Craft Comparison Table
Craft | Speed (knots) | Range (nm) 6 | Air time | Fuel | Weapons | Damage | Cargo | HWPs | Cost/Rent ($) | Time (h) | Destroyed Pnt. |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Skyranger | 760 | 13,500 | 35h30m / 82h30m4 | 1,500 | None | 150 | 14 | 3 | 500,0001 | 72 | -200 |
Interceptor | 2,100 | 8,050 | 7h30m / 15h50m4 | 1,000 | 2 | 100 | None | None | 600,0001 | 96 | -250 |
Firestorm | 4,200 | 7,000 | 3h20m | 205 | 2 | 500 | None | None | 400,0002 | 14,0003 | -250 |
Lightning | 3,100 | 7,750 | 5h | 305 | 1 | 800 | 12 | None | 600,0002 | 18,0003 | -300 |
Avenger | 5,400 | 27,000 | 10h | 605 | 2 | 1,200 | 26 | 4 | 900,0002 | 34,0003 | -400 |
1 This cost is paid upon ordering and also monthly as rental fee, charged at midnight on the first day of each month.
2 This is only the up-front cost. These craft also require a number of Alien Alloys, UFO Navigation and UFO Power Source to build, as well as engineers time and workshop space.
3 Engineer man-hours to manufacture.
4 Stationary (Patrolling) air time. Fuel consumption for conventional craft is decreased, allowing longer air time.
5 Elerium-based fuel: every fuel unit is worth 10 minutes of fly time, and 1 Elerium-115 unit is consumed every 5 fuel units.
6 Range is the maximum distance from base a given craft can reach before fuel (50%) requires it to come back. Thus, maximum travel length of a craft is actually twice its range.
cash | alloys | power | navigation | total materials | |
Firestorm | 400k | 423k | 250k | 80k | 1153k |
Lighting | 600k | 553k | 250k | 80k | 1483k |
Avenger | 900k | 780k | 500k | 80k | 2260k |
In terms of combat effectiveness, (vs Battleships) an Avenger has exactly the same damage output as a Firestorm, but has almost 2.5 times as much health. The Avenger also costs slightly under twice as much and almost 2.5 times as long to build. In actual combat with a Battleship, on average, 4 Avengers will receive exactly the same amount of damage as 4 Firestorms, aka they are equally effective in combat, when engaging with 4 craft at once. And 4 Firestorms will fare better than 2 Avengers. In effect, this means that dollar for dollar, building 10 Firestorms is cheaper and more effective than building 4 Avengers. However, EACH avenger uses less fuel than 1 Firestorm, due to shorter airtime. Furthermore, 10 firestorms require 10 hangar.
In short, if you have enough resources, the Avenger is the better choice, but if you are short on resources, and for some reason you feel an uncontrollable urge to shoot down battleships (I do not know why you would do so), a fleet of Firestorms is better.