Banu Defender, good fit for bounty hunting?

[Richard Bong]

I know there was some speculation about stasis pods that move like cargo, and you can fit cargo into the back of all the Vanguards. You just can't lash it down so it will bounce around. It'll be interesting to see what sort of damage that creates.Depends upon your mission and target. Most players like that they can fire forever, but lasers kill much more slowly and can in this, get the one using them all dead and like that.

As point defense you don't need to hit a missile with lots of power. You just need to hit it. :slight_smile:

Given the Sentinel is a sneaky-ass ship, I want to investigate going all ballistic with reduced power and Void Armor. I'm so glad they made the 4 S2 lasers in the nose removable. They had not been for ages. If you use straight ballistics, Void Armor, and a smaller reactor, it is going to be extremely hard to tell what sort of bird you're facing, methinks.

The Harbinger is straight Ballistics, nose mounts and Chin Mount.

Jammers, most Sensors and EMP are not sneaky components, they are very loud, noisy and obvious, by their very nature. For example Wild Weasel functionality is "Here I am, look at me! Shoot me now, shoot me now (So my buddies or my ordinance can find you and shoot at you.)!" Jammers are like Strobe lights in the dark. EMP is a Nuke on an Electronic Scale.

Sentinels are support ships designed to distract, disrupt and spoof (using an FMS) the enemy to draw their attention, which is exactly the opposite of Stealth. Note that FMS is either a "Footprint Magnification System" or an " F Me Sign."

It is a Joker, it is a thinking person's ship, it is designed to be annoying to your target, but if it is stealth it is not doing its job.

The question is what are the nose guns going to be after the rework. The Vanguard nose mounts have, since 2.6.3, been damage of Size 3 guns with range of size 2 guns.

 

[Shadow Reaper]

As point defense you don't need to hit a missile with lots of power. You just need to hit it.

This is why I want to investigate the Jokers and Pyros. They're both supposed to be AOE instead of a point, though I think they may have removed that from the Jokers. I'm not sure. Seems I saw a vid with Jokers shooting lines into the void. Pyros would of course be even better, but the mount atop the Vanguard won't have them.

Jammers, most Sensors and EMP are not sneaky components, they are very loud, noisy and obvious, by their very nature. . .Jammers are like Strobe lights in the dark. . .

Sentinels are support ships designed to distract, disrupt and spoof (using an FMS) the enemy to draw their attention, which is exactly the opposite of Stealth. . .

Yes! Which is exactly why if you can reduce your IR and EM from the reactor, and reduce the RCS with Void Armor, you should be able to switch on and off that LOUD target signature. No one can jam while in stealth, but you can approach a target with stealth and then power the shields and jammer. You don't have to run with shields on and they don't emit when off, but you can't make a big reactor look like a small one, so if you want to do stealth all the time or on and off, you are still stuck with a small reactor. I really hope when the full component swap capability comes online we can opt for multiple smaller reactors in place of a single larger one, and actually shut one off when the need to be stealthy arises. CIG mentioned this a couple years ago (when the original post on EM Warfare came out), but I have seen no signs of it since.

BTW, you won't see it in print but you can bet there is a Growler-like version of the F-35 clad in stealth. Probably in the X-47b as well.

The question is what are the nose guns going to be after the rework. The Vanguard nose mounts have, since 2.6.3, been damage of Size 3 guns with range of size 2 guns.

Yeah. There was a lot of complaining that they singled out the Vanguard to not be as utilitarian as other ships when they stipulated the lasers in the nose were a part of the ship that couldn't be changed. Then came the Hoplite and they realized they had nerfed the frame terribly. So they redid it, and I am so glad! I want to be able to swap out components on the fly right before each mission when I know best what I need. I know they wanted to make that an especially attractive feature of the Hornet, but that is not reason enough to nerf the Vanguard. I think they realized when working on SQ42, they needed the Hoplite capability and that lead to a rethink of the whole bird.