[TC] Need advice on first M2/M1

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Aldaris5
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[TC] Need advice on first M2/M1

Post by Aldaris5 » Sun, 25. Sep 11, 17:44

Hi everyone,

I have good progress in my game, and in OFF missions. I got to a level which needs a bigger and more capable ship for the fights. I have a Thresher, but it seems an M7 wouldn't be enough. I thought maybe an M1 or M2 would do the job.

My expectations: good shielding, capable harbouring at least a couple of fighters, have enough firepower to wipe a station out in reasonable time.
And it is not Split! I dispise Split ships in general.

I happily take any advice in missile and weapon loadout as well.
Money is not an issue, but I am in Vanilla and didn't finish the aldrin missions...

Thanks very much in advance

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Re: [TC] Need advice on first M2/M1

Post by Gazz » Sun, 25. Sep 11, 17:49

Aldaris5 wrote:capable harbouring at least a couple of fighters
That kind of excludes M2 right off the bat, doesn't it? =P

But if you prefer to stay away from the fight and let your fighters do the job, the carrier with the highest fighter-capacity should be it.
Since that would be a Split, the second best will have to do and that is the Collossus.

It still packs a punch but it's not even close to the league of M2 where sustained firepower is concerned.

While the Odin has decent laser generators for an M1, you're looking at the firepower equivalent of 3 PPC where an M2 usually has 16.
A carrier is a carrier...
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Post by Alan Phipps » Sun, 25. Sep 11, 17:56

What you need to complete FF will depend entirely on your fight rank (higher rank = bigger/more enemies). If it has to be bigger than an M7 and you want to dock fighters then it will have to be an M1 Carrier.

The Split Raptor is the best of the bunch and the only one that approaches being a real combat ship in its own right (ie through weapons and laser energy) when not just using its fighters, drones and missiles. So if the Raptor is out, then choose whatever M1 you like the look of, equip it with anti-fighter weapons like flaks and rapid-fire and then stock it with the fighters, drones and missiles you like to use for wing/group combat.
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Post by navetta » Sun, 25. Sep 11, 18:17

OTAS boreas

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Aldaris5
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Re: [TC] Need advice on first M2/M1

Post by Aldaris5 » Sun, 25. Sep 11, 18:30

Gazz wrote:
Aldaris5 wrote:capable harbouring at least a couple of fighters
That kind of excludes M2 right off the bat, doesn't it? =P
Oops! To be the honest, I thought the M2 has hangar as well. Never stop learning, do we? :lol:

With this perspective, can you (all of you, I mean) suggest M2 as well?
Regarding Split ships: not just ugly, but I prefer manueverability over speed.

Any suggestions of a loadout of weapons?

Edit: I am not stay away of fight, but my Thresher was ripped apart in a minute under fire. I am on Battlemaster level and I thought some fighters give me some time distracting the fighters, and scouts, while I am dealing with the corvettes. And the clusters.

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Post by Gazz » Sun, 25. Sep 11, 18:43

Well, the Boreas is the single most overpowered ship in the game (not counting an M7M with an infinite missile supply...) but it's not very rewarding to win, knowing that you did so only because of an unbalanced ship.
It packs more anti-capital firepower than any other ship in the game, is quite fast, and is one of the smallest, if not the smallest M2 to boot.
Of course it's pure win. It just leaves a bad aftertaste. If you can stomach that, try that one for a start.

The Osaka (any terran M2, really) excels in an anti-fighter role because you can mount Flak in every single turret.
Against cap ships it's considerably weaker than commonwealth ships, though. A Boreas would take it's lunch money but up against a huge fighter swarm, I'd rather be flying the Osaka.

Others will tell you the Ray is best, and the Brigantine, and the Phoenix, and the Tyr and you know... they are right.
It's really a matter of personal preferrance and how you want to do things.



You can always drive an M2 and bring a carrier just to transport fighters or drones. It's what carriers do, after all.
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Post by Skillzfire » Sun, 25. Sep 11, 19:24

i vote phionix :) it is a absolute monster, a slow monster mind you ;)

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Post by Gazz » Sun, 25. Sep 11, 20:10

Oh, not to forget the Odysseus! It clearly is a best M2 as well.
I don't use PSG often but in the right situation they are the next best think to tactical nukes.


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Post by StarSword » Sun, 25. Sep 11, 20:33

Gazz wrote:The Osaka (any terran M2, really) excels in an anti-fighter role because you can mount Flak in every single turret.
Against cap ships it's considerably weaker than commonwealth ships, though. A Boreas would take it's lunch money but up against a huge fighter swarm, I'd rather be flying the Osaka.
A Boreas would only take an Osaka's lunch money if it was the player flying the Boreas. Boreas does more DPS due to PPC's higher rate of fire, but the Osaka is tougher, and nothing below M7 will survive a single blast from its forward battery alone.

AI Osaka vs. AI Boreas, it's fifty-fifty.

And just because you can mount flak in every single turret, doesn't mean you should. I favor this loadout: 24 PSP, 24 SSC. Equally effective IS and OOS.

The real issue with the Osaka is sourcing its weapons. I've had to built two entire complexes to supply them.
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Post by quoick » Sun, 25. Sep 11, 23:39

StarSword wrote:
Gazz wrote:The Osaka (any terran M2, really) excels in an anti-fighter role because you can mount Flak in every single turret.
Against cap ships it's considerably weaker than commonwealth ships, though. A Boreas would take it's lunch money but up against a huge fighter swarm, I'd rather be flying the Osaka.
A Boreas would only take an Osaka's lunch money if it was the player flying the Boreas. Boreas does more DPS due to PPC's higher rate of fire, but the Osaka is tougher, and nothing below M7 will survive a single blast from its forward battery alone.

AI Osaka vs. AI Boreas, it's fifty-fifty.

And just because you can mount flak in every single turret, doesn't mean you should. I favor this loadout: 24 PSP, 24 SSC. Equally effective IS and OOS.

The real issue with the Osaka is sourcing its weapons. I've had to built two entire complexes to supply them.
What he said.

I've got a Boreas, 10 Osakas and 2 Tyrs and I would have to recommend the Osaka. It is tougher than the Boreas and its guns take out anything pretty much straight away. You won't be flying an M2 too much because they are just so slow and ungainly so you want it to perform other tasks OOS. I have lost my Boreas a couple of times with OOS actions, reloaded and watched an Osaka clean up. Loadout as stated above (24 PSP and 24 SSC) is ideal. The Tyr is pretty good too but I don't see the point in mounting PSPs in the front and flying sideways :P

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Post by Mightysword » Mon, 26. Sep 11, 00:02

Not sure if this applies because I have several mod in my game and I can't tell whether the Galleon in my game is the vanilla Galleon or not, but if you can get your hand on one it's a pretty good Carrier for personal flying I think. Not too slow, have more guns than a normal carrier with a good hangar space.

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Post by ancienthighway » Mon, 26. Sep 11, 00:11

Any of the M2s in the game should easily deal what what you have to face in that final mission.

If you want to finish it quickly, you'll want to be able to get a ship that you can mount capital guns on quickly. Building your own drops out of the question because of the time it takes to complete 1 or 2 weapons per build cycle. Your weapon source then becomes NPC stations and what they have available. Or what Pirate/Yaki ships you can capture with a hold full of IBLs. You could end up buying weapons at every every station in the universe that has them, and still be short of fully arming your ship, but that's still faster than building them all.

You aren't in that final battle alone. There's a task force with you that can take on capital ships and destroy the stations. There's no shame in letting them do the heavy work while you focus on fighters and corvettes. Swap those PPCs out of spinal for some anti-fighter/corvette weaponry. Or get a Deimos with PSGs and make short work of large groups of fighters. Once they are gone, your Thresher will be better position to take on a Kha'ak M1/M2. Or a couple of M8s to take out the Guardians and stations.

I recently went to Menulaus' Paradise on the PHQ plot to kill a large group of Yaki fighters. No problem, except for a Q and supporting fighters close enough to make trouble for me. I had 2 TMs with 7 M3s and 4 M4s. Restrictions on my game play prevents me from buying any combat ship for the CW races. An impossible mission. NOT. I flew a lone Mamba Raider into sector, then with it's speed and turbo was able to get out of their range of interest. I then watched the Yaki tear up the Xenon, but with heavy losses. Final survivors - to Yaki M4. Mission complete.

There's more than one way to complete any mission.

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Post by StarSword » Mon, 26. Sep 11, 00:11

Mightysword wrote:Not sure if this applies because I have several mod in my game and I can't tell whether the Galleon in my game is the vanilla Galleon or not
If its stats match this, then it's the vanilla Galleon.
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Post by fairywhipper » Mon, 26. Sep 11, 00:32

if you can get the weapons then Oska. heavy turrets set on kill capitals. starburst on others, maml on rear. add 10 waith missles and some polt, kills anything by itself.

trying to test all the m2s and m1s to see which is best, takes a while but comes down to how you play....


get oska...
for fun add a boreas as side kick.

then again with OFF, you could just jump in a m7 and let rip with 200+ frails followed by a m8 and letting rip 100+ tommohawks, while sit around in m5 and watching the show.

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Post by Triaxx2 » Mon, 26. Sep 11, 01:49

I've rather fallen in love with the Galleon. It's a nice deadly carrier and if used as an M7, it's more effective than you might expect. It's one of the few ships with the speed and mounting to reproduce the 'Elephant trick' from Reunion, which was using PPC's in the rear mount to slaughter KM2's. It's got 4 IBL's in the rear mount, and speed enough to avoid getting splattered.
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Post by deca.death » Mon, 26. Sep 11, 21:33

Gazz wrote:Well, the Boreas is the single most overpowered ship in the game (not counting an M7M with an infinite missile supply...) but it's not very rewarding to win, knowing that you did so only because of an unbalanced ship.
Actually, difference between M2 ships is not so drastic at all. Boraas has one shield extra (most of CW ships have 4, Boreas has 5) and is able to mount PPC at back, but many others mount IBL which is almost as good /and not often needed really. It's small target but other CW ships are comparable in evading damage (carrack, titan...) I agree he is most powerful - but still I find situations in which boreas is indispensable very rare (xenon gate blockade penetration is one) In 90% of other combat scenarios, and M2 will do, I often take brigantine for ride (it has "only" 3 shields) and it performs great. With M2 is almost the matter of personal preference. There are small (and sometimes larger) differences but basically they are almost equally deadly.
The Osaka (any terran M2, really) excels in an anti-fighter role because you can mount Flak in every single turret.
Brig and akuma can mount most powerful AA battery of all CW M2's btw, and can mix up IonDs, for good measure : ) powerful and fun to use.
Against cap ships it's considerably weaker than commonwealth ships, though.
Well I would't say so, Terran capitals have no problems in eliminating capital opponents, they can have limited problems in certain scenarios and with more maneuverable opponents due to high powered shot combined with low ROF.

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Post by Infekted » Tue, 27. Sep 11, 14:11

Except the boreas is basically all up sides with no down sides. A player flying an M2 can destroy basically anything in vanilla, but thats not to say some don't perform better than others. The Boreas performs better than anything.

Its small. It's fast. It's highly shielded. It can mount max weapons out of virtually anything (8/8/8/8/4/4 is as good as commonwealth gets). The choice of weapons you can fit is simply incomparable.

The ability to mount PPC in the rear is irrelevent as really you shouldn't be mounting anticap back there. If cap ships survive long enough to be to the rear, the side mounts can fire almost directly backwards anyway.
The combination of PPC front, GC sides, IonD + FAA/CFA in rear/top/bottom make it the ultimate killer of everything. That IonD/CFA combo is what makes it better than Terran M2s for a player ship. SBSC hit things hard, but the above combo destroys whole clouds of fighters at once.

There is nothing bad about the Boreas aside from it's looks... 12GJ shileds would be nice, but thats mainly for OOS duties.

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Post by Alan Phipps » Tue, 27. Sep 11, 14:23

Infekted wrote: "That IonD/CFA combo is what makes it [Boreas] better than Terran M2s for a player ship."

As long as you are very, very careful about avoiding collateral damage and friendly fire issues when you fly it in most sectors! Otherwise spot on.
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Post by Infekted » Tue, 27. Sep 11, 14:27

Oh I really don't care about collatoral damage :D
I quite frequently unleash 60 nova raiders packing PBG... Now that is collatoral damage. Luckily its so easy to regain rep in this game it hardly matters :)
Friendly fire, yes spot on. You want to leave your fighters at home when flying that bad boy, but the Boreas doesn't need fighter support, ever.

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Post by Alan Phipps » Tue, 27. Sep 11, 14:40

Well for a first M2 as per the OP's title and probably intended mainly to be used on plots and missions then collateral damage can be an issue. Anyway, I was just highlighting the need to think about it.
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