Has anyone managed to get the tier 4 strike craft? (2024)

With the Paragons DLC, a legendary admiral can appear with an event to unlock special strike craft.

They have interesting stats:

Note the 5 armor. This won't really slow down enemy strikecraft too much - they'll still kill you in 2 hits on average- but flak batteries have -75% vs armor, giving you a fair amount of extra health against PD. This is the same reason that prethoryn swarm strikers are so resistant to PD. They also have an extra 5% evasion. So while they only have a little extra damage, they should be a bit tougher to get rid of.

Unlike Renowned Leaders, legendary leaders seem pretty rare. Maybe I just need to play more games to try these out.

This is a good question, as a strike craft enthusiast. I'll dig into the code and see how to get the Legendary Leader, then see if there's a reliable way to get it in-game.

I have no idea if this is literally relevant at all, but the last I checked the only "AI Personalities" that priortize strike craft are "Honorbound Warriors, "Peaceful Traders", and "Migratory Flocks", also also possibly the Devouring Swarm one. The Legendary Leader might be tied to one of those playstyles.

Hansatron said:

With the Paragons DLC, a legendary admiral can appear with an event to unlock special strike craft.
View attachment 981579
They have interesting stats:
View attachment 981580
Note the 5 armor. This won't really slow down enemy strikecraft too much - they'll still kill you in 2 hits on average- but flak batteries have -75% vs armor, giving you a fair amount of extra health against PD. This is the same reason that prethoryn swarm strikers are so resistant to PD. They also have an extra 5% evasion. So while they only have a little extra damage, they should be a bit tougher to get rid of.

Unlike Renowned Leaders, legendary leaders seem pretty rare. Maybe I just need to play more games to try these out.

Click to expand...

No, don't let this be the Tier-4 Strike Craft - I'm "fine" with it as an alternative SC option, but it doesn't follow a progression from T3 Advanced SC.

• Damage should go up ~30% Tier to Tier, versus 13%, so you'd expect the Damage range to go to 8-22 and Average Damage to go to 52.17 (30.4%).
• Evasion is kind of effed already, with T0 Scout at 60%, T1 Basic SC at 65%, then T2 Improved SC jumps all the way to 80%, and finally T3 Advanced SC DOESN'T improve. A 5 point increase is probably close to what you'd expect here, but the starting and ending states are both wonky.
• Speed has jumped by 50 each Tier (which (surprise!) has its own issues), so only a 25 point jump is probably too short.
• The thing that makes this very much an alternative option is the increases to defenses. Again, the increases to SC defenses are flat (i.e., effectively diminishing), with T0 starting at 10 points (Flak does 200% vs.Shields, so the 10 Shields are effectively 5 points of defense, plus the 5 Hull), going up by 4.5 points to T1 (5 Shields/2 + 2 Hull) or 45%, then 5.5 points (37.9%) to T2, and last 4.5 points (22.5%) to T3. This last jump is closer to 21 points (85.7%) because the 5 points of Armor facing 25% vs.Armor attacks are worth 20 points of Hull on their own.

I spent a thread analyzing Strike Craft, alongside Guided Weapons but this was almost exactly a year ago, so other changes have come through that invalidate some of it. I still stand by the ideas that I brought up, though the numbers definitely need serious adjustment to match to the current paradigms.

The Alloy Costs are shifted down to match to be 4x S-slot Missiles (though they can be adjusted the other way, to match, e.g., L-slot Red Lasers, if needed). Power uses the same values in the middle and more accurately extrapolates in either direction. Damage is much closer to a proper progression (the first two jumps start so small). Tracking and Evasion still have to deal with the Evasion cap, so it does no good to identify Tracking as 100% (unless it can be debuffed?) and Evasion should reach the cap eventually (I have a TON of issues with the Evasion/Tracking continuum in general, but I'll leave those out of this for now). Shield and Hull together progress almost dead on at 30% per Tier. Speed increases are slightly off of their source, in that the Thruster techs are T2, T3, T4, and T5, so I basically moved their effective boosts for SC down a Tier (and kept it at +25%/Tier even at T4, while Dark Matter Thrusters are +125% over base).

If you wanted a T4-equivalent alternative SC for this leader, you could eliminate or downgrade some of the other increases from T3 (primarily damage, shields/hull, and speed) in order to have the 5 Armor (effectively 20 defense) addition, and/or increase the Costs or Power numbers. If it's seen as being more of a Kinetic Artillery vs. L-slot Gauss Cannon type "parallel" technology, the other increases could still happen somewhat (the addition of Armor is HUGE if paired with everything else above).

Cordane said:

• The thing that makes this very much an alternative option is the increases to defenses. Again, the increases to SC defenses are flat (i.e., effectively diminishing), with T0 starting at 10 points (Flak does 200% vs.Shields, so the 10 Shields are effectively 5 points of defense, plus the 5 Hull), going up by 4.5 points to T1 (5 Shields/2 + 2 Hull) or 45%, then 5.5 points (37.9%) to T2, and last 4.5 points (22.5%) to T3. This last jump is closer to 21 points (85.7%) because the 5 points of Armor facing 25% vs.Armor attacks are worth 20 points of Hull on their own.

Click to expand...

I wasn't thinking about SC vs. SC action, but instead just Flak vs. SC - the 5 Armor is totally useless against other Strike Craft, with their 150% vs.Armor rate and higher DPD. If defensive SC are seen as being the more dominant threat to these T4 SC alternatives, then the other improvements are mostly if not totally valid to apply. But if Flak is still involved, it's a huge advantage in that scenario and maybe some give-back would be necessary.