Belters

The Belters - a loose collection of independent traders, prospectors, pirates, and privateers - share a common belief: that freedom from tyranny is the right of all humanity. Belters are a rough-hewn, unruly bunch of borderline anarchists. Led by unlikely hero Orion Sholes, the Belters pilot an odd mix of captured and jury-rigged equipment: the "Junkyard Armada."

The Belters' junkyard orientations give them most of their unique qualities. At the technological level, the Belters have the ability to use technology in ways that other cannot, namely, without requiring a technological base. This means that any Mk-1 and Mk-2 technology picked up in space or previously researched can be used by Belters pilots at any time. For example, if an Iron Coalition were to stumble upon SRM Anti-Base 2, he would pick it up as would any aware pilot. However, his team requires a Supremacy Center to make use of the technology. The Belters, however, can replicate the missiles right away and for the rest of the game. Only Mk-3 level ships (requiring an advanced station) require that they possess a technological station. As such, adversaries of the Belters are particularly careful about not letting technology into their enemy's hands regardless of the Belters' chosen technological pathway, because chances are it'll be used against them.

This is compensated for by the Belters' slow research time: 240 seconds, and by the high cost of research. For example, technological research priced at 5000$ for the Coalition is priced at 6250$ for the Belters. This impairs the Belters financially and temporally. Conversely, their ship prices are lower, and so they can purchase more capital ships earlier than other teams, for example.

The low prices are also characteristic of their technological stations. Where others like GigaCorp can spread quickly with cheap, weak expansion stations, the Belters can spread quickly with cheap yet solid technological stations. Coupled with their ability to maintain technology from lost technological stations and incredible versatility in ship loadout, Belter pilots generally have a very large array of choice for their ships and equipment.

The Belters are extremely flexible in terms of equipment, missiles and weaponry. Many small class ships can mount weapons, such as nanites, which other factions cannot. This leads to strategies like heavy interceptor nanites and boosting stealth bombers, which are particularly deadly. Heavy interceptors can even mount SRM Dumbfire Missiles, and every single small class ship can carry a booster. This is useful for quick getaways for the scouts and stealth ships, but is rarely useful in long distance travel due to the poor quality of the booster.

The Belters are the least sophisticated faction. They are utilitarian. As such, they have never bothered to enable their small-class ships to mount any kind of shielding. They are completely devoid of small shield technology. Although this leaves the small ships with less signature, it also makes them slightly defenseless. The ships are given strong, dense hulls, but cannot compensate fully for this flaw. Also, they are particularly bulky, being a collection of ship parts fused together. As such, they maneuver particularly poorly, and have a hard time accelerating.

After finding rescue probe technology in Coalition space, they attempted to replicate the technology. They succeeded and pilots in eject pods can indeed use those probes to be quickly sent back to the nearest station. However, they did not succeed in creating specificity in the probe, which thus works for every other factions. This means that pilots from any faction can dock at such a probe, so Belter pilots are instructed to be particularly careful in laying them around, hiding them to be sure that the enemy cannot take advantage of them. The religious beliefs of the Belters led them to name this technology a "sanctuary".

View screenshots of this factions unique Ships & Stations

The following "Faction Perk" post was written by Shizoku, with minor edits.

Belters Faction Perks Strongest Hulls (1.05) High Speed )1.15) Miners have great yield (1.25) Bases are cheaper (20%) Dumbfires can be mounted on Ints Scouts, Stealth fighters, carry booster. Bombers can mount Lt. booster Can use all tech despite not having the requisite tech base The only Faction to retain it's Level II tech after a tech base is destroyed. (Like all other factions, research that is not completed is not kept.) Lower cost ships Faction weakness 4 minute research time Higher cost for tech (1.25) High mass (not always a bad thing, offset by (1.05) turn rate(1.1) turn torque to help with the mass) Poor miner capacity (.8), slow mining speed (.8), smaller paydays (-.25) Lack of shields scare off new players Faction Specific Tech Omni Fighters - A cloakable fighter, capable of mounting any weapon available for a small ship, as well as any missile for a small ship. Requires Starbase and one of the following: Adv. SF - Adv Fighter - Heavy Int Ideal Settings Like Bios, Belt's can survive on low amounts of money quite easily. Ideal settings are Med/Med, plentiful can be helpful for techbase spam as long as your not against Giga. Faction Strategies Heavy Bombers - The Belter heavy bomber is the tank among bombers, also with the Sup hull (GA) upgrades and AC 2/3, these bombers can take on heavy interceptors. One of the key items for Belter bombing is Nan 2, it is absolutely crucial. With Belters, always encourage your team to pick up all floating tech. The Belter bomber can load light booster, which when it is being properly rammed, can get up to speeds of 170 MPS. These bombers are fun and fairly cost effective. Missile Frigate (MF) rush - Purchase a tech base for 8K, then immediately get a Shipyard (SY). One relatively cheap medium class payment away and you have a missile frigate that can use nerve gas to capture a base. HTT Rush- With good Belter settings, and a proper econ, you can get HTTs by the 15 minute mark. The Belter Int is the best dogfighter due to it's large mass, but it does however load Nan making it an excellent rammer. Belter HTTs can go over 200 MPS with proper ramming. The key to getting the HTT so quickly to partial invest TT, Adv EXP, Int and Sig 1 GA all at the same time. Belters have a 240 second research time, so it doesn't need to finish research off immediately start with cheaper tech first, and put little increments into expensive tech. Belters is sort of like Giga, in that once you have your Adv EXP, you should be getting enormous amounts of cash due to the yield. Due to this fact and the defensive fact of your Ints, EXP is a great tech to up first with Belters. Multi-Teching - Belters Tech bases are so incredibly cheap that with a good Belter commander, the only time he loses is when there are no tech rocks left on the map. The cheap tech bases makes going dual or Omni tech very easy, even if you don't plan on getting anything from the base aside from the GA's, it is almost still worth it. The key that will make or break Belters, is the amount of tech your team picks up. If items like DF2, Nan2, Boost2, Mini2 and Gatt2 are brought in, you will save a lot of time and money. Belters should never have to buy Mark II tech.