| Author |
An Overview of Factions |
Enterprise
Chief Marshal
Raven Warriors
Joined: May 19, 2002
Posts: 2576
From: Hawthorne, Nevada
|  Posted: 2009-03-02 02:41
I don't usually do guides; experience teaches the best.
But people can be nausiatingly short sighted, and with the recent changes, fortunately every faction now has actual strengths and weaknesses, at last letting people choose their playstyle.
Anyways, onto your friendly neighborhood information vendor.
Its important to remember that while each individual ship has strengths and weaknesses, every faction has specific, glaring ones which in general apply to most of their ships. They can be applied with a reasonable assumption that they are accurate strengths and weaknesses, and its important to know them.
Its important to know them, because then if you don't, you get to find out how easily people who do know them get to kill you because you don't.
Don't expect me to give out actual, solid tactics though. I'm going to be general. I'm not going to be giving my enemies more weapons than they need.
UGTO are considered the newbie faction, but more officially, they are the Balanced faction, combining a good mixture of offensive and defence.
Their strengths (and any corresponding weaknesses) include:
They have the best energy efficiency in comparison to other factions, and the required skill to manage it is relatively low. This allows UGTO ships to fight at faster speeds.
Even in the hands of a beginner, their defence is acceptable. However, it has to be noted that a UGTO ship can be hulled by simply damaging a single arc. Its not nearly as easy to do as it sounds however, and a skilled pilot can force enemy ships to fight through all layers, and coupled with a supply ship, makes them arguably have the best 'toe to toe' defence in the game.
Their weapons are decently ranged while still doing decent damage. However, UGTO ships are undeniably best at close range. Unfortunately, they are noticably weak at longer ranges. Also counterbalanced again by EMP weapons, which are very effective against ICC.
TL;DR : Easy to learn, well rounded faction whose only real weakness is not having a major strength.
ICC, once the redheaded stepchild, are once again the defensive faction, having superior defense in comparison to other two factions while having poor offensive.
Their strengths (and any corresponding weaknesses) include:
Their shields are potentially the best defense in the game. However, this is due to using them correctly, unlike UGTO, where simply turning the right way offered protection. ICC shields feature the art of rotation, allowing you to redirect shield HP to any arc you wish, up to 100%.
This basically means you can force any enemy ship to have to go through at least 50% of your defense at any given angle of attack, giving ICC ships essentially the 'high ground', as it were. However, shields take alot of energy, forcing them to slow down between attacks and shield regen - which is alot faster than standard armor. However, shields cannot be repaired, and must soley be relied to do so on their own time.
This makes for interesting tactics. The main point though, is that ICC are far more effective the less damage they take at once. ICC weapons take alot less energy than their counterparts, but also do alot less damage, but have far more range and travel alot faster.. ICC ships are therefore, best when fighting defensively - that is, at range while avoiding weapons fire.
They also get Pulse weapons, which are great for taking out missiles and other destroyable projectiles.
The biggest ICC weakness is close range combat. UGTO and Kluth win the day on that one. Therefore, the best way to win against ICC is to get right in their face.
TL;DR - Best range in the game and superior defence makes ICC ships hard to kill under a skilled pilot. Energy problems will forever plague them however.
K'luth are arguably the most difficult faction. They are the hardest to learn and even harder to master. However, with great application, skilled players are very, very hard to kill in a Kluth ship. They are without a doubt the most Offensive faction while having horrible defences.
Their strengths (and any corresponding weaknesses) include:
Cloak. This is K'luth's greatest asset. K'luth ship's armor are abysmal, having less HP than Standard armor but having a decent regen rate. And its also repairable. Still, its far too easy to be carelessly hulled as a Kluth pilot.
Fortunately. Cloak relieves their problems. It makes you undetectable : period. It works by reducing your signature to a flat zero and making your ship invisible, Of course, the higher the signatue the longer it takes to cloak (and uncloak) fully, so ECM always helps. Pinging ECCM can reveal a cloaked ship, but don't expect to get much out of it. Beacons will increase your signature dramatically, forcing you to take longer to cloak and uncloak so be warned.
However, thats not the full beauty of it. Cloaking lets Kluth ships use their incredibly powerful (if highly energy draining) offensive weapons for hit and run attacks. By sneaking around, dealing massive amounts of damage to other ships weak points, a Kluth ship can be a monster.
But alone, a Kluth ship is weak. They only have enough energy for a few alphas, and Cloaking takes a ton of energy. Kluth only gets really, really powerful in a team, so much more so than other factions its almost a requirement.
K'luth also get the Automated Hull Repair, also one of their greatest assets. It allows systems to repaired near instantaneously, and it repairs hull damage at a slow rate. This lets Kluth ships stay in the fight longer, and escape narrower deaths.
Their greatest weakness however, is their very strength. Alone they are so much more vulnerable than together, and they still have to get close to fight, so make them work for it. Forcing a K'luth ship to stay at speed with you is alot harder for them than it is for you; once their energy is gone they are out of the fight for a good bit.
TL;DR : K'luth are hard to master, but with superior offensive weapons and the ability to sneak up to their targets, can evade and destroy targets with equal ability.
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Again I reiterate, they are general rules for the factions ships. There are some exceptions, but they are few. But they can be generally applied to most if not all ships in some way. To this end, its still better to learn for yourself how to best use each factions strengths, and how to best exploit other factions weakenesses.
Use your heads for god's sake.
-Ent
[ This Message was edited by: Enterprise on 2009-03-02 02:48 ]
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Don Nukey of ICC *CO*
Chief Marshal
Interstellar Cultural Confederation United
Chatting in 'DarkSpace English'
Joined: June 05, 2006
Posts: 429
From: Zeebrugge, belgium
| Posted: 2009-03-02 03:47
well ent hats of for you, you've summerised all factions very well in this nifty guide
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DarkScorpion
Marshal
Sanity Assassins
Joined: September 14, 2004
Posts: 237
From: London England
| Posted: 2009-03-02 04:39
Thats what i like to see simple and straight to the point well done. 
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Sauur
Chief Marshal
Praetorian Wolves
Joined: November 30, 2004
Posts: 475
| Posted: 2009-03-02 06:46
Nice one!
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Russian Roulette with Muskets
Grand Admiral
Joined: September 04, 2002
Posts: 393
| Posted: 2009-03-02 07:12
You should add the "Expect to die a whole lot" into the UGTO passage.
The problem with being jack of all trade is that John "firepower" Stealthbug will hand you your intestines in the timeframe he is engaging you.
While an UGTO dread technicaly can outlast a Kluth dread ba virtue of sheer Hitpoints available and can outgun it by virtue of having a wagonload of energy for spare, bringing that to bear against an oppoent who can simply switch to godmode v0.9 is something that happens in lab tests but not the real (game)world.
Fighting ICC is somewhat more balanced since they cannot simply slip away. However: the whole Defense for sacrificing offense stuff doesnt fly either.
The Best offense is obiously an offense that manages to harm an opponent, and the icc (heavy)weapons are better suitet to that since they actualy hit their target.
With ugto, no matter what you do (save flying a BD which is only due to the sheer awesomeness that is the particle cannon) you have to get close.
Proton torpedos are not slow nor are they fast. they are.. normal. Being the main heavy weapon besides lasers, having a torpedo that is "normal" is actualy quite %&?~~~*@ty.
The Kluth are knife fighters right of the bat, they get the beams for it and the torpedos to match it: Alpha strike closerange firepower. The whole race is based around getting close and dirty so the torpedo fits into the picture.
ICC get a long ranged fast torpedo and that is great because they can actualy hit you decently from afar while dance aroudn your torps, assuming you're in range to fire them which you proably will not be.
Now enter mr. normal proton torpedo.
You can't hit %&?~~~*@ at medium ranges if your target makes some evasive actions.
You HAVE to get close with that thing and thats the point where having a torpedo that indeed does neither have good travel velocity, nor good damage nor good range is hurting you. You get no benefit from getting closer to your enemy, you only increase your risk of eating lasers/ruptors/am torps.
Fighting at standoff ranges is out of the question since the torpedos travel way to slowly to hit anything that is not the size of a stationm so you get no benefit from fighting fro manything but close range either. You actualy loose what little damaage the torps can do.
The QST is a conglomeration of mediocricy, but so are the other core weapons. its hard to call any of them good or bad. the are just... bleh.
What i'd like to see for UGTO is a change in their weapons and setups.
First: loose the beams. Get rid of the Lasers - including heavy and light chemical lasers - on the Torpedo cruiser, and EAD,
The Goal is to turn the heavy duty cruiser and the EAD into long to med range slugmachines, and they have no needfor pd or onlyclose ranged weapons (read: lasers).
What heavy duty weapons? Well this one here:
Get rid of the proton torpedo, introduce the proton torpedo-cannon.
(comes with minimum firing range)
The basic principle is that the cannon will fire 5 proton torps (an i mean the projectile animation, damage obisously would need a review and lacking any numbers i cant do that here) at high velocity, much like pcannons do.
It will also feature a warm up phase before firing. It takes 4 seconds for the thing to "go off" after you pressed the fire button, and in these 4 seconds your ship will glow like a christmass tree (aka the hardpoints will start to glow), informing everyone that pain is about to come their way.
Overall DPS of the would be somewhat smaller than the weapon suites of the equivalent ships of the other factions, since you traded in close range firepower for more armor and a heavy cannon that will hit targets at medium and long distances.
The whole braodsiding thing would fit the ugto quite nicely, and in adition it would look seriously cool.
Oh, and since UGTO is called the newbie faction, having the newbies contribute in picket dessys frigates and cruisers will actualy be good. Theres a need for them if the big guns do not get their own pd.
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- In firepower we trust.
- I'm not buying this!
-we ran out of firepower.
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Lithium
Chief Marshal
Joined: June 29, 2003
Posts: 109
| Posted: 2009-03-02 07:18
IMO, You are oversitimated K'Luth weapons.
Human factions have better weapons than K'Luth's I think.
Also you are understimated UGTO defences and ICC weapons.
Most time UGTO armors are better than ICC's.
And ICC weapons have same power as UGTO.
K'Luth is bad weapon, bad armor and bad energy but good self-repair, good hiding and good speed faction.
UGTO is bad speed but good weapon, good armor and good team repair faction.
ICC is bad energy but good weapon faction.
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Meko
Grand Admiral
Joined: March 03, 2004
Posts: 1956
From: Vancouver
| Posted: 2009-03-02 08:29
Switch to the other factions.
you will quickly find out that they are in fact now balanced, and that youve gone through one too many doors without opening them.
@Ent, nice read. Very accurate
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Talcyon
Captain
Joined: July 09, 2008
Posts: 10
| Posted: 2009-03-02 08:59
Enterprise. Very nice read. Hopefully people will actually understand what you say.
You did forget to mention though that ICC is arguably the fastest faction. I dont know if this is still true, or if it was nerfed (Like always).
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BackSlash
Marshal
Galactic Navy
Joined: March 23, 2003
Posts: 11183
From: Bristol, England
| Posted: 2009-03-02 09:10
Quote:
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On 2009-03-02 07:18, Lithium wrote:
IMO, You are oversitimated K'Luth weapons.
Human factions have better weapons than K'Luth's I think.
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K'luth weapons are better than human weapons by quite a margin.
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Bash
Fleet Admiral
Joined: February 04, 2005
Posts: 365
| Posted: 2009-03-02 09:25
The point ent and lithium show you jack is Kluth have to work as a team when ICC and UGTO dont have to.
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Russian Roulette with Muskets
Grand Admiral
Joined: September 04, 2002
Posts: 393
| Posted: 2009-03-02 11:51
Quote:
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On 2009-03-02 09:25, Bash wrote:
The point ent and lithium show you jack is Kluth have to work as a team when ICC and UGTO dont have to.
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pardon me?
Any kluth vessel with a half decent pilot will own the equivalent human faction vessel one on one....
Humans have to fly in packs or they die, thats a fact. Especialy since theres always, always the risk of actualy being swamped in kluth vessels without you ever knowing it. Until they tear you to shreds.
And Meko, its not whining. Im just saying how the wordl the ugto is currently living in looks like.
As UGTO you either face invisible firepower mongers that can severly hurt you quite fast and easily while you probably have not even finished bringing a single gun to bear on them. And once you do, they cloack into safety. "Oh but kluth are powerhogs, they cant fire that often!" Well duh. They don't need to. The weapons are powerfull enough to break through even with fewer volleys per se. much preferable overall than the constant barrage that is needed to make way with ugto weapons (that share the same need for closerangedness with the kluths weapons but do not deliver the same punch).
And the whole power for balance thing flys right outa the window, on a pink marshmellow, into the land of mystical makebelief once more than one kluth are involved.
Kluth vs human isn't fair 1vs1 and fingerquotes suprisingly, doesn't get any fairer the more ppl are involved.
Well then, you could also attack the standoff snobs. The ickys will sit out of your optimal weapons range (UGTO optimal wepons range being the target sitting riight under your nose) and pelt you, while your few weapons that actualy match theirs will not break their shields anytime soon.
The weapons you have that actualy CAN break the shields before he breaks your armor are all close ranged and very much useless beyond 300 GU.
So youre supposed to crawl to that guy. all the while being peltet with cannons or torpedos before you even get to seriously shooting him.... oO
You could jump him of course, which would most like prompt him to jump himself and then youre running the risk of getting swampoed without a way out. And youre stil lbeing pelted with cannons.
What i ask for is that the UGTO gets decent mid range firepower, so that the ships can support each other even when they arent right next to each other.
Let us form naval style battlelines and send broadsides against the rest of the lot. Some old school crossfire.
That of course means we'd need weapons that can fulfil that role. Heck, you can exchange all the proton torps for qsts and every ugto vessel will be better off with that, in any situation.
[ This Message was edited by: Russian Roulette with Muskets on 2009-03-02 11:59 ]
_________________
- In firepower we trust.
- I'm not buying this!
-we ran out of firepower.
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Bash
Fleet Admiral
Joined: February 04, 2005
Posts: 365
| Posted: 2009-03-02 14:21
Read into how factions works dude really you sound sad after a few years being gone and ugto should be top of everyone else. UGTO is the most well balance faction . Which means they are easy to use. ICC and Kluth dont have the same option.
As for what i said KLUTH cant solo anyone ship. They are always force to cloak when the target it's self has turn it's ship so they can do more damage back(kluth end up with 60% hull left or less) then you come to the thread for another yet CRY we need nerf post.
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12:02:07 Doran: "and you never hear AI complaining about how dumb players are"
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MrSparkle
Marshal
Joined: August 13, 2001
Posts: 1912
From: mrsparkle
| Posted: 2009-03-02 14:39
Bash is correct. Kluth cannot 1v1. They are not designed for it, and it's evident in this version which is pretty balanced.
I'm not sure how much you've played this version or how many 1v1's you've had with Kluth ships, but I can assure you that only a noob UGTO pilot vs a skilled Kluth pilot will result in the Kluth winning outright. If anything, the Kluth will jump away and nobody wins.
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Russian Roulette with Muskets
Grand Admiral
Joined: September 04, 2002
Posts: 393
| Posted: 2009-03-02 14:50
i wonder what kind of blokes you had as opponents then.
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- In firepower we trust.
- I'm not buying this!
-we ran out of firepower.
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Supertrooper
Marshal
Pitch Black
Joined: March 18, 2004
Posts: 1895
From: Maryland, U.S.A
| Posted: 2009-03-02 14:51
Very nice Ent, accurate and a good guide for almost anyone.
And for Russian, learn to fly UGTO and figure out what teamwork is if your one ship can't handle it's counterpart on another faction. Read what Ent said, not having a strongpoint is a weakness.
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