Bay 12 Games Forum

The stats are pretty simple, and I will describe them to you now:

• Anti-Air is the ship's firepower against enemy fighters. Those won't come into play for quite some time, so this stat is essentially useless at the moment.
• Anti-Ship measures a ship's firepower against other ships. Possibly the most important stats for most ships, as most of their time will be spent shooting holes in things.
• Cruise Spd is the ship's movement while flying from planet to planet. The faster, the better, unless you like long slow voyages.
• Battle Spd is, obviously, speed during combat. Faster ships can more easily get to grips with the enemy. We should have enough speed now to catch that bloody transport from before.
• Mobility affects how likely enemy shots are to miss.
• Armor is armor; damage reduction.
• Durability is simply "hit points". This ship has 460, which is more than double what the DAISY had.
• Atk Range is important, as it measures the range at which your sensors can lock onto enemy ships. If a weapon has a longer range than this and fires from outside that range, it's chance to hit is severely reduced.
• Livability determines how long you can travel before your crew reaches crippling exhaustion levels.
• For fighters, a ship needs a catapult (built into certain models) and hanger space. As previously mentioned, those won't come into play until later.
• Wpn Slots is the number of available hard points on a ship's hull. Weapons range from Small to Extra Large, and each ship has it's own loadout. For instance, the LOTUS here has one Medium and one Small weapon.
• Each ship requires a certain number of crew. You can go above that, which can be useful for melee battles and such, but I usually have better uses for limited hull space.

Now, The LOTUS as is will probably be enough to beat Panfilov, but we want it to be better, right? Every ship, when bought, comes with the bare minimum needed to fight and fly: Default weapons, a basic bridge and engine room, and just enough crew quarters to make the bare minimum. This is where ship modification comes into play. Ship modding is a huge part of this game, and we'll need to find and install better mods as you progress. Let's look at what we can do with the LOTUS:



Like I said, pretty bare-bones. It's also much more simple than it appears at first glance: Bridge modules go in the bridge section, engine rooms go in the engine section, and everything else can go into the other spaces. Each module is in a tetris-like shape, which cannot be rotated. You simply drag and drop modules wherever they can fit.
You need to buy the blueprints for most modules, much like ship blueprints. However, Yuri (or more likely Nia) starts with a few handy:

• A fire control room increases the accuracy of both AA and AS weapons, a must-have.
• A radar room increases attack range by a small amount. Not a must-have, but it's nice and we have space and money to spare.
• Holds are handy. Whenever you dock at a port, you earn a small amount of credits for each hold in your fleet. Higher-level holds earn more money.
• Finally, crew cabins. Each one provides living space for 10 additional crew members, and provides a small livability boost. I'll go ahead and add a couple to keep them happy.

Here's the LOTUS now. I added both a fire control and radar room, as well as two extra crew quarters and two holds. It'll be a little pricy at 750G, but we're ready to fight Panfilov whenever now.

On to weapons! At this stage in the game there are only two alternative weapons available to us, both of them a gamble. Currently, our two weapon systems are single-shot lasers with decent stats in everything (power, range, accuracy). We can replace either size laser with a dual-shot laser: Each shot does slightly less damage, and range and accuracy are slightly reduced. However, they have the potential to do much more damage than the single-shot guns. I'm leaving the default lasers for now, but I can trade them in before the next update should anyone request it.

After you finish setting up your new destroyer, Nia comes up to Yuri:

: That's quite a ship you got there! And you bought it with your own money, so that makes you the captain.

: I'm a captain?

: Yup. And from now on, sink or swim, the responsibility lies with you.

: (Captain, huh? This doesn't feel real.)

: And considering everything that's happened, I'd be happy to offer my services as one of your crew members. Just assign me to a post. You can assign crew members at the Cosmic Trade Authority you can find at any spaceport.

: You're going to be on my crew?

: What, you don't want me?

: No, of course that's not it. I just feel like you're being way too good to me.

: Ha ha ha! Don't worry about that! After all, you're my client until I get you safely to Central Elgava. Anyway, what's important is that now you're ready to go up against Panfilov.

: I am, aren't I? (Hold on, Kira! I'm coming to get you!)

From now on, the CTA option will show up at any spaceport we visit. There, we can assign crew members to various slots and organise our fleet. We can also visit a HELP desk and check what Yuri's rank as a zero-G dog is.
In fact...



Nuts. Rank is determined by the amount of fame someone has, which is mainly earned by defeating enemy fleets. Yuri has q-u-i-t-e a way to go.
Hmm, I wonder who the top rank is?



Someone named "Valantin", apparently. Pff, I bet we could take him.

Back to the important stuff. First, we need to make the LOTUS our new flagship.



Easy enough. Please note the how the stats have increased from before being modded. Also, we don't lose the DAISY. We can't sell it, so it just goes into ship storage. We may be using it again in the future, but since it can't be upgraded or modded in any way it will rapidly become obsolete.
Next, we need to look at the crew screen.



The "party members" we recruit can be assigned various positions in this screen. Each position has a skill governing it, and this skill increases when a crew member levels up. Including the captain position, there are 35 slots for party members, though Yuri is permenantly locked into the captain's spot. Yuri's spot is special however; he is also sometimes in charge of melee fights (thus his blade and combat suit).



As you can see, Nia is already a skilled zero-G dog. She can be helpful in just about any slot, so I'll now give you a brief overview of what each skill entails:

• Leadership: Only used in the Captain and First Officer posts. Increases Mobility and the rate at which the Command Gauge will refill.
• Control: Increases gauge speed and attack range.
• Navigation: Increases Mobility, Battle, and Cruise Speed.
• Artillery: Increases accuracy of ship weapons.
• Maintenance: Chief Engineers boost Mobility and Battle Speed. Mechanics increase the rate at which health of ships and fighters recover.
• Science: An interesting skill. Scientists automatically research improvements to your flagship, and possibly all of your ships (I'm pretty sure they only work on the flagship, though).
• Medicine: In battle, crew can become injured, which leads to a decrease in combat potential. Doctors and nurses increase the rate at which crew recover.
• Management: Accountants help boost monetary gain from cargo holds and other sources. Head Chef and waiters/waitresses increase Livability and reduce the rate at which fatigue rises.
• Combat: Security officers act as commanders in melee battles, improving their effectiveness. They also increase livability, presumably by bashing the heads of troublemakers
  A further note about Combat: If the Security Chief slot is empty, Yuri commands melee battles. This can be an advantage, as Yuri receives a number of combat upgrades as the game goes on.
• Piloting: Increases the effectiveness of fighters.

So, what shall Nia do on the ship? The choice, as always, is yours