Loyalist

The Loyalist is a Battleship equipped with a full armament of medium Turrets.

Description

The Loyalist is a Battleship equipped entirely with Medium Turrets and a few spinals. This ship can be used much like the Ampharos or Tempest, as its Turrets have a high rate of fire with decent accuracy. It is almost entirely black with the team colors most visible on the engines and between the plated areas.

Interior

The interior is almost non-existent, a dark room with a chair and sign sarcastically pointing it out.

Advantages

• High health for a Battleship.
• It's eight high-accuracy Medium Turrets provide high damage at close range against both small and large ships.
• Turrets are all on top, allowing quick focus fire on one ship.
• Good maneuverability.

Disadvantages

• Highly vulnerable bottom.
• Weak Spinals.
• Somewhat large being similar in size to Dreadnoughts.
• Turrets have low range.
• Doesn't do to well against most Aliens.

Strategy

• Provide excellent anti-ship support to a siege fleet, especially against Ships around the size of Cruisers.
• Stay behind other ships when larger ships attack. The Medium Turrets are best used for support and are not always effective against large targets with high health, even at this quantity.
• Since the blindspot below you can be exploited a lot, try to mostly outmaneuver your opponents with repeated descending warps. If you think you can't keep your target in sight for the weapons, do not force the fight and flee to your closest starbase.
• This ship excels at Alien hunting. While it can't fight a Punisher in a 1v1, it can destroy most of the Swarmers, Outriders and Bruisers with ease.

Version History

• Received a shield and hull buff and it's Turrets were changed from 8 Gatling Turrets to 8 Medium Turrets in version .63h. Likely due to the fact that when there was heavy server lag, the Gatling fire rate would become dramatically slower, which hindered the Loyalist from dealing its full DPS.
• 2 Medium Lasers changed to 2 Dual Medium Lasers and 2 Medium Cannons changed to 2 Medium Railguns in version .65a6 along with the new Turret models.
• Turret loadout changed from 2 Medium Lasers, 2 Dual Medium Lasers, 2 Medium Railguns, 2 Dual Medium Cannons to 2 point defense lasers, max Hull increased from 3200 to 3600 in version .66b.
• Buffed in .66b, increasing its shield from 3850 to 4050 and its hull from 3600 to 3650.
• Nerfed in .69a1, decreasing its hull from 3650 to 2500.
• 2 Medium Flak Cannons moved to the bottom of the ship in version .69e.
• Turn speed buffed from 0.1 to 0.35 in version .70c

Trivia

• The ship was originally going to be called the Cyclone but was changed for unknown reasons.
• The ship used to "hard-counter" small ships but after the re-balance, it was near useless against them, a grim irony taking the description into account.
• It was considered one of the worst Battleships before the re-balance like the Sovereign. But became one of the best afterward.

• The current model used to belong to the Retribution, however the model was given to the Loyalist after constant complaints.
• The description was incorrect during the time of update .63h considering it was armed with more PVP-oriented weapons.