Dragon, Stingray or Starchaser

[athspk]

I am playing 2.3.1 and just reached Jan 2085.
After researching i can now build 3 new aircrafts (Dragon, Stingray, Starchaser).

Which one do you think i should produce?

[Sarin]

Stingray all the way, it's the top craft available, and only one with 3 medium weapon slots.

[Jon_dArc]

Definitely Stingray. They're all much too expensive in terms of Alien Materials to justify going lower, and aside from being very slightly thirstier on the antimatter it dominates the alternatives statwise (most notably in speed).

The only two reasons I can think of to build one of the others is if you're stuck with a desperate and immediate need for interception capability beyond the Stiletto/Saracen and are either still progressing along the research chain or lack enough Alien Materials for the Stingray (including stored UFOs waiting for disassembly). Probably an area that needs to be tweaked.

~J

[Ildamos]

Definitely Stingray. They're all much too expensive in terms of Alien Materials to justify going lower, and aside from being very slightly thirstier on the antimatter it dominates the alternatives statwise (most notably in speed).

The only two reasons I can think of to build one of the others is if you're stuck with a desperate and immediate need for interception capability beyond the Stiletto/Saracen and are either still progressing along the research chain or lack enough Alien Materials for the Stingray (including stored UFOs waiting for disassembly). Probably an area that needs to be tweaked.

~J

Should be nerfed a bit? It would make sense if every craft has a pronounced set of pros and cons. This "all the way" thing is disturbing.

[homunculus]

as far as i remember, they all had the exact same building time and alien materials cost, so that is probably for testing if they work at all.
the cost is quite high for just testing, however.

[ManicMiner]

The biggest problem I have is getting enough antimatter to keep them in the air.

Early in the game I stuck lots of laser turrets in bases and built a few SAM sites in key areas to soften up bigger craft for interception, so 90% of stuff that flies around the map either gets shot down by default or can be taken down by a cheapo interceptor.

So about 1 craft in 50 touches the ground intact. It does seem surprising that a 76% intact crashed UFO would have no recoverable antimatter in it given that a container leak would likely atomise the entire ship!