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The Kortul Devastator is the Vasari's Battleship.
Official Description: Like many ships in the Vasari fleet, the Kortul doubles as both a warship and a home for the remnants of the empire. As the lead assault class vessel, the Kortul has a number of defensive systems that grant it impressive survivability in battle, which combined with a full complement of heavy weapons make it a force to be reckoned with. In the days of the Empire, Kortuls formed the backbone of every Wing of the Dark Fleet, and while the Exodus Fleet pales in comparison, the Kortuls perform much the same function with one exception: they no longer carry Variments of shock troopers.
Overview[]
The Kortul is very powerful when it comes to combat. It is in fact the most combat oriented battleship in the game. It is able to beat almost any other capital ship by a wide margin. However, it is only able to effectively fight when it has its abilities active such as Power Surge. Without this ability it will fail in most major capital ship battles.
Tactics[]
The Kortul Devastator is a blunt instrument, efficiently deploying large quantities of firepower, but not offering any major strategic choices other than a full frontal assault. The Devastator can be effectively compared and contrasted to the Kol Battleship: both ships offer offensive and defensive abilities; both vessels have dedicated anti-fighter abilities; and both vessels have some degree of active shield regeneration. Here the resemblance ends: due to the Devastator's possession of a passive ability. To the unexperienced, this may appear to be a separation from Power Surge and its astounding combat prowess, but the two abilities are intrinsically linked. Despite freeing antimatter for Power Surge and Jam Weapons, Disruptive Strikes is perhaps the primary purpose of this ship. It allows the Kortul to annihilate the antimatter reserves of other ships as a default. Power Surge, while it does significantly increase damage output, should not be regarded as a damage buffing ability, but rather a regenerative ability that drastically improves the effectiveness of Disruptive Strikes. At maximum levels, Power Surge and Disruptive Strikes allows the Kortul to remove antimatter from enemy ships, making it superb at disabling the abilities of other capitals.
A fleet of Kortuls and Skarovas Enforcers may be a very difficult fleet to defend against, and additional strength can be acquired from Skirantra Carriers. Late in game, researching plasma wave, pulse beam, and phase missile upgrades can dramatically increase a Kortul Devastator's firepower. Power Surge itself is an excellent ability, increasing overall raw damage output on a level that surpasses Gauss Rail Gun (due to the fact that increased attack speed benefits from weapon upgrades), though in practice, damage applied will be lower due to the effects of Shield Mitigation. Critically though, because as the game progresses, Power Surge's damage increase will be increasingly negligible as frigate counts increase, resulting in the Kortul making up a much smaller percent of overall fleet damage output. That said, its cooldown reduction and shield regeneration capacities make it much more adept at disabling enemy abilities and resilient.
The Devastator's anti-fighter ability, Jam Weapons is a short-term shutdown rather than an out-and-out damage ability like Flak Burst. The practical results of this difference are as follows:
- Jam Weapons immediately removes a fighter threat for a short period of time; this window of opportunity can be all a Vasari player needs.
- Jam Weapons can be used to buy time in a way that Flak Burst cannot.
- Since Flak Burst's damage is ultimately not enough to destroy a fighter immediately, this ability often either deprives the Kol of anti-matter or forces TEC players to deploy the Kol in pairs. The Kortul Devastator does not suffer from this problem, since it is equally effective alone or in groups.
- Conversely, since Jam Weapons does not destroy its targets, a Vasari fleet unprepared to sweep the disabled fighters from the sky while they are disabled can suffer grievously when these fighters come back on-line, particularly in the post-1.1 environment in which Light Carriers are employed with much greater frequency.
Volatile Nanites allows the Vasari fleet to distribute large quantities of damage amongst an enemy fleet in the late game. When combined with the Jarrasul Evacuator's Gravity Warhead, the Vasari can both keep a retreating fleet in range and simultaneously rip them to pieces. Of course, this is hardly a central strategy, since level 6 capital ships are somewhat difficult to acquire in small games. Nevertheless, the synergy between these two capital ships bears consideration, particularly combined with the acceleration effect of the Antorak Marauder's Distort Gravity ability.
Another stratagy, that requires a little micro-managing, is to withhold the Volatile Nanites ability while your fleet weakens (but not kills) a small cluster of enemy ships central to the enemy fleet. When a number of these ships are below 300 hull points, cast Volatile Nanites over the enemy fleet. Then destroy the weakened ships. If done correctly the explosion of a single ship will destroy nearby weakened ships (also afflicted with Volatile Nanites), causing them to explode and so on.
Development[]
Note: As of patch 1.18 / Entrenchment 1.041 , the Kortul has changed to a "denial" ship.
- Power Surge now regenerates shields in a more steady and respectable manner, by 25 / 35 / 45 points per second for 20 / 25 / 30 seconds and with a constant 10 second delay before the ability can be cast again. This means that a level 1 Power Surge regenerates 500 shield points every 30 seconds, level 2 gives 875 points over 35 seconds and level 3 grants an astonishing 1350 shield points every 40 seconds. So, Power Surge denies the enemy a chance to kill this ship without tremendous firepower.
- Weapon Jam now continuously disables weapons on all strike craft in a decent radius for 20 seconds, with a 30 second cooldown. This means that for 2/3 if the time, enemy strike craft are denied a point of existence in this ship's vicinity. This can be used in a number of ways - from direct fleet protection to more interesting applications. One such unconventional use of Weapon Jam is protecting a cloud of bombers from enemy fighters as they are ripping apart an enemy's starbase. This is particularly effective because bombers are well countered only by fighters (except for Kol/Halcyon's abilities, which can be taken care of with the next Kortul's ability). Flak frigates deal relatively small damage to bombers and will not manage to destroy a large cloud of bombers without fighter support before the starbase takes really heavy damage.
- Disruptive Strikes received a major buff across the board. It fits best in the "denial" role of the ship - it simply denies the enemy a chance to use his abilities. With this ability, Kortul can now defeat any other capital ship, even the Evacuator (with it's powerful Nanites) or Radiance (with its Detonate Antimatter) by simply cleansing their AM pool. It is now much more effective and can reliably keep an even-leveled capital ship on zero antimatter indefinitely if putting points in DS is not completely neglected. When used with Power Surge, DS not only applies much more frequently, but also makes the ship near immortal, making any capital ship fight unfair after just a few dozen seconds, with Kortul chaining Power Surge for unending Shield points and the other ship having no antimatter for its own abilities.
- Volatile Nanites is unchanged, but it can also be interpreted as a denial ability, since tight formations are denied a chance to survive.
| Ship Type: | Capital |
|---|---|
| Primary Role: | Combat |
| Shield Power: | High |
| Hull Points: | Very High |
| Armor Level: | Very High |
| Armor Type: | Capital |
| Antimatter: | Low |
| Weapons (Fore): | 2 x Plasma Wave Cannons / 2 x Pulse Beam Projectors / 4 x Phase Missile Launchers |
| Weapons (Side): | 3 x Pulse Beam Projectors (Starboard / Port) |
| Squadrons Supported: | 1 - 2 |
| Compliment: | 9,000 |
 Power Surge |
 Jam Weapons |
 Disruptive Strikes |
 Volatile Nanites |
 Ability Management |
 Attack |
 Stop |
 Move |
 Tactics Management |
 Squadron Management |