Frankenstein’s Monster

[Shadow Reaper]

For a long time I’ve sat pondering what to do with the Paladin. It is almost enough as is, but those two side turrets turned over to the pilot beckon to me. They call, and seduce, and offer forbidden embrace. They are sultry twin temptresses, awaiting fulfillment through my darkest fantasies. And so I share with you, my TESTie brethren, my misadventure.

The side turrets on the Paladin are S4 turrets, just like the quad S4 turrets on the Centurion. So according to game doctrine, it ought to be possible to put twin quad S4 turrets on the Paladin, which surely has enough power available to run virtually anything.

So for example, you could keep your top turret Galdereens for self defense, and give 8, Deadbolt IV to the pilot, for about 9k DPS, most of which will go through any sort of armor.

The SC Ship Performance calculator has not been updated yet, so does not show the armor for the main gun turrets of the Perseus, but if they are similar to other main ship components, they deflect about 132 ballistic, and absorb about 8,000, which means an Alpha strike with 8 deadbolts will destroy the armor and a second will destroy both weapons. That’s 5 seconds to destroy both turrets and their weapons aboard a Perseus.

Franken-boat.

 

[Shadow Reaper]

Loaded with all Attritions the monster will put out 17,493 dps. 3 of them put out more damage, have 50% more shields and have 25% more HP than a Perseus, which begs the question whether manning a Perseus is a good idea.

In general, when we compare combat performance across different sized vessels, the larger the ship the more performance you get per crew member. Fighters have been the exception until now.

The Monster is also an exception. I highly recommend TEST consider fielding small teams of such monsters to examine their performance, especially in light of the armor changes.

 

[Montoya]

I like the look of the Paladin. We know from experience there are nerfs and buffs. Im ok holding it until its proven completely irrelevant, which is not yet.

 

[Shadow Reaper]

You probably have the resources to check what I don’t. Ships like the Drake Vulture have a salvage dedicated tractor that can remove and replace turrets. So anyone with access to a Paladin, a Vulture and a couple Centurions should be able to build The Monster, basically doubling the number of S4 pilot guns from 4 to 8.

If anyone does this please give us a shout how it worked out. People have been using this to put the Hurricane quad turret on Vanguards. I think what you can’t do is mix remote and manned turrets. So for the Paladin you need remote, and the Centurion turret is the only quad S4 thus far in game.

Players have likewise been moving the Harbinger S3 turret onto the Sentinel S2 turret mount. Erkul lists the Sentinel mount as S2, so apparently, the size of the turret does not matter. This means it is possible, quad S4 manned turrets like those on the Hammerhead, could be monster-sliced onto a Vanguard, etc. Crazy as it sounds, it may be possible to splice the Paladin S5 manned turret into a Sentinel. I’d love to see that.

Someone should check. This does not seem to me to be taking advantage of an exploit. It appears deliberately engineered into the game. I’m told this only works with the special salvage tractors found on ships like the Vulture and Reclaimer. Not sure about the Salvation, but it appears it won’t work because technically it does not have this special tractor.

TEST needs to know the limits of garage chop shops, IMHO. One of the big draws for me with SC is the ability to customize your own whip. Too often this gets thwarted by dedicated guns, obvious choices, meta this n that. The ability to custom monster a ride is super appealing to me.