Utopia Prizes and builds

Icebreaker 

The newest garrison hull for the next raid, following the format of the Hellwraith and Cannoneer as the go-to hull for the next 3 months. However, this a tier 6 hull, both the Hellwraith and Cannoneer were tier 5 hulls. Since tier 6 is the highest tier-currently-this can lead down two paths.

• The Icebreaker won't be getting a limited flagship 

or 

• Kixeye will be adding tier 6.5-7 soon

You think people have been complaining about the Pride and Liberator recently? Just wait until 6.5 and 7 tiered flagship versions of them. Enough about future gebuckel, what can we do with the Icebreaker now? 

Well, looking at its stats only

It's a fucking tank. 

The starting defenses of 60%-strike that 66% because of it's FoE, and deflection of 600; already besting the punisher, with its 110% rocket reload leaving the base reload of the paired weapon, D-100S, at .48 seconds and with a BDPS of 13,900. Ranked at 57%, giving the rockets a minima reload of .2 seconds, boosts the BDPS up to 23,828.

But Ouch37, this is for the weapon not the ship! 

Yeah I know, on to the ship now.

With a comparison chart of other worthwhile tanks to use in garrison. 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16y7-bfLTum-jVBb5lTltuAkNXAElxRx53TIvzeDcleI/edit?usp=sharing

Green-best out of two or more

Yellow-tied for best 

Cyan-No stats or non applicable 

Red-Terrible, just wrong, 

Orange-Hopefully gets reduced (yes I know there is already a 50% armour repair reduction, but 3
hours for a blank hull is still a lot, people still add armour) 

The Icebreaker has the best deflection/DPS stats, best combat speed, and armour. All useful
thingsin garrison tanks/spotters. However, it is lacking countermeasure boosts, so a starting
build will need that; if you are putting countermeasures on it if not skip this. Along with
defense to pen and explosive, speed, and damage abilities. Let's build! 

Alright, this is what I got. I'll explain each component, and other substitutes-if available. 

• Hailstorm-D - Anti-mortar as the Garrison targets are bi-focused on explosive damage, fully
  ranked should be able to shoot down, at minimum without anti-mortar evasion, 1-2 mortars
  shells. Having four of them should be more than enough to keep the mortars out of the sky.
  Can be replaced withGale 3. 
• Phalanx 4 - The other half of the damage is penetrative, thus missiles. Two is minimal I say,
  with the rhinos in current targets overwhelming a single one. Fully ranked, with FLCS, should
  shoot down 13-14 missiles, without anti-missile evasion. Can be replaced with Phalanx 3,
  but refit ASAP.
• D98-U - 94 range without needing a special, just needed to spot for remote targeting hulls.
  Can be replaced with any other long ranged special lacking weapon, including but not limited
  to: any other launcher, Judgement mortar, or the D100-S. I would rather use the Antipode
  over the D100-S, as for range, as getting too close could trigger other turrets on a different
  platform, or
  remote targeting by defending fleets-this is a personal opinion for your play style. 
• Speed System 5 - Adds to combat speed, map speed, and most important turn speed. For
  example, testing the ranges of turrets you want to be able to retreat and get out of fire quickly,
  not stuck under missile or rocket fire. This is the most basic and common speed upgrade for
  higher level players, you don't need to change this out. 
• Agility System 4 - Adds to evade, for better defense against missiles, and adds to slow and
  stun resistance, which we will encounter through drac ice mines, and/or possible new
  coldsnap turret upgrades
• High Velocity Rounds - Added this for the projectile speed, the faster you can shoot down
  mortars, the less are coming down overall. If you replace the D98-U, keep this special
  as it does increasebuilding damage. Can be replaced with Explosive Systems 4, for
  projectile speed, or Cluster Warheards/Combustion System 1-2 if you replace the
  D98-U with the D100-S, boosting the reload speed of rockets-ranking a tank is
  always cumbersome- or increase the splash and spread of the rockets to increase the
  area of damage, since maximum reload is reached at rank 57%. 
• MX-3 - To better the defense, pretty basic really, you will always need to boost the defense on
  tanks. Can be replaced with D6-A, Heavy Plating 3, D5-X, or Fallout Armour 4. 
• FLCS - To increase the turret based defense, and boost countermeasure applications. Can be replaced with Countermeasure equipment 3, or Countermeasure Loaders 3. 
• C1-X - These targets will have mortars, and coldsnaps. Both of which has explosive damage,
  you are gonna need some way to protect yourself. The downsides are the health pool scales
  with your ship health-more on this below. Can be replaced with D5-X, but
  I don't recommend-explained later on.
• C1-M - Missiles will be prominent, this will take each incoming missiles and reduce the
  damage to 25 before resistances and deflection. Health pool scales with ship health still;
  can be replaced with D5-M, but I don't recommend for reasons below. 

^That^ was all for a spotter/tank build, let's do one for actually dealing damage. No chart
this time as there are no usable rocket garrison hulls. 

Built all around dealing damage, let me explain the modules. 

• Hailstorm D - You will probably need to make tight turns in these targets, anti-mortars will
  lessen the damage if you get caught by mortars. Can be replaced with Gail 3 again
• Phalanx 4 - To reduce the incoming volleys of missiles, Rhinos, if they are there, will have
  remote targeting. You will be under missile fire, don't mess up and leave these out.
  Can be replacedwith Phalanx 3, but refit ASAP 
• D100-S - The paired weapon with the Icebreaker, earlier I got the BDPS  to be 13,900,
  having 6 and then with bonus building damage, projectile speed, this will be a rocket sending
  beast. If you have to replace it, I suggest using: Dragonfire rockets, inferno rockets, or
  D95 siege rockets; you
  could be bold and use coaxil, but with a much longer reload compared to the other
  options. 
• Speed System 5, you will need greater turn speed, as explained above. 
• Combustion system 2 gives the better splash and spread combo than the explosive
  systems 4, and with a difference of only 5% in projectile speed. Can be replaced with
  Explosive system 4. 
• MX-3 - You don't want this thing to die immediately do you? 
• Garrison Battery MX-K  - Adds turret defense, increasing your survivability by 50%,
  and bonus building damage along with +18% explosive damage, doing the math the basic
  building damage of the D100-S with MX-K verus that of Siege Battery 3 is 1300 points
  higher. Can be replaced with: Siege Battery 3 without explosive bonus damage, Siege
  Targeting or Siege Reloader for extra building damage, but at the cost of turret defense;
  or with FLCS for countermeasure bonuses, but without the extra building damage. 
• High Velocity Rounds - Adds 100% projectile speed, along with 80% building damage.
  This is special has become a fast staple on hulls, use it. If you don't have it, Siege
  Targeting or Siege Reloader. 
• C1-M - Reasons as stated above
• C1-X - Reasons as stated above

Now that we have both builds, a tank and a fighter, I say we are wholly prepared for the next raid.
Expect that one build is a tank, and tanks are useless without a remote targeting hull to help out,
a remote taregting hull like the...

Empyrean

Built as the generalist version of the Citadel, it comes with a FoE that will activate resonance
trigger. Meaning you could replace the FLCS in our tank build with the resonance trigger,
at the cost of no countermeasure backing. Its a game of weighing pro's and con's, best to
leave it to you. 

Chart for comparison of a R5 Citadel versus that of a Empyrean; looking at which is better
at the basic job of shellin'. 

Looking at stats only, the citadel is the better choice for remote targeting. A lower build time,
mortar reload, splash, better defenses if it gets caught by missile/mortar fire, and longer range.
The Empyrean does have its come back with the siege and assault DPS. For a weaponized
hull alone, with the same mortar on both, I would have to lean towards the Citadel. 

However, with the Generalist restricted weapon and special,  Imperial D100-Z Mortar and
Trajectory Plotter,  the Emyprean becomes the clear choice versus that of Citadel with
Judgement mortar and Explosive system 4.  How? Lets build the empyrean first. 

I have no armour, as the perfect remote targeting hull driver never comes under fire. Besides, the countermeasures on the Icebreaker, if you pair them together, will stop any mortars. Explanation of
each part? Look below fellas 

• Imperial Mortar - 2 salvs every 4 seconds? Yes please, and when built like above with a
  full ranking of 75% it goes down to .56 seconds? Fuck yeah! I worked out the basic
  BDPS, without splash and spread and projectile speed, to 114.388. Thats huge for a
  single, non-limited mortar hull. It could be replaced with judgment, but in reality, you
  always get the weapon with the hull. 
• MX-K - Gives turret defense, building damage, and explosive damage. The turret defense
  isnt needed, but siege targeting and reloader aren't possible with this build. Can be replaced
  with Siege Battery 3, but MX-K gives better overall explosive damage. 
• High Velocity Rounds - Gives a bonus 100% projectile speed, and 80% building damage.
  Both of which rank it high on my list for Garrison Targets. Could be replaced with
  Seismic rounds if you don't have the Velo rounds, but the build above gives the same
  splash, with higher building damage. 
• Viscosity Regulator - Gives the bonus splash that the Velocity rounds doesnt have in
  comparison to the Seismic rounds. Can be replaced with Explosive Upgrade for bonus
  damage, or Speed System 5 for extra speed; however, with a base speed of 26 adding
  Speed System 5 will boost it up to 44, higher than our Icebreaker build. Always a hassle
  when the ships you are trying to protect are faster than your protector ships. 
• Explosive Upgrade - Bonus explosive damage, what else can I say? Can be replaced with
  Splash Upgrade, but the weapons already have a splash of 38, seems kinda redundant. 
• Trajectory Plotter - The special of which the Empyrean needs to live; giving bonus
  splash, and projectile speed while increase mortar reload by 80%. With a fully ranked
  ship, the paired mortar, D100-Z, will be firing every .56 seconds. 

Paired with the Icebreaker, this hull should work wonders in the next raid cycle and in the
weekly. But what about for bases? Well, Kixeye has gone and released an overpowered hull
again, on par with Borbas's Goresaber. 

At first glance, Ferox's Fury doesn't really seem to be bestowed the title of 'overpowered'; but 
looking at the last stat block, and Berserk, everything comes together. 

24,000 damage per second in a 60 radius range, coupled with a 3 second stun going off a
 minimum of 4 times, lasting 8 seconds of 200 per second damage; i.e. 1600 radioactive
 damage. During these 8 seconds, combat speed increase, and corrosive reload increases 
by 75%. The original paired weapon with the Fury was the Conflagration Scattergun. 
Taking the base reload of 9 seconds, halving it by 100% corrosive reload, then fully ranked
 give it a final reload of 1.13 seconds. Now, adding on the 75% bonus, the final firing 
speed of the Conflagration on a Ferox's Fury during berserk is roughly .8 seconds. 

Leading to 12.5, for math I'm rounding down,  shots within the berserk period. Now lets 
find the total damage output during that time, of a Ferox Fury with all 7 spots having been 
filled with Conflagration Scatterguns. 

4440 building damage x 1.25 bonus corrosive damage x 7 weapons = 38,850 listed damage for 
every salvo. Multiply by 12, we get 466,200. Enough to take out a level 7 turret, without any
 armor. 

Reminder, this is just one ship. 

With a maximum weight of 45729 tons in dock 13, and 35107 in dock 12, having a full fleet 
of 5 Furys  (or furies?) is a very likely possibility.  

Assuming the berserk bonus applies to all ships in fleet, in this case furies (or furys?), the 
total damage is multiplied by 5, leaving with 2,331,000. Almost enough to take down a level 
8 turret with all permacrete armour. 

That's not the reason why I consider it overpowered though. The FoE is why. 

24,000 corrosive damage per second; though in a 60 range. Not affected by splash blocking 
walls, this I assume. Meaning that just driving through the base, damage is automatically 
done within the 60 range. One could drive right past Enforcers, Vanquishers, Alpha Behemoths,
Harlock's Citadels, and any missile hulls, take almost null damage and sink without firing
 many a shot. 

Kixeye has brought back the blitz hull. It doesnt matter if you are taking fire, by just driving 
right through it all, you will damage no matter what. 

Countering? 

1. Demolish any non-essential buildings. Resource collectors and Radio tower. Both of
   which add to the F-Fury's bloodthrist. Having less buildings keeps the enemy conqueror
    hulls from reaching bloodthrist, and retargeting for the liberator.
2. Have Maxim Gun Turrets, the F-Fury only has, at max bloodthrist, 600 deflection.
   Take advantage of this. Specials to pair with include: Expanded Concussive Charge,
   Eruption Pyre, and Fuel Tank D1-X. All of these increase splash, ECC boosts
   concussive damage, EP boosts projectile speed, D1-X boosts explosive damage
   which isn't needed but the splash upgrade is. Order of pairing would be
    ECC+EP, ECC+D1-X, EP+D1-X;
    for a levels 6-7. For level 8, use all.
3. Ballistic turrets, Blunderbuss and Ballista. Equip with Depleted uranium shells 3, for
    ballisitic damage and accuracy, and Supercharged EM Rails 3, for 300% damage
   on a critical hit with a 25% chance of being a
   critical hit. Guessing that critical hits depends on salvo/multi shot, there will be on
    average 3 critical hits per every Blunderbuss shot.
    Both of these specials are in the raid, for a combined price of 2 million points.
4. Ships can be useful too, Valiants with Calamity Scatterguns deal both corrosive and
    concussive, F-Fury is weak against both.
5. Chromium Overlays, boosts wall's defense by 20%-50% to corrosive damage. At best,
   a level 9 wall has 175,000 health, add the 50% defense and its 262,500. Taking that
    number and dividing by half of the FoE (half because all damage is half of listed damage),
    we find the number of seconds it will survive under the field. Spoilers, it's 218 seconds.
    A good amount of time compared to a normal level 9 wall needing 145 seconds.
   Seems unnecessary, but the longer the wall stays up, the longer it takes for the
    F-Fury to knock down the turrets or ships behind it. 

My Personal thoughts

This raid has a lot going for it, with an insanely large prize pool, and three good ships coming
out of it. 6 Days should be good enough to get everything I want, needing about
50-60 million points. There has been some dicussion about the overbearing costs,
which the Battle Pirates
Professor went over in his latest post. Its a good read per usual. 

Other people have been complaining about the build times going back up, with 4~ days for each
hull and 9~ for the F-Fury. I honestly agree with them, but we do have the weekly mission for
build tokens. 

• Tier 4 gives out 2-day build tokens 
• Tier 5 gives out 2-day build tokens + 1-3 day build tokens, for a total of 3 days or 5 days
   build tokens 

Adding together we have 5 days to 7 days of free build, and doing it again gets us 10 days to
14 days of free build. Adding to the natural week of the weekly, we have 17 days to 21 days
 per week. Enough to build a single ship, rank it some and test it out and possibly some
refits, all within the same week. My builds above are 15 days, 15 days, 10 days. Leaving us a
minimum of 2 days to a maximum of 11 days to play with. 

Charges Armour Conspiracy 

Formal advice giving post is over, dawn the tin foil hats my friends. 

Both charged armours come with a reduction of 37,725 for penetration, and 10,000 for
explosive. Leaving a minimum of 25 and 35 pass through damage respectively. This is
all before resistances and normal deflection is added.  Why would kixeye release armour
that would leave ships barely scratched? Is the damage in the next raid Tier 6 targets in
the high thousands? Doomrooster stated that the reduction is applied to each single
 projectile, and then resistances and deflection is added. If the reduced number from
 the charged armor is the minimum, resistances  and deflection aren't added. 

These numbers don't work with Kixeye. Having players take barely any damage from
turrets, lowering the coining, doesn't seem like Harbin's plan for retirement. This can
go down two paths 

• The total damage from the turrets will be higher than the charged armour reduction,
  leaving a normal amount to resistances and deflection
  
  or
•  Kixeye is actually gonna have players take almost no damage, for a while, in order
   to increase playage of tier 6 targets. 

Notice how I said 'take almost no damage, for a while'? The damage reduction from the
 Charged armour doesnt work on just one number, but rather two. The damage reduction,
 and the health pool. 

It works like this; for every point of damage deducted by the charged armour, the same
number is taken from the health pool. i.e., if you have a mortar dealing 10,000 damage,
and you have the C1-X equipped, you will only take 25 damage, but the health pool will
decrease by 10,000 damage. Any amount of damage you take from incoming fire, you
also take from your health pool. 

For Doom's explaination, click me. 

For C1-M, it reduces damage by a maximum of 37725, to a pool of 1,886,250. 

Meaning that you can take a total of 50 projectiles dealing 37,725 points of penetration
damage, receiving only 1250. 

For C1-X, it reduces damage by a maximum of 10,000, to a pool of 500,000. 

Meaning you can take a total of 50 projectiles dealing 10,000 point of explosive damage,
receiving only 1750. 

Tips for using Charged Armour 

Have ship wearing the Charged Armour be defend by countermeasures,
or have countermeasures equipped.
A minimum of 50 projectiles isn't large when you think
about the number of coldsnaps, firing at you in current garrison targets. 

Count the number of projectiles hitting you. 

This might seem like a cumbersome task, but it is very useful when you consider that
 the health pool is scaled with your ship health per battle. If you retreat after each little
 'section' is destroyed, your health pool is back to full, or near full. 

Lets look at the  97 FM target for my explanation. 

Let's say that you enter from the south east, take out the platform, and then retreat. Your
ship has charged armour with a pool of 1000. During this advance, you take 900 damage in
the same type of charged armour you have. Your pool is left with 100. Your ship takes only
10 points of damage. 

Now, your Health Pool scales to ship health. If your ship has 100 health points total, and
after battle you have 90, then your pool would be 900. The pool resets after battle to a
scaled health of your ship.

The amount of damage taken during that battle doesn't matter. All that matters is your
ship health percentage. Having a large amount of health, and a large health pool is key
to no damage. 

By retreating and reentering before your pool runs out, you refill it. With a large amount
of health, your percentage of health should stay around 95-99% after a battle. Scaling your
health pool to 95%, your ship health afterwards would be down to 80-89%. After each
battle you will have less and less health, and thus less health pool; but less damage
coming in. Repairing the little lost health after the first battle seems like the best
way to save time or
coin. 

Overall, use the charged armour in tier 6, and try and maximize the armour on your ship. 

As always Film at 11