JL, a friend of mine and reader of this blog, has recently confessed his addiction to Skyrates after reading about it on my blog. I decided to jot down some of my skyrates history for posterity:

I had a Mastiff, then a Cyclops, and then a Lancaster, which I loved. I then tried a Cetacea, then a Mantis. I then went back to a Nomad I think, that was virtually impossible to combat with, just one rear arc. It had a trading kit and a performance kit iirc, which brought it’s CKPH (which is Cargo Kilograms per Hour) to a quite respectable number - the highest configuration possible in a T2 plane I think.

Then I had an ill-fated experience with a triple-kitted Lancaster, which wasn’t as awesome as I remember when it was the original non-kitted version, but in reality it was almost certainly better than the non-triple kitted version
I had my best experience yet with a Vengeance, perf kit and combat kit, mad props, a large ammo feed and wings B. Actually it was even better when I had the wings A and the armor piercing rounds instead of the wings b and large ammo feed, but I kept running out of ammo. It was ultimately the ammo that made me decide to get a Bolo. And it’s top speed.

So I got my “Perfect Bolo” configuration completed:
http://lobachevsky.net/mechanic/compare.php?p=25&u=10,17,40,43,42,12&s_c=5&s_r=5
but 50 cargo wasn’t enough to run the missions I wanted so I was looking for something else.

I happened to be at Uurwerk when unobtainium dropped, so quickly sold the Bolo, bought a Leviathan, and filled it with Unobtainium. What a capitalist. The week that followed was the most boring skyrates I’ve ever played - it took 17+ hours to get anywhere, and I could only sell 20x crates at a time (with a cargo hold of 675 crates) before the price dropped too hard to be worth it.

So I finally got so sick of it, I went back to the Bolo. Unfortunately in the process, I lost so much money that I couldn’t afford the 2-kit version I had tweaked myself into. And with the 50 cargo not being enough, I now believe happiness looks like this:
http://lobachevsky.net/mechanic/compare.php?p=25&u=36,17,10,21,40,12&s_c=5&s_r=5
which is what I’m working towards, but that may change at any moment.

I had a Seahawk with my alt, “Squeek”. The only problem with it is the no engine slots, but they’ve all got a problem, that’s what makes the game so interesting - it’s a billion tradeoffs working against each other.  At the time I started Squeek I was running very boring long-haul trades in the nomad, just getting a bankroll together to get something else. That’s why I started Squeek and made him have a more intense experience - more combat, combat planes, combat skills etc. As I shifted my main character towards the more immersive combat play, I moved squeek more into a trading role, just gathering a bankroll to buy a monster plane.

Also Leyton plays a bit too, but for him a Leviathan would be a good choice because of how much trading he does, and how little time he’s got. That’s another interesting angle.

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