Unlock[]
The Impactor Mission Section is unlocked by Accelerator Amplification.
Use[]
Impactors are slow, vulnerable, and incredibly devastating. This is the only section which can bring the terrifying Railgun to bear against your enemies. These ships are fairly binary, either winning a fight outright or being surrounded and destroyed by the enemy.
The rest of the fleet should be designed around their use. An Impactor can fire on targets well beyond visual range but can't fire on distant targets without a spotter. This means that a Deep Scan Command Section will nearly triple the Impactor's effective range. However, without Advanced CnC a player will be unable to command ships from the tactical combat screen. The only way an Impactor can fire on a distant target in this case is if it happens to wander into its sights.
Railguns gain a lot of benefit from the Fire Control and AI Fire Control Sections. Fire control reduces inaccuracy by 75%, and AI Control reduces it by 95%. When operating at ranges in excess of three kilometers, even a half a degree off means a miss of hundreds of meters.
In general, Cruisers should be used for Impactors, not Dreadnoughts. First, Cruisers can more easily reposition, allowing the commander to keep his artillery safe. Second, CR turn faster, allowing faster target acquisition. Third, one Dreadnought Impactor can only be in one place at a time, three CR Impactors can be distributed across the battlefield. While one surrounded DN Impactor is little better than a damage sponge, one surrounded CR Impactor can recieve fire support from the other two CR. Further, most end game fleets have enough command points per DN CnC to field 2 DN and 2 CR, and few CR carry their weight in a DN fight quite like Impactors. Finally, the Morrigi, and Zuul field 3 railguns per CR, while they only field 7, and 6 railguns per DN, respectively. This means that these races are actually forgoing damage output if they use the larger hull.
The Races Compared[]
Human[]
Humans make a convincing argument for DN Impactors due to the comparative cost. It's the cheapest in credits, and only slightly slower to produce than the Zuul. Even so, if you calculate cost/railgun, Human CR are still significantly cheaper.
Hiver[]
Hiver CR Impactors carry their railguns beneath their hull, and firing them results in considerable downward torque due to recoil. Therefore, they will need to take a moment to recover before they can move. In addition, they're the second most expensive overall, and they actually take the longest to build a DN. However, they also have the best health statistics of any Impactor, and so could possibly survive a few moments longer than the competition, enabling a retreat.
Tarka[]
The Tarka have the distinctive benefit of having the most mobile Impactors, which may help them find the correct positions or retreat. However, they may find their CRs pushed around by recoil more than the other ships due to their low mass, and it's clear that the savings came from skimping on armor. Keep these safe.
Liir[]
The Liir have the most railguns per DN at 10, which comes out to 0.55 repeating railguns/command point, compared against their CR's 0.5 railgun/command point. This means they're the only race which will see more DPS from 1 DN than from 3 CRs. Further, their unique drive system means that a Liir DN Impactor can probably line up its target even in close quarters, though it will still be overkill for anything smaller than a hostile Dreadnought.
Morrigi[]
Morrigi may have the best spread of combat stats for their CR Impactors, but they also have the most expensive ships.
Zuul[]
The Zuul sacrifice less than other races to put an Impactor CR on the field due to their higher command cap. On the other hand, their DN is armed to the teeth with conventional weapons and might manage to take some of the enemy with it should it get surrounded. In addition, though the Zuul DN is incredibly expensive, they also tape it together extremely quickly.
Possible Structural Modifications[]
Armor[]
| Polysilicate Alloys | Magnoceramic Lattices | Quark Resonators | Adamantite Alloys | Stealth Armor |
Coating[]
| Reflective Coating | Improved Reflective Coating |
Statistics[]
Cruiser[]
| Hiver | Human | Liir | Morrigi | Tarka | Zuul | |
| Crew | 50 | 35 | 12 | 35 | 30 | 30 |
| Health | 3,300 | 3,000 | 2,700 | 2,800 | 2,650 | 2,800 |
| Mass | 14,000 | 10,000 | 11,000 | 10,000 | 9,000 | 9,800 |
| Savings Cost | 35,000 | 30,000 | 34,000 | 38,700 | 25,000 | 33,000 |
| Industrial Cost | 3,630 | 3,250 | 3,530 | 4,500 | 3,050 | 3,260 |
| Tactical Speed | -5 | -5 | -10 | -5 | 0 | -5 |
| Turn Speed | -5 | -5 | -10 | -5 | 0 | -5 |
| S Mounts | 4 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 4 |
| M Mounts | 2 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 0 |
| L Mounts | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Railguns | 2 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 2 |
Dreadnought[]
| Hiver | Human | Liir | Morrigi | Tarka | Zuul | |
| Crew | 155 | 100 | 50 | 90 | 85 | 100 |
| Health | 14,500 | 14,000 | 10,000 | 12,500 | 12,000 | 12,500 |
| Mass | 65,000 | 45,000 | 50,000 | 50,000 | 55,000 | 45,000 |
| Savings Cost | 430,000 | 340,000 | 450,000 | 461,000 | 380,000 | 500,000 |
| Industrial Cost | 26,000 | 19,000 | 22,000 | 23,000 | 21,000 | 16,400 |
| Tactical Speed | -5 | -5 | -10 | -10 | -5 | -5 |
| Turn Speed | -5 | -5 | -10 | -5 | 0 | -5 |
| S Mounts | 3 | 0 | 9 | 4 | 6 | 4 |
| M Mounts | 0 | 6 | 6 | 8 | 0 | 9 |
| L Mounts | 3 | 1+4missiles | 2 | 4 | 3 | 3 |
| Railguns | 6 | 6 | 10 | 7 | 6 | 6 |
Final Comments[]
The Human Dreadnought comes with an extra four missiles. Whether this is percieved as a great way to sneak some extra weapons into every fight or a poor trade for no small mounts is up to player perception.
See Railgun for additional statistics on weapon damage