...
Teladi capital ships are of a dome shaped design series. This is considerably different from X3 where their ships were more a merger of tech from other races. All these ships offer great mobility, offering the often with the highest speeds and turn rates of ships in their class. Offensively they tend towards few but strategically placed turrets under powerful forcefield generators. The capital shipwrights are located aboard Serpentine Haze/Verdant Profit/TU Overwatch.
Teladi Trade ships only come in specific cargo varieties. The XL variants have top end mobility with competitive toughness and decent anti-capital defenses in the form of numerous Plasma/MA Turrets. The Energy variants suffer from very low capacity XL offerings making them considerably worse than ships like the Lyranea. Although the Container variants are beaten for speed by the Sanahar, the XL offerings have unparalleled capacity. Likewise the bulk offerings also have unprecedented capacity. Although the liquid variants cargo space is only mediocre, they do still have mobility and toughness advantages for their price. With exception of Container, the Vulture L series is very competitive in the L transport class. The Albatross and Crane XL series are not that useful as they are mostly obsoleted by the Albatross XL series which offers the same mobility but with better capacity, toughness and weapon systems for similar value efficiency. The Albatross XL series large cargo capacities generally cannot be fully utilized during trading however the Container variant makes a good mobile warehouse for hoarding various high value products such as construction materials and the bulk version can be a decent mining ship.
Teladi Fight ships capital ships are only available in XL variants and are the most physically compact in their classXL fight ships. They consist of just the Teladi style dome with most of the firepower mounted on the front surface and very little protection for the back. Each feature 6 anti-capital weapons on the front of a mix between Plasma/MA and Jet turrets with the back protected by trivial HIT/MA turrets. Toughness wise they are by far the weakest XL fight ships with hull and shield values in the L range. During in zone combat all 6 anti-capital weapons can fire which can result in decent long range damage comparable with other XL fight ships. Despite the fire power they are effortlessly destroyed by all other XL fight ships and even many XL trade ships due to the paper like toughness. The compact shape and weapon placement should mean that they work well for in zone combat if massed and ordered to attack a target together so that multiple engage at once. Unfortunately the Taranis level price tag of the ships makes them completely useless as a Taranis has similar mobility and offers a lot more firepower and toughness.
Although the purchasable fight ships are useless, the boarding only Phoenix Marauder is far from it. Not only does it use a massive 6 Plasma/JET turrets on the front but it is also the second fastest capital ship. However what makes the ship so special is that it has 50k universal storage, a feature unique to it out of all player obtainable ships (Xenon I is not player obtainable). As it is classed as a fight ship it is subject to being treated as one meaning that non-hostile Teladi pirates will completely ignore the ship even when carrying wares. This makes owning one very profitable as some of the trade deals offered between TU Overwatch and UA Haunt with places like Albion and Omicron Lyrae can make several million per trip. Although most commonly seen belonging to UA and CAR, they can also spawn as generic enemy mission marks allowing them to be obtained with no loss in reputation. Despite the high speed of the Phoenix Marauder it has a comparatively slow boost speed making it slower than some dedicated trade ships for general purpose trading.
The Phoenix Marauder spawns as a generic Teladi capital ship for generic kill missions. It can be identified as a mark from the mission screen by looking for its distinct red tinting as opposed to the usual green of non Marauder variants. The ships can also spawn as the backup ships for mission marks. Due to how weak Teladi fight ships are any non Phoenix Marauder ships that spawn as part of the mission can be effortlessly dispatched by 2 Taranis or 1 Olmekron. Since the Phoenix Marauder has Plasma/JET turrets it cannot be approached from the front until they are removed. Removal is as simple as flying 9 km away straight in-front of the ship, facing it, switching into reverse and then spamming Sunstalker Missiles at the turrets. The Plasma/JET Laser turrets are divided into 2 banks of 3 with each bank protected by a Mk3 Forcefield Projector. Due to the compact size of Teladi ships the missiles will more than likely cripple some of the 12 engines and expose the Forcefield Generators of other banks. After the Plasma/JET Laser turrets are destroyed stripping the ship is trivial as it only has 6 HIT/MA turrets remaining for defense. Of note is the ships absolutely absurd boarding resistance which fully repaired exceeds powerful ships like the Arawn despite the low hull maximum. Not only does this limit boarding to very low hull amounts but care must be taken to watch for repairs as single percent of hull can correspond to a boarding resistance increase of several units. The ship has a very long full repair time after boarding due to the need to repair 12 engines.
Heart of Light (Interlude)
...