Cadet PRS Faction Unique Ships

Omni-Fighters

The Belters omni fighter is a special type of fighter which, as the name suggests, is suitable in a number of roles. For your commander to research Omnis, your team must already have starbase and advanced ships researched. Omnis can hold any Small ship equipment so kitting out your ship is the main task. Then they can be used in a similar way to the ship you have kitted them out as.

Ga'Taraan Federation

In lieu of the standard medium escort-class ship offered by every other faction, Ga'Taraan chooses to do things a little differently. Instead, they take the idea of a gunship and split effectively into two aspects. Offence and Defence. Mustang and Guardian.

Mustangs

Mustangs are effectively what an interceptor would be like if it was given medium shield and missiles. They pack a ridiculous amount of firepower, they're fairly agile for a ship of it's size, and in the hands of a competent player, they can be a nightmare to kill single handedly. Stangs pack a mini-AC, can use hunters, seekers, zeus, or killers, and can carry one mini-AC turret. Plainly, this is a ship built to achieve and maintain space supremacy, and in the right situations it can. More often then not though, it's used incorrectly in Pick up games, much to the unfortunate commander's (and his team's) folly. Their use is a brute force heavy fighter. You can use them to camp an enemy team and force PT bombers or regular bombers down an enemy team's throat. Versus Standard or Enhanced Tech, Mustangs will be absolutely devastating. Versus Advanced tech, only skilled mustang pilots will be able to squeeze the most out of their ships. If you want to see Mustangs used properly, watch a great commander decide to be creative with GT. You'll see tactics such as TacStangs, and a 20-minute GT hostile takeover (PT Bombers + Mustangs can be extremely devastating).

Mustangs are not short-range fighters. They're not like interceptors, even though they can handle short-range combat, they're simply not built to excell in that category. Mustangs do well in a medium-long range fight, anywhere from 600-900m. The key behind this is the way the ship is outfitted. Your main weapon, the Mini-AC, has 1000m range, and it has a very minute weapon spread. You have access to two very strong combat missiles, with the potential to use 2 more devastating, albeit more difficult to use, types of missiles. So with a really accurate frontal gun, a turret gunner, and LRM or MRM missiles, why would you engage someone within their range and allow them to shoot you? People in this game label multiple, clean kills as whoring. I call it efficiency.

Backthrust. Map it, learn it, love it. It will become your best friend. If any ship wants to stand a chance at killing you, they have to approach you. If you're backthrusting, you're slowing their rate of approach, giving yourself a valuable commodity; more time for your weapons to do their job. You out range every other small craft with the exception of a stealth fighter, use your range, it's your advantage.

That's not to say you shouldn't initiate an engagement as a mustang, hell you have the pefect tools to do so, just don't walk right into their sandbox and expect to walk away unscathed. You're a heavy fighter in every sense of the term. At the price of your durability, you'll find that you lack the tools to get away fast if the situation turns for the worse. So it's important that you don't go screaming into a pack of ints expecting to kill them all. Instead group with your buddies, sit at 1300, lob missiles at them, wait for them to approach you, then chew them down one at a time. In the event that you do need to get away, you have light booster, which lets you scream away at a blazing speed of 160mps </sarcasm> and a 15 second rip time. Yeah. Plan your engagements because if you're caught with your pants down, you're probably going to end up in a pod. Err on the side of caution or you'll be nothing more then a free kill.

Guardians

Guardians are basically SC Towers from Tac with a player controlling them. They're extremely slow, extremely tough, and they're armed with the devastating PW SkyCap. Basically instead of buying sc towers from tac, and then building an SC tower, you build a research, research Guardians, and for the same 2k price tag you get a player controlled SC Tower (Read: An SC Tower that should never ever die). Most commanders won't have money to hand these things out like candy, but they make an excellent bomber deterrent if you want to play a fragile early game techpath, such as Tac, or if you want to go for LongTom Guardians. You will generally only see two to four elite and patient players flying around in these things if they are researched.

Guardians are, well, guardians (duh). You're not fast, you can use Ion booster to cover like 1k at a decent rate, but that's about it. Your job, is to basically defend an aleph, base, hell you can even bring one or two on your bomb run in lieu of turret gunners. Just make sure your run travels at the appropriate speed. Typically, unless the enemy uses overwhelming force, whatever you assign guardians to, should not die. They function just like a turret, their turn rates and torque are exactly the same as a turret. I can not stress this enough you literally are a moving turret.

Now the actually meat of a guardian, is a shieldless mass of medium armor. That means your sig is low. About 50% actually. So if you're not firing, you probably won't be seen by anyone entering your sector. Atleast not until they're in range. Then it's pretty much GG for your target. If you find yourself in a guardian, surprise is one of your major advantages. USE IT. Guardians can also ripcord, but their riptime is pretty slow, about 25 seconds. So if you find yourself defending a teleport, and things are about to get real ugly, you'd better have a nan because 25 seconds can quickly seem like too long.

Guardians are slow. About 20mps for their top unboosted speed. So ideally just sit near a green door, in the event that you find yourself taking some damage, all you have to do is make your slow way to your green door and dock, redeploy, and resume unleashing hell in your sector. Also they have no scan range, so don't go take one miner hunting, your job is to defend. If you can't handle defending, don't fly a guardian.

PT bombers

PT Bombers used to be mean whoring ships, capable of lobbing LRM ABs while cruising at 120mps with medium shields (and turret). They are still all of that, but they now cost $250 each.

PT bomber research is immediately available when your team has a Palisade, though most of its equipment upgrades also require a Research station. They can mount Lightning and Thunderer Rockets (better on heavy armor than Lightnings). A skilled pilot can shred almost any opposing ship with 2 rocket salvos, and Rocket Targeting research makes the missiles even more powerful.

PT bombers can mount 3 kinds of anti-base weapons. The MRT AB missile can be launched at around 2k (going at 100mps) and is worth 3/4ths of an AB1. The Kinetic Torpedo is an unguided projectile weapon with a similar range as the MRT torpedo, but does the same damage as an AB1. The LRM AB missile, and can be launched at 3.1k once the bomber is cruising.