[TC] Praise for the mighty M7 Teladi Shrike.

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kreep69
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Praise for the mighty M7 Teladi Shrike.

Post by kreep69 » Sat, 27. Feb 10, 06:27

I finally decided to move up from my long time favorite personal ship .. the M6 Hyperion Vanguard .. because taking any kind of defend / patrol mission at higher fight ranks (I'm at one above Overlord in this current game .. Legend I think) is just getting too tough and tedious. You know, missles, dropping laser towers and keris only goes so far hehehe.

So having tried most other M7's and found them somewhat lacking -

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Tiger - can kill capital ships and hold off an indefinite number of small ships but runs into energy problems when things get really thick (ie: situations with multiple enemy M2's and M1's and their escorts)

Panther - replacing the 32 fighters it can hold is annoying and it also cant seem to hit anything with its damn IBL's unless you jump to the turret to target things yourself (while you get p0wned).

Cerberus and Carrack - meh.

Thresher - energy issues, runs out of steam too easily.

Aegir and Skirnir - the boomstick and missle boat are fun but very limited.

Q - haven't gotten my hands on one yet (will amend that shortly) but even with PPC's on it looks like it will have the same energy issues as the Thresher. The faster speed and decent cargo hold seems nice but it does not have enough turret coverage (blind spots) and its shape is too bulky (as opposed to the very low profile shrike).

Agamemnon (and Deimos) - Nice stats but in reality they suffer from the issues similar to the Panther (and the Aggy trades docking bays for a few more energy leeching and innefective IBL turrets). Those IBL's just dont seem able to hit things, they just suck up your energy .. at least the Aggy has enough IBL's to where if you do jump to the turret you can do some damage.
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In general I think IBL's on M7's track too slowly (assuming turrets) esp when you strafe around to stay alive against one or multiple capitals.

Enter a fully loaded M7 Teladi Shrike with 5 fighters (m3+ eclipse b/c 100mj of shields is too soft), 1 XL capable fighter (for errands the freight drone wont do for), 1 personal fighter (m3+ medusa), and 1 pirate kestrel (for fast sector travel to missions and adrenaline purposes). It is loaded up with Keris, Missles (typhoon, tempest, and thunderbolt, wasp, and a few mosquitos for drawing the attention of little fast ships to you), 10 lasertowers, 60 crates of GCA, squash mines, etc. 4 IBL's, 2 CIG's, 1 IPG, and 1 ISR up front ... the IPG/ISR combo is used to slow down big ships and mess with their weapons .. the CIGs for when you are pretending the slightly sluggish M7 is a fighter .. the 4 IBL's for when you charge them up and destroy capitals and stations. 2x Flak up and down, and CIG's in the rear, and 2x Gauss Cannons on each side. Turrets set to missle defense except for Gauss which are 'Attack Capitals'.

So loaded as described, I park at Terracorp HQ in Home of Light and see what fun there is to be had. Taking a defend type mission from them I jump to Elena's fortune West gate. Sure enough, the Shrike starts firing GC at the Pirate M6's around it and there is way too much friendly traffic around. Exit ship in the Medusa (for those who don't already know it .. when you're not piloting a ship, the friendly fire [like from its turrets] does not harm your race rep.) and then command Gold wing (the 5 eclipses) to protect me and tell the Shrike to 'Attack All Enemies'. Needless to say .. the initial group and subsequent M6's did not stand a chance. Likewise I wiped the fighters out with Gold Wing .. mission success.

That was too easy .. so lets try something heavier .. jump to Xenon Core 023. Okay right away there are 3 Q's, 1 J, 1 K, and several fighters near the North Gate. So .... run away to the left and back from the gate .. drop 50 Keris and 10 Lasertowers .. make sure to tell the docked M3's to sit tight. And here comes the 2 Q's and some fighters. Fire some missles to confuse them then start charging up the 4x IBL's on the nearest one while the GC's also bear on it. As that one song goes, click .. click .. BOOM. Pop goes the Q. Fighters getting flacked or CIGed ... 2nd Q (semi auto aiming until its close enough then full auto) goes down very quickly too. The laser tower draw the J's attention even though it has some shots to give me .. so strafe a little and hardly anything hits me because the Shrike profile is so skinny, perfect for strafing. J goes down and now I'm feeling bolder .. full charge on the K with charged IBL's and here come the GC as well (they track and fire more than quick enough to kill M7's and up .. even M6's as the prev mission showed). K is shooting me but nothing is hitting .. did I get better at strafing recently? not really its that low profile again. Much more quickly than I thought the K goes boom. Pick up my LT's head to the Shipyard (40GJ of shielding and a few million hull). Tell GC turrets to attack all and start killing the shipyard. With charged IBL's helping (you can get off about 15 charged shots and then you let off a little) the station goes down more quickly than I thought it would. I had to fend off a few Q's (about 30 seconds for each one once it was in range) but it was no problem they couldnt seem to hit me while I had no trouble hitting them.

The great thing about the Shrike is that it can keep on firing 4x GC and flak and rear turrets and your energy still charges up quickly (to where you can unleash more 4x IBL charged fury). Also the turrets seem to do what you expect them to (like they are reading your mind as opposed to IBL turrets which seem to want to fire at fighters even when set to attack capitals) and those GC track and fire fast esp. compared to IBL's.

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I've taken a few missions since all that including a crazy sector patrol mission that was absolutely psychotic (Xenon + Yaki + Pirates). Needless to say there was absolute chaos in the sector but with the Shrike (and missles, LT's, fighters, and squash mines) all opposing parties were decimated ... what a great ship!

Anyway, sorry I got a little carried away here but I put more hours into X3:TC recently than I have in a long time thanks to re-'discovering' the Shrike as one of the best personal ships in the game. I had a few on sector patrol but never thought to pilot them (mainly b/c assuming a lot of big ships esp. Teladi are slow-responding slugs). The 96m/s is more than adequate for where I am in the game right now (mostly micro-managing and personal missions) and with the docked ships I pretty much have everything I want except for a damn TP when a transport mission requires it for its passengers (how annoying that you can't have a luxury fighter sized ship with no weapons or big shield thats a TP class).

Unless this (Teladi Kern / Shrike+Cargo Bay) -
http://eng.x3tc.ru/x3_tc_ships/x3-ship. ... DE4Njk1NzE
- ever shows up in the Vanilla game (can you freakin' imagine 16500 cargo bay in an M7) I have a feeling I will be in the shrike for pretty much the rest of this game; unless they make an official mini-M2 that pilots as well as an M7.

Thank you, to the recent 'best M7' threads and people promoting the Shrike therein; have fun :).

Catra
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Post by Catra » Sat, 27. Feb 10, 06:46

nice read :)

the teladi tern sentinel (i think) is the shrikes "prototype", the only thing youll ever find of it is in the game files :)

boreas<--mini m2 /corellian corvette almost the same size as the shrike(see for yourself =] ), not the fastest, but definately flys good and destroys everything. :)

kreep69
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Post by kreep69 » Sat, 27. Feb 10, 07:51

oh man, mini m2 for the boreas indeed! i had no idea it was that small. you would think it would be the size of the phoenix with the generators it has.

im going to have to start a scripted game to put some of these crazy ships in game like the valhalla which looks like its about 5 m2's wide.

reiks
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Post by reiks » Sat, 27. Feb 10, 09:52

if only the Boreas didnt have that "head" that looks like a bee. The satellite is a big turn-on though.

XanII
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Post by XanII » Sat, 27. Feb 10, 09:56

The Shrike deserves its praise. It is really a sight to jump into a fighter and follow a Shrike close up when it attacks it's target.

The amount of firepower it unleases is just unreal.
X3:TC Heavy M6 guide : : : Let's pretend you are an addict, lets pretend that you are a X-games player... but i am repeating myself here.

AL'42
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Post by AL'42 » Sat, 27. Feb 10, 10:22

I’ve been wondering why my shrike is so wonderful !! Like everyone else I got a panther in my first game (yawn… why is that ?) but after reading NS got a shrike I was intrigued and got one for my current game.

It really is a lot of fun, I’ve also loaded it with 4 GC to conserve on energy, and a whole mix of guns IBLs, CIGs, FAA, PRG, PBE… just send it in to the foray and watch it blow everything up (external view is so funny hah hah) Amazing turret coverage all round, even the FAA on the up/down turrets can hit enemy ships at the front, when I first saw this I wondered what the hell was hitting them !!

So its also got a hangar huh, well blow me, didn’t realise that.

And I wasn’t sure about friendly fire from your own ships, thanks for the tip, I’ll jump into a fighter next time my shrike goes awol with all guns blazing near friendlies.. Yeah, feels like a mini boreas. Panthers blah.

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Zaitsev
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Post by Zaitsev » Sat, 27. Feb 10, 21:41

Nice story there, and it got me all worked up since I just bought my first Shrike :D

Now I just need to some missiles and some GC ammo, and then I'll go pay that Q who killed my TM a visit :fg:
I'm sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of how awesome I am :D

DiDs:
Eye of the storm Completed
Eye of the storm - book 2 Inactive
Black Sun - Completed
Endgame - Completed

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Flozem
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Post by Flozem » Sat, 27. Feb 10, 23:10

I got first hand Shrike experience at the final final fury mission... I ordered my entire fleet in, and my shrike got seperated from my main force somewhere along the fight.

My four M2's and the other M7 were busy destroying the other two stations, while my shrike insisted on going to the nothmost one. I went thinking... omg... it'll surely perish.

It's entourage of 8 Teladi Falcon Haulers armed with HEPT and its GC's kept two of these Khaak Guardians busy long enough for me to join the fight in my springblossom though. No losses, although one Falcon came very close to loosing all shields. :)

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