Multi-Player Ship Operation Guide

Multi-Player Ship Operation Guide V 1.20
By: Tellahane

Positions
There's 5 types of positions:


 * Pilot
 * Operations Officer
 * Engineer
 * Gunner
 * Medical officer

Crew Minimum for combat operation: 3
 * 1 Pilot/Operations Officer/Engineer
 * 2 Gunner's

Crew Preferred for combat operation: 8
 * 1 Pilot
 * 2 Gunner's
 * 1 Operation Officer
 * 1 Medical Officer
 * 3 Engineer's

The phrase "a well oiled-machine" comes to mind. With this group you cover all the bases of operations for this ship. However no matter how good you are, or well equipped, lets not forget that fighter escort!

Weapon Specs (for all 3 ships):
 * 2 Rotary Gunner Turrets. 1 for each gunner
 * 3 Missile Ordnance. All controlled by pilot.
 * Ship total mass is near 5,000,000 so load it up!

Pilot: Fly level and straight as best as possible. The ship should be considered a heavy bomber with turret defenses. Pilot only needs to worry about flying even so the gunners can properly engage defensivly, and to drop the missiles where they need to go. Depending on your flight situation, whether your escorting a mission, engaging a series of fighter waves, or doing a destroy mission of a strong target you should vary your ordnance load. Against fighters and escorts i'd suggest loading up 3 mark 4 proton launchers, and use them as incoming waves enter the area to deal some basic initial damage that your gunners can finish off. This follows in escort missions as well. For destroying targets there are differences of opinion. I usually load up 2 space bomb launchers and 1 mark 4 for fighter defense. Some go 3 seismic launchers etc it can vary depending on your situation. Planning ahead is your best tactic.

Operations Officer: This guy is the one who runs the droid controls and the special abilities that comes with your pilot class. And is the only one to do so. Communication between the pilot and operations officer is critical for working together. The best thing for the decimator is to use eweapons and weapon overloads for the gunner, assuming your reacter can hold it. When going up against a destroy target focus on bomber strikes and the droid weapon overload.


 * Adv. Strategy: The best setup that I have seen with my decimator and will probably work with all three ships is to set up your droid interface at the lowest possible speed(lower the droid command speed the faster you can use them!), and use weapons overload three. NOT FOUR, four really really overpowers your turrets, makes them do huge damage. But will drain your capaciter to nothing in 2-3 shots. Weapon overload three, often increases your damage by a chunk without extra cost to your capaciter. This will give your gunners more power overall. I also do not suggest engine overload 4, i'd stick with 3. I so far haven't seen the advantage of tuning, or any evidence that it works. Only set this up if you have some spare reacter energy not in use(around 1k+ or more minmum). Otherwise it might disable some components(the most fun i had was doing an engine overload and having my droid interface disabled so i coudn't turn the overload off! ahhhh!). Also keep in mind that your standard pilot abilities half-stack. And what i mean by that is the advantages of your ability will hit, but any advantages from your droid command may override it. For ex. /eweapons will make my capaciter be stronger and add damage, but since my weapons are overloaded it only just makes my capaciter stronger. Having multiple operation officers has its advantages as well. One person can sit down and call a bomb strike or reload ability, then a 2nd can sit down and call theirs as well. Though i haven't tested with the actual abilites like emergancy shields or weapons twice, the double bombstrike is succesful. The ability timer is based to the player sitting in the chair.

Turret Gunners: Watch your capaciter and try to make sure to fire if you know you will hit o that you don't run out at a time you really need the energy. When you are being shot at, make sure to hit 'r' or whatever you binded to target what last shot at you and to shoot it down first. Two or three shots at it and the npc will pull off. In a pvp situation your job is to constantly spam the find nearest enemy player button which you may have to bind, and shoot at them just before they come into range and keep spamming it so they run into your fire before they get the chance to fire back.


 * Adv. Strategy: The best controls for a gunner to use is the mouse. Kick your mouse sensativity up to max for the quick turning and adjusting during fire fights. A mouse vs. a joystick just completly blew the joystick out of the ring.

Engineer: Runs around and repairs things, have lots of repair tools of many differen't types stored on the ship and on the player. Keep players posted in sections for quick repairs as you take hits. For quick grabs it may not be a bad idea to throw down some extra repair kits below or next to all the different components incase someone dies or you have the operations station jump out and assist with repairs. Best to have everyone on the ship admin for repairing purposes. (don't load anything in your decimator you don't want stolen!)


 * Adv. Strategy: Nothing incredibly big needs to happen here other it might be good to have at least one engineer if not all shipwrights so they can craft repair kits if necessary if you run out of your stashed set of kits.

Medical Officer: Keep everyone alive, have plenty of fire suppression blankets and wound packs ready. Without the engineers the ship will go down!

Fighter Escort: This is a big one. For your multi-player ship no matter what you have loaded in your equipment armor shields or otherwise you need a fighter escort with you to be mostly effective. Just like discover, don't leave home without it!


 * Adv. Strategy: Though the more fighters that are not aggroed on the MPS the better, sometimes it may get too hot on your tail, don't be afraid to use the advantages of the guns on the MPS. Fly the fighters on your six right past it and let the MPS lay waste to your enemy.

Roles of the Multi-Player Ship
Escort Missions: Escort mission are probably the most fun for the crew, All the pilot needs to do is form up on the target your escorting. Usually right behind it either higher or lower, sometimes to the side. Make sure you give a good clearence so your top and bottom gunners can shoot forward at the waves of fighters as they come in. Load all 3 of your ordnances with anti-fighter type missles. Usually mark 4 protons or use concussions. Not bent on destroying unless you want to but more for taking down their shields for easier kills. Stay with your escort and let your gunners do most of the work unless you start taking hits and your shields get low, then pull off increase speed and do some simple meanouvers nice and smoothly untill you have cleared of the fighters on you then rejoin the formation. Your fighter escort should keep anyone who aggro'es pretty busy.

Fighter Wave Missions (duty missions): This is more challenging, You do basically everything you would for an escort mission except for 2 major points. The first is instead of flying formation with the escort(which doesn't exist in this mission) stay towards the back of your group. Leaving your fighter escort infront of you to engage the first wave of fighters.

Second once you enter or approach what i call the storm(the are where all the fighting is going on like a swarm of gnats so to speak) begin a nice easy simple non-changing turn around the equater of the battle. Giving your top and bottom gunner both plenty of targets to shoot at. Just keep the turn steady and stay with the crowd. As far as loadout stick with the anti-fighter as usual.

Destroy Target Mission (For the bigger then fighter targets): This is the harder, but more fun part to play! First thing is first, load up your ordnance with at least 2 launchers that deal extensive damage. I personally go with space bombs, some go with seismic, depending on your target you may want one or the other. For your 3rd ordnance you can load up a 3rd launcher thats seismic or space bomb, or you can have a little fighter defense and grab proton's or cuncussions. Up to the pilot and the varying situation.

For this point lets say your target is a gunboat with its own fighter escort. The goal here is to have your fighter escort take on the enemy's fighter escort, keep em busy take em down all that fun stuff. Basically leaving you un-aggroed. Approach the target to about 2000m.

If you are imperial, call in bomber strikes on the target, they usually clear out the weapons for you. If your not imperial then you better have 1 or two fighters fly in before you and target the weapons subsystems with your gunners and the fighters. once the weapons are down close into missile range and release the boom boom's.

If you have high enough forward armor and shields, or if the craft is not aggroed you, you can go ahead and hit it hard with everything you got. Note however the guns on the gunboats and bigger cruisers may try to shoot the incoming missiles down especially space bomb's since they are so slow. If needbe i would go after the weapon system with seismics once the shields were down. Siesmics do pretty good for taking down components.

Destroy Target Missions(Corvette's etc.): This is one of the more fun things. As an imperial in my decimator with a decent crew and a 3 man fighter escort i've taken down a corvette in under 5 minutes. First of all the corvette in kessel, spawns with 2 gunboats and fighter escorts. If you are imperial(you guest it) launch a few bomb strikes at the corvette itself to clear its weapons. If not, first send in your fighter escort to pull and drag the fighters from the corvette, take em down.

After that come up behind the gunboats and do the same from above. Take out the rear shields and weapons then release hell with your forward ordnance. Once they are out of the way its corvette fun time. Target and take down the weapons of the corvette, the have 8 each. SAVE your missiles. Mostly let your fighter escort do this.

Now for the primary and secondary shields there are 2 ways to do it. One which is the easiest is approach from the top or bottom or sides and release your seismic/space bombs on them. Both generaters are on the front side of the neck, right behind the bridge. They are hard to hit with just fighters because the corvette moves. Missiles however nail them very easilly.

The second way is to pull up next to the corvette's bridge on either side and have your gunners shoot at it while you match speed. After the shields are gone have the fighter escort take out the engines since its a very easy task. While they are doing it meanouver your craft to above or below the engine section.

Once the engines are out, target the reacter and again release space bombs/seismics. The reacter is a very hard component to hit, but not for missiles =). Once the reacter is down the bridge is pretty easy either pull in front of the corvette and let your gunners shoot out the window or do a pass and hit it with more bombs/missles to finish the corvette off. And boom boom boom enjoy the show =)

Trick/Tip List
Pilot: When doing a bombing run on a heavilly armed target, fire all 3 of your ordnance at the exact same time. Bind them to the same weapons group especially. Though it doesn't increase a whole lot, it does do a bit more damage then if you fired them seperatly. Operations Officer/Pilot/Gunner: Use the weapons overload 3. This decreases the charge per shot, and increases damage to the gunner turrets. It also increases the damage done on your ordnance as well! Overcharge 4 is pretty much useless as it increases the damage significantly, but at huge cost to your capaciter. It also disables your ordnance no matter what.

Pilot/Operations Officer: During escort missions, use engine efficiancy in combo with weapons overload. Match speeds with your escort. If you have a decent enough engine you can use efficiancy and still keep up with speed. This extra power will go into all of your other systems including shields.

Multiple Operations Officers: You can have one sitting down, call a bombstrike or some other non-droid ability. Then get up, and have a 2nd member sit down and use theirs. As far as this was written, the timers are tied to the player, and not to the ship. However using 3 eweapons or ethrust etc will not stack as far as how much power they do, just on how long they last.

Ship Owner: It's always helpful to place down repair kits for the corresponding panels right below, or right infront of it as a last chance emergancy, incase your engineers get killed.