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An ancient but unvenerated class, the Retribution is an extreme battlecruiser design which dates to the renaissance of military experimentation during the first consolidation period of the Domain. It sacrifices armor for firepower and tremendous speed for its size class via a nearly unique implementation of "Orion Drive" technology which was considered an archaic curiousity even then.

The physical stress inflicted upon both human flesh and ship components by the propulsive jolts made the Retribution an unpopular ship in the Domain Armada, one of only a handful of opinions shared whole-heartedly by crew and officers alike. Only a handful of examples were ever deployed by the Armada proper, the Retribution finding more use among frontier mercenaries and pirate-hunters that relied upon unexpected bursts of speed and hyper-aggressive tactics.

–In-Game Description

The Retribution-class Battlecruiser is a low tech design fielded by the Luddic Church.

Overview[]

The Retribution sacrifices armor in favor of speed. It possesses a relatively low amount of armor at 800 hitpoints. Its shield is small and takes increased damage compared to others, but also efficient with its flux upkeep, needing only one-fifth of the ship's capacity compared to three-fifths of other low tech designs. It possesses an impressive amount of frontal firepower, and its Distributed Fire Control hullmod increases the weapons' durability and reduces EMP damage taken. However, this also means it can't use Dedicated Targeting Core or Integrated Targeting Unit to increase its weapon range.

While very fragile for its class, the Retribution is the cheapest purpose-built combat capital to field and maintain. Two Retributions are only slightly more expensive to deploy or maintain than an Invictus or a Paragon, as well as being less costly individually than a Conquest or an Odyssey.

Loadout Tips[]

The Retribution can be considered the closest thing to a capital with Safety Overrides: it's fast, and can pack a lot of firepower, but is comparatively short-ranged against other capitals. Ideally used against lone targets. With its low defense stats, the Retribution can't tank shots for long, and can't really be used against more heavily-armored capitals, head-on at least.

The Orion Device can be considered a better version of the Plasma Burn. It can certainly ram into other ships with its extreme speeds; the comparatively instant speed boost making such collisions even more devastating. However, the Retribution is lightly defended in terms of both shielding and armor, making such aggressive maneuvers simultaneously dangerous to itself. A poorly timed ram leaves it vulnerable, but can be an effective way to bully smaller ships or add flux when colliding with shields. In addition to propelling the Retribution, the Orion Device produces an actual explosion behind the ship, providing coverage to the engines in a similar manner to Canister Flak.

Weapons[]

The Retribution can make use of the Devastator Cannon to great effect. Since the Orion Drive can bring the Retribution very close to an enemy ship, the Devastator's random projectile detonation is a non-issue at close-range. This means that unleashing three of these weapons against an unsuspecting ship is a viable option.

Hullmods[]

It's not advised to build-in Heavy Armor for the Retribution, so as to keep its manuverability unhindered. Similarly, Armored Weapon Mounts only brings a marginal increase to armor due to it being relative low to begin with.

Advanced Turret Gyros is a worthwhile built-in, as its benefit to cause more damage to ships smaller than the ship built-in on benefits capitals the most.

Ballistic Rangefinder is not affected by Distributed Fire Control, and since the Retribution has a large ballistic mount, it give a flat 100 range increase to any medium ballistic weapon not already at a base of 900 range, as well a flat 200 range increase to small ballistics.

Trivia[]

  • Retribution is a word of latin origin that means inflicting punishment in the spirit of vengeance. This is reflected by its design and system encouraging hyper-aggressive tactics.

Change History[]

  • 0.96a-RC9 Patch: supplies/deploy and supplies/month reduced to 35 (was: 40).
  • 0.96a Patch: Introduced.


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Up to date for version 0.97


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