With R12 you can still take R9 into battle. There is no excuse to sit on the R12 only therefore, as the ±3 rule allows you to take a ship up to 3 ranks under your max ship.
I find it great you make thoughts about this tho, as you notice yourself, a one-ship-wonder, as it is sometimes termed, reduces a lot of strength, and even puts the cards on the table, as the enemy knows exactly, which role you will take.
If it comes to Capture The Beacon - where every ship has only 1 life - every ship is unlocked, even those which you cannot take. Therefore, if it would be the remote chance, that you have only up to R8’s and one R12 (which is pretty unplausible), you can still take those ships to at least have another life in a ctb game - with the role bonuses for underranked ships they also perform a bit better, than in lower ranked games, having significant damage and resist bonuses.
If you have R12 only in one faction, just take the max of another faction instead. The missions say “max of one faction”.
The Tharga, being the only ship in the ellydium faction, counts as the rank you maximally _ applied _ already (with the button). So if you only unlock it to R9 actively, it will stay also in your profile as R9, even if you have already unlocked items you could use from higher ranks. IF you ever unlock it to R10 or higher, with apply, ranking it down to R9 will not make it count as max ship of ellydium (afaik), so you can keep it any rank you want while still unlocking higher stuff if you never actively upgrade the ship itself above a certain rank instead. The ranks mentioned are just exemplary, but keeping the tharga r9 is actually the only way, for someone who has already all r15s unlocked, to make those missions in medium, so i mention it here.
2 hours ago, FilthHound said:
LRF
i find, lrfs should not be in your lineup, until you really got the hang of all the other roles, or you are synergizing it, or maybe keeping it as a survival ship. sitting in an lrf is the best way to keep losing games, and is even worse, than a single ship player. the worst player you can have is an unseasoned one-ship-wonder with a LRF, like a mauler. The reason is not because the LRF sux (mauler is a beast! but yeah, that is r13), but for being a good LRF having experience in the game, both to understand the ships you are facing, and the objectives to play, is key, as it basicly leaves your team hanging, if you are not a major threat to the enemy team, as each LRF standing alone somewhere in the nowhere removes one ship from the main fleet, you hurt your team, and each LRF reduces that fleet even more - as you cannot really engage more than single targets, you simply do not carry your own weight, making LRFs actually the ship, which should be chosen last from all the options the game gives you - even if there are exceptions, given what the enemy takes, or game modes like dread battles, where they have a dedicated objective (shooting dread-to-dread torps). Even if you take other ships, and perform less well overall, simply being there amongst the fleet gives the fleet a better chance of success to achieve victory. So anyone who is still leveling his basic ships, a word of advice: do the LRFs later, and always one at a time.
And don’t camp in spawn.