Advanced-Fighter

Advanced-Fighter is a Tier 6 ship in Starblast.io. It fires one frontal pulse with immense damage and knockback, and four small side lasers from the front, and like the Shadow X-3, it is a typical glass cannon ship. Its frontal pulse has the highest damage per hit of all Tier 6 ships (when fully upgraded, matching the pulse damage of a Tier 7 ship), and as such, has to wait between shoots to regenerate enough energy to fire its pulse. It's regarded as the second-best possible ship to get in a team mode and/or in survival mode, after the best ship, the Odyssey.The Advanced-Fighter has relatively weak shields for its tier, being an offensive ship. The initiative is vital for this ship, and if it can get the first shot, it will almost always win the duel, due to its immense firepower. Never use the small lasers while fighting, except to finish off an opponent who is nearly destroyed. The frontal pulse will deal massive damage and destabilize the target and send it flying off the screen if its mass is low. It is necessary to use the environment well, and send the target on a collision course with asteroids, while ensuring one never enters a sparse asteroid field as the Advanced-Fighter.

When playing as this vessel, you should upgrade your Energy Regeneration first, then max out the shields and energy capacity, Damage and Ship Speed, and then the rest of the stats. While widely considered to be the best ship in the game, this ship is particularly bad against teams, so try to scatter your targets if they are teamed up, before picking them off one-by-one.

When energy and shield regen are upgraded, this ship mines at 66 DPS, the same rate as the U-Sniper, faster than all other ships except Tier 7, making this ship one of the best ships for mining. With the high 60 energy regen, this ship is the theoretical best ship in Tiers 1-6 for mining, healing, and attacking, but in practice, it does not feel like a good miner compared to other ships like the Rock-Tower, and other ships like the Howler heal almost as fast, while being hard for attackers to hit. However, a Barracuda can mine faster than the Advanced-Fighter because it has higher mass, is more agile, moves faster, and mines well even when shield is low.

The Advanced-Fighter shares many characteristics with the Shadow X-3 and the Pulse-Fighter, and tends to have the opposite specifications to the O-Defender, on the other end of the ship tree.

Fun Fact: When fully upgraded, this ship's pulse does just as much damage as the Aries's pulse, even though the Aries is Tier 7.

Secondaries: It's best to used defense pods on the Advanced-Fighter. This is because the pulse does large knockback and damage, so you don't really need extra firepower, and since it does large knockback, and the attack pods only attack enemies that are close, they won't really be doing much anyway. Besides, it has the second worst shields of any T6, only ahead of the A-Speedster, and defense pods let you take extra shots, so that can be useful. The best secondary setup is either 5 defense pods and 1 pack of missiles, or 2 packs of missiles and 4 defense pods.

Note: It's amazing at killing Marauder's, Condor's, And A-Speedster's, because those ships take lots of knockback and have low shields (The Condor has good shield capacity but mediocre regen, and the Marauder has mediocre capacity but amazing shield regen, and the A-Speedster is trash at both.)

The only upgrade path is Fly > Delta-Fighter > Pulse-Fighter > Vanguard > U-Sniper > Advanced-Fighter. The Vanguard is a HUGE drawback: its speed, firepower, and shields are trash. Upgrading it only makes it a little better. The only good part of the Vanguard is its agility, which is the highest agility of T4. The Pulse-Fighter is an amazing T3, with decent shields, awesome firepower (for it's tier), great speed and agility, making it the best T3. The U-Sniper has recoil and is best with RCS. It is a very powerful attacker and can kill T7's. The downside is its weak shield. It's the best T5, tied with the Howler. The Advanced-Fighter can upgrade to the lethal Shadow X-3, and the overpowered Odyssey. The Shadow X-3 is fast but has low agility. It does 200 damage per shot, and it can kill any ship in a 1v1 if used properly, but it has mediocre energy regen. For that reason, it is best to upgrade to the Odyssey, which has the highest 150 empty DPS in vanilla. The Aries has 175 energy regen, but its pulse only does 105 DPS. In addition to firepower, the Odyssey has 750 shields, very good ram damage, and amazing shield regen, making it a very good ship. The only downside is it's very slow and has terrible agility. It is usually much better to upgrade to the Odyssey than to the Shadow X-3.