Crews and Rolling

Rogue crews 

Rogue crews are time limited upgrades to your fleet, with the upgrades ranging from bonus to speed to increased building damage. There are four types of rogue crews; common, uncommon, rare, and legendary. For a full list of crews available: https://www.kixeye.com/forum/discussion/563498 

You can tell the type of the crew based upon its colour or the number of stars in the bottom right corner. 

How to get rogue crews 

Rogue crews can only be recruited from the Great Hall. With a daily spin based on a 24 hour clock, two ways to roll for crews using uranium  and two ways to roll for crews using coin. 

The Basic crew, bottom left, has a high chance to give out common crews, good chance for uncommon, and no chance for rare or legendary crews. The Advanced crew, top left, has a good chance for common, high chance for uncommon, good chance for rare, and rare chance for legendary crews. The Elite crew, top middle, has rare chances for common and legendary crews, and high chances for uncommon and rare crews. 3x Elite crew, top left, has three crews with one guaranteed as rare or legendary. All other crews are one at a time.

For how often the rogue crew comes up depends on a RNG, random number generator. With each crew getting an assigned number, and a process to choose a new number each time. This means that just because you have run through almost all the crews, doesn't mean you will get the one you are missing, or that you might receive the same crew numerous times in a row.

Doxy (BP Professor) did an excellent write up about the crews and his rolling experiment. http://bpprof.blogspot.com/2015/08/rogue-crew-changes.html 

How to use Rogue crews 

To add rogue crews to your fleet, just head to your dock and the selected fleet. Once there, click on the crew icon, and choose your crew from below. 

Once you add the crew, the timer starts. You can not pause or stop the timer once it begins. You will have to wait until the current crew runs out before you can add another crew to it. Once your crew runs out, you have the option to dismiss the crew or buy it again with gold. The price for buying the crew after you use it ranges from 3 gold to 15 gold. This varies because of the rarity of the crew or the usefulness of the crew. 

Types of Rogue Crews 

There are five basic types of rogue crews, offensive, base hitting, defensive, base defending, and special. Each of these types fits as a separate media because of having different bonuses or uses. 

Offensive 

Offensive crews are optimized for fleet hitting or hitting raid targets or the forsaken mission. This crews provide a clear bonus to the offensive capabilities of a fleet. 

• Disciples of Skullduggery
• Grease Monkeys 
• Molotov Maidens 
• Dead Eye Destroyers 
• Bullseye Brigade 
• Hellfire Heathens 
• Mortarheads
• Wolfpack
• Silent Hunters 
• Midnight Marauders 
• Fearless Blitzers 
• Gearheads 

Base Hitting 

These crews are optimized for base hitting primarily, but can be useful in weekly missions or during raids 

• Demolition Squad 
• Creeping Death
• Wrecking Crew 

Defensive 

These crews are made for improving the defensive capabilities of your fleet, such as defensive or evade. These crews can be used for literally anything because of how useful they are, the only downside is the time.  

• Sea Serpents 
• Steelheads 

Base Defending 

There is only one crew in this category, but because it is specialized for base defense, it fits no where else. 

• Junkyard Dogs  

Special 

  These crews are marked as special either because they fit in all other categories, or there purpose is for special reasons, such as VXP or uranium. 

• Remote Raiders 
• Irradiated Cutthroats 
• Death From Above 
• Radar Runners 
• Salty Dogs
• Lucky Bastards 
• Dragon Slayers
• Wharf Rats 

When to use the rogue crews

Since rogue crews have a limited time to be used, ranging from 10 minutes to 3 days and 12 hours, discussion arises as to when it is best to use them. This depends the crew itself. With defensive crews, such as Junkyard Dogs, it best to use them during Alliance wars or on a Monday as the alliance bonus reset. Offensive crews, such as Gearheads or Sea Serpents should be used when needed, as goes the general rule for using crews.  

My priority towards crews however ranges are as so

• Raid, offensive crews
• VXP weekends, special crews 
• Weekly forsaken mission, offensive or defensive crews 
• Alliance wars/Sector wars, offensive or base hitting crews 
• Normal day, special crews 
• Monday, base defense crews 

Changes ahead 

Since I posted that poll, a majority of people reading this blog are from the 50-70 level range. Due to this, I will be adjusting my content to account for this. Thank you 

VXP weekend

The VXP weekend is finally here!!!

What is the VXP weekend you ask? The VXP weekend is where all cargoes give double VXP and special targets give unlimited VXP. Special fleets spawn around relay tower that up to 100 VXP per battle. The best way to gain VXP this time, for lower players is to hit the special targets that give unlimited VXP. These targets are found around Draconian bases are found at these times 

0,1,3,4,6,7,9,10,12,13,15,16,18,19,21,22 and every 15 minutes. But remember that Kixeye time is Pacific Time. (UTC-8:00) 

Targets to hit-Lower Levels 

During this time, it seems best to hit the Special targets, marked as Draconian Fleet 83. Once you enter these targets, just wait until your fleet dies and repair and hit it again. Your fleet earns VXP every time it dies, this is the fastest way to gain VXP as a lower level. 

Targets to hit-Higher Levels 

Seems like most of my viewership is comprised of higher levels so... The best way to gain vxp without coining too much is to just hit the cargo fleets, as the 83's are giving only 1-2K per run (dying inside not completing). With a couple hours to repair or couple coins, hitting cargoes with Salty crews seems like the faster option in one part. I'm gonna be adding more content for higher levels now, so keep viewing and I'll keep posting. 

Foundry

Foundry and Dreadnought 

The foundry system is new. It was created to help lower level players, like you, catch up in the game and receive stepping stone hulls. Link to original kixeye briefing. The way the foundry works is that you have to hit certain targets in able to earn fragments. Using these fragments and certain blueprints, you can earn hulls. The first hull you can earn, and the only one we will be looking at right now, is the dreadnought hull.

The dreadnought hull is for ballistic weapons, with an added 40% bonus to range, 55% to damage, and 90% to reload. With a build time of only 6 hours, it is a great hull for lower level players. But first before we use it, we need to get it.

What to hit? 

The dreadnought hull requires 50 fragments, 4 dreadnought fragments, and the Siege Battery 1.

The Siege fragments and the dreadnought fragments can be found in Level 40 cargoes, and the siege battery in the Forsaken mission (which we'll go over in the next article). The level 40 cargoes can be defeated by your brand-spanking-new predator subs. Dropping the Dreadnought fragments and  siege fragments are dependent upon your sector threat level, i.e. if it is teal it drops one, if yellow it drops 2-3,and orange it drops 3-4. The siege battery can only be fetched in the forsaken mission currently.

Until you are able to earn the required requirements for the dreadnought, keep upgrading your buildings as high as you can, and keep hitting 17-31 cargo fleets to earn blueprints. I'm currently looking for the assault cannon blueprints.

Predator sub

Getting and Using the Predator Sub 

Now that you have the Intelligence lab built, lets start finding and finishing blueprints. 

The best blueprints are found in tier 2 and tier 3, but for them we need Predator subs to be better able to take down cargo fleets. 

To get the Predator sub, you must first upgrade the Naval Lab to level 5 to research the sub. During this time you can complete the next Campaign 'Long Shot', which nets you the D51-N, the D5-E, and the Leviathan A. For the guide how: http://ouchbattlepirates.blogspot.com/2016/04/guide-to-battle-pirates-part-7-long-shot.html

Predator Sub Basics 

Every sub has a dive time, the dive time for the Predator sub is 24 seconds. Dive time refers to how long the sub will dive underwater and be avoidable from enemy ships, unless the enemy ships have sonar and/or thermal. You can protect against sonar, but not against thermal. During the ship's dive, it moves around as normal and can still fire its weapons, but can't be seen or fired upon unless the enemy has sonar or thermal.

Every sub fleet must have a lead ship that is a ship and not a submarine. This is void when using the Phantom Nighthawk and the Phantom tiger shark, but this still stands for Predator subs.
You must have a lead ship of a gunboat or long ship, any boat except for another submarine. 

Predator sub specialist 

Along with granting bonus reload, vxp points and rank also grant faster repair times to certain ships, luckily the Predator sub is one of them. Head over to the naval lab to find the specialist tab. 

Click on the Predator sub icon.

Once the ship reaches the rank level of Elite 1 for example, it lowers the repair modifier by 16%. The repair modifier gives how many seconds are required to repair one health point. If the modifier is 300%, the ship takes 3 seconds to repair one health point, if the modifier is 50% it takes .5 of a second to repair a health point.  The higher the predator sub ranks up, the faster it repairs and the faster it fires.

Predator Sub build 

This is the build I am using for the Predator sub, remember how I had you research the engine 1? Its time to use it now. This speeds up the sub by 30%, increasing it from 12 to 15.6 combat speed. On the downside, it lowers the accuracy of the weapons by 10%.

How to use Predator sub

You use the Predator sub similar to kiting, but when the dive time is running low, try and drive your sub away from the enemy ships, wait until it dives again and move in to attack. This allows that the sub remains undamaged, and helps to strengthen your kiting skills and submarine skill.

On a level 17 cargo: https://youtu.be/BJjLl383UVo
On a level 23 cargo: https://youtu.be/qAJ3BwWcqbw
On a level 31 cargo: https://youtu.be/U2NBddeii-g

Rank

Rank and VXP 

VXP stands for veteran experience points, which are points your ships gain after battle. You can earn a maximum of 20 VXP per battle, unless you are using a special crew or during the VXP weekend. You earn these VXP points in two ways, by dealing damage and receiving damage, with a maximum of 10 each. You gain one VXP point everytime you deal/receive 1/10th of your ships health. Your ship must deal or receive damage to gain the VXP points. 

What are VXP points used for? 

VXP points determine your ships rank. There are 25 available ranks, with each rank requiring more VXP to earn. The rank of your ships determinds the reload bonus it has, with a maximum of +75% reload. This reload applies to all weapons and damage types, which is very useful for multi-role ships. Each rank give a certain bonus to the reload, with the bonus growing smaller as you rank upwards. For example, the first five ranks grant you a +5% bonus each, the next five give +4%, next five give +3%, next five give +2% and the last five grant +1%. Totaling these up you get +75% bonus. 

For a complete list of VXP required for ship rank, per ship. Visit here http://battlepirates.wikia.com/wiki/Veterancy_Experience_Points
or
http://www.ahoymearty.co.uk/blueprints-wiki/

How VXP affects ranks 

As mentioned before, VXP increases the reload of your ships, by a maximum of 75%. How does this compare to an unranked ship? The base reload of a Thud 4 cannon is 3.5 seconds, with full rank this decreases to only .88 of a second to fire. Which is almost a 400% bonus to the reload.The higher the rank, the faster the ship can fire, the more damage it puts out. 

How to get Rank 

The best way to gain rank is through attacking cargo fleets, as you can earn 10 VXP points for dealing damage. Combine this way with the Salty Dogs  rogue crew, which doubles the VXP you gain, it goes fast.

The second best way is during the monthly VXP events, where all cargo fleets give double VXP, and has targets with no VXP cap on them, meaning you can earn way more than the standard 10 per battle. 

Armadas

Armadas and Uranium 

Armadas are special fleets on the world map that pay out Uranium per their destruction. Armadas only spawn once the sector bar is filled to the yellow level.

The sector bar is found by click on the bar in the bottom right corner of the world map. Doing so opens this pop up showing how far along your sector has come to opening the Armadas and Drac uranium bases. The sector bar is fueled by destroying cargo fleets on the world map. Once the sector bar moves into the yellow, it starts a two hour timer and once it moves into the orange, by attacking cargo fleets and armadas, it extends the timer by one hour. 

Kixeye original briefing: https://www.kixeye.com/forum/discussion/584436

Kixeye updated briefing: https://www.kixeye.com/forum/discussion/612034 

Hitting the level 30 armada 

The level 30 armada is the lowest level armada, and is level locked to under level 50 and under's, meaning that only people level 50 or below can attack it. The armada pays out a couple thousand in uranium.

The top two ships on either side, Battle Cruiser X's have long ranged cannons, while the other three ships, Light Cruiser X, has strike missiles with extended ranged. The ships move fast and try to drive around your ships on the rim of your firing range.

I would wait until you have stronger ships to try and take out this armada fleet, but one will be coming up soon. Next article will focus on the Predator sub, and the one after will be about the foundry and getting the dreadnought ship. 

Level 17 Cargo

How to hit level 17 cargo and get blueprints 

Blueprints are always better than what is available in the Weapons Lab, but first we gotta find those blueprints. The lowest level cargo that has them is the level 17 cargo. But first we gotta use a certain fleet. Fleet . This fleet has torpedoes, because they offer a wider range than missiles at the moment, and can be used for kiting. 

 Finding the 17 cargo 

Most cargo fleets spawn around bases that are equal in level to the cargos, i.e. level 30 bases spawn level 31 cargo fleets, 50 bases spawn 51 cargo fleets. Level 17 cargo fleets should be found around level 15-20 bases, and two at a time. After you attack them and take the cargo, a new cargo fleet should take its place in a minute or two. 

Attacking the 17 cargo 

Here is a link to the video I made about hitting 17 cargo fleets. Don't worry if you take damage or your fleet sinks. Just return to your base, repair and try again. Everyone was a rookie at sometime, you just need skills to be able to kit better.

Blueprints found

There is a drop rate of only 4% when hitting Level 17 cargoes. This means that 1 out of every 25 hits gets you a blueprint, but dont worry there are rogue crews meant to help you with this. The Lucky Bastards crew gives a 100% drop rate to cargo fleets, for either 10 minutes or an hour depending on which one you use. 

How to get rogue crews

Rogue crews, such as lucky bastards, are found within the Great Hall. Open up the Great Hall by clicking on it. There should be a pop-up similar to this photo. 

Your pop-up will be different though, instead of having the icon with 50 minutes remaining and two men, you should have a icon saying Free crew. Click on this button, this will lead you to the rogue crew store.

Click on the bottom button, it should say for yours free roll. Once you click on it it will open a new pop-up similar to this one.

Now just click accept to own it. To use the new crew you must go to your dock and click on your fleet. Then click on the crews button to add your rogue crew.

Hit recruit and launch your fleet next. Your crew will work and be active until the timer runs out. To check the time, hover your mouse over the fleet bar when on the world map.

For higher leveled players or if you are looking for more Battle Pirates content, head over here to gain a more detailed analysis of the newest tech and end game help.