FM Roundup November 2016

Précis? Well, maybe not exactly...

By: George Argyropoulos
a/k/a   Dragon_Bane

The after raid hangover is subsiding, Christmas displays are in the stores, BP has not imploded into fiery inferno because of the Harlock's Tide Seeker and we have a new FM cycle, with all new and exciting added prizes, to ease our way back into our chores and game.

Did someone say Jingle Bells? - Seeking through the surf, cutting through the spray, hunting phantom subs, killing all the way...

Oh... sorry, got distracted...

Ok, so FM prizes and you. What you may or may not want to know...

Radioactive upgrade:

The first item up for bid... Oh- Sorry. Bob's job, or Drew's now, anyway.... Ok, Radioactive Upgrade.

While at first blush this does not look particularly great in terms of use, it can be a good choice for those builds in which you want to add a little extra punch. It is not a game breaking special and seems to be a designed 'step'. I like that. Slower power creep and good design brings longevity to a game.

What comes to mind with particularity is the Cyclone launcher. This special would add 270 damage to each flechette. Not too bad, particularly in builds like the Vanquisher where you sometimes struggle to find relevant specials to add.

Tephra Thrower:

The Tephra Thrower. It's... well, it's a thrower. Yay?

While throwers were fun and all, they really have never held relevancy in the game. They were very short lived and I do not see this signaling a resurgence of the idea... yet. Additionally, the high salvo is such a drawback in today's game that it really should never have been implemented. At .2 sec per salvo, you are looking at 2.8 seconds for the weapon to just fire off it's salvos before even starting to add the reload time.

I will say that maybe adding one here or there on your base defense fleet may behoove you for the death weapon effect, I do not see this weapon gaining any sort of predominance over weapons we currently rely on for damage.

Reaver Bulwark:

Next in the offering is the Reaver Bulwark. I'm not sure of the thinking behind this. The repair efficiency of this armor is .8 and seems to be the baby version of the Bulkhead. Build time is rather long as well and I can only see this as a use in niche builds and, well, that's about it.

Personally, I try to get multi-use out of my stuff as much as possible unless it is ultra-efficient in what it is designed to do. Not sure what options this grants over the multitude of options available to us.

Mayhem Torpedo:

Now we get to what is really interesting. Let's start with this: This is a dumb-fire weapon. Starting with this may be obvious, but I am going to extrapolate a little. The reason this is the thing I lead with is that Kixeye does not release some info. In this case projectile speed, however, we can make a few presumptions.

Kix will not want to toy with the raid targets enough to make the twisters useless. They also do not want to make this torpedo slower so as to make it useless in the raid either. Remember, similar targets will be our Uranium targets starting this month. Releasing something not viable is silly, but releasing something to ease our future chores is rather smart- particularly when people have a penchant to coin re-fits to combos that work well.

That all said, another absolutely great aspect of this torpedo is that splash. Baby got splash!!! If you watch some of the videos (particularly mine, right?) and were familiar with the 105 layout, you will see how much time this would save in these engagements as well as much safer engagements of the thermal hulls in the targets. I WISH I had some spare shipyard time in order to refit my Hell Wraiths with these things.

So- there it is. A quick and dirty overview of the FM prizes. Thanks for the visit!