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Mor-Dan wrote:
Has anyone ever even read one of those books? I see them everywhere and just thought I would borrow the title


Ok, so you loaded JTL, now what? Well, when loaded in there should have been a screen pop up asking you what flag you wanted to fly under: Imperial, Freelance, or Rebel. You choose a city and no matter where you are it takes you straight to that city with a nice little path to the trainer. The trainer gives you a starter ship and a mission, and you head off to the starport and choose "Launch into space". You're flying around when these three Black Sun pilots pop out of no where and start chasing you. No, these aren't the mission guys, as they will be in a red box and use little piloting skills. You target one but the other two just waste you from the back and you realize pretty quickly; this ship sux arse. i need a new ship.


Now we are up to date. Not everyone was able to play beta so not everyone knows what to look for when assembling a ship. Well the good news is that your starter ship is the easiest ship you will ever have to outfit. The bad news is it will still suck arse when compared to higher end competition if not properly outfitted, and in this case i mean tier 2 enemies. SO, what do i need, and what should i look for? Well, I am glad you asked. The first thing you need to do is find a Master Shipwright who can fill a personal order for you:

1 Ship Chassis
1 Mark 1 reactor core
1 Mark 1 engine with a top speed enhancement
2 Light Durasteel Armour plates with armour level enhancements
1 Mark 1 Shield Generator with a mass reducer enhancement
1 Mark 1 Weapons Capacitor
1 Blaster Cannon with a speed limiter enahncement


Now you're saying, "Ok, Mor-Dan, so what is all this crap?" Well, keep your shirt on and i will tell you:


Ship Blueprint/Chassis/Assembly

This is the foundation of your ship. DO NOT SKIMP ON THIS PART. How well you shop this item will determine how good your ships can be. For a starter ship this number should be well into the 11,000s. There is a wide variety of ships available at this level, as well as any other level, so I will not go into name details. The way this works is you buy a "blueprint" from a Shipwright (as well as the other things that were/will be mentioned), then go to your local starport and find the chassis salesman. He will search your inventory for a blueprint and quote you a price (10k creds for a starter chassis). After you pay, you will receive a deed for that ship. Unpack it, go to a ship terminal, and choose the option to manage your ship components. Each category you have an item for will have a little yellow box next to it. Click on the box, select the item you wish to load, and choose load on the top, middle screen. Do this for every item you have to put in your ship. At the bottom you will see your chassis size (again, should be over 11k) and, after you load your reactor, your energy allowance. If after you load up one of these numbers is red, you need to talk to a Shipwright about replacing an item with something that will fit. Be VERY descriptive in what you need (ie. i am 200 over on energy, what is the best way to lower my energy without sacrificing performance? -or- These are the power levels/mass of the items I have... do you have anything better than these?)


Reactor Core

The reactor core is what gives your ship power. The key stats for this component are Power and Mass requirements. The power available needs to be over 10500 to be considered of average quality. Anything thing less tan this means the builder is not using very good supplies. Once the power level is over 10500 all other experimentation should go to mass reduction.

Engine

This is your key propulsion unit. Without it you don't go anywhere. However, the level 1 engines are crap for speed. For instance, my first engin gave me a top speed of 396. You don't get much more sucky than that when having to travel 7km through space. What you are looking for here is an engine in the 49.0 and up range. That is a great starter engine. After the engine speed has been maxed, you want all other experimentation to go to mass reduction, as the increased speed increases the mass of the ship (i could be backwards here and it could be the energy consumption that increases... i don't have my old charts from beta anymore, but i am sure someone will correct me and then i will update this).

Durasteel Plating

This is your armour. Once your shields are gone this is what gets hit. It is the last line of defence before your weapons, engines, chassis, etc get damaged. There are two armour holes, a primary and secondary slot. Since your shields are also going to suck big time, you need your armour up over 250 fore and aft (front and back for the nautically challeneged) to help protect you from that rear bogey fire, and the one that charges you just blasting away. The armour enhancement will increase the mass of your ship, so all remaining experimentation after the armourl evel needs to go into mass reduction.

Shields

This is the primary defense system for your ship, and one of the REALLY customizable parts once you find out what type of pilot you are. For now we will start with a base of balanced shields in front and back. These aren't very good right now, but they should be over 230 in front and back. The mass reducer is not 100% necessary, but might be depending on the Chassis size of your ship. Your shields should be the last component you buy fro your ship to find out what you can and cannot fit onto your vessel.

Weapons Capacitor

This is what allows you to fire your guns and torpedos. The key stat here is recharge rate. The higher this is, the less total energy you need it to hold. Ideally, you want this number over 20.0, but the 19s will do because of what we are going to do to the blaster cannons.

Blaster/Ion/Disruptor Cannons

This is your main offensive weapon. As you can see, there are three types, which will become important later. For right now, you want blaster cannons because they are the most balanced damage type. The speed delimiter is going to increase your refire rate (marginally to tell the truth.. it really should be higher) while decreasing the energy requird to fire by about half. Basically, you will be recharging faster than you can fire so you will in essence have unlimited ammunition. In Beta, i had my ship with dual cannons set up with an Ion cannon for knocking out shields and a disruptor for knocking out armour and the ability to fire indefinitely. I was taking down Tier 4 ships in a tier 1 ship AFTER they changed the system. You, however, are in a starter ship, so quit dreaming.



Depending on the person you find, and the supplies they have, this configuration should work. You may notice there is no booster and no torpedos on this ship, and that is because they are dispensible at this time. They will come in handy later when you are ready for advanced tactics in a ship that can actually PERFMOR enhanced tactics. The content you will be flying against at first will not be able to withstand your onslaught for very long with this ship. They can't really damage you, and even though your weapons are crap for damage you never have to pause to recharge. This means their shields don't get to regenerate. Now all that's left is for you to learn to fly...

Good luck, pilot...

...and may the force be with you.

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I also seriously recommend shopping around.  On my server in particular, one Shipwright sells basic Y-Wing chassis for 80k, while everyone else sells identical chassis for 150k and up (have seen as high as 500k).  It's the same thing as the day mounts came out.  Who remembers CHs selling Kaadus for 500k or more in Coronet and now they can't give em away?  Vehicles were also the same on day one, and so forth.  Don't overpay if you can get the same thing somewhere else for a much better price.