Jugger
The Utwig Jugger is one of the most dangerous ships in the quadrant, thanks to its unique weapons and shield systems.
The Jugger is suprisingly fast for its size, although its acceleration is weak. But it is also outfitted with a set of amazingly powerful turning jets, and is capable of coming about as quickly as a vessel less than half its size.
Armament
Primary
The Jugger's main weapon is an array of six forward-facing cannons powered by an extremely efficient combat dynamo system. With it, the cannons have a virtually limitless supply of energy, and are able to fire without drawing any energy from the combat batteries. With a moderate rate of fire and damage, a Jugger can obliterate most other ships with a few salvos.
Secondary
The Jugger is equipped with a unique shielding system. It is capable of absorbing an almost limitless amount of punishment from both kinetic and energy-based attacks, and it in fact converts this energy for storage in its combat batteries! However, with the combat dynamo devoted to the primary weapons, it is not capable of replenishing energy on its own, so if the combat batteries run out, the shields are knocked offline. After a battle, the crew of the Jugger can feed energy from the main weapons systems into the batteries, but the process is imperfect, yielding roughly 50% of their capacity.
Tactical Overview
The Jugger's shields consume energy when used, but they absorb energy from enemy attacks. Therefore, a skilled Jugger pilot who uses his shields only when necessary can keep his batteries fully charged and minimize damage to his ship. A corollary to this is that one should keep an eye on "skirmisher" weapons that require more energy to shield against than will be regained by shielding against them. Such weapons can slowly bleed the batteries dry, leaving captains in a vulnerable position.
The Jugger's massive size and poor acceleration make gravity wells particularly dangerous, since at full speed they can be difficult to avoid. This, combined with the excellent turning rate of the ship and unique weapons systems, make pillboxing a wildly popular tactic.
When fighting a computer-controlled Ur-Quan Dreadnought or Kohr-Ah Marauder, a most effective strategy is a full-on frontal assault. The computer makes a policy of firing as fast as it can, so on approach, absorb all the punishment they can dish out, and when their fuel tanks run dry, take a potshot or two from point-blank range. As soon as they get enough energy to fire back, they will, so keep the shields at the ready, and whittle them down to nothing with impunity. Indeed, some consider this ship to be more effective against Dreadnoughts AND Marauders than even the almighty Chmmr Avatar!
One very odd thing to note, however, is that somehow or another, a Jugger's shields cannot absorb energy from an Androsynth Guardian in its in its Blazer form. While the Jugger won't take damage from the Guardian's Blazer form, it also cannot re-energize its Batteries from it. It can, however, re-energize from the molecular acid spheres the Guardian fires, just like it might from any other standard projectile. The working theory as to why a Guardian's Blazer energies cannot be absorbed is that its energies are so unique and so violent that the Jugger simply cannot convert the energy into any usable manner.1
Notes and References
- 1 Note that this is simply a theory one fan came up with, story-wise. If you want a game-related technical answer though, simply put, the game reads the Guardian as still being a ship, rather than being a true projectile. The Jugger's shields can only absorb projectiles. Call it something of a glitch in the programming, I suppose.