4 years later and my new-found Yokohama love.

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photomankc
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Joined: Wed, 16. Jul 14, 15:01

4 years later and my new-found Yokohama love.

Post by photomankc » Thu, 3. Jan 19, 16:40

Man it's been a while since I last picked this game up and played. Maybe 4 or more years now. Pretty impressive that the graphics are still pretty immersive even all these years later. It's also impressive how quickly it sucks you back into the time-sink!!!

I've tried to map out a different play-through this time. Last time I was a scrupulous good-guy. This time I'm more than willing to be a bit of a pirate. I'm also a lot less fanatical about avoiding the scripting side of things. It's for fun, so if I have to script up the resources to get past the hub plot then so be it.
One of the surprises to me was how much I ended up liking Terran ships. My last time playing I didn't even bother with them as they were often trashed as lacking in stats (which they do) and being impossible to eqip (which they aren't). Since I was all about efficiency in my last game I didn't pay them much mind and left the Terrans to largely rot after I was done with the plot line.

This time I kept seeing the Yokohama coming through gates and kept thinking "Dang it, I just REALLY like the way that sucker looks". Since I'm not hurting for credits and have a pretty substantial freighter empire of CAGs I thought "why not".

To my surprise I actually love flying it. It's nice to look at when I'm admiring the view and I think it works as sort of a pit-bull super-M6. It's definitely not something I want a fleet of for OOS combat with capitols but it has been very competent for me in tackling other M7s and even a couple of M2s.

So like I mentioned I'm not afraid of playing with the scripting engine a little and decided that since it was so limited as a true frigate, that giving it a couple notches of over-tune was not out of line so it could run a bit more like a fighter-vaporizing M6++. Hey, it is conceivable that with some credits spent the engines could be upgraded to get it into the mid-lower end of the M6 speeds. 136m/s makes sector flying a lot more tolerable but if I were pressed I could still live with the 112m/s of the stock ship.

What I like:
- The looks, I'm sorry but I just really like the looks of the Katana and Yokohama both.
- Compact, I'm not swinging a giant butt or nose around in rocky sectors or in close to other ships.
- Ammo based M/AML, not hearing "Attention, energy low" in the middle of each attack run.
- Heavy shields.
- SSC's in the top/bottom turrets swat fighters off like flies.
- Reasonable speed, overtuned at 136 it feels right and is good at knife fighting with the Xenon capitols and still be able to break engagement.
- Decent cargo bay, a couple of frieght drones make the docking restriction *less* problematic.
- Can get 10 M/AML on target with a canted strafe run.
- The looks ;)

What I don't like:
- No real capitol weapons which as most everyone points out, is a deficiency.
- No sense of the ship in forward view. It's harder to gauge how close I am to things on the sides.
- I have to work to stock up ammo and missiles because they are not plentiful.
- Station defense missions are tough, you are not going to dogfight those Fujin Raiders and getting them away from the station where turrets are safe once they get to it is tough.
- Losing 2 hours of work because you forgot to manually save *and* forgot you can't turn on a dime now and ran into the station - Priceless.

In pirate operations I love coming bearing down on those freighters with this beast. It's an imposing sight coming up from the rear. I think I often pop the frieghter before they even have time to get out the call for help or turn red. Unlike CIG's my target doesn't go spinning off like a top either. It does cut down on my bails unfortunately. I need to bring some EMPC's to mount so maybe I get a few extra credits from the bailed ships as well, but hearing their girly screams before they can finish complaining about me shooting them is satisfying as well.

Long story short, don't write off piloting ships you like because of the statisticians, and hats off to Egosoft for a game that's 10 years old that I still enjoy looking at and playing! Also thanks for makeing the scripting engine so available. Helps mitigate some the time-consuming mundane things that as an adult I can't devote 10 hours to setting up just-so and waiting.

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