Cadet I/Scout guide

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WyldKarde's guide to Allegiance Scouts

A local reporter known as the "DataNet Tattler" recorded this conversation in a bar as a scout pilot relaxed with a half price spritzer in his hand.

+++ Voxrecord begins +++

I've been an Allegiance pilot for almost two years now, and the vast bulk of that time has been spent in the snug cockpits of the various scout class ships. As this is scout week, what better time for me to sit here with my feet up on the tactical console, bottle of synthetic vodka in hand, and wax lyrical about the various scouts? The answer is, 'no time like the present', or even, 'that's a rhetorical question, stop talking rubbish and tell me something useful, Wyld', and either way you'd be right; so let us begin.

Belters

Belter's scout

Ah, Belters. "The Boosting Bricks". The key thing about the Belters scout is its mass and its booster. Even when you're out of ammo you're still flying a deadly weapon. One good ram can do significant damage to your opponent. Excellent for when you've run into an enemy constructor and want to keep it from building while reinforcements catch up to you. Just keep whacking into that bitch and it'll never be able to line up to build. Keep an eye on your hull gauge though, even a Belter ship can only take so much of a pounding.

Of course, that mass has its downside as well. You'll find changing course takes longer in one of these ships, even with the help of the sidethrusters. Take that into account next time you're playing ring-around-an-asteroid with your foe, or you may find yourself sucking rock, and that's bad for your teeth. The powerful Belter sidethrusters also make the belter scout surprisingly manueverable. Note: I said maneuverable, not agile. Don't work against your momentum and try to spin on a dime, work with it and use your powerful side-thrusters to travel in smooth curves, throwing off your opponent's aim.

Another thing to consider is that the booster may well save your life. As well as getting you into the combat zone quickly, it can get you out as well. Giving over one cargo space to a fuel rack can make the difference between flying a brick and flying a pod. Hit the ripcord button while boosting and you're a much harder target to track and shoot while you get away than you would be during the usual ripcord sequence, where you're slowing down and tumbling more or less on the spot.

"But Wyld," I hear you shriek in pitiful horror, "There are no shields on these things!" to which I say, "Bah! Shields are for sissies." You've got that lovely extra thick Belters hull wrapped around you, more than capable of taking a burst of fire from your opponent's gun of choice, and unlike shields, the hull won't raise your signature. You're naturally stealthy, enjoy it.

Belters scouts have access to the Sanctuary. At $100 a pop, these babies deploy like probes, and will act as pickup points for any pods in the area. Including those of the enemy, so be careful where you drop these. Placing them becomes a tradeoff between convenience for your team, and the ability of the enemy to find them. Tuck 'em away behind a rock that is out of the way, perhaps. The good news is they're cheap, so don't be afraid to carry one with you most of the time. Spamming pickup probes of any kind is a great way to keep your team moving.

Finally, in CC, Belters heavy scouts take advantage of the Belts famed ability to mix and match tech by allowing miniguns to be mounted. So if your team has gone Belts adv expansion, you'll be able to pack the short ranged but powerful Minigun 3 on your scout, which can be a bit of a shock to anyone trying to take you down. Just be sure to bring along some extra ammo if you do. You'll need it.

Oh, and here's something they won't have told you at the academy. Just underneath the heavy scout's turret, behind the Navigation console, there's a little cubbyhole that's right where the cryo ducts for the booster meet the inner hull. It's a great place to stash a sixpack of beer for those long, boring recon runs. Just try not to get too loaded. If you're seeing double when an enemy capship turns up you could throw your whole team into a panic.

Bios

Bios scout

The key feature to the Bios scout, indeed to all Bios ships, is its ability to use the heavy cloak. That handy gadget will, when used correctly, give you a good twenty seconds or so of invisibility. Excellent for sneaking through a camped aleph, or getting away from the kill hungry intwhore who's decided you'd make excellent padding for their KB.

Heavy cloaks are great, but weigh even more than prox. Most of the time they are only good for an initial surprise, your chances of using it to get away uneyed are ... well let's just say 8 secs of cloak isn't always enough. As such, I picked up a neat trick off Tigereye: Ejecting the heavy cloak as soon as your energy is depleted.

Change your bindings so that "Swap Cloak" and "Eject Cargo" are near each other. Whenever something is swapped into cargo it is always put in the primary cargo slot, allowing you to eject it immediately without having to double check you're ejecting the right item.

It's not just a defensive advantage, either. If you use it while closing on someone you intend to engage you can surprise them with an unexpected prox mine and/or a volley of Dumbfires coming out of nowhere. I once crippled an entire Galv run by flying at them and using the cloak just as they were about to eye me. I managed to plant three prox mines in their path, podded two, crippled several more and forced the rest to slow down in order to evade, which gave the later defenders more time to scramble and intercept. A friend of mine who was flying as one of the galvers later told me he had just enough time to think, "Hey, was that Wy-"BOOM.

Bios scouts also have excellent energy reserves. If you're not using it on the cloak then you'll be able to nan for much longer than most other factions. That's a plus. Try to resist the temptation to cloak when nanning a bomber. Save the juice for keeping the big guy alive. Of course, just because you can mount a heavy cloak doesn't always mean you should. Those things are heavy in mass as well as in cloaking and if you leave yours at base (or eject it during flight) your ship will accelerate faster and handle better. Good for when you need to camp an aleph ASAP. Just remember it won't be there to save your hide if things go south.

For me, the main disadvantage of the Bios scout is its shape. It has a huge fat ass, and as such it's a fairly easy target from pretty well any angle. Bear that in mind when deciding whether to engage a target or avoid combat.

All Bios techbases (including your Garrison) are automatically advanced so most commanders will throw down the extra dough to upgrade basic scouts to advanced. If the game is more than about 12 minutes in and you still only have basic scouts available then either something's gone wrong with your team's economy, or your commander is in dire need of a clue. Feel free to offer one, but do it politely. "Comm, why don't we have advanced scouts yet?" is okay. "OMG u sux, wherez my adv scoutz! Clueless Comm! Mutiny!" will probably get you The Boot.

Dreghklar Empire

Dreg scout

Speed. Say it with me, "Speeeeeed". The Dreg scout is the single fastest ship in the game, at least in terms of cruising speed. Boosters can go faster but boosters need fuel, whereas these babies can just keep on running indefinitely. In CC they also enjoy a ridiculously narrow profile. When directly in front or behind a Dreg scout, it's almost impossible to land a clean hit. This makes running away and dropping proximity mines an excellent tactic for these ships.

Sometimes that speed can be a hinderance. Sure, it has 20% more speed - but it has the same acceleration as other factions. Once you're going flat out in one direction it takes a dreg scout a lot longer to change it - you're relatively less agile.

One game I like to play is to make a high speed pass through an enemy held sector. So long as the aleph isn't mined you can go in full speed and just dash across it at near 200mps. This means you can eyeball what they're up to, and hopefully lure a few whores onto your tail for a damn good proxing. I've managed to pod as many as four people in a single pass this way. Once you're near the far edge you can either ripcord home, or turn around and do it again, depending on the situation. Maybe drop a few EWS en route if you're brave enough to go with a reduced prox loadout. Even if they see you drop 'em they'll probably still need to waste time deprobing.

Dreg scouts are also agile and turn very well, making them okay dogfighters. Just know your limits and don't pick a fight with a five year veteran flying a heavy interceptor. Or if you do, don't come whining to me about it during your inevitable pod ride home.

Something else to consider is that the Dreghklar Empire make excellent missiles for their military. Their tracking and damage are superior to the other factions. You may want to take advantage of that by packing an extra rack or two of your missile of choice. This edge especially pays of if heavy scouts are available with the extended rack size they offer.

Dreg's main weakness is their light hulls. Your ship is fragile. That means with the high speeds you can attain, mines are especially dangerous, and it also hampers your combat endurance. It's all very well being faster and more maneuverable, but when you're in a circling furball with someone and spitting Gattling fire at each other, there's a good chance you'll run out of hull before they do. You just have to be the better shot.

If you ever find yourself winning a campaign on behalf of the overgrown lizards, expect to be ceremonially presented with some kind of freshly severed lizardling head on a chain. Just smile, wear it around your neck, tell them it's a great honor, and toss it out an airlock when you get home. Those things can really stink the place out after a couple of days.

Ga'Taraan Federation

GT scout

Ah, GT. That whacky offshoot of the Iron Coalition, these guys always have to do things differently. Still, the GT designer who worked on their scouts had a stroke of genius. Alongside the usual gun mount, there's a dedicated nanite cannon mount. That means your repair gun is always loaded and ready for use inside a heartbeat. Make the most of this feature. Few things will endear you to your team's intwhores more than providing a little combat nannage when things are hot. They'll love you for it, and with any luck they'll even be able to pick up your pod after the enemy get wise and decide to gak the nan first. Just make sure the nan's switched off when engaging the enemy. Not much point trying to punch a hole in someone's ship if you're repairing them at the same time!

A secondary advantage of the Nan mount is that you don't need to keep a nanite in cargo. That's an extra slot according to your mission needs. One more probe, one more prox, one more rack of missiles. That can make all the difference.

The GT scout, like the Dregs', has a wonderfully small cross section, so again you're going to be hard to hit if your nose or your butt is pointed at your enemy. That, combined with those tough GT hulls and overcharged shields can add a great deal to your combat endurance. Use it well.

GT missile tracking isn't quite as good as that of other factions, so take a moment and line your shot up carefully before taking it. About the only thing I don't like about the GT scout is that it's so damn cramped. I've looked at the design specs for both their lifepods and their scouts, and about the only difference is the two guns bolted on the side. Maybe it's just that I'm getting old, but I like a little space to stretch sometimes, y'know? When you're parked two clicks above the plane keeping a stealthy eye on an enemy camp it's nice to be able to work the kinks out a little.

Gigacorp

Giga scout

Let's be honest here. Gigacorp is all about the profit margin, and when it comes to their basic scouts it really shows. Even the paintjob is some bland, mass produced ick. There's little to be said about them, really. They do the job, but they won't win any awards. That's not to say they're boring, they're as versatile and potentially deadly to the enemy as any scout, it's just that aside from the high quality shields and engines that GigaCorp put on all their ships, there's really not much to say about them. Oh, and the hull design means they're big, fat targets. Can't have everything, I guess. Or in this case, can't really have anything, at least not at basic cost.

Unless, that is, your commander has upgraded all the way to heavy scouts because then, my friends, we have the joy of flying the GigaCorp luxury scout. The Lxy scout is a different beast altogether. As well as the bitchin' paint job, you have the rosewood control console with brass inlay, air conditioning, soft leather pilot's and gunner's chairs, a full autocannon in the turret, and the best sensor suite available to man.

It's those last two features that really make the Lxy scout worth $500. Most heavy scouts pack a mini autocannon, which does decent damage and has a pretty good range, but the Lxy scout packs a FULL autocannon - the same size and ferocity as the ones you find on bombers and gunships.

The sensor suite is also something special. Somehow the boffins in the GigaCorp labs have managed to come up with a scout sized sensor array that's almost as powerful as a pulse probe. You'll detect an item with a 100% Sig at a range of 4.3k away. I pity the HTT or stealth bomber that crosses paths with a turreted luxury scout. Then I pod them. Hey, it's my job.

Now combine those two and you have a killing machine. Use it to hunt miners. Track down and destroy enemy constructors. Play hell with their offensive operations. The luxury scout is a machine with which a dedicated scout whore can really come into their own. Just be absolutely sure, don't slap down that $500 unless you have someone to ride that turret! A full AC is wasted if there's nobody there to fire it.

Iron Coalition

IC scout

What can I say about the Coalition that hasn't been scrawled on the bathroom walls of Belters bars from here to Proxima Centauri? Sure, they're a bunch of moralistic, letter-of-the-law military nuts, but hot damn do they make cool ships!

To be honest, there's not much to say about the IC scout that doesn't apply to all their ships. Powerful shields, excellent damage from both guns and missiles, good energy capacitors, good ammo capacity, bloody noisy signature.

The main thing you'll need to bear in mind when flying an IC scout is their ability to deploy Rescue Probes. RPs cost $250 each, but they're worth it. Not only do they act as pickup points for pods on your team, but it also acts as an EWS probe, keeping a watchful eye out for the enemy. Just be careful where you deploy them as your enemies will want these things dead as soon as they find them.

Oh, and one last thing, with a little cunning rewiring you can overclock the sensor array on these things by about point-two percent. It won't make a blind bit of difference to your scan range, but the overheating chips should warm the footwell nicely and keep your toes from going numb during prolonged deployments. Just for the gods sakes, don't crosslink the alpha-c circuit into the delta powerlinks. My right arm still aches when there's a pressure fluctuation.

Rixian Unity

Rix scout

When dealing with the Unity we're really looking at two different scouts. The conventional Rix scout and the scout[SR] (aka the Ripscout).

Rixian guns are excellent. Both range and damage have a significant edge over human manufactured weapons, although there is still something buggy in their targeting systems - if you compare it to the design specs of their guns you'll notice the crosshairs never appear until the enemy is already well inside nominal range.

Your cross section is flat, meaning you're only likely to be taking serious hits from above and below, and your rate of yaw is excellent. So much so that oversteering can be something of a problem.

The bad news is twofold. Firstly, your pitch rate sucks. If there's an enemy above or below you (where you're easiest to hit) then you're going to have to roll and then turn left or right to face them. Secondly (and mainly for some) the Rix don't use missiles. You won't find launch tubes on your scout. Still, that cargo slot that is usually kept for a spare rack of missiles can be used for something more mission specific, usually an extra probe or prox mine.

Now to the Ripscout. It handles pretty well identically to the ordinary scout, except that it has a higher sig. That might tempt you to leave your shields back in base in order to be less visible, but that's probably not a good idea. The enemy are going to want your Ripscout dead asap, and for the same reason it cost you $500 to take one out of base.

You see, Ripscouts are smallrip capable (hence the name). This means scouts (including other Ripscouts), fighters and stealth fighters can all ripcord to you, at the cost of draining your energy bank. So if a Ripscout can get near enemy miners or constructors reinforcements are only seconds away. Killing your Ripscout is going to be a priority for the defenders and as a Ripscout pilot you have to walk a fine line between being somewhere useful, and being out of your enemies' gunsights. It might be a good idea to drop shields and run to the edge of the sector to lose eye, or sit and hide behind a rock somewhere while reinforcements rip in. The tricky part is that you're no good to anyone flying around 10k at sector boundary, or if you sit still you're unlikely to be somewhere useful for very long (enemy miners tend to keep moving around, y'know) and it won't take long for the enemy to realise that rix fighters keep appearing from the same spot, find you, and pod you.

As Rix, if your commander has invested in heavy scouts you're in for a treat. The non-SR heavy Rixian scout replaces the normal gun mount with one capable of mounting a forward firing mini autocannon. That's in addition to the maniac in your turret. That's twice the long range hose capacity. Bring an extra belt of ammo. Maybe two.

Heavy Ripscouts don't get the miniAC mount on the front but they're still worthwhile because with someone in your scout's turret the heat can be kept off you that bit more effectively. Don't forget all the mini-AC toting regular scouts that will be ripping to you. It really does add a whole new dimension to miner hunting in a Ripscout. Now you have to sweat over whether it's worth getting into miniAC range in order to pound on the target directly with your turret, or hang back in case the defenders come for you. Which they're likely to do anyway.

One thing I really dislike about Rix though is their lifepods. Inside there's this freaky, swirling, interior colour projection thing that's apparently quite soothing for Rixians, but always gives me a headache. I'm still trying to find the off switch for that, assuming they thought to put one in.

Technoflux

TF scout

The Flux. Mad science experiment gone rogue. Offshoot of IC R&D that's AWOL and doing its own thing. Nobody knows quite what it's doing or why, but it had some of its ships refitted for human use so it can hire mercenaries, and by golly does that make it fun time for the scout whores!

In terms of pure combat capability, the Technoflux scout wins above all the others, hands down. It handles well. Its shields regenerate at incredible speed. Its low mass makes for excellent acceleration. It comes with dual gattling energy cannons that have a long range and tight focus. Ripcord times are the shortest of any faction. Plasma generators are dropped like mines, and after a few seconds warmup time they start blasting every enemy ship within range. Beacons can be deployed for just $100 each to enable rapid pod pickup, just like IC rescue probes and Belters sanctuaries. And that's just the starting tech.

If you manage to bring home a light booster, or your commander chooses to research it (and for a paltry $1875, any commander who doesn't is a fool), you can mount it on your scout. So in addition to all the fun outlined above, you now have a decent enhancement to your speed and you can use the emergency boost-rip to get the hell out of trouble. In fact, combine the light booster with those twin cannons and it's not so much a scout, more a light fighter with excellent sensors and the ability to deploy probes and beacons.

Always, always carry a nanite in cargo. Technoflux miners are smallrip enabled, so if someone's beating up on your miners you can just drop what you're doing and rip in to provide defense and repair, and given Flux's short riptimes, you can get there pronto.

If you're heading for enemy space, bring a spare belt of ammo, too. Those twin Gattlings are hungry, but pack a hefty punch when you can get them on target. With a spare belt of ammo you can solo an undefended miner, and you should do so whenever the opportunity presents itself.

The Flux scout's main Achilles heel is its sheer versatility. By the time you've packed a nanite cannon, spare belt of ammo, booster fuel and a beacon in cargo, there's little room left for mission specific equipment. You may need to compromise somewhere along the line. Sometimes it's a no brainer. If you're scrambling to defend a miner in your own sector you probably won't need a beacon or the extra ammo. If it's a long range recon and probing run across the map you might want to leave out the spare fuel and save the booster for emergency use. Use your judgment, and don't be afraid to screw up. It's the best way to learn.

As with all Technoflux ships, the scout has no missile launch tubes. Apparently the AI can't handle missile firing, and the master brain, or whatever the hell is in charge of the mad bots, hasn't seen fit to put launch tubes on the ships retrofitted for human use. The long range guns go some way to offsetting this, but if your virtual cockpit is prone to signal lag you may find it difficult getting a solid burst to hit a target at range due to the lack of shot spread.

Plasma generators also present an interesting change of pace for the scout pilot. Like prox mines, plasgens need a few seconds before they arm. Unlike prox mines, plasgens work by blasting away at enemy ships in range. This means they're not much use for a typical prox-deployment-while-running as the target is unlikely to be in range for more than a second or so. Instead you should either work with companions to lay a trap at an aleph (they're excellent camping weapons), or lure your prey into a tight dogfight where you can force them to stay in range of the plasgen for an extended period. They're also satisfyingly effective against slow moving targets, like miners and constructors. Just drop one a little ahead of your victim's path and watch it blast away. On second thought, don't just watch. Open up with those twin Gatts and let 'em really have it!

If your commander decides to upgrade the garrison things get really interesting. Flux advanced scouts are capable of mounting dual nanite cannons. That's twice the nannage in the same amount of time. Unfortunately it's also twice the energy consumption. On a prolonged escort mission you may well find that your energy reserves run dry, so watch out for that. There have been times when I've decided to stick with just the one nanite, and found myself the only person still able to effectively Nan my target after a while because all the dual Nan scouts have run out of juice. Doesn't happen much these days though. Since I got myself a rep I'm often the first Nan targeted by the enemy pilots.

Flux heavy scouts are pure sex. As well as the usual mini autocannon and the twin nanite feature of the advanced scout, you get a third gattling slot and double plasgen capacity. Fighter grade firepower in a scouting package! Just bear in mind that those Gatts and the MiniAC all use energy as well as ammo. It's easy to run dry in an extended fight if you're not careful. Triple Flux Gattlings though... that's a serious punch.

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Well, that's all the factions covered. My bottle is empty, I'm having trouble seeing straight, and long range sensors just reported a bomber inbound on our techbase. Looks like I'd better get a move on.

RIPCORDING!

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