Razon EX target spotting ship

[Shadow Reaper]

I'm looking at the various options again of what works best for spotting targets with a "spotting ship" ship, and blasting them with the S10 torps on the Polaris. I've looked at both speed and stealth as solutions for spotters, and even considered the Eclipse since it will fit in the Polaris bay. Just recently though I'm looking at the Razor EX, since it is relatively inexpensive, stealthy, fast as blazes and fantastically tiny. It actually looks like maybe up to six could fit in the Polaris hangar bay. That would be shocking to me as an Eclipse just barely fits with its wings folded.

So I'm looking at this cheezy li'l racer. . .and suddenly I'm like GEEZEE! This thing is FAST! It has low sigs and if it gets in trouble it can always run away. What's better than that for a spotter?

One thing I am curious about though, is the EM sig. It is twice as high as the Eclipse. I'm wondering if that is because all the vids I've seen, the pilot has the shields running.

Has anyone here looked to see what happens to your EM sig when you turn the shields off on a Razor EX?

 

[Phil]

I am thinking Hornet ghost, Sabre Raven are the first ones to come to me as they are designed for low sig/stealth I am sure most light fighters could fill this spot and play with their systems to drop their sig's but if you want something designed for it those are my two pics, sure you could use the bomber as well as stealth is in their design but if for some reason that bomber gets located its most likely dead with little dog fighting ability and little defense.

 

[Kaiserz]

Get an Eclipse, you have the best radar and lock range in game... why get near the enemies when you can see then at 30.000 mts away? how to survive if they see you ? keep those 30km between you and them, you'll have a enough time to jump to another location.

PS: Don't tell me the Eclipse is bad for this because it can't defend itself, you're a recon/attack ship, it means hit and run, same with the Sabre (i have one), you need to get as close as possible, kill and run, it doesn't have a great shield and weapons overheat fast so... be a shark, kill the ones outside the group, alone... hit hard and kill once you finish with them!

 

[Shadow Reaper]

The Eclipse has the same S radar as the tiny Razor EX. While I like the notion of being able to attack large ships from more than one vantage point and using an Eclipse is good for this, the main mission of a spotter is to spot, and if seen to survive by fleeing.

Probably the Razor is no more visible in RCS than the Eclipse. The issue is EM. The Razor has twice the EM signature of the Eclipse and I want to see if that is because of the shields always on in the vids posted online.

The spotting ship's proposed practice is to boost to full, disconnect and float across vast spaces with systems passive, and ping periodically, in order to spy out a large swath for the Polaris. The S10 Polaris torps have greater than 50KM range, so if the spotter finds something 50 KM away, the Polaris can kill it from a distance where something like a Void Bomber can presumably not see it, so it can't be counterattacked. However, Void Bombers fly with scouts too, and if a Sythe or some such finds a Razor, the Razor can not only flee effectively, but because it can do this it can lure the escorts into a trap. Hopefully that means we take Sythes and other escorts home from a hunt. An Eclipse would instead be forced to waste a big missile on a little target to escape. That does not make economic sense, and running a successful Sons of Orion storyline requires one make big bucks for the crew.

The really nice thing is I can imagine flying at least 4 Razors off the Polaris, and they drift at much higher speeds than the Eclipse, so they can spy out more than 150% the battlespace in a set amount of time, which is key when you want to provide exciting gameplay for everyone. If there is 4 of them flying off the Polaris, they will spy out 600% the battlespace, which ultimately means 6X more kills for the team. If you want to keep a team together, you need to up the game so they stay interested. I think this might do it!

 

[Printimus]

Why not get a terrapin or a Hornet Tracker...... thats what they are meant for.

 

[sovapid]

Has anyone here looked to see what happens to your EM sig when you turn the shields off on a Razor EX?

If I remember I'll check it out for you tonight.

 

[Shadow Reaper]

Why not get a terrapin or a Hornet Tracker...... thats what they are meant for.

Good question. I am hesitant to do this for two reasons. First, you only get the one into the Polaris bay, same as the Eclipse. The Terrapin has S2 radar, so is a good choice, but both are much slower than the Vanduul fighters and would be on their own if discovered.

Being faster than your pursuers is not only a safety thing. If you know you can sprint away and dodge shots effectively, you can squiggle around and lure scouts into the Polaris S3 missile range, again without anyone seeing the Polaris. That leaves the little Vanduul birds prey to the Polaris Arrester III missiles, and if you then kill the main ship, you can tractor Blades into the Polaris, fly the Razors and Polaris home and you have KEWL LOOTZ! Blades are often used as scout craft and two of them will fit into a Polaris hangar.

 

[Printimus]

Good question. I am hesitant to do this for two reasons. First, you only get the one into the Polaris bay, same as the Eclipse. The Terrapin has S2 radar, so is a good choice, but both are much slower than the Vanduul fighters and would be on their own if discovered.

Being faster than your pursuers is not only a safety thing. If you know you can sprint away and dodge shots effectively, you can squiggle around and lure scouts into the Polaris S3 missile range, again without anyone seeing the Polaris. That leaves the little Vanduul birds prey to the Polaris Arrester III missiles, and if you then kill the main ship, you can tractor Blades into the Polaris, fly the Razors and Polaris home and you have KEWL LOOTZ! Blades are often used as scout craft and two of them will fit into a Polaris hangar.

You may want to see how the mechanics of that type of gameplay comes about first before you decide on something like this. Also o note, the Polaris hangar bay should only fit 1 ship, dont be surprised if there are penalties for trying to fit more than one.

 

[sovapid]

Cut shields, then weapons, and then pretty sure quantum drive (edit, just looked it up, wasn't the QD. Not sure what I turned off last).....

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6ezPfXO3LE

 

[Phil]

Get an Eclipse, you have the best radar and lock range in game... why get near the enemies when you can see then at 30.000 mts away? how to survive if they see you ? keep those 30km between you and them, you'll have a enough time to jump to another location.

PS: Don't tell me the Eclipse is bad for this because it can't defend itself, you're a recon/attack ship, it means hit and run, same with the Sabre (i have one), you need to get as close as possible, kill and run, it doesn't have a great shield and weapons overheat fast so... be a shark, kill the ones outside the group, alone... hit hard and kill once you finish with them!

Sometimes running is not an option the raven also has EMP which could be used to get away as well, the original post was about stealth and low sig options, basically if you can maintain range without any fear than any ship is plausible why not just the ship with the longest radar range and stay as far away as possible? Because you don't want to be detected the whole point of recon is to not be detected, I said you could use the bomber it has stealth and low sig but again just because your on recon does not mean your safe, fleets have their own defenses as well and they include patrols most likely low sig/stealth ships of their own if you get popped by a raven,sabre, hornet your dead that was my point again I never said you couldn't use it I just said its not my first choice.

 

[Shadow Reaper]

Cut shields, then weapons, and then pretty sure quantum drive (edit, just looked it up, wasn't the QD. Not sure what I turned off last)

Wow. Thanks for this! Those are insanely low sigs. With the weapons turned off the Razor IR sig is 1/5 that of the Eclipse. The EM didn't ever go down quite as far as the Eclipse--1400 when the Eclipse was 1100, but the IR went down to 420 when the Eclipse was 2400.

I have never seen footage of the Raven with its gear turned off, but with it on it has HUGE EM and IR sigs. You can't use the EMP without giving away your position as if you were waving a road flare, and because of the charge time it is not then useful from stealth. I like the Raven and want one, but the EMP is wasted when the mission is stealth recon. Likewise, the heavy guns and hull of the Hornet is not best for stealth recon. IMHO, best is small, fast and as little EM and IR sig as possible. If you could reduce the Radar Cross Section (RCS) by cutting all the control surfaces off the Razor with a beam laser like on the Prospector, I'd do that as well, but fat chance of that working. Odds are the game will not even note changes in orientation create different RCS. My guess is they'll just assign a single RCS value to each bird. If rather, the game actually calculates RCS based upon target orientation, that changes everything about how you have to fly a recon bird so as to keep the smallest RCS toward your target. It would also be reason to get out your saw and cut the control surface bits off space stealth birds that have no reason to fly outside atmosphere.

Yes, I'm sure we need to wait and see what can reasonably be fit into the Polaris hangar. Its well to note though, you don't have to have multiple birds fit into the hangar all at once. You need to be able to refit and refuel birds one at a time, in theater. You really want to do this after arrival in a sector but before a confrontation with the enemy, so each bird can flee when necessary, but you don't have to have all your recon scouts fit in the hangar unless you want to exit the game and respawn all birds at once (which would be extremely handy on deep penetration recon, search and destroy.)

Also, we really need to see the difference in the scan range between S, M, L and C. While it could be you could get 6X more coverage from 4 Razors than you would from one Ghost Tracker, Raven or Eclipse, if the M radar in the Terrepin has 3X the scan radius of S, then it is 9X the area. So even moving at 2/3 the speed of a Razor, a Terrapin would scan as much as 4 players in Razors. That would make the Terrapin much more efficient, even though it would be much more dangerous.

I have never seen a vid of the Terrapin with its EM and IR sigs displayed on the HUD. Is weird people review it in combat and all, and don't note what kind of sigs a supposed stealth ship offers, and no one has put out a vid of the scan as compared to S scan on little birds. Go figure. I do like that they raised the Terrapin's speed up so high--1205 afterburner is quite high! but it is not enough to escape Vanduul scout craft like the Blade (1240), and I am sure that is quite by design. It is so close, you could reasonably make a run in the Terrapin for the cover of Daddy Polaris' S3 Arrester IIIs, but from 50 km out to 9km range of the Arreser's is a long sprint made much longer by any attempts to dodge. My guess is you'd be quite dead trying to run 40 km from a couple Blades in a Terrapin. Can you survive half miniute of attack? Would be exciting to find out! Lucky we have Owl to test it for us. . .

Need to wait and see. I confess i do love the combination of stealth and speed and prefer recon running away rather than fighting when detected.

 

[SullyQuindarius]

I've got a Sabre for that.

Also, there's the capital radar/scanning systems.

 

[Wolfy]

I have my Sabre Raven for scouting missions that require heavy stealth. I'm assuming the intelligence systems on it can be used for that purpose. I don't know about using them for weapons guidance, they need to flesh that part of the game out more first.

 

[Phil]

EMP is a last resort I never intended it to be a recon tool just an evasion tool if you were discovered. The Razor looks great also again it was designed from the ground up for stealth and low sig, I wonder once the game is finished how many other ships can be modified by replacing components to make its IR low so there may still be a ton of other options once the game goes live with some modifications. I regret not grabbing the Raven when it came out ship looks fun.