Bonus Ship Ommission File

[Hearteater]

Youngling are a very laid-back bonus ship.  I've got an AAR at 8/8 with Weasels and I did everything by just FRD'ing 2 Space Docks with 3 Engineers each at any system I wanted.  I sometimes grabbed groups of Youngling to knock out specific targets that were giving them problems, and sometimes I staged a full cap of Mark I-III before sending them through to crack the initial build up of ships right on the wormhole, but otherwise they were a no brainer.  I routed them across 4-8 hostile systems on FRD, letting them automatically clean out any spawns.  I never unlocked Transport II and I never put them in a Regen Chamber, or even built one.  Whenever they weren't were I needed them, I scrapped the lot, powered down the current Space Docks and turned on the set closest to my next target.  I almost hit cap on Space Docks.

It is seriously the least micro and least intense game I've ever played.  And a ton of hilarious fun.

[TechSY730]

Younglings are an oddity. You don't need as much micro to get some sort of effective use out of them compared to many other ship types (even "normal" ones). However, you need much more micro to get optimal use out of them compared to almost any other ship type in the game (only ones I can think of that would take more to get optimal usage from are "slowish" raid style ships (like the eyebot), teleporting ships, and zenith seige engines).

[keith.lamothe]

Hitting AI planets with a Space Dock Cannon (loop-build-FRD-younglings) is some of the most fun I have playing the game.

[TechSY730]

I've actually done the "Space Dock Cannon" with other cheap ships, like laser gattlings. It takes them a bit to start making some headway, but it is often a rather cheap way to keep up the pressure on the other side of the wormhole. Plus, even though losses are severe at first, I can keep building them for cheap, while the AI has to wait a bit until their next "pulse", meaning they will eventually kill enough on the other side that they can "break through" and start being able to take on the rest of the planet.

[keith.lamothe]

My preference for the younglings in that capacity is based on their movement speed.

Of course, then something gravitic happens, and I have a cap of Youngling Sad Pandas just kinda sitting there.

[Draco18s]

Youngling Sad Pandas

New Bonus ship type:

Youngling Sad Panda
HP: 1,000,000,000
Range: 3000
Damage: 1000*mk
Speed: 1
Self-attrition: 1000000/sec (16:40)

[TechSY730]

Actually, I had an idea.

Many of the high cap things have a mid to low weapon range*. What about a high cap ship and/or youngling ship that has good to great range? (Yea, it's a bit late to suggest this, being right after an expansion release, and expansion development are one the few times when new bonus ship types suggestions are usually accepted).
It wouldn't be as much as a sitting duck for gravity turrets, as there is decent change that its range would be long enough to hit the grav turret anyways.

May want to file this one away in Mantis or something for when the 5th expansion (if there is going to be one) gets underway.



*yet another reminder, Spire corvette main weapon range

[KDR_11k]

We have enough fairly useless swarmers available that one of them could be repurposed into a longer ranged ship. I guess they got typecast into "light" roles, i.e. weak combat abilities, high speed. A long ranged swarmer would need to be slower or it would just kite everything.

[Hearteater]

Deflector Drones are pretty long ranged, at 13k range.

[Winge]

Younglings are an oddity. You don't need as much micro to get some sort of effective use out of them compared to many other ship types (even "normal" ones). However, you need much more micro to get optimal use out of them compared to almost any other ship type in the game (only ones I can think of that would take more to get optimal usage from are "slowish" raid style ships (like the eyebot), teleporting ships, and zenith seige engines).

Add cloaked ships to that mix.  Raptors are great fun to play with, and Space Planes are borderline overpowered, if microed well.

[ZaneWolfe]

Bumping this because I still like the idea of the original post. A setting allowing you to disable either the AI or yourself from getting certain ships.

Edited for clarity.