Hey, I was looking dow the list and I can't seem to find a Gunner guide, could someone please post one?

Time Warp

The problem with a Gunner guide is that Gunner is a really well balanced all around class. you can do just about anything and succeed with it. at least half assed.

yeah kinda.


I don't have time to post one atm, later I will


Kanga

From me, the worlds most average Gunner

Level 0-200
Dont go Gunner, I reccomend a Berserker in a Hotrod with Pointdefenses and Rad Control. This lets you get to level 200+ with little effort.

Levels: 200-500
Okay, you now have enough skill points to throw around effectively as a Gunner. Go out and buy yourself a frigate and 2 Gunner Augs. Also get a Capital Laser if you can afford it or any other long ranged weapon with decent accuracy, but not a MagCannon, you just wont have the DPS. Get 2 if you have enough skill points to max out the gunner skill.
Your frigate will be fast enough to run rings around most AI and you will have enough range to pound opponents without getting hit by return fire.
If you opt to use Capital Lasers you are going to need a good Energy, I reccomend a Mzungu Lightning and upgrade to a FotG as soon as possible. You should also invest in a decent sheild as soon as you can, a MisD or GnT being the best choices.
As soon as you have the Gunner Skill maxed you have 2 choices on what to spend your skill points on. If you intend to use Excomms and Abstructors then train Mining Control in Lagrange, if Capital Lasers then train Big Guns in Lyceum.
Any of those weapons are viable choices, I solo DPSed Marco Columbus with Abstructors so dont discount them as a low tech weapon, although Excomms are far superior due to their range and projectile Speed and Capital Lasers have 100% hit ratio even while you dodge projectiles.

500 and Upwards.
Get a new Capital Ship when you can, they are very useful on team ventures like Uber runs and Base Assaults. Battlecruiser and Dreadnought both come with the Stooch's Seal of Approval.
I reccomend Athena+, Gunner Prowess on a Battlecruiser and Zeus+, Dem Rage on a Dreadnought. Although Combined Aspect of Lion on a Dreadnought would be obscene.
I also reccomend purchasing a ship that you will use for solo DGs and levelling. A Heavy Fighter like Rosmarinus, Zebra or even an Izer will be useful, they arent quite the bullet magnets that Capital Ships are. Get Zebra Spitters for your Heavy Fighters.
Never forget the Frigate, it can be used to solo Omega Platforms in DGs due to the 2k Range you will be reaching with Capital Lasers and almost 50k Sheilds when you get a Giga GnT.


And always remember, you will only be taken to Ubers because of your Destruction skill, aside from that the only Ubers we are useful against is Dark Curse and Marco Columbus.

Other Things
There are other routes to take while levelling, I have merely laid out what I feel is the optimal. At level 500 I myself was using a Celestica augged for when I was a droner and I could kill Big Greens with Abstructors... before they got their speed nerfed. So dont complain that they re too tough.
Other reccomended ships are Porpoise and Parsley. Dont get a Basil, the Parsley is superior in every stat. Although I used my Basil til level 800 and could kill Picks with Abstructors at that point (I was a very poor gunner and couldnt afford better).

I'm no professional, but I really don't see how you can power two capital lasers, missiles and a shield / shield charger on an electric regen setup like MZ lighting or even FotG. Even with the elec tempering from gunner augs, and help with efficiency from an OS 5, it's just too much. With lots of panels it might work, as long as you are fighting in a well-lit area.

Another option is to use that energy bonus on your capship wisely by going for a bank energy setup. That way, you can still fight through systems and DGs with dark suns, as long as you don't have to do too many of them in a row before you get a chance to charge. It sucks sitting around waiting for a charge, but you'll be sitting around waiting for your shields to charge anyway, so it really doesn't take any extra time.

Another gunner tip I'll throw out there is DON'T neglect your tractor skills. When your missles miss, even on slow targets, it can take forever for them to turn around and catch back up. During that time, you're not firing anymore missiles. It helps a bunch if you can tractor your target into your missiles or your missiles into your target.

I have tested, you cannot power capital lasers. But with a Lightning, Thunder or FotG you have more than enough elec to kill a Pick or a BG with a small amount of downtime to regen.
I used to use a Bank setup that could regen 1.7mil energy in roughly 5 minutes. Then they nerfed solar panels. I used a Crystalline Reserve to have 1.7mil energy bank. I could kill 3 or more Green Battleships at once using that energy. But sadly I then had to wait 30minutes to regen my elec, more if my sheilds were damaged because they then ate my elec regen.

The optimum energy to use is a Lion Heart, large bank and awesome regen. This means that even once the bank has been exhausted you can still fire enough to keep up your negative damage tweak. On the other hand if you have a bank setup and your elec runs out, you are now a sitting duck for the next 20 minutes. Check every high end Gunner in a capital ship, they will be using a Lion Heart.

I spent 5billion on a Crystalline Reserve and 16bil on 2 Dem Rage augs before they simultaneously nerfed solar panels and the Crystalline Reserve. After that nerf hit, I used my 90mil FotG instead of the 5bil energy that still sits in my thatch.

I used a Mzungu Thunder in my Battlecruiser for months and never had any problems.

Stooch pretty much summed it up, here are a few other pointers:

1: In a cap ship, do not expect to power. You cannot. I have a lion heart and lots of solar panels, as well as a setup with good elec and no added RoF, and I cannot power even without a charger.

2: Be careful where you place your ship, especially in groups. One of the biggest problems I have when I go on uber runs in my dreadnought is the size. Never sit anywhere near a droner, they will not be able to re-deploy and may lose billions of credits worth of drones, which will generally not make you very popular.

3: Although the cap ship may seem big, it gets cramped fast, with all the huge gear you must use. Don't carry around a ton of useless items, and biggest is not always best. Use a liberty cap VI or a luxurious one, because an OS one will hog up too much room. Also, if you intend to use a lot of solar panels, realize that you will be wasting hundreds of space on them.

4: To solo stuff, you must be VERY patient. I have well over 400,000 shields, which is nice for fighting, but an absolute nightmare between fights. If I die, it probably takes in the area of 30 minutes for me to regenerate my shields fully.

5: If you do die in a cap ship while in a DG or similar, do NOT get back in when it turns yellow! That is just the five-minute maximum going by, your ship still has a low shield bank and you will die again very quickly if you get in without letting your shields heal.

6: If you are heading into warp 3 to go DGing or just to kill stuff, do not use your travelling field if you do not have a monkey with you. Again, the time you must sit and regen will usually be longer than the time you saved with the extra speed.

7: When you are leveling in w3 and your shields get low, dock and buy a crappy ship such as a roswell. Transfer all of your fuel into it and wait for your shields to regenerate, then transfer all the fuel back to your dread. This way, you do not run out of promethium (or whatever you use) after fighting just a few enemies because of your godawful regen. If you are in the middle of a DG and your shields are low but you have killed everything, toss your fuel overboard and tractor it. It will not decay this way, and will not disappear either.

8: If you do use promethium, always carry a good supply of prom crystals with you. I always buy 150 promethium before heading into warp 3 to hunt GBs, but much of that is gone by the time I get there. It is unimaginably annoying to spend that long getting deep into warp 3, killing just a few enemies then heading back because you are out of fuel.

9: You are slow. Always remember this. If your team is planning to do an uber run, such as Iq' Bana or Snake Hole, leave before everyone else. Otherwise, they will be stuck waiting for you for a long time, simply because you are that slow. If there will be a shield monkey wherever you are going, use a travelling field and have the monkey heal you when you arrive.

10: Your gunner subskill that lowers an enemies resistances is very useful when fighting in groups. Often, I bring a pair of magcannon IIIs with me as well as my capital lasers to uber runs, because the amount of extra damage it gives my teammates is higher than the damage I would be doing with my capital lasers.

11: Just kidding, that is all the tips I can think of right now.

P.S. If you intend to use a heavy fighter instead of a capital ship as a gunner, disregard almost all of that. I used an izer before I got my dread, it is pretty much an entirely different class. Also, a great setup for a gunner heavy fighter is 2 superior combined, 1 gunner mastery, it has a ton of space for all that big gear as well as everything else you could need.

as Stooch has said, you CANT power 2 Capital Armageddon lasers, however, with a few panels, a Z+, and the most power energy in game for ships, you can power to cap protos or the KMK. by taht time, however, you would most likely be at least lvl 1000, if not 1500 or 1800, as the FP9 and the KMK are quite rare, but if you do get there, use two KMK. even tho 2 cap protos are about 1b and 2 KMK are about 10b+, the KMK is eth and by sitting on a stationary planet or a non damaging sun, the ai's will use their eth wep, which, for the most power, is not as power as their main wep.

at lower lvls, i've seen that Light of Peace is an effective weapon, but like stocch and the lasers, the gunner i saw couldnt power his two LoP. this means you'll most likely use a bank/panel setup for 70% of your time if you sue a capital ship. for HF or even freighter, i dunno, as i havent tested beelzebub's setup on paper and havent seen a freighter gunner yet.

between battles, when you arent shooting, and if you had the space to carry a decent charger, equip that to help your shields along. NEVER use that after battle charger DURING battle. there were instants where the charger killed the capital ship because the elect drain crippled the shield.

Would an Mz Smash be better than lightning? It reqs. enukes?

Well lets see... it is the same size, has twice the bank and twice the regen, yes I think it would be better. Hell its probably better than a Thunder.
I only suggested those energies because they are what I used and I got them cheap in team.
There are always other choices, by no means take what I have said as the be all and end all of gunnering.
Try things out and use what works for you.

Personally I'd use aku qa on a dread with 2x zeus+. Should power it... with panels.. and luck...

Yep, Aku' Qa with 2 Z+ would work better on paper and rid the requirement for fuel... panels would assist but the Aku' Qa is small so its freed up space as well as the space you would have used for fuel.

I'm thinking of making a gunner out of Tarikn2 my lvl 1200 alt and I will make a dread and a Zebra setup...

Is a Lion any good for a gunner?

Lion is too slow. Zebra with the typical all-around H+ Ath+ PtE works great, its very fast and can take a beating.

In my eyes, that's a very poor guide. Gunner is useful for more stuff than you said, Anaconda for example. And the UZ. Also I didn't see you mention missiles once.




Say lion is too slow again and I'll show you wrong, Gunner Rosmarinus works. Rosmarinus TS is 85, a lions is 80... Don't say bullshit like that, the Lion has numorous advantages, it's hull and mods, and it has the lion maul. If I had the money I would of made a Lion for Kryton when I had him gunner, and if I had the money now I'd make one for Jeff!

Stooch wrote his guide back when missiles didn't exist...