Just a little exercise that grew out of my own grumblings about the Empire ship tree being… well, wrong.
I personally believe that each faction should have a clear role in Star Conflict; one provides superior “core” ships, the other provides the faction’s alternative ships. For example, I believe the Empire’s Legion faction should have Recon, Gunship and Long Range as their classes, as they are the core ships of the Empire.
So I decided to go through and actually tally up how each faction, and the race in general, fares with their classes. The results are given below. Note that I am not including Premium ships in this, as it’s a little tricky to definitely say where they belong.
So… what pops out to you?
For me, the biggest red light that the Wardens and Legion look back to front. The Legion is meant to be the army’s elite front-line fighters, whilst the Wardens are the rear-line guardians of Earth… yet the Wardens ships aren’t what I would call rear line units. Recon ships by their nature should be out in front, Gunships are head on brawlers, and whilst Long Range shouldn’t be right in the thick of the fight their main role is to give fire support to the front.
Compare that with the Legion. ECM isn’t really a front-line Interceptor; it works best when supporting others, disabling attackers for its allies to engage and destroy. Command ships work anywhere, but can passively ‘buff’ from behind the fight. Engineers form a rallying point in the fight where people can fall back to. In effect, the Legion ships are all the ones you want hanging back defending your beacon or Captain, while the Warden ships are the ones you throw at objectives to capture them. This is totally at odds with how the factions are portrayed…
The next point of interest for me is that Jericho does not have a core Fighter. The Techs have a core fighter - the Command - but Jericho by default is split evenly. What’s really interesting is how Jericho and the Raid interact. In tier 1 both are command, Tier 2 default is Tackler and Raid is Command. Tier 3 they swap, and Tier 4 they both become Tacklers.
Jericho’s Interceptor progression is the one I truly love. It is the only progression that is, to my mind, exactly as it should be. The default ships are all ECM - Jericho’s trademark Interceptor. Raid Interceptors are just better ECMs, whilst the Techs have tried to do things differently and refitted their ships for a Covert Ops role. This fits what I know of the Techs - secretive and insular. Covert Ops, Tackler and Long Range missile frigate sound like a good combo for a faction that doesn’t want anyone poking their nose in… shame they don’t have any of the latter two really.
The Federation… well, I’ll say this much; the Armada is about where I think it should be. They are the ones who give me the impression of being the ‘core’ faction - the “same but better”. They run pure Covert Ops and have the same Frigate composition as their parent; it’s just the fighters they get wishy-washy over.
Final thought, which is one I suppose is a good sign; the division of ships may be uneven, or even well off in each individual section, but it is generally right overall. Each faction has eight ships in its core roles and four in its secondary roles. Personally, however, I think the implementation needs work.
Now I know others might disagree, but I think the Default and Faction 1 should be pure primary, and Faction 2 pure secondary. However, an equally valid approach would be to follow the pattern of the Federation; Default has three primary ships and one secondary. Faction 1 would follow this and Faction 2 would invert it.
So what are your thoughts on our ship tree? What do you make of this pattern, and what (if anything) would you like to see changed?
