Each of the ship types have two nations that can fly them but whats difference does it make depending on which nation you choose? I know that Empire seem to have better hulls, Jericho have good sheilds, and Feds are fast, but is this consistent through all the ships? Are there any other differences?
And how do these differences change playstyle? Does a better shield mean you are better at 1v1 attacks because you can sustain a fair amount of damage and heal back a lot of it? How does better speed help? How do you select modules knowing you have a good hull strength?
So a lot of folks have addressed a lot of points here. I’ll just rehash because I feel left out.
Empire has better hulls and more firepower. This lets them both give and take a lot of damage, but the problem is that hull doesn’t regenerate by itself. Also empire ships are the slowest.
Jericho has better shields. Their tank regenerates, which lets them pop in and out of cover, helping them survive long-term engagements better than Empire ships. Unfortunately, shields aren’t as straight-up tanky as hulls.
Federation has better speed and maneuverability. This lets them do objectives and stay with the team better, as well dodge a lot of enemy fire. They have low shield and hull stats, though.
These are all consistent for all the ships. Other differences are a bit more subtle, and tend to go into specific ships, so I won’t say anything.
Playstyles definitely change for all three. It’s already been covered, unfortunately, and I don’t have much to add. 'Cept that Jericho is not necessarily the best at 1v1, since shield tank is, again, not as straight-up tanky as hull tank. But it does regen, which is a fact that is pretty important to playstyles.
Better speed, like on fed ships, really helps if you know where you’re going. Fed interceptors can use this speed to be immune to most human firepower - drones, tackler slows, and pulsar are typically the only things that hit them consistently.
Both interceptors and fighters can use speed to pop in and out to ambush someone with some unexpected firepower. Harassing someone over and over again, always being just out of their reach, can be rather effective.
And all fed ships can use their speed to stay “in position” – basically, near the objectives, near the teammates, near cover, and moving to where you need to be next. After you get to about tier 3, you’ll be able to see how much being in position helps both you and your team. It helps you stay alive and doing important stuff like capturing beacons and supporting teammates.
Modules are typically a pretty standard choice. Since you seem to be asking about empire ships, I’ll talk empire ships first. The tl;dr is the first sentence of each section.
Engines are typically verniers. Those help you rotate faster, which is pretty important even if you stay in one place the entire match. Other options include catalyst injector and auxiliary generator, which increase your speed (only a tiny bit useful for most ships, typically not used), collision compensator, which increases rotation and strafe speed while decreasing collision damage (useful for playing interceptors if they wobble a bunch for you). Also available for fighters is the cruise engine, which you shouldn’t use because it’s a pain in the rear and I hate it increases your speed to faster than that of an interceptor, at the cost of raising afterburner energy cost, decreasing rotation and strafe a good bit while not afterburning, decreasing rotation and strafe to essentially zero while afterburning, and being a jerkwad imposing an energy cost upon activating afterburners. However, again, typically this means that only really fast interceptors or tacklers/guards with slows can catch you, which is a serious pain advantage.
Capacitors are typically voltage regulator and emergency barrier. These help you regenerate energy fast enough that you can use afterburners and modules whenever you want, and save your butt from fire while retreating, respectively. Also, emergency barrier doesn’t stack. Other options include iridium heatsink, which increases burst firepower (useful if you like that), pulse discharger, which increases dps in exchange for energy regeneration(useful if you don’t worry about energy), and leak stabilizer, which increases capacitor volume (useful for commands focusing on diffusion tank). Also available on frigates is acceleration coils, which increase projectile speed of your main weapons (helps hit fast ships, doesn’t do anything for lasers).
Shields are typically adaptives on empire ships, as they increase hull resistances by quite a bit. However, if you wish, you can also increase shield resistance to one type by a bit. A sketchy choice for an empire ship would be increasing volume - a tiny volume plus a tiny percent equals a still tiny volume.
Hulls are typically galvanized, and reinforced beams or armor plated hull. These increase resistances across the board at the cost of rotation (rotation is more important the faster you go, so be careful when using this on interceptors, but use liberally on frigates), increase hull volume without a cost, or at the cost of some speed (speed is more important the smaller your tank, so again, be careful when using on interceptors), respectively. Other options include the individual resistances without downsides - really useful if you know what kind of damage you take a lot. A very attractive but costly module is the passive armor, which increases energy regeneration by a huge amount at the cost of some resistances. Be careful, even though the resistance cost is low, if you use this, you are losing a slot that you could have used for something else! If you really need the energy, or are confident that you can play with lesser tanking power, then use it. Otherwise, don’t. Another typically attractive modules is the regenerative coating, which helps your hull regenerate slowly when capacitor is half full or more. Do not be fooled - this is majorly useless on most ships. If frigates are going to die, they’re going to die in less than 30 seconds - and 1500 hull from the regeneration isn’t going to stop it. If fighters die, they’re more likely to have been worn down over time, but again, the low amount of regen isn’t worth the hull module slot. On the other hand, certain interceptors can definitely use it, as it helps mitigate the low amount of damage that they ought to be taking if they’re dodging correctly. But only fit it if you have enough energy stability to have it on more than not, and if you typically have some small amount of hull damage at most points in time. Otherwise, take something else.
CPU slots are a bit… weird. They highly depend on the weapon and ship you’re using. Infrared scanner is really useful for most ships, since crit damage is some great stuff. Electronic guidance is only useful for select weapons (meaning the RF and Heavy blasters), but definitely helps more the further you are from your target. Proton wall may seem a bit useless in lower tiers, since they work on a grand total of five different effects (tachyon cocoon, ion diffuser, stasis generator, white noise jammer, and IR pulsar). However, in tier 5, it definitely helps lower the damage you’d be taking from an ECM using their 4 second stasis generator right after their 10 second ion diffuser. If you don’t like being stunned, use it. Overclocked CPU helps ECMs and tacklers quite a bit, as they need lock on to apply their stuns and slows. Otherwise, it doesn’t help terribly much, as that period of one second (max) before lock on you’d be cutting off can still be used to fire at your target. Spatial scanner is a ripoff right now, and was typically useless without a T5 one on a T5 ship anyways.
And uh… That’s it.
