FAQ/Planes
From The Skybrary
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[edit] Basic Plane Hierarchy
Planes are divided into three categories and six tiers. The six tiers basically describes what "level" your plane is; each next tier costs approximately three times as much as the tier before. Reference The Mechanic for more detailed information. In addition to tiers, planes are divided into the Performance, Combat and Trading lines.
Performance planes focus on speed and maneuverability; they have low armor and cargo, high speed and high maneuver. Combat planes generally follow along the lines of "Slow and Sturdy wins the fight", and are relatively slow in their tier but have high firepower and armor, and often moderately high maneuver and cargo. Trade planes have the most cargo but are usually the slowest of their tier, with moderate amounts of armor but poor maneuverability. Tier 1 through Tier 5 also have hybrid planes that attempt to perform two jobs moderately well- Performance/Trade, Performance/Combat, and Combat/Trade. Below is a list of each planes with my personal rankings, and a brief description. Keep in mind this is for UN-KITTED planes only; adding kits completely changes the performance of a plane.
[edit] The Planes
Key: ( Trade Rating / Combat Rating / Performance Rating) Name of Plane
Brief description
Note: Ratings are in comparison to planes in the same tier.
[edit] Tier 1
(5/2/1) Halifax - Hands down, the best trader of Tier 1. If you're careful, it can even win you a few combats.
(4/5/2) Phantom - A solid choice for combat, though relatively slow. As a bonus, it even trades decently.
(2/5/5) Chapparal - Depending on your style, the Chappy may be a better combat plane. It certainly flies faster, though it suffers from lower armor, firepower and cargo.
(4/4/2) Mastiff - Another solid plane, performs well at both trading and combat. Its poor maneuverability is compensated by wide arcs and good coverage.
(4/3/4) Kittyhawk - The Kittyhawk performs admirably as a fast trader, though it combat capabilities are only marginally better than a CR4P's. It does have bigger guns, though.
(1/3/3) Excelsior - The black sheep of the tier, the Excelsior suffers from a large sprite (hitbox) and poorly placed arcs. It also carries very little cargo.
[edit] Tier 2
(4/5/1) Seahawk - The Seahawk lacks engine slots for good reason. It has fantastic arcs, good cargo and dishes out and takes punishment like nothing else in its tier. The only drawback is its relatively slow and hard-capped speed.
(4/3/4) Spectre - An excellent fast trader. Although its combat stats are low, the Spectre has well placed arcs that let it hold its own in most fights.
(5/2/2) Nomad - The Nomad is a great straight trader. Its arc placement allows it to take down certain planes with ease, and it has the bonus of being able to carry two crew members.
(2/4/5) Marauder - Speed and maneuverability make it a capable fighter, though it is a little lacking in firepower and cargo. Depending on your fighting style, this may be the plane for you.
(1/5/4) Valkyrie - If you don't plan on doing much trading, the Valkyrie is an excellent blend of speed, maneuverability, armor and firepower.
(3/3/2) Cyclops - Although a decent combat trader, it is outshone somewhat by its peers.
[edit] Tier 3
(5/1/2) Bullfrog - The plane of choice for the straight trader. You should be able to find a navigator for safer flights at this point; else you may find yourself bribing your way out of combats.
(3/5/3) Vengeance - Nothing says combat like giant flying cannon. Though fairly slow, it holds a decent amount of cargo.
(4/2/4) Requin - A very capable fast trader. Its combat stats are poor and high stall speed makes it difficult to fight with though.
(2/5/4) Havoc - Like a Phantom on crack. It lacks cargo space, but more than makes up in speed, maneuverability and firepower.
(4/4/2) Lancaster - An excellent combat trader, though a bit slow. However, watch your wings, as they are huge targets in combat.
(2/4/5) Nova - The Ingersoll junior. Terrible at moving much cargo, but it will get you where you're going, and depending on your style it's a more than capable fighter.
[edit] Tier 4
(3/3/4) Seafire - Mediocre beyond all belief until you can kit it. It moves fairly quickly, but doesn't move a large amount of cargo and has poor combat stats. The arcs are fantastic, but not enough to save it from mediocrity.
(4/5/2) Hades - Combat pilots rejoice: this plane kicks pirate butt. It is slow, but has 50 cargo and 5 arcs, allowing it to perform every combat tactic under the sun. A personal favorite.
(4/3/5) Bolo - Before kits, the Bolo is a superb plane. The arcs are novel and take some getting used to, but it fights passably. It also flies exceedingly fast, which bucks the trend for the combat/trader line. With kits, it becomes the ultimate plane. The Devs are planning to implement a speed reduction to correct the imbalance.
(5/3/2) Cetacea - Cetas are excellent straight traders. With some tweaking, they fly at tolerable speeds and can even hold their own in light combat.
(2/4/5) Mk-ii - A glorified Valkyrie, it compares well to its Tier 2 predecessor. For the combat pilot who prefers to travel light (lower cargo, faster speed) this is the ship.
(2/3/5) Thor - Although a decent plane, it is outclassed by other planes in its tier for combat and trade. With poor cargo capacity, low firepower and armor, its speed is less useful than it might otherwise be. Its sprite is also much larger than most performance planes.
[edit] Tier 4.5
(?/?/?) Mantis - in progress
[edit] Tier 5
(2/4/1) Bismarck - The Bismarck is novel and interesting to fly, but it fails at being a great combat plane. Slow speed, large sprite and lack of some maneuvers conspire to make this a poor choice for the driven combat pilot.
(5/3/2) Dauntless - The Dauntless is a canonical combat trader. A slow, sturdy plane, it performs well at both tasks but does not truly excel at either. With 75 base cargo, it is slightly biased toward trading.
(1/3/5) Loki - With four engine slots, the Loki is effectively the fastest plane in the sky. However, that counts for little if you can't move any cargo. Other issues include ammo, firepower, armor and acceleration.
(3/1/3) Barracuda - The Barracuda is hardly spacious at 47 cargo, and does not nearly fast enough at 550 kph. It utterly fails at combat, having a large sprite, inability to do many combat maneuvers, odd arcs, low maneuver and armor. It was a trading powerhouse in the previous round, but was terribly nerfed in this round.
(5/1/2) Kingfisher - Although it moves slowly, the Kingfisher is a superb trader. Its two engine slots allow it to fly faster than molasses, and its four hull slots can quickly boost its cargo past 200. However, zero gun slots make it a poor fighter.
(2/5/4) Thunderbolt - The Tbolt is a decent plane, quite capable at combat. Low cargo is expected from a performance combat plane, but the presence of a hull slot makes for interesting builds.
[edit] Tier 6
(1/4/5) Ingersoll - This is the plane for those who fly for fun. While not bad at combat, very low armor make it distressingly susceptible to critical hits. Also, only being able to carry one crew member cuts into its usefulness.
(3/5/2) Avenger - in progress
(?/?/?) Leviathan - in progress
