[JTL] Multiplayer Ships

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Multi-Player Ship Operations Guide V 1.31 by Tellahane

Formally known as the Decimator operation guide!

1.15: Added some adv. strategy info, more to come!

1.20: Added some more information, wish list, bug list etc..

1.25: Added Advanced Pilot MPS Technique, Added 1 item to wish list

1.26: Added a paragraph comparison, YT-1300 vs. VT-49 Decimator (need Nova info yet)

1.27: Added comparison for Nova Courier, and thoughts info, Submitted by (hase2 &KyrYxus)

1.28: Fixed typo's, added wish list items, edited bug list items

1.30: Added a few things about Elite components and included the Y-8 mining ship and mining notes for POB's, also removed bug list since there’s a far more up to date version! ENJOY!

1.31: Reposted this in the new forum as per requested. I went through re-read and tweaked/adjusted here and there to try and bring it partially up to date. I still would like to over-haul it but I need suggestions so please reply with your experience!

DISCLAIMER: This guide is Imperial biased, so consider that as you read and adjust your thoughts accordingly. I'm open for information to change things based on Rebel pilots' experience as well as Freelance. Please reply with the information that may need to be changed or added to the post. I will plan on doing a complete over-haul but probably will be tied to the release of the flyable gunboats. Enjoy the guide! There are also some various font changes in size, try and bear with me as that’s just really old formatting code that won't seem to change.

Positions:

There's 5 types of position: Pilot, Operations Officer, Engineer, Gunner, and Medical Officer.

Crew Minimum for combat operations: 3

1 Pilot/Operations Officer/Engineer

2 Gunners

Crew Preferred for combat operations: 5

1 Pilot

2 Gunners

1 Operation Officer

1 Engineer

The phrase "a well oiled-machine" comes to mind. With this group you cover all the bases of operations for this ship. However, no matter how good you are, or well-equipped, let's not forget that fighter escort!.

Weapon Specs(for all POB ships):

2 Rotary Gunner Turrets. 1 for each gunner

3 Missile Ordnances. All controlled by pilot.(FIX: The YT-1300 only has 2 ordnance slots -Thnx to Kyr'Yxus)

Ship total mass is near 5,000,000 so load it up!

Multi-Person Ship comparison:

I've grinded up Master Privateer on my alternate character and picked out my YT-1300. I loaded it with all of the exact same components that I had in my Decimator and have put it through extensive full-crew testing. Below is a simple list of pro's and con's from my point of view. YMMV. The Nova Courier comparison was brought in by hase2!

Rebel YKL-37R Nova Courier

Pro's

3 Ordnance slots instead of 2 for the YT-1300

can go overt in any system. Opposed to the YT-1300

very good visibility due the cross shaped layout.

imp ships show red.

Con's

difficult to navigate through the interior compared to the YT (several rooms, narrow corridors)

less style while dogfighting as opposed to the YT

hard to find 'matching' furniture

HUGE target, much larger than both the YT and the Decimator. The hit profile on the Nova is unbelievable.

Corellian YT-1300:

Pro's

Better Gunner visibility and angle of attacks

Smaller Ship shape making it harder to hit

Better looking interior even though it’s not shaped right(the gunner turret ladder is supposed to be centered, it’s not even close)

More fun to dogfight/fly in then the big hulking Decimator

Repairing panels are easier to navigate and find for the engineering crew

2 static chairs in the cockpit that anyone can use

Con's

Only privateers can man the operations chair, no rebel or Imperial pilots

Only 2 ordnance launchers instead of 3

Corellian YT-2400:

Pro's

Best Gunner visibility and angle of attacks

Smaller Ship shape making it harder to hit

More fun to dogfight/fly in then the big hulking Decimator or courier.

Repairing panels are easier to navigate and find for the engineering crew

Con's

Only 2 ordnance launchers instead of 3

All faction enemy ships will appear as yellow not red, unless in deep space making it harder to target

Imperial VT-49 Decimator:

Pro's

Gets the full 3 ordnance launchers instead of 2 like the YT-1300

Both Imperial and privateers can man the operations chair

Can go overt in this vehicle in any system

Rebel ships will show up as red to even privateer gunners. Allowing for easier targeting

Con's

Bigger and fatter, looks a lot uglier when dogfighting with it.

Harder interior to navigate to find and repair panels or conduits

Because it's bigger it's easier to be hit.

Gunners have less visibility because of the long front(mainly bottom gunner)

No other static furniture, crafted furniture doesn’t "match" the interior well.

Y-8 Mining Ship:

Pro's

Gets the largest cargo capacity for minerals

Anyone can use this ship!

Can go overt in this vehicle in any system(but strongly not recommended!)

Can equip the most powerful mining lasers

Con's

Bigger and fatter, looks a lot uglier when dogfighting with it.

Harder interior to navigate to find and repair panels or conduits

Because it's bigger it's easier to be hit.

Gunners have extremely less visibility then any of the other 3 POB ships

Not good in dog fighting, not good for fighting in general

Pilot: Fly level and straight as best as possible. The ship should be considered a heavy bomber with turret defenses. Pilot only needs to worry about flying even so the gunners can properly engage defensively, and to drop the missiles where they need to go. Depending on your flight situation, whether your escorting a mission, engaging a series of fighter waves, or doing a destroy mission of a strong target you should vary your ordnance load. Against fighters and escorts I'd suggest loading up 3 mark 4 proton launchers, and use them as incoming waves enter the area to deal some basic initial damage that your gunners can finish off. This follows in escort missions as well. For destroying targets there are differences of opinion. I usually load up 2 space bomb launchers and 1 mark 4 for fighter defense. Some go 3 seismic launchers etc it can vary depending on your situation. Planning ahead is your best tactic.

Operations Officer: This guy is the one who runs the droid controls and the special abilities that comes with your pilot class. And is the only one to do so. Communication between the pilot and operations officer is critical for working together. The best thing for the Decimator is to use weapons and weapon overloads for the gunner, assuming your reactor can hold it. When going up against a destroy target focus on bomber strikes and the droid weapon overload.

Adv. Strategy: The best setup that I have seen with my Decimator and will probably work with all three ships is to set up your droid interface at the lowest possible speed (the lower the droid command speed the faster you can use them!), and use Weapon Overload 3 or 4, 3 with an Elite Capacitor and 4 with a Mining-Grade Capacitor. This will give your gunners more power overall. I also do suggest Engine Overload 4. Only set this up if you have the necessary reactor energy , otherwise it will disable some components (the most fun I had was doing an engine overload and having my droid interface disabled so I couldn’t turn the overload off! ahhhh!). Also keep in mind that your standard pilot abilities half-stack. And what I mean by that is the advantages of your ability will hit, but any advantages from your droid command may override it. For ex. /eweapons will make my capacitor be stronger and add damage, but since my weapons are overloaded it only just makes my capacitor stronger. Having multiple operation officers has its advantages as well. One person can sit down and call a bomberstrike or reload ability, then a 2nd can sit down and call theirs as well. Though I haven't tested with the actual abilities like emergency shields or weapons twice, the double bomberstrike is successful. The ability timer is based to the player sitting in the chair.

Turret Gunners: Watch your capacitor and try to make sure to fire if you know you will hit o that you don't run out at a time you really need the energy. When you are being shot at, make sure to hit 'r' or whatever you bound to target what last shot at you and to shoot it down first. Two or three shots at it and the NPC will pull off. In a PvP situation your job is to constantly spam the find nearest enemy player button which you may have to bind, and shoot at them just before they come into range and keep spamming it so they run into your fire before they get the chance to fire back.

Adv. Strategy: The best controls for a gunner to use is the mouse. Kick your mouse sensitivity up to max for the quick turning and adjusting during fire fights. A mouse vs. a joystick just completely blew the joystick out of the ring.

Engineer: Runs around and repairs things, have lots of repair tools of many different types stored on the ship and on the player. Keep players posted in sections for quick repairs as you take hits. For quick grabs it may not be a bad idea to throw down some extra repair kits below or next to all the different components incase someone dies or you have the operations station jump out and assist with repairs. Best to have everyone on the ship admin for repairing purposes. (don't load anything in your Decimator you don't want stolen!)

Adv. Strategy: Nothing incredibly big needs to happen here other it might be good to have at least one engineer if not all shipwrights so they can craft repair kits if necessary if you run out of your stashed set of kits.

Fighter Escort: This is a big one. For your multi-player ship no matter what you have loaded in your equipment armor shields or otherwise you need a fighter escort with you to be mostly effective. Just like discover, don't leave home without it!

Adv. Strategy: Though the more fighters that are not aggroed on the MPS the better, sometimes it may get too hot on your tail, don't be afraid to use the advantages of the guns on the MPS. Fly the fighters on your six right past it and let the MPS lay waste to your enemy.

Roles of the Multi-Player Ship:

Escort Missions:

Escort mission are probably the most fun for the crew, All the pilot needs to do is form up on the target your escorting. Usually right behind it either higher or lower, sometimes to the side. Make sure you give a good clearance so your top and bottom gunners can shoot forward at the waves of fighters as they come in. Load all 3 of your ordnances with anti-fighter type missiles. Usually mark 4 protons or use concussions. Not bent on destroying unless you want to but more for taking down their shields for easier kills.

Stay with your escort and let your gunners do most of the work unless you start taking hits and your shields get low, then pull off increase speed and do some simple maneuvers nice and smoothly until you have cleared of the fighters on you then rejoin the formation. Your fighter escort should keep anyone who aggros pretty busy.

Fighter Wave Missions(duty missions):

This is more challenging, You do basically everything you would for an escort mission except for 2 major points. The first is instead of flying formation with the escort(which doesn't exist in this mission) stay towards the back of your group. Leaving your fighter escort in front of you to engage the first wave of fighters.

Second once you enter or approach what I call the storm(the are where all the fighting is going on like a swarm of gnats so to speak) begin a nice easy simple non-changing turn around the equator of the battle. Giving your top and bottom gunner both plenty of targets to shoot at. Just keep the turn steady and stay with the crowd. As far as loadout, stick with the anti-fighter as usual.

Destroy Target Mission(For the bigger then fighter targets):

This is the harder, but more fun part to play! First thing is first, load up your ordnance with at least 2 launchers that deal extensive damage. I personally go with space bombs, some go with seismic; depending on your target you may want one or the other. For your 3rd ordnance you can load up a 3rd launcher that’s seismic or space bomb, or you can have a little fighter defense and grab protons or concussions. Up to the pilot and the varying situation.

For this point lets say your target is a gunboat with its own fighter escort. The goal here is to have your fighter escort take on the enemy's fighter escort, keep 'em busy take ‘em down all that fun stuff. Basically leaving you un-aggroed. Approach the target to about 2000m.

If you are Imperial, call in bomber strikes on the target, they usually clear out the weapons for you. If you're not Imperial then you better have one or two fighters fly in before you and target the weapons subsystems with your gunners and the fighters. once the weapons are down close into missile range and release the boom boom's.

If you have high enough forward armor and shields, or if the craft is not aggroed you, you can go ahead and hit it hard with everything you got. Note however the guns on the gunboats and bigger cruisers may try to shoot the incoming missiles down especially space bombs since they are so slow. If need be I would go after the weapon system with seismics once the shields were down. Seismics do pretty well for taking down components.

Destroy Target Missions(Corvette's etc.):

This is one of the more fun things. As an Imperial in my Decimator with a decent crew and a 3 man fighter escort I've taken down a corvette in under 5 minutes. First of all the corvette in Kessel, spawns with 2 gunboats and fighter escorts. If you are Imperial (you guessed it) launch a few bomb strikes at the corvette itself to clear its weapons. If not, first send in your fighter escort to pull and drag the fighters from the corvette, take ‘em down.

After that come up behind the gunboats and do the same from above. Take out the rear shields and weapons then release hell with your forward ordnance. Once they are out of the way its corvette fun time. Target and take down the weapons of the corvette, the have 8 each. SAVE your missiles. Mostly let your fighter escorts do this.

Now for the primary and secondary shields there are 2 ways to do it. One which is the easiest is approach from the top or bottom or sides and release your seismic/space bombs on them. Both generators are on the front side of the neck, right behind the bridge. They are hard to hit with just fighters because the corvette moves. Missiles however nail them very easily.

The second way is to pull up next to the corvette's bridge on either side and have your gunners shoot at it while you match speed. After the shields are gone have the fighter escort take out the engines since it’s a very easy task. While they are doing it maneuver your craft to above or below the engine section.

Once the engines are out, target the reactor and again release space bombs/seismics. The reactor is a very hard component to hit, but not for missiles =). Once the reactor is down the bridge is pretty easy either pull in front of the corvette and let your gunners shoot out the window or do a pass and hit it with more bombs/missiles to finish the corvette off. And boom boom boom enjoy the show!

Narf's Disclaimer: I am reposting this. I have made some corrections, mostly typos, but haven't really read through and fixed it up. There are some claims in here that I have not verified. If you find a discrepancy or wholly inaccurate information, either post in the thread or PM me and I will update the post. This goes for both sections (stupid forum length limits counting formatting characters).

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Advanced Pilots with Advanced Equipment and crew:

This is something I was able to do successful last night with just 2 gunners, and an operations officer. This was pretty awesome to do so I'm going to throw it up here for some of you very advanced MPS pilots to try out with your gunners. We've all see the falcon in ep6 flying around just as a fighter would, with both guns fixed forward taking down fighters in a fast dogfight. Well in JTL you can't fix the turrets forward, but you can do something slightly better. Below are all the equipment I currently load in my Decimator, and a few things I have ordered that I will be getting for my Decimator soon. With this set-up and lots of practice flying, I'm able to go head to head with X-Wings, Y-Wings, B-Wings and, in some cases, after a good chunk of practice, A-Wings, all Tier 5. *****Now that there are also these new Elite POB parts I strongly suggest you invest in them, they make the world of difference...*****

With a tight setup on my Decimator of Elite parts and some looted, I can dogfight with most fighters. What I've trained my best gunners to be able to do is to keep the guns facing forward, and change them a little as I come up behind enemy fighters for them to shoot down. Now as the pilot that’s not as easy as it sounds, you have to maneuver the ship regardless of the missing crosshairs to a point where both guns can shoot at the fighter, which is not easy to learn but doable. Using this method one night, SOLO, my gunners and I were able to take down the corvette in Kessel with all of its escorts, a corvette in Deep Space with fighter escorts, and a half-dozen gunboats as well, with only 1 plasma fire to a reactor which was fixed and so far working properly since the last patch, and a few armor hits, but the armor never got below half. Being able to turn and knowing when to accelerate/decelerate is the biggest key, you have to do it blindly and it takes practice.

Added Thoughts From pilots:

Equipment

Since MPS tend to die fast when in trouble I would try to use as much crafted equipment as possible, at least for the training phases when you and your gunners start getting used to new tactics or enemies. Expect to die. Since mass isn't an issue on MPSs at all (at least atm) you can use heavy crafted stuff for a while.

Programs:

Engine Overload 3 - This is a must-have. Good average boost with less of the damage, and won't disable weapon systems.

Weapon Overload 3 - This is a must-have.

Weapon Capacitor to Shield Shunt 3 - This is a must-have. As long as your capacitor is overloaded, you are set.

Reactor Overload 3 - As necessary. Nice to have for situations when the reactor gets damaged and some stuff gets disabled.

Weapon Capacitor Overcharge 4 - Very handy, since it raises capacitor regen and max energy. More energy = more shields regained per shunt.

Shield Adjust/Reinforce - As necessary. Shield Reinforce is very useful for making an assault onto another slow moving vehicle, giving more power to the shields.

Space Mining with POB's and Y-8!

First to start off I'm going to focus on the Y-8 and you will understand as I go. A lot of people I've talked to all agree that the Y-8 is a useless mining ship and I strongly disagree after playing around for awhile...first in order to get the Y-8 ship to mine you need the following requirements:

You need the pilot inside the pilot chair(mining lasers will cease mining the second the pilot gets out of the chair.

You need to equip the "elite mining laser(Y-8 only) into your weapon slots(all 3 of ‘em).

You need a Y-8 only cargo hold(the small holds 5000 I think the large holds 15000 not sure). **** You can now get crafted holds for the Y-8 a high as 50,000ish ****

You need 2 gunners!

Possibly an ops chair person for doing shield shunts in areas where you might get attacked by bandits a lot.

Once you're setup to mine you can head out to your first asteroid; I'd suggest carbonaceous in Naboo system or other Tier 1 systems to start off. First of all don't bother chasing asteroids down, right now the asteroids are infinite spawn meaning they will always be there if you blow it up another spawns etc... Point your main laser at the asteroid form about oh 2-300m away, and fire one shot, let the first asteroid chunk pop out. Watch the direction that the chunk goes, ROTATE do not turn your ship so that at least 1 of your gunners has a very good firing area in that direction(yes this means that sometimes your rear gunner may get bored sometimes your top gunner does). And then just fire at an even pace. Have your top/rear gunner shoot the large chunks primarily and then get what little ones he can while its within range, use 3rd person and make sure to keep popping out chunks so the gunner can immediately switch to the next chunk once the asteroids get out of range.

Now wow this sounds like a pain in the butt but it is somewhat faster then just a fighter, that is if you have a good gunner *wink*

But hey that’s the Y-8 what about the other POB's! Good question here we go:

The other POB ships like the nova, Decimator, and the YT-1300 all have 2 turrets and decent visibility in almost 360' angles... so you have a better chance of getting asteroids using the stationary method above.. let’s run through the requirements:

Pilot again must be sitting in the Pilot Chair

Equip 2 class 3 mining lasers(yes the ones from the fighters can work in POB's)

Have an ops chair if needed and of course 2 gunners..

The large cargo hold for (POB only) is about 3500 which still is better then a fighter and you can get better crafted from a shipwright. See your local structures crafter to get the highest cargo hold you can fit!

Again with the Y-8 method park yourself outside the asteroid about 2-300 meters, have your top or lower gunner fire 1-2 shots and see where the first chunk goes, then rotate your ship so that both gunners can shoot the same general direction of where the asteroid goes and designate one gunner to pop out chunks as you go.

Well Mitoh that’s all fine and dandy, but it's still only slightly faster then my fighter but takes more people and work! And this can be true in most cases. but hey put them all together and you got yourself one really fast mining operation. For example, put a Y-8 set up on the asteroid, then align say 2 POB ships on either side but further out from the asteroids, or even put them about 5-600m out at the direction the asteroid chunks will fly off, bam as the ones get away from the Y-8 you got 2 sets of sentry turrets picking them off as they come into range, far far more efficient then a fighter...and much faster...but even with sentry turrets mining lasers don't usually do enough damage to handle Tier 4-5 bandits effectively(can take like 10 minutes just to kill 4) and they have a smaller range the any other weapon...so make sure to keep 1 or 2 fighters incase a chunk or two gets away or at the least escorts for the mining convoy, as I've stated plenty of times in this guide a POB isn't appreciated at its most without somewhat of a fighter escort.

Wish List:

Ordnance Panels Built into the ship as well. This would have 2-fold ability. One would be to repair it. The other would be to allow members of the crew to re-load the ordnance once it ran dry, mid-flight.

Countermeasure panel. There isn't one that I have found and would be needed.

Droid Interface panel. Also something I haven't found yet, perhaps this one could be built right into the cockpit area.

More things the non-chair crew can do to keep busy. While en-route to various missions it can be very very boring to sit there and not do anything for a majority of the fight. Even when the MPS starts taking decent damage to the point things need repaired. It only takes a few more shots before the whole thing is destroyed anyway. Increasing the armor of the ship can help to a degree. However having a system where a player can plug into a panel or run through some basic GUI items attached to various panels like shields or weapons, can cause a slight increase in power or better efficiency without causing any DMG to the item etc.

A Battle Stations Alarm!. There are times when a 2nd alarm for when the ship engages in combat would be handy and realistic among the POB ship to notify the crew to go to battle stations!

On-Board Repair droids(Idea by: Moricky). Have Droids with special DE-made repair modules where you load them up with the repair kits, and when the ship components take damage, the droid would automatically go to the panel and start repairing it at X rate, for X multiplier of the repair kit. These droids should either be placed as a part of the ship, or made to work from any players who call one out anywhere on the Multi-player ship.

On-Board Droid Power Boosting. Have Droids with special DE components that allow members aboard the ship who aren't manning a gunner or ops chair position to hook their droids up to specific devices to further boost their capabilities at a somewhat large cost to the droids power ability, requiring a lot of droid batteries or a power droid to be running around recharging these droids.

Docking Ability between ships. This is a big one. All 4 Multi-person ships including the SoroSuub, as far as I know, have docking hatches in some form. Pilot owners should be able to add a name to a different list in the ship. The name would have to be the pilot owner of the opposite craft. Both would have to come to a halt, and then they could dock with each other. On the inside of the ships, at the docking hatch there would be a terminal that would open up. This terminal is nothing more then transfer to the other ship. Nothing spectacular needs to be done. Thus the characters can load into the opposing craft instead of dealing actually connecting the two in some way. This can also provide player content out the wazoo. Capturing ships, even perhaps NPC' ships for non-space loot provided there’s some heavy duty NPC's guarding their ship on the inside... as well as transferring personnel or loot if a guild should decide to move to a spot and camp it for loot they could turn it in to a MPS, to hold until a SoroSuub or some other ship could come buy and take a load of supplies back to a planet for home base. Of course as well as with this anyone not in an mps should be able to dock but the only thing they can do is transfer items to and from inventory to a loot box or a transfer box within that mps.

Optional Storage space components. 75 inventory is ok for a ship, but add in furniture, supplies and other storage you can fill that up rather quickly, thus as the ship collects loot there’s no room for in the loot box. IDEA: Allow for optional storage components that add 75 inventory for a max of 2 extra spaces, each one would take 1 extra lot from your house lots but would allow you to have bigger space for loot furniture and supplies. These components of course should cause the max mass of the ship for components to reduce as well.

Optional hard-points On both the VT-49 and the YKL-37R there are 3 forward ordnance and 2 gunnery turrets, 2 ordnance for the YT-1300. These ordnance slots should turn into optional hard points for either forward weapons, missile ordnance, possibly more countermeasure launchers, or in some cases depending on the physical design of the ship, the option to add another turret lot. I would remove both escape pod launchers on my ship in a heartbeat if I could attach a lateral turret to each side leaving me only 1 ordnance lot.

Customizable SoroSuub. I've looked the SoroSuub out up and down inside and out, and it looks like it was originally designed to first, have a top and bottom gunner turret, as well as a rear turret in the top back. There are 3 what looks like forward gunmounts on the bottom. Lando was able to customize his ship to have weapons and what not, I think we should have the ability to modify ours at one huge cost, one it should cost close to 100k to turn it into a modifiable deed, and it should be no longer invulnerable when you do so. Of course it will still remain un-redeedable and un-tradable as it is a veteran reward. The SoroSuub should have the same thing as the Decimator or the Nova Courier with one difference, 3 turrets, 2 top 1 bottom, no ordnance launchers, but 2-3 forward guns. I think it should be slower then a Decimator and Nova Courier with all that extra equipment and turrets but still should be customizable.

Trick/Tip List:

Pilot: When doing a bombing run on a heavily armed target, fire all 3 of your ordnance at the exact same time. Bind them to the same weapons group especially. Though it doesn't increase a whole lot, it does do a bit more damage then if you fired them separately.

Operations Officer/Pilot/Gunner: Use the weapons overload 3. This decreases the charge per shot, and increases damage to the gunner turrets. It also increases the damage done on your ordnance as well! Overcharge 4 is pretty much useless as it increases the damage significantly, but at huge cost to your capacitor. It also disables your ordnance no matter what.

Pilot/Operations Officer: During escort missions, use engine efficiency in combo with weapons overload. Match speeds with your escort. If you have a decent enough engine you can use efficiency and still keep up with speed. This extra power will go into all of your other systems including shields.

Multiple Operations Officers: You can have one sitting down, call a bomberstrike or some other non-droid ability. Then get up, and have a 2nd member sit down and use theirs. As far as this was written, the timers are tied to the player, and not to the ship. However using 3 eweapons or ethrust etc will not stack as far as how much power they do, just on how long they last.

Ship Owner: It's always helpful to place down repair kits for the corresponding panels right below, or right in front of it as a last chance emergency, incase your engineers get killed.

I will add more as I learn, still not doing the whole PvP thing with it as I'm spending most of my time helping my guildies level up in their pilot. If anyone has any info they would like to add please feel free and reply. As well as any tips/bugs/wishes they would like to see. I will be checking this every day or two give or take and try and keep this more up to date as I learn stuff. Enjoy!