UE Cruiser...the best?!

First off, thanks for all the great feedback guys. its nice to have some help with problems or just good answers to silly questions. well i got the UE cruiser, its not a bad ship; than i got all the thrust, turn and top speed upgades and i feel like im cheating! the thing is wicked. it has to be the best ship in the game. its got gobs of weapons space, enough crew to capture most any vessel you want, and with its five turret slots...well! does the igadzra phallus ship beat it? i was saving up for a crescent warship but whats the point. also i was wondering if the crassworm trade route was in fact the most profitable because its a very nice route. oh and i got a lot of voinian supply ships for trading because they hold 250 cargo and are nice and tough. which ships have the most cargo room?

ps. liking EVO much, much more than nova

The UE Cruiser is nearly invulnerable against all Crescent warships after a layer of Dospect armor (available at Paaren Station, if you did the little string involving building the station) has been equipped.

I think the big Miranu freighter (the blue one) has the most cargo space, somewhere around 500 tons IIRC.

The only real reason you would have for getting a Crescent Warship (or better, Azgardi Warship) is a bit more speed. Actually, a layer of Dospect makes just about anything invincible in the Crescent.

Like Nova, the "best ship" depends (sort of) on your fighting style.

If you think the UE Cruiser is deadly, try the UE Dreadnought, from the Reign of the UE plug (destroyer bays, of all things, plus a massive crew, and LOTS of turret slots).

Yes, the Miranu Heavy Freighter can hold the most cargo... but it's SLOW.

I've always preferred the Igazra. It looks cooler :), is a bit faster (I'm pretty sure ... 140 vs. 100?), has more shields (500 vs. 300) and more weapons space, plus you're not locked into having a fighter bay. Also because of the Igazra's length, it can appear to have a greater range with turrets - this can be observed even with the AI ships.

Anyway, the UE Cruiser is just a bit bulky for my liking, and I've never been a big one for capturing ships so crew size isn't important for me.

As for an AI battle between them, I'm pretty sure the UE Cruiser would win every time due to its rather tough armour that is hard to penetrate with Phase Turrets. But then again, Blaze Turrets aren't that good against shields, and have less range. I don't know now ... a shame they never fight in the game ... maybe the fighters would make the difference?

Actually, it kind of depends on your OS. Your weapons seem to move a better distance in System 7 than 8 or 9. IDK about AI weapons tho.

Yes, I would think that the UE Cruiser would beat the Igazra with factory loadout. Of course, once you put neutrons on the thing... =). Just don't try to pick off Kraits. That's best left to the Plasma Siphon or a few phase turrets.

Voinian warship of any class vs. Igazra... no competition there.

As for seeing if a UE cruiser can beat an Igazra... capture one as escort, ping the Igazra with a needle missile, and watch the fireworks.

MartiNZ, on Apr 19 2005, 03:58 AM, said:

I've always preferred the Igazra. It is a bit faster (I'm pretty sure ... 140 vs. 100?), and more weapons space, plus you're not locked into having a fighter bay. Also because of the Igazra's length, it can appear to have a greater range with turrets - this can be observed even with the AI ships.
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It is indeed faster. It has 130 speed, which is poor but still better. It has a 275 accel, which is a gargantuan accel for such a heavy ship. How typical of the Crescent.

For the fighter bay... why is a free bay bad? If you dont like UE Fighters, dont use them. They are EXTREMELY cheap at 80.000 credits per fighter. Also, dont underestiate them. They can kill a Crescent Warship in numbers of 5. and critically damage (20% shields left) the next Crescent Warship before dying. Trust me, I saw it... in one Fall of the Voinian Empire mission. I was surprised at how good UE Fighters actually were. I excepted them to die quick, and do only little damage to them.

I am afraid I have to prove you wrong about the weapon mass. Using the very data files themselves, I looked at the amount of launchers & ammo for the weapons. The UE Cruiser has 3 Rocket Launchers + 15 ammo, 2 Hunter Launchers+ 15 ammo, and 4 Blaze Turrets plus 40 tons of space. That makes 340 tons. The Igazra has 3 SAE Launchers+ 30 ammo, 2 Disperal Launchers+ 10 ammo, and 5 Phase Turrets plus 40 tons of space. That means the UE Cruiser barely beats it in weapon space. It has 340 tons of space to Igazras 325. I havent seen the Igazra having longer range in turrets- perhaps I havent observed close enough.

As warships go, the UE Cruiser is the most powerful of them. It is not, however, the best ship at everything.

As has been mentioned, the Miranu Heavy Freighter has the most cargo space, with 500 tons. The most profitable trade route I've found is Weapons from Morin in Chak (3600 credits/ton) to Emalghia in Emalghion (5625 credits/ton) and then River Eels from Kitrak in Kitrak (720 credits/ton) to Zidagar in Zidagar (1125 credits/ton) on the return trip. I was doing that in a Crescent Fighter with 6 MHF escorts, though you might find it simpler in a Miranu Courier (or whatever the purple half-circle ship is called) because it has five times more fuel by default, and the trade route is a long one.

The Pax -> Omm -> Telnan -> Pax trade route with Crassworms, Medical Supplies and equipment (I think it's equipment anyway... I could be wrong) is also nice, though it earns significantly fewer credits per trip, and more mouse-clicks are involved.

The easiest way to get MHF escorts without pissing off the Miranu is to buy one yourself, capture a merchant Arada to use as your own ship, then buy another MHF and repeat until you have six escorts.

My overall favorite ship in Override is the Azdara, though I'm sure the Zachit Fighter would be a close second if it were possible to fly without plugins. Its sheer mobility makes it the envy of all other ships, and incredibly fun to fly. Also, Dospect + Azdara = Invinsible.

For doing most mission strings, the Azdgari Arada is my ride of choice. It far outclasses all other Aradas, and is an excellent ship, suitable for nearly any role you choose for it.

- edit -
Killed a wayward apostrophe.

This post has been edited by Qaanol : 21 April 2005 - 06:40 PM

General Cade Smart, on Apr 21 2005, 04:44 PM, said:

It is indeed faster. It has 130 speed, which is poor but still better. It has a 275 accel, which is a gargantuan accel for such a heavy ship. How typical of the Crescent.

For the fighter bay... why is a free bay bad? If you dont like UE Fighters, dont use them. They are EXTREMELY cheap at 80.000 credits per fighter. Also, dont underestiate them. They can kill a Crescent Warship in numbers of 5. and critically damage (20% shields left) the next Crescent Warship before dying. Trust me, I saw it... in one Fall of the Voinian Empire mission. I was surprised at how good UE Fighters actually were. I excepted them to die quick, and do only little damage to them.

I am afraid I have to prove you wrong about the weapon mass. Using the very data files themselves, I looked at the amount of launchers & ammo for the weapons. The UE Cruiser has 3 Rocket Launchers + 15 ammo, 2 Hunter Launchers+ 15 ammo, and 4 Blaze Turrets plus 40 tons of space. That makes 340 tons. The Igazra has 3 SAE Launchers+ 30 ammo, 2 Disperal Launchers+ 10 ammo, and 5 Phase Turrets plus 40 tons of space. That means the UE Cruiser barely beats it in weapon space. It has 340 tons of space to Igazras 325. I havent seen the Igazra having longer range in turrets- perhaps I havent observed close enough.
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Cool, I wasn't sure about those stats - so with the upgrades it's pretty nice!

I guess I'm just not much of a fan of fighter bays in general. When I first got a UE Cruiser I was playing on an LCIII on System 7 - which produced some curious things. Big ships' graphics didn't display correctly in rotations from 9 o'clock to 12 o'clock; capturing ships caused the game to crash; and recalling fighters to your ship caused the game to crash. Maybe that last one was something to do with my preference :).

As for the weapons space ... damn :). Just imagine how much the cruiser could have if you could strip out that bay! (what would be its weight anyway...?). Oh well, I usually strip the secondaries anyway, and then have trouble filling up all that space. Having done the Voinian string and got access to Bronev helps there, and makes an Igazra somewhat better in the Crescent - basically, without that it is very hard to take on 18 Azdaras at once and survive in an Igazra, I find.

Qaanol : I've never really looked that hard for trade routes; I tend to only buy commodities when I find I have some space left over, but doing it that way it's often hard to find a decent place to sell so I often just don't bother.

The only place I've ever done much trading is down by the South Tip - Duios to Tibidat, right next to each other, often with Renegades to take down, and then also Independent-type missions if they get to like you enough ... makes one feel good :).

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They are EXTREMELY cheap at 80.000 credits per fighter. Also, dont underestiate them. They can kill a Crescent Warship in numbers of 5. and critically damage (20% shields left) the next Crescent Warship before dying.

UE Fighters are perhaps the most cost-effective purchasable fighter in the game, as the Voinian fighters are much too slow to be effective, and almost all the Crescent bays suffer from either low capacity and/or ineffectiveness against Voinian vessels. All in all, the UE Fighter Bay is perhaps the second best bay in the game (after the Azdara bay), and is probably the only truly 'decent-against-everything' bay (this is, again, debatable because of the Azdara's insane speed, but even when their speed makes them seem to not take damage from enemy fire it takes a full flight of those fighters painfully long to disable even a Voinian frigate).

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Just imagine how much the cruiser could have if you could strip out that bay! (what would be its weight anyway...?).

The bay is an unpurchaseable outfit; I think its weight is somewhere in the 200s range.

This post has been edited by UE_Research & Development: 22 April 2005 - 06:12 PM

MartiNZ, on Apr 22 2005, 01:52 AM, said:

Cool, I wasn't sure about those stats - so with the upgrades it's pretty nice!

I guess I'm just not much of a fan of fighter bays in general. When I first got a UE Cruiser I was playing on an LCIII on System 7 - which produced some curious things. Big ships' graphics didn't display correctly in rotations from 9 o'clock to 12 o'clock; capturing ships caused the game to crash; and recalling fighters to your ship caused the game to crash.

As for the weapons space ... damn :). Just imagine how much the cruiser could have if you could strip out that bay! (what would be its weight anyway...?). Having done the Voinian string and got access to Bronev helps there, and makes an Igazra somewhat better in the Crescent - basically, without that it is very hard to take on 18 Azdaras at once and survive in an Igazra, I find.

Qaanol :

The only place I've ever done much trading is down by the South Tip - Duios to Tibidat, right next to each other, View Post

Yep, 205 speed and 350 accel!! drools /me wants to fly a Igazra again

Thats extremely odd. Your system must have been extremely underpowered. I think Quadra was the reguirement... Try it again on your new, real Mac (I assume you have one?) and youll start liking fighter bays much better. Even on Basilisk (which is slow, because its a emulator) recalling fighters is fine. It was a Quadra 950 it was emulating, so I guess the message is: dont try to play EVO on less than a Quadra! Though there was one odd bug in E2- Dark Horizons. Occassionally (but very rarely) it would be unable to launch more than one or any fighter. Sometimes it would launch all but one fighter. They would also launch slower than normal: Tactical Bombers usually launch literally instantly. In that case, they wouldnt use anything but primary weapons, making them almost useless...

Heh. I knew I was right, having counted before your post. All the UE Cruiser weapons are junk if you dont plan to fight the Voinians, giving you even more weapon space. But all the Igazra weapons are good if you dont fight the Voinians, so its hard to strip. The Dispersal Rockets are the only I might think of stripping. I dunno about SAES in 1.02 though... Oh well, atleast some hit if you change the guidance type to 1. Yeah, just imagine... I think I could make a plug like that. But perhaps it would be a little bit of cheat. The bay weighs 100 tons, I think. Thats what I remember from last looking in ResEdit- not sure though. I remember easily killing 6 of the so-called invincibile Azdaras. I did in a Zidara: just use its mobility to outrange them, then unleash Phase Turrets from max distance. A Phased Beam takes down one or two too...

Oh, and why do you want to trade between Duios and Tibidat in addition to Renegades and missions? Because short route yields more profit?

UER&D: How is Retribution progressing? The Progress Log at ev-nova.net hasnt been updated for almost 3 months...

Short routes yield much more profit.

After Paaren Station, take med supplies to New Calcutta, and luxury goods to Paaren.

I wouldn't mind throwing the UE fighter bay in favor of the Azdara bay. Sling at Voinian Dreadnought and watch the (slow) fireworks =).

I remember the first time I did the Azgardi (sp?) storyline. The "invncible" Aradas all got blown up in the last mission and I didn't kill them all... and I won anyway.

I remember flying a shuttle on a jump to Alpha Centauri on an LC III... with virtual memory on. That was the only time I flew anything on that thing. The only reason I tried was the crazy instability of the 575 on the other side of my desk (system 7.5 on a performa = bad). I don't want to see what the Voinian Dreadnought does on that thing.

Heh, well it speaks volumes for how great the game is that I spent hours playing it on the LCIII - of course that included 5 minutes loading time every time I played. I remember when I first downloaded EV classic (it only took 2 minutes to load and played quite acceptably), I had clocked up 120+ hours of playing in the first 20 or so days - it used to give you that nice statistic in the register dialog :).

I actually managed to complete most things in EVO on that machine though. The first time I took on the dreadnought it took about half-an-hour, but the main problem was that the UE ships sent to help really didn't. The machine did give that nice hard drive reading sound and step a bit sometimes when the dreadnought came on screen. It had 8MB RAM and RAM doubler running ... good times :).

My favourite ships, are the UE Fighter, the Miranu Gunship and the Voinian Cruiser. In terms of firepower, the Voinian Cruiser with extra Bronev is horribly powerful in the crescent, although the Igazra and the Azdara are pretty great everywhere else.

As a player ship, I think that the Zidara really sucks too much ass.

** (argh! Where are the bullet points on this keyboard?)

The fastest way I made money was by capturing at least 6 Miranu heavy freighters, but doing it outside of Miranu space so I don't end up being on their ugly side, and I usually used the Munb leaves/Medical Supply route between Himgro and Dewe

In my UE cruiser

This post has been edited by Coraxus : 29 April 2005 - 06:34 PM

Old Thrashbarg, on Apr 29 2005, 05:52 PM, said:

My favourite ships, are the UE Fighter, the Miranu Gunship and the Voinian Cruiser. In terms of firepower, the Voinian Cruiser with extra Bronev is horribly powerful in the crescent, although the Igazra and the Azdara are pretty great everywhere else.

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Ahh yes... the good old days of doing the Zidagar string in a vonian frigate. With its armour I was almost invincible and with its crew I was able to capture an Igazra and an Agardi warship. That all ended when I had to do a time limited mission. With the frigate taking 3 days to jump I oviosly failed. I changed to a Zidara and to compensate I gave it a layer of Bornev plating. So far I haven't got the mission again.

In a forum about 'are the EVO ships ballanced' someone said that the 3 main warships in EVO were the UE cruizer, the Vonian cruizer and the Igazra. If the AI were fighting each other the Igazra would win against the UE cruizer, the UE cruizer would win against the Vonian cruizer and the Vonian cruizer would win against the Igazra. Kinda like paper, sissors, rock.

I'm supprised that no ones mentioned the Vonian Dreadnought

blah sailor of the seas, on May 13 2005, 03:07 PM, said:

I'm supprised that no ones mentioned the Vonian Dreadnought
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Killing the Dreadnought with a stock (almost stock) shuttle.
The Dreadought as the best escort ship in Override.
Read.