Bird of War
07 Nov 2024Rawnu
What if the Mandalay, the heavily advertised meta-explorer from Zorgon Peterson, is actually... an angry Mamba with wide wings? That was a question I had, since laying my eyes on this ship. My own history with that ship is detailed elsewhere, I know its lineage and what runs in its blood. Once I got my hands on the ship, my intuition became reality: this is a Bird of War in disguise. I contacted Tanya Blaine back from my ExploRacer days and we exchanged some ideas. But she wasn't really into it, something else occupied her time, something connected to her mercenary past and the new power players on the galactic stage. Now was not the time to push her on either of those topics. So I decided to tinker for myself. I am an engineer after all. At first, I was scratching my head about the power plant and the distributor. Those would be the bottlenecks for a lot of combat activities. One class higher, and everything would be fine. In fact it would be more than fine: with a class 6 power plant and a class 6 power distributor, this ship would be unstoppable. Maybe ZP still wants to sell the FdL and the Mamba after all! So I got to work experimenting with the perfect mix of power demand and sustained damage output. Initially I wondered if the great heat radiation performance of the Mandalay would translate into being a dedicated PA weapon boat. But the distributor proved to be a hard challenge. I exchanged some ideas with Elvira Martuuk, who helped Tanya and me with the ExploRacer. She suggested not to push against the strengths of the ship: its extreme agility and excellent weapon convergence. Rather she advised me to work with those. And then it clicked: Rails.
The combination of rail guns and fragment cannons, together with a strong focus on the Mandalay's excellent shield capabilities, proved to be perfect. Its damage output was on par if not larger than ships twice its size, only my Mamba and Python Mk2 exceeded it. The ultimate test was of course in combat, around pirate-heavy compromised nav beacons. And my "Eye of Harmony", a reference to the quantum singularity at the heart of the mysterious ancient time ships of a long forgotten race, was up to the challenge. It outmanoeuvred even Elite pilots in their FdLs without breaking a sweat. Only the heavy ships were a bit of a drag – but just that, not really a danger for the "Eye". The only real issue was staying power when it comes to projectile weapons. Engineering the rail guns for plasma slugs eliminated this as well.
But there's always something more. The final challenge for any ship is going against the toughest targets you can imagine: the Thargoids. Could this ship hold its ground against Thargoid Interceptors? Could it best them? I felt how nervous I got, the war still haunts me. I still am not able to shake loose from it, like so many of us. What have we become?
Today is not the day to lift this curse, today is the day to take this bird to war. And so I did. On the one hand, power wasn't such an issue because I go shieldless. However the Guardian weaponry eats away all energy gains from abandoning shields. So I was faced with the question, how hot should this build run? In the end, after testing, it became clear that the best arrangement was to use two medium and two small modified Shard Cannons (don't ask me how I got them, please), along with two medium thermal vent beam lasers. I experimented with different loadouts, threw in a medium enhanced AX multi-cannon, but they just don't pack the necessary punch, at least not alone. With this AX Mandalay build I went to Thargoid town, to Picenile, where the latest invasion was happening.
And hot damn, it delivered! Soloing Cyclops and Baselisks was almost a walk in the park, so effortlessly did the "Eye" do it. Its agility is truly unmatched, even the FdL and the Python Mk2 will have to push very hard in the hands of a skillful pilot to match the Mandalay. Medusas and Hydras were more difficult, as was to be expected. The hard limit here was the distributor: it just takes a tick too long to recharge and have your weapons ready to fire. And heat, oh boy, against the Hydras heat was an issue. To be clear, the Mandalay looses heat very quick, but a class 6 distributor would enable the Mandalay to almost never overheat from consecutive weapons discharge. I was wondering if ZP ever experimented with a higher-class power distributor or if there's a blueprint for a Combat Mandalay in some hidden away file.
After all this engineering and combat testing, the Mandalay proves to be a fine combat ship, capable of performing almost every combat task you could ask of her, with an agility that is breathtaking – and a jump range (and full range) no other combat ship can deliver. Makes me wonder, if ZP has more in mind with this ship. To me, this would make an excellent multi-purpose vessel for long-range reconnaissance with the occasional combat scenario. Maybe this is the ship that will open the less travelled parts of the galaxy for colonization? In either case, the Mandalay is truly a Bird of War, a Bird of Multitudes. A ship that continues to take my breath away. What role will I engineer her next?
