Value or Worthlessness of the Akkan

Your are very mistaken about the 'worthless'ness of this cap. Its by far one of the best support ships out there.

Its HP is one of the highest. If not the highest. Its higher than the Kol. (Funny IMHO)

Its DPS isnt the greatest but its a support cap.

An awesome colonize ability.

Ion bolt is great for all the reason you mentioned. Im not sure what you mean its not a cap killer? Ive watched many caps trying to jump away never make it b/c of good old Ion Bolt.

Targeting Uplink is sooo misunderstood its not funny. This is one of the BEST fleet support abilies out there. Sure it doesnt seem like much. But as you said the increase in range and accuarcy is beyond words wonderful for flak. Also the increased range helps LRF attack SB with damage, or an incoming fleet (love to set fleets to hold postion).

Akkan is by far on off the best Caps out there. Its not a powerhouse...but get a fleet around it and watch its true power show.

Actually, Akkan has the highest hull points of any capital ship in the game.  Its shields are lowest of any capital ship in the game, but not significantly different from other TEC caps.

If you do the math on the new colonize, it's better than the old Progenitor's colonize (before it got nerfed).  Akkan's colonize is absolutely astounding now.

I kill more caps with ion bolt than any other ability in the game.  It's an absolutely deadly ability.  Remember, it's the frigates that are going to have to make the killing blow, the Akkan is just giving them a free shot.  You need sufficient numbers to bring down the enemy cap.  When the opponent starts retreating, hit him with an ion bolt and then move your Akkan ahead of him.  Keep all your fleet pummeling him as you keep ion bolting him every time it recharges.  Often times an enemy will start retreating at nearly full health, and be dead before they even reach the edge of the gravity well.

Someitmes this won't be very helpful, other times it changes the entire course of the game.  Strike craft and asteroid fields are useful, but one of the top uses is actually when you combo this off with Ogrovs, starbases, or turrets.  The stationary starbases and turrets gain a lot out of range bonuses.  A starbase with targeting uplink can actually outrange Ogrovs, and with the targeting uplink bonus to the hanger's flak weapons you can even protect it quite well against strike craft.  An Akkan guarding an Argonev is one of the toughest starbase comboes to crack.  When you combo it with LRM's or Ogrovs already long range units get obscenely long range, making them harder to counter.

FYI, maxed out targetting uplink lets LRM's attack from outside starbase weapon range.

This is one of the most powerful abilities in the game.  With missile barrage a little harder to bring out early (solo Marza isn't viable anymore IMO) I personally think this is the most powerful ultimate ability in the game.  Free retreats are just one use of this ability.  Another is to regroup and heal mid-battle, buy time for reinforcements to arrive, or (one of my personal favourites) buy time for a starbase or defensive structures to complete.

You can also use it to bypass the phase desablization. While not very useful its another way the Akkan can make your enemy go wtf.

Didn't think it was that high on hull points...

Though I do understand the responses.  While personally incapable of much, it can as you guys said benefit those around you.  Many of the uses I had not thought of however.

Question answered.

You have no idea the blasphemy you speak.

It'd actually be interesting if we had statistics on the popularity of different capital ships online.  Something like what Blizzard tracks for Warcraft III (yes, the Death Knight is that overpowered... and by the way, you're not allowed multiples of the same hero):

http://classic.battle.net/war3/ladder/reports/last-week/Lordaeron/w3xp-reports-hero-usage.shtml

The Akkan is something I really want to start using. It's just so great but i just can't use it right!!

Thing is, it's not ABOUT the Akkan at all.  The Akkan is all about making your fleet and economy better, tripping up capital ships for you to kill, and providing you a substantial amount of savings and extra income on colonization of a planet.  Aside from the usual care you'd take not to get a capital ship killed, try to play as if it's not there at all.  Sometimes your opponent will forget about it too... until he decides to retreat his cap and suddenly it stops dead...

My new favourite TEC Capital ship. The income it saves / earns you early on taking neutral planets is excellent. Wipe out Siege Frigates, take planet (and start developing it) while the Akkan and its supports finish clearing. If its a tough planet you can quickly throw up a repair platform to help your fledgling clearer fleet finish the job.

Later, when it's time to invade enemy planets I'll add a Sova to the same fleet to help crack them. Ion Bolt will stop enemy Cap Ships fleeing (and keep them in the range of missle platforms longer, which should also benefit from Targeting Uplink) while the Sova does bad things to them (and Embargos the planet too).

I'll freely admit I'm a Work-in-progress player though and don't play online so I'm by no means any sort of expert. But the Akkan dramatically increases the speed I can expand at and adds great fleet support later on when fleet battles start happening.

@Darvin 3 and @jonfon: thanks for the good insights and strategy tips

Where can you find info about the dps (damage per second) of each ship?

Here's the thing, Volt_Cruelerz.  All these people jerk off to ion bolt, high hull points, blah blah.  Fine, but I build an akkan for one thing and one thing only - colonize.  You might say "wow, you mean the free extractors are that good?"  I don't know, and I don't care.  Listen to me say it again: I build an akkan for one thing and one thing only - colonize.

So build one, and send it off an start colonizing, comprehende'?  It's better than a colonization frig, because colonization frigs are weak, have low hull and health, can't go into a desert or terran filled with militia and take the planet, have low antimatter that has to recharge after every jump, can't skip grav wells and colonize the grav well beyond, etc.  YOU COLONIZE FASTER WITH A COLONIZER CAP.  That's the reason to build an akkan.

The only other reason I've ever built an akkan was when I needed an interrupt (level 6 marza running around or something).

Hey hey yesterday i started playing the Akkan as an Akkan BATTLECRUISER. And i must say. Its excellent!!!

Its been so long since I reached lvl 10 on a capital ship.

Can't believe how tough this ship is. Have you tried the lvl 6 ability??? Wooooow!

Yes but when looking at the other Colonizer caps for the Vasari and Advent I get jealous.

The Egg is by far my favorite ship: nanite desolators are amazingly brutal. Progenitor is plain OP at least a few months back. 

Akkan compared to them just sucks. 

Except the Egg's Colonize isn't exactly stellar, and it's durability is bad. Progen has only Colonize and Shield Restore; DPS is low and its other abilities are kind of weak and situational.

The Akkan gets the best Colonize in the game, high base DPS, the second-best cap killer in the game in Ion Bolt, and Targetting Uplink is a nice DPS boost. Armistice essentially makes the Akkan immortal.

In the strategy unit guide: Unit Guide: FAQ [complete] » Forum Post by Raging Amish

The Raging Amish pretty much said this: 

Ability 3: Targeting Uplink

- This ability rarely has its uses. Don't put upgrades into this. I just don't see the point. You get extra range +6% per level and +5% targeting chance to hit per level. That sounds great, but range isn't everything, and Targeting only helps flak (Only ship with less than 100% hit rate...they have something like 65% hit rate against strikecraft). This also helps if you're in an asteorid belt. You get 20% less hit rate in there. It also helps if an Advent player is using a Dominator capital ships with Vertigo. That ability lowers your hit rate by 10% per level.

I took it to mean that's pretty much worthless except in 2 cases. 1 - Flak, 2 - in Asteroid fields. Most weapons are auto-hit and the range increase is too small 6%.

Basically the Akkan has a crappy ability. Darvin suggested it helps out turrets and starbases but wouldn't it still only give it 6% additional range? (6 + 6 + 6) 18% range increase at lv. 3 which is a lot of points to put in targetting uplink, I'd rather put it in Colonize to max it out or Ion Bolt.  

Actually is there a auto-hit penalty in colonizable ASTERIODs  vs. empty asteroid fields? That would actually make Targetting uplink more useful since there are lots of fights over Asteriods. 

Only uncolonizable asteroid belts.

Targeting uplink is best used in conjunction with LRM's, Ogrovs, starbases or turrets.  The former two already have extreme range, so even a slight buff is actually rather considerable.  For starbases and turrets, they're stationary, so every scrap of range you can give them is more area to protect.

I usually put one point into targeting uplink and then ignore it in favour of other abilities until later on.  However, when I'm running a defensive war I almost always start sinking points into it.  This has been a major life-saver for me in the past.  However, there's no questioning it's situational and may just as easily be of little to no use at all.

The Akkan is a wonderful cap in my opinion. It fills its role as a colonizer excellently and its colonize is the bomb

I agree that the ion bolt is somewhat lack luster but a lvl six akkan has plenty of strategic capabilites

Anyone care to elaborate why they think Ion Bolt is lack luster?!? What do you expect it to do?

Im seriously confused by the negative blasting on the Akkan....I dont get why yall think it sucks. 

Well, when I use it, I never seem to notice it doing anything game winning.  It just seems a bit lackluster.  Though personally, I would expect something such as Ion bolt to if nothing else degrade mitigation levels or deal shield damage...  It just seems like it ought to do something other than stun, but according to you and Darvin, that is enough so...

When your fleet is pounding a capital ship for 200-300 DPS (after mitigation and armour) stunning someone for a couple seconds is a big deal.  Also, they lose all acceleration and have to start from a stand-still after each bolt.  Another minor bonus is no regeneration while under the effect of ion bolt, but the duration is so short that's not a big deal.

That is true...  So in and of itself, the Akkan is worthless.  Put it on the defensive with a bunch of support and it becomes very helpful.

Compared to the Egg or Progen, I just don't see the value in Akkan.  All 3 of Progen's abilities absolutely rock (its lvl 6 sucks, but...).  Improving flak with Akkan is an awesome idea, but it just doesn't measure up to a lvl 3 shield restore or Malice.  I will say this, though:   the Egg lacks a good mass-bonus ability whose effect is fleet-wide, whereas Akkan can buff LRM+flak spam.  The best it can hope for is indirect:  it can knock out an enemy cap and take out HIS fleet-wide bonus.   I also think the Progen's colonize is almost as good as Akkan, anyway--its big weakness is that you have to spend a lot of money on colony upgrades right away to take advantage of it.

Now, that range upgrade with turrets is nice.  You can focus-fire a lot more turrets at what you need (plus you get to bring 1 or 2 more turrets in you otherwise would not have).  And a fully-upgraded TEC starbase's range combo'ed with Akkan is just plain ungodly.

I still say that they are about the same.  I tend to highly upgrade my planets, so the Progen helps more.  Also, if you have the researchable, artifacts can be free to look for.  Very nice little tidbit...

i dont see why all you people are saying that  ion bolt is lackluster, with 25 lrms and 30 scouts i have killed a lvl 6 progen, that started retreating from the center of a grav well, it had 100% health and shields, it died before even reaching the edge to jump because i kept ion bolting it. Ion bolt also can be used to interrupt Shield restore. if used properly Ion bolt is by far the best cap killing ability in the game.

_|~Uber