Well since everyone is doing them, I may as well too.
In this thread. I will answer questions about ship builds and about techniques and other tips that people wonder about. AS A DISCLAIMER, everything in this thread is my _personal opinion. _While I will do my best to provide accurate information, none of my builds or suggestions are the definitive best or even all that good. I will share what works best for me and if it works for you too, great, if not, that’s great too. As long as you are learning how to be better at the game, more power to you.
As for my ships. I have all the credit ships from R12 and down with some T5s of classes I like.
I only use 1 set of Implants and I use this for all my ships:
As a start: I will show my favorite ship:
Federation Rank 9 Premium Engineer: Valor
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This Valor is purely an “Ambulance” meant for modes where the main objective moves around and you need an engineer to flex with the moving front lines. In modes where the battle is more static, a Styx is better. This is a somewhat specialized “Speed Tank” build and has some weakness, but it is best when at full AB speed. The emphasis is extreme mobility with 2 Vernier Engines to allow excellent rotation even while at max speed.
The main source of durability of this build is from the 2 Adaptive shields, offering a combined 82 points of resistance on all types of damage at a speed of 292m/s+. The Passive Armor, while cutting into the durability of the build, keeps the ship energy stable, which is vital for a Speed-Tank build. Most importantly, this allows this Valor to use a module slot on something other than an Energy Emitter to remain stable.
The Proton Wall, Emergency Barrier, and Repair Kit with Armadillo II (F8 - Multipurpose removes all engine debuffs) are your escape options and ensure that you remain in control even when faced with Tackler/ECM debuffs that are especially lethal on this build. EB also means you can survive “Face-Torping” interceptors chasing you down and the supreme rotation can allow you to prolong dogfights long enough for your team to assist.
At full A/B and both auras active, the Valor’s capacitor will stabilize at roughly 50% or 430 energy. Enough to always have the Repair Kit available for use, however Autonomous Stations (533 energy) will need about half a second of charging to drop, on top of regenerating your capacitor back to 50% if one wishes to continue afterburning.
All in all, a versatile build that can move with a team when the objectives move as well, ensuring that you can survive skirmishes when at full speed and supporting the front lines even as they change.
Federation Rank 8 Engineer: Anaconda
Hmmh. . . Anaconda is such a “meh” ship that a good build for it is rather challenging, but I’ll see what I can throw together.
Frankly this ship can go so many ways, building it for speed-tanking isn’t really worth it with only 1 Shield slot, so I just went with a general resistance build. It’s not energy stable with auras going, but it can manage incoming treats “okay-ish.” I want to slap on a Passive Armor to make it more energy stable, but this thing is such paper that it NEEDS any resistance it can get it’s hands on. Honestly Styx is so much better. Shield can either be Thermal or EM, but I’d personally use EM because most Thermal damage is from snipers, which are easy enough to dodge in Federation ships as long as you don’t fly in a straight line.
Empire Rank 14 Command: Aura
A somewhat interim Aura build until I can get a full set of x3 Mk. 4 Voltage Regulators. So my final will have a stronger focus on regen, rather than the more mixed build depicted. My Aura focuses on Diffusion Tanking and providing maximum support with, well, auras.
Passive Armor gives too much cap regen to pass up and Compact Shield Generator is a no-brainer for Empire Commands. Regen coating gives a constant stream of hull healing since a Command only ever has a capacitor below 50% when using Diffusion Shield and makes up for the fact there is no Repair Kit handy. Gravi-scanner + Cruise Engine means my Aura can hit the speed cap and move around the battlefield with ease and speed with even a mob of interceptors.
I know the meta says Ion Emitter is the way to go, but I’m terrible with lasers, especially vs interceptors, so I personally use bubble gun.
My Aura build is best when under Diffusion Shield, otherwise it is rather meh. It’s an absolute star with support, but don’t expect to rack up too many kills.
And more practical build:
Federation Experimental Engineer: Octopus
A fairly generic Thermal tank build. Station cooldown is also lower than its 30 second duration, so stations can be put up constantly without issue. Armada drones + missile drones can make it dangerous to approach, but only when the drones are up obviously.
Jericho Rank 15 Guard: Inquisitor S
This is a Thermal Shield Tank build. Thermal damage is stupidly ubiquitous in T5 plain and simple. With 3 Mk.4 thermal shield mods and Phase Shield set to Thermal, you have a whopping 340 resistance to the damage type, so even Heavy Blaster shots will barely tickle. And even if your shield is set to a different type of damage, you are still reasonably well protected from thermal.
Hulls slots on Jerry Guard are focused on improving other ship stats, because lets be honest, a Jerry Guard down to it’s hull is pretty much dead at that point. The Passive Armor could be subbed for a second Pylon, but I like the extra cap regen. And Passive Armor also covers the regen penalty on the two Power Relays that improve passive regen. The only substitute I see being worthwhile is a Acceleration Coil for the slow mortars.
Shared Cooler and Horizon give the Coil Mortar the flexibility it needs for the slow Jerry Guard. And yes, while the coil and Octopus missiles mean you only do 1 type of damage: kinetic. Kinetic damage isn’t really tanked that much in T5 and is best for burst-damaging down ships that already have significant hull damage.
Active modules are fairly standard. Pulsar and Mass Inhibitor because Interceptors are all over T5 and both shield restoring modules because this ships is about tanking as much damage as possible with minimal down time.
Jericho Rank 15 Premium Command: Excalibur
With only 2 Capacitor slots and no Hull slot for a Passive Armor, I find that any sort of Diffusion Tank on this ship is not only worthless, but goes against the bonuses this ship has.
With J3 (+30 Shield Resistance), Shield Booster (+10), and the innate ship bonus (+10), you have a full +50 resistance to all damage types before you get around to adding more with the three shield slots this ship has. For Kinetic alone, that is 100 points of resistance or %50 damage resistance, with only the mentioned passive bonuses.
This ship is all about mid-team, mid-line support. All by itself, the ships is pretty meh, but that’s not where this ship shines. This ship is best when it brings on the focus fire, when other ships are busy with the other ships near you and when engagements are long and drawn out. This is a DPM ship, it doesn’t spike down kills like Cov Ops or Gunship, but softens targets perfectly for your teammates to swoop in and finish the job.
And really, with damage-over-time/team-support-damage being the goal of this ship Assault Rails are a no brainer. The ship role bonus perfectly covers the malus of spread in exchange for rate of fire and with x2 Heatsinks, gives a 34% boost to firerate giving Rails an extra 68 rounds per minute over the default 200. Shared Cooler gives that extra bit of breathing room with increased firerate and with how quick rais cool, you can fire non-stop guaranteed with half-second pauses occasionally.
Shield mods emphasise strong allround resistance with the Command’s Aegis System providing even more. Now a case could be made for one EM resist being swapped for an Auxiliary Shield Projector for move volume, but I personally strongly prefer resistance over volume any day.
Modules are fairly standard and do a great job of benefiting both yourself and the team. Shield booster as obligatory multipurpose. Valkyrie gives your rails the extra punch they need to get through shields and if firing at the edges of maximum range. Gravi-Scanner to get around the battlefield and help your team move as a group. And of course aura module.
Federation Rank 15 Premium Tackler: Rockwell
In a nutshell, probably one of the only ships that can fly with the Cruise Engine and not be useless in a dogfight and not be useless by not debuffing targets.
First and foremost, it has all the proper slows that a Tackler needs to do its job effectively. With all 3 slows available (slow beam, inhibitor, and suppressor) and able to hit the 700 m/s speed cap, you can chase anything and everything down with certainty.
Sentry drone is taken over Target Painter because sentry drone is for punishing inties that fly into its range. What I do is engage a target and drop it mid-dogfight while my target is slowed and distracted. Between TP and SD, the goal is the same, assisting with damage in an engagement. While TP is more flexible, SD is extremely effective when used correctly (e.g. not like the typical baddie drone pooper). Basically, take TP if you want to kill fighters/frigs, take SD if you want to focus on damaging inties.
Also went with Piercing Missiles over Slowing-Field missiles because they seems to screw with teammates more than enemies and I just generally find them terrible compared to the finishing power of a piercing missile on a slowed target. Doomsday missiles are also extremely viable in this regard. Most of this build will be getting kills either from missiles or the Sentry Drone.
And lets face it, Tackler is inherently scrubby when it comes to surviving. Passive mods on hull and shield focus on regen for recovering after cloaking out of a fight and escaping further damage.
CPU mods are fairly standard, Overclocked CPU because speedy lock-on time is essential for Tackler and Proton wall because of the ECM-heavy meta in T5 right now.
This is my go-to ship for Detonation and Realistic/Capture the Beacons, especially with how T5 is almost never bigger than 5v5.
For example in T5 having less than 10-20 surplus energy on similar build is pushing energy starvation.