Where Did That Chameleon Go?

If the Pretender were a hull.

Raised in a secret facility built for experimenting on children, Jarod is a genius who can master any profession and become anyone he has to be. When he realizes as an adult that he's actually a prisoner and his captors are not... no... no wait... that's the show, right?

Oh  yea- The Chameleon!

I'm seeing a lot of hate geared towards this hull, and some of the criticism is justified. It does not live up to the previous generation of Generalist hulls in ability to conform successfully to specific metas and it also does not have the same flexibility as, say, the Zelos, however... it does have some serious value, particularly in a specific niche context.

That context is everyone's favorite - Expeditions! Yea, ok, that was sarcasm, but it does bring a certain value in that arena.

The other part of the contextual picture is this - a co-op campaign where you can gain tokens, and through those tokens, you can get one of these fleets out for free. Why does this make the hull and TLCs valuable? I'm glad you asked!

First, the fleet can be perpetually running in Generalist Expeditions for free premium resources. This is helpful during raids- particularly the longer ones. We all know the premium resource prices in the raid are... less than value oriented.

Second, you don't ever have to worry about the damage it takes. You can either park in a corner and wait for the expedition to time out and come back to your base fully repaired OR you can complete the target and let it coast getting premium res and it will come back fully repaired. How can you lose in this?

The tokens are not limited to 10 or less as some have been lately so you can stock up and save them until you have time in your shipyard or you have all the tokens to crank out a fleet.

Is the fleet ideal in any way? No. Is it something neat to have in the toolbox? Yes. Are they a great stand alone value? Not really compared to other options in the game. Since the tokens are essentially free with the Co-Op option I'd highly recommend doing the campaign. If you have a build that isn't performing up to snuff in the targets, now is a great time to stock up the tokens so you can tweak that build. It's actually a really good thing to have TLCs like this offered- one they don't really stress players out because they are optional, two they offer variety in the targets (though they DO need to make target requirements CLEAR) and three the co-op aspect beings back in a measure of the social aspect of the game- made even better with the addition of the world chat.

So- TL;DR - cool optional TLC that you can stack up some tokens cheaply and decide later if you want to invest in a build. Have fun pirates!