say for this example you can hold 3 weapons in the Interceptor (I've never flown one so I'm guessing.) You can, for example, load one ion cannon and two blasters. Using your keymap you can use each gun individually or both at the same time. By default you will fire all guns at once but that will drain your capacitor rapidly. You may want to alternate fire by mapping your guns to different buttons and using them in different groups (Ions first to knock out their shileds then lay on the blasters).

4. My preferred combo is Ions and Disruptors. Ions effect Shields only, Disruptors effect Armor only and Laser Blasters effect Both but to a lesser degree than Ions and Distruptors (by about half the effectiveness). I was doing fine with an Ion/Blaster combo but I found I was more effective using Disruptors rather than Ions. Try them all and see what you like best.

[Novall]

One of the best things you can do is get your loot reverse engineered. Save the highest lvl loot you can use, and get it reversed. I've been able to make some extremely good items from saving my high lvl loot. Examples:

Current engine gives me 913 speed at 10k mass.
Current main blaster gives 3.9k dmg with 13 energy per shot and 25k mass.
Current cap has 1100 energy with 44 recharge and 10k mass.

Right now my heavy black sun is setting as 116000 out of 130000 mass. My reactor is my only limiter at this time.

Seret is right about being fast and punchy with moderate/little defence. 90% of all attacks come from the rear, but remember that most missles come fron the front to...so be aware of that.

My personal combonation is blasters and disruptors...or blasters and blasters. Ion's are good on shields, but shields start dropping really fast anyhow...so in my opinion its better to go for the fast kill then the wear down. Most blasters seem to overpower all disruptors/ions that i've seen currently.

[Keer]

2. I'm honestly not sure. I imagine armor points are your first line of defense before you part gets blown to bits. So if you shield fails and the enemy targets your reactor that reactor has some many armor points to go through before the enemy starts damaging the reactor itself lowering the percentage of its effectiveness until its disabled. I cannot confirm this but that is my estimation of armor and part hitpoints.

According to the JtL Game Guide, that's exactly correct.

4.Ions effect Shields only

Same source says Ions effect armor as well, but to a much lesser extent. I think that if you look in the Manage window of your ship there is a listing for both "vs Shields" and "vs Armor" for Ions like those of Blasters.

Could be changed though. Maybe the in-game documentation hasn't caught up yet.

I go with Ions first to eat the shields, then get the Disruptors crackling on the armor/ship. Somewhat awkward switching, but I get more out of my Capacitor that way.

[Seret Sajet]

4.Ions effect Shields only

Same source says Ions effect armor as well, but to a much lesser extent. I think that if you look in the Manage window of your ship there is a listing for both "vs Shields" and "vs Armor" for Ions like those of Blasters.

Could be changed though. Maybe the in-game documentation hasn't caught up yet.

I go with Ions first to eat the shields, then get the Disruptors crackling on the armor/ship. Somewhat awkward switching, but I get more out of my Capacitor that way.

Never trust an SWG game guide. My original one still says I have to loot my corpse.

Though you might be right about higher level Ion cannons, the few I've made say 0.0% effectiveness against armor. I can't say for certain all Ions have 0.0% rates but the first few levels do, as well as Concussion missles.

[Glacial]

On the topic of ship tuning.... I'm puzzled about reactors.

I am consistantly running more equipment than my reactor can handle, and have seen no ill effects. Am I missing something here? Similarly, does reactor overload help? So far I'm doing fine with an undersized reactor.

[Ekade]

My latest strategies... (based on experiance in piloting the X-wing, 99k Mass ship w/3 weapons)

Armor/Shields:
I dont put heavy armor on my ship. I'd rather dedicate that mass to better reactors and shields. In my opinion, once your armor is getting pounded on, you are in trouble. At this point I use /eshield or /iffscrable to get out of a bad situation.

I disagree that most attacks come from behind. In my experience most of the dmg comes from the front. I often use the droid command to adjust shields foreward. This is even more true when dealing with TIE Oppressors, Gunboats, and Shuttles.

Right now my Weapons, Reactor, and Shield are Zanjet manufactured. Everything else is looted.

Novall is 100% correct in that RE is the way to go. I have just started getting into this and it is great, especially for the lighter ships. RE components give you the most bang for the buck ("buck" = mass and energy drain).

[Gaaralow]

Ekade's on to something. I take it yer fast and manuverable in a Tie. As such, you'll have yer enemies in front of ya most of the time, so you'll want yer better armor in the front.

[TramelRaggs]

I spent a good amount of time in a TIE Interceptor and am debating about keeping my TIE Advanced instead of the TIE Oppressor. I think I can help you out here.

1. Are there specific templates that work best?( ie high defense/shields at the cost of weapons).

As it has been said before, it all depends on your playstyle. Unlike the ground game, the space game is much more reliant on user skill. My ship is built around the way I handle myself in space, and what suits me best while covering my faults. There won't really be any one template that will work better than others.

2. What is the difference between hitpoints and armor points? Sometimes the numbers are the same, sometimes not. What is the signifigance?

As someone said, armor points take a beating before your components hit points go down. Hit points are tied directly to performance, though. If you had one capacitor with 50 armor and 100 hitpoints, and one with 100 armor and 50 hit points, you'd want to use the second one (all other things being equal). Once you're down to 40 hitpoints, you're now only getting 80% of max performance out of that component.

3. How do weapons groups work? Does this mean that I can load more than one weapon into a ship(ie the Tie Interceptor ) and switch the weapons on the fly?

The TIE Interceptor only has 1 weapon and 1 missle slot, but when you move up you'll be able to load on more of each. You can even do it now in the bomber (note: Do NOT use the bomber). With weapon grouping, you can fire weapons together, or divide them up however you wish.

4. What types of weapons do you find to be most effective against different enemies?

I use my twin blasters against everything because they are my babies. They are .5 to shield and armor, and some would think it's not as useful as the a ion/disrupter combo, but I disagree. It's not a large hassle, and the bang for the buck is definately there.

When you get to master level, you'll be able to use a type of weapon that are insta-kill on light ships in PvP and light Tier 5 ships like A-Wings (no other ship will piss you off like A-Wings), but we'll talk about that after you get to master...