5 hours ago, Forgottenlore said:

What do you mean by "difficult to fly"? Do you mean

"difficult to utilize it in such a way that it is "good"" or

"requires a lot of skill to reach its full potential"

to my thinking, the hawk and the lambda are very easy to fly. There are so few options on their dial and action bar that there are limited choices to make. Setting the dial on my lambda rarely takes more than a second or two because there are so few options and it's pretty obvious what the ship needs to do.

Echo, on the other hand, practically requires a phd in non-Euclidean geometry to try and figure out where he CAN end up, much less which of the 90,000 options is the optimal choice. Easily the hardest pilot in the game to fly.

What you said. The Lambda is hard to use effectively, but easy to fly. Echo is an exercise in "wait, THAT'S where I ended up?" More generally, anything that moves before the manoeuvre is quite challenging - strikers, the PtL/AdvS IGs that like to boost before they move, etc.

9 minutes ago, Forgottenlore said:

Although it is looking like the star viper with the new title may be able to give him a run for his money.

It's possible - Advanced Sensors, Engine upgrade and PTL gives them a significant number of maneuvers. Both have 7 decloak options (Illicit on starviper), 6 barrel rolls and 3 boosts (before or after the maneuver). The difference is that echo does his fancy bank move first - so he can be in slightly different positions, although not more of them.

The tiebreaker would be the fact that the Phantom can take a crew such as navigator for that little bit of extra wiggle room.

23 minutes ago, fhdz said:

What you said. The Lambda is hard to use effectively, but easy to fly. Echo is an exercise in "wait, THAT'S where I ended up?" More generally, anything that moves before the manoeuvre is quite challenging - strikers, the PtL/AdvS IGs that like to boost before they move, etc.

Eh, the Striker is actually pretty easy to visualize where it'll end up, since it only has three endpoints for any move, and they're all just rotated around it. I usually just visualize one path and it's pretty obvious where the others go (roughly just rotate your endpoint around your starting point).

Echo can do a lot more ridiculousness because she can end up in many more places after decloak (two possible bearings, ten possible endpoints if you only roll front to front or back to back, but the rolls are REALLY fuzzy clouds of positions because of the bearing change).

Also, striker flight paths make sense. They're just two normal moves back to back - the craziest thing you do is basically fly an S path to dodge things or get better position (though they can also turn super tight/hard with bank>turn, or functionally copy the Aggressor's 3-turn sloop).

There are two different aspects to this - "mechanical" flying and "tactical" flying. Mechanical flying is the skill floor of a ship that you need to master before being able to utilize it. Ships that are difficult here include Echo, minelayers, Whisper, arcdodgers, and minelaying K-Wings in roughly that order. These ships however tend to have it very easy in the second department, which is a bit more difficult to grasp.

Tactical flying would be how much you have to plan ahead. It becomes easier the less commited you have to be to a certain line of play once you start executing it. Ships that are very difficult here would be the Lambda Shuttle, T-65 X-Wing, TIE Punisher, TIE Bomber...you get the picture. Ships that are slow, prone to taking damage, lack repositioning, can get arc-dodged, or all of that. I would debate wether the HWK fits into this, as it can mitigate its weakness with a turret, allowing it to not be arcdodged and not care about its facing which drasticaly improves maneuver options.

So naturaly the hardest ship to fly would be one that combines difficulty in both areas. Since the decloak nerf you could argue that Echo does fit the bill, but pretty much only on a turn by turn basis - you are still very flexible concerning your larger picture positioning. The Lambda Shuttle with its large base is not machanicaly easy to get around the asteroid field and with the lack of white turns it is easily the most difficult one to plan around - once you go into a direction you are commited, so it has to be the right one. One wrong descision and your 21+ point ship is out of the game for 3 or more turns, at which point you very likely lost.

Ultimately I value the tactical component a lot higher than the mechanical one, because once you mastered that (which doesn't even strictly require games, just visualization exercises) it becomes trivial. So even though the Lambda Shuttle isn't particularly difficult to fly mechanicaly, it being so difficult tactically pushes it beyond all other options for me.

Currently I'd say expensive ships with low (4 or less) health. With Sabine'd bombs and mines, TLTs, burst damage and 5+ dice rollers out there, the margin for error with these ships is very slim.

I especially have a lot of respect for those players who are still getting mileage out of Corran Horn. The ship is not as nimble as an Interceptor or Protectorate, and doesn't have the benefit of being able to equip Autothrusters either. Regen's good, but not taking the damage in the first place is better.

alpha squadron interceptors - unlike academy ties, the extra points investment in them + their ability to block and low HP make them a glass cannon. With no ability to get massive action economy, you've got to coax the best out of them through estute action choice - knowing when to boost or roll for block / arc dodge at p.s. 1 - or when to evade vs focus is pretty key. A mistake and you'll lose the ship quickly. at 18 points, it is a good filler ship, as it has a high probability of being ignored, and ignored 3 dice guns can put out damage in this game.

14 hours ago, Forgottenlore said:

What do you mean by "difficult to fly"? Do you mean

"difficult to utilize it in such a way that it is "good"" or

"requires a lot of skill to reach its full potential"

to my thinking, the hawk and the lambda are very easy to fly. There are so few options on their dial and action bar that there are limited choices to make. Setting the dial on my lambda rarely takes more than a second or two because there are so few options and it's pretty obvious what the ship needs to do.

Echo, on the other hand, practically requires a phd in non-Euclidean geometry to try and figure out where he CAN end up, much less which of the 90,000 options is the optimal choice. Easily the hardest pilot in the game to fly.

I intended more of the second- what ships require a lot of skill to reach their full potentials?- but it looks like discussion is taking both into account. :-)

I think the hardest ships to fly are the ones that punish you the most for a single mistake. In that sense, any Phantom tops that list. Because to fly them well you have to make 0 mistakes, there is no forgiveness at all! A hawk and shuttle at least have more health, and rarely get one-shot. Maybe I fly a ton of them, but I've seen my fair share of mistakes with these Phantoms. Strikers are up there as well, but with adaptability they are a bit easier to fly.

The thing with Echo is, your opponent has no idea where she'll be, but neither do you lol

I get why some people say Lambda, but disagree. Strikers are so hard to fly. If you mess up and don't arc-dodge at close range, your screwed. Lambda can weather some punishment.

Echo requires a ton of skill to fly properly and effectively, but when you come across a solid Echo player they can probably solo your whole list with just the one ship. I really like Echo, a lot, just wish I could her properly.

20 hours ago, PhantomFO said:

The Lambda really requires you to become skilled at self-bumping to be effective and control their speed. Plus, they're the only ship in the game without a white turn, which is especially painful on an arced ship.

As for the Quadjumper: Unkar Plutt with a spacetug is surprisingly legit as a pilot. The other Quadjumpers aren't great, but Unkar is an annoying little punk for his points.

I've had pretty good results with using Sarco Plank with some Mangler Scyks. I haven't played it in any competitive events but Sarco feels like he's been worth his points in most games. He primes the Attani Mindlink pump most rounds and helps the Scyks push through some extra damage. The reverse moves are nice if you don't over use them. In most of the games where I've played this squad Sarco only uses the reverse move once but it ends up being kind of a game changer because its something that my opponent didn't really account for.

Serissu (20)
Attanni Mindlink (1)
"Mangler" Cannon (4)
"Heavy Scyk" Interceptor (Cannon) (2)

Tansarii Point Veteran (17)
Attanni Mindlink (1)
"Mangler" Cannon (4)
"Heavy Scyk" Interceptor (Cannon) (2)

Tansarii Point Veteran (17)
Attanni Mindlink (1)
"Mangler" Cannon (4)
"Heavy Scyk" Interceptor (Cannon) (2)

Sarco Plank (18)
Attanni Mindlink (1)
Pattern Analyzer (2)
Spacetug Tractor Array (2)

Total: 98

I am really surprised no one has mentioned the kihraxz before the guns for hire drops.

1 hour ago, Flyingbrick said:

I am really surprised no one has mentioned the kihraxz before the guns for hire drops.

I don't feel it's difficult to fly, just difficult to keep alive. At least until the expansion drops.

Ships without k-turns/sloop like the Decimator, U-Wing, HWK, Lambda, YV-666, etc. are a challenge to fly and require some fore-thought.

E-wing..

Just.. too.. **** ugly.

I think that, if a ship has a lot of free repositioning actions and different from others is more difficult to fly because you just simply have more posibilities. In that case, In that case, the most dificult are:

1) Tie Phantom (Mainly Echo)

2) Tie Striker

3) Star Viper with new title, or Jake Farrel with Intensity. T

The case that a ship has BAD movements do not neccesarily makes it difficult to move, it's simple, you just have a bad repertory of movements, you have to deal with it, but it do not make hard to fly (Maybe hard to win in certain cases).

In addition, I think any ship with 360º turret is too easy to fly. You don't have to care for your primary arc, just for be in positions that could be out of range/arcs of the enemy.

Her. "Echo" is female.