1.  Frigates favor damaged ships when attacking, so as they cleaned up their targets they would go after the ships hit by PMS.  Obviously PMS is more useful the more ships you have backing the Vulkoras.  I don't think it is quite as bad as you make out.  For example, I think the base nuclear attack on the Marza is crap, but overall the Marza is pretty good.

2.  I didn't realize PMS wasn't a real Phase Missile...hehe, it figures, right?  Thanks for info.

 

These ships are in fact big siege frigates.  That is how I always used em.  I'm glad you have brought to light some of the bugs with them, I always did wonder about Assault Spec, because I had a hard time telling if it was doing anything.  Regardless, even when I have built a few of these ships, their shortcomings have never stopped me from beating other players because they were always backed by fleets, and they do have some offensive punch to contribute to the fight.

It's the VOLATILE NANITES which make the combo deadly, while the PMS only makes the chain reaction come a little sooner.
Use your brain before you start clicking, that's what I think. I for one will not tell my fleet to attack some stupid Aeria drone host or defense vessel which got hit for 400-ish damage by the stupid PMS, when the enemy subjugators, guardians and cap ships are making my combat vessels look as if I bought them in toys'r'us and when the enemy progenitor is making the enemy shield points breed like they were a bunch of rabbits on a f***fest.
Every idiot knows that there are ships that should be taken down first and those that do not. PMS does not know that. It chooses its targets without any understandable pattern and half of them are likely going to be ships that you wouldn't focus on until you've dealt with caps and support vessels, simply because it doesn't make sense to waste dps on them before you do so.
Hell, the PMS doesn't even always target the ship's current target from what I've seen. Explain why, wise guy.
On third level of the skill it can be used every 15 seconds, turns off enemy bombers' and fighters' weapons for 35 seconds and has a range way greater than the bomber's shooting range. If you micro this ability, it pretty much creates a dead zone for enemy strike craft, unless they wanna become a cloud of useless flying "Shoot-meh" practice dummies. In 1.1 it will be even more effective, with highly increased range and slightly reduced AM cost.
You know what I think of your comment above? "That is rubbish. Since you dont understand the Weapon Jam ability and since it doesnt fit your playstyle, you dont like it.  Dont claim that it is useless though". Oh and "Use MICRO. Enough said."
Please do not rewrite what other people wrote before, I don't like repeating myself over and over. Anyway, I'm not comparing Vulkoras to 40 Assails and 20 cruisers, no single cap can fight such a fleet. I am trying to have you guys notice that cap ships do not travel alone, unless they have a death wish. They are going to be in a fleet and it is the fleet that is going to do damage, not them. In small engagements Vulkoras' weapon damage and PMS will matter a lot. In big battles - he has nothing to really affect the enemy fleet.
It can pick a single enemy ship and pray his blue ray of doom doesn't get interrupted so he can really give it some damage and then happily wait another 150 seconds (90 in 1.1, gj) to do it again, hoping he isn't scrap metal by then.
Or it can choose to give away 3570 damage (4200 which will always be mitigated by at least 15%, read one of my previous posts) divided to seven targets. Wow. 3570 damage is the damage caused by a medium sized fleet over about 3 seconds to targets that you REALLY WANT DEAD, not some random seven. The advantage the crappy radiation bomb has above PMS here is that it damages EVERYTHING in range, INCLUDING the ships you DO want dead FIRST. I too agree (again) that it is its main purpose. There must be a reason to why they call it the Desolator, eh?   So you admit that you like Vulkoras even though you haven't really paid any attention to the fact it DOES NOT WORK (as in: its own bombing damage with Ass Spec is more or less a half of what it should be, plus buggit platforms). It really helps your opinion sound professional. 
 Bombers, LRMs, HCs... all of that crap can take out buildings fast, there is no need to bring that clumsy Vulkoras to attack the structures and increase your total damage output by, omg, 5%, when he can be bombing the planet instead (which he is really good at, or rather will be good at when the bugs are fixed and 1.1 is out).
Every capital ship has abilities that make it a Capital Ship in any battle, no matter how big. Vulkoras is a ship that has absolutely no ability that increases in effectiveness with the amount of your or enemy ships.
Even the space whale's Nano Disassembler gives a -2/4/6 Armor debuff, which highly increases the damage output of ANY ship that is shooting the target, so the more ships you have, the more effective it becomes.

Volatile nanites does not make PMS worthwhile, it just makes it much better. PMS have a brief cooldown, so you can use it again and again. The damage dealt very quickly becomes noticable.

 

That is why you need to think about where the desolator is in the battle. If it is at the front, with your heavy cruisers then PMS will damage the dangerous ships.

 

I didnt say that weapon jam is useless. It is the weakest anti-strikecraft ability, but yes almost every ability requires micro to use it to its full potential. Weapon jam can be good when the enemy has superior strikecraft numbers or is bombing your capships. I have very rareley needed it though.

 

If you agree that, then why are you complaining that the desolator is pointless? That IS what the desolator is for.

 

 

Volatile nanites makes PMS very worthwhile is big battles. The Kol and the Skirantra carrier (to a lesser extent) dont affect large enemy fleets very much, but both are VERY useful.

 

 

Well, I will opine that it is more useful for someone who isn't good at macroing and/or just hates doing it, aka, me. I usually find, in my large battles, that a few dozen ships are getting hit, basically all the ones right along the front line. Phase Missle Swarm, since it's range isn't (I think, don't quote me) substantial enough to go from normal firing range against the front lines to trashing utility cruisers in the back, will hit primarily or exclusively those ships exchanging fire with my own. On top of that, the Vulkoras' impressive forward attack will likewise be focused on my opponents, and then he has, as I consider it in the way I play, the bonus of taking out buildings and planets faster.

So yeah, I think it just comes down to how you play (and WHAT you play, since I don't do MP). But I think your points are perfectly valid, and perhaps the ship could indeed use some boosting to give more general use (part of me leans towards bastardizing the Marza's passive and adding that to Assault Specialization, part of me feels like that's just lazy). Maybe making the missles actual Phase Missles would be an easy start.

I do have one question/observation to add; what I've heard here is that, regardless, cap ships are of minor importance in MP between skilled players anyway. I mean, to the point that, except for that one free one they give you, you shouldn't bother using them anyway, as they are big targets just begging to die. So, if that's at all true, shouldn't the efficacy of this ship (and most other Cap ships) not matter to an MP player anyway? Most of the time, it seems as if maybe 12 or so of the cap ships are regarded as "n00b strat" or "AI-opponents only strat" anyway.

The Kol actually gets some splash damage at level 6.  But by all means, don't let me derail this argument about the Vulkorus -- I find it fascinating that so much can be written in argument over the finer details of this majestic battleship....not that I'm reading all of it, mind you.

 

 

In Multiplayer, Capital ships are of critical importance for their strategic abilities, not as much their direct combat abilities.  The bigger the map and the bigger the fleets, the less you care about how much damage a capital does, and more about how you can leverage its other special abilities.  On very small maps, the actual combat abilities of the ships are very important, even in multiplayer, but as fleets get massive, you care less about how much damage it can do than about what it can do for you that your fleet of frigates can't do.  ie.  (Drain / Raze Planet, Repair Cloud, Flak Burst, Telekinetic Push, Shield Restore, Malice, etc.)

a] I said it is good for bombing, not big battles. Now you say I'm am correct, while just a few posts back you said it was rubbish. Make up your mind.
 b] To actually make the Desolator a good planet ravager, you have to have it leveled up. I believe the Desolator, unlike most other ships, becomes really good only at 10th level.
He NEEDS his PMS on level 3 for it to be sensible.
He NEEDS Assault Spec on level 3 to really be a planet killer, just as he needs the platforms.
He NEEDS the Disintegration, or else two bomber squads could destroy it given enough time, because he has no other survivability booster.
He also NEEDS all antimatter he can get. He isn't gonna prawn a tripod bike with the amount of antimatter he starts with, and he gets only like 25 per level (Antorak gets 45).
As a comparison, the Kortul can skip the Jam if the enemy is far from spamming strike craft. He can also skip the Disrupting shots (until v1.1), cause I had a level 10 Kortul and he hardly managed to keep an enemy level 5 cap's antimatter regeneration slowed by half. Volatile Nanites is what I believe Kortul is about, with Power Surge for survivability. Skirantra can easily skip scramble bombers, cause it really is a heavily meh skill to be used in a big battle. And so on.

The point of the above is that you need the Desolator brought to high levels (well at least level 6 so it can max out platforms and ass spec, but then he is absolutely useless without PMS... so level 9 that is) to make him really good.
So, how are we gonna do that? We have to bring the Vulkoras into BATTLES. And this is where I'm having a doubt about this ship.
To become good he needs to fight in battles where he is NOT good.

The abilities don't have to affect enemies specifically. I only expect that those ships' abilities become increasingly useful with higher numbers.
Skirantra's Repair Cloud extends the lifespan of your frigates (if not the focused ones, it protects you well against enemy's AOE tricks like Volatile Nanites or Missile Barrage or the like, so they don't result in massive destruction) and your strike craft (Flak burst? Kek! Repair Cloud -> You sux nib!) and the strength of it lies in the fact that it can heal anywhere from one to million ships and strike craft, as long as they are in range. That's the scalability I want.
Microphasing aura makes strike craft in a huge radius temporarily invulnerable and speeds their maneuvering by some. It's scalability is again in the fact that it can affect all friendly strike craft, from one to million.
As for Kol, it is the most durable ship of all in this game, so if the enemy wants to kill it, he needs to waste firepower enough to destroy three other capital ships or two dozen frigates to do so. He also has the spammable flak burst which prawns enemy strike craft unless they have a skirantra. Again, he can damage from one to zillion strike craft -> scalability.

Cykur: Well, I've now been told various things, so okay. The reason I brought it up was to try and pin down in what situation this cap ship should even be judged by.

N3rull: This is really quite an interesting amount of thought on the merits of one ship. That's not a judgement, it's merely an observation. It was obviously designed for taking down planets, we all see that, but I wonder if it's a particularly fair criticism to complain about having to level it to make it useful, or about "scalability". Nothing the vaunted Space Egg has is scalable; it can colonize one planet, it can damage one planet, and it has two abilities that effect one ship at a time. And as far as leveling, what about the Kortul; it's Jam Weapons ability hardly even works at level one, and it's passive ability, as you noted, has to be level 3 to even be somewhat useful. I don't think Power Surge is all that useful at lower levels either, since both the duration AND the amount it's buffed increases with levels. Assuming one wanted to make these worth it, that's, what, level 7 (3 Disruptive Strikes, 2 for the others), if we don't get Volatile Nanites ASAP? Between the Kortul and Vulkoras, firepower isn't dramatically different, merely shifted around. And since my cap ships, at least, usually don't have too many ships on the sides of it anyway, I don't see a big difference in damage output to begin with, meaning low level versions of each are similar. So...I'm not sure I go along with your argument. No, it's not that great a cap ship, yes, it's primarily for damaging planets and structures, but I don't see how "it needs levels" is fair when that's not unusual. And correct me if I'm wrong, but don't ALL cap ships get experience from ANY enemy killed in it's gravity well? If that was the case, then it could level up while still being used as souped up seige ship, and avoid the battle for the most part.

A few posts earlier, you said that it wasnt good for anything. I agree with you on the point that the Desolator is good for taking down planets. I disagree that it does not work in big battles.

b] To actually make the Desolator a good planet ravager, you have to have it leveled up. I believe the Desolator, unlike most other ships, becomes really good only at 10th level.
He NEEDS his PMS on level 3 for it to be sensible.
He NEEDS Assault Spec on level 3 to really be a planet killer, just as he needs the platforms.
He NEEDS the Disintegration, or else two bomber squads could destroy it given enough time, because he has no other survivability booster.[/quote]

What is so strange about that? plenty of capships need levelling up before they are useful such as the Kortul.

It would take a pretty long time for 2 bomber squads to take down the Vulkoras. I NEVER send in capships alone, so I always have fighters to defend against bombers.

Using the same logic, I could also argue that the Marza sucks because it cant regenerate health so 2 bomber squads could kill it. This is not the case though. The Marza is good.

 

 

Yes, on the THIRD LEVEL it is decent, not so on lower levels, just like the Kortul's other abilities.

Different Strokes for Different Folks.  It is a big Damage Dealin' Planet Sieger, but nothing fancy.  'Nuff Said

I already said that Disassembler reduces target's armor, which in turn increases the damage output of EVERY SHIP IN YOUR FLEET against that target. So it DOES scale to the size of battle, if only to help get rid of enemy cap ships faster (which is an asset).lol wut? You mean Gravity Warhead affects one target? Reread the tooltip.Jam weapons is situational, not essential. Everyone agrees that Vulkoras without Platforms and passive does little more to planets than any other cap. He needs them maxed. And did you ever see a Vulkoras without PMS? Absolutely useless in any fight. So this makes us level 9. Kortul, on the other hand, is ALL about Surge and Vol. Nanites. So level 6 and he is the dread on the battlefield, unless the enemy has AOE healing abilities in the field. Jamming is purely situational - should be taken only if enemy spams strike craft. As for the passive, only with 1.1 it is becoming good, so before the patch I simply skipped it.
But either way, you have an option: level 6 with surge and nanites = massive destruction. Or level 5 with 3/3 Jamming = strike craft dead zone. Or level 6 with Surge and Disrupting strikes (and patch 1.1) = "you-ain't-got-antimatter-dude" support ship with high shield regeneration. Whichever you choose, he is useful in battles, you simply have to choose wisely which will do best against your current enemy. As I said before, Vulkoras on level 6 can either be a meh combat ship with meh bombing capability or a good planet killer with no combat capability whatsoever.which is your errortheir damage output does not matter at all from the 30th minute of the game. It's the abilities. Kortul survives with Power Surge nd makes enemy fleets disappear with Volatile Nanites, while Vulkoras on level 6 either has the meh PMS and half of his siege capability or is a strong siege weapon with no comabt use at all. You can make a level 6 Kortul which is either tough and deadly, or you can make it an anti-strikecraft "get lost" beacon. Whatever you need. Vulkoras on level 6 is either meh in battles and meh in bombing or good at bombing and absolutely useless in battles.you can make any other cap deadly in some way on any lower level simply by maxing one ability and abusing it. Vulkoras can not, simply because PMS is meh as soon as battles go beyond, say, 40vs40, Disintegration is not spammable with 120/90 sec cooldown and 150 AM cost, while the other two abilities are siege-only. BUT.... No he can not avoid the battle for the most part, becuz over 1/3 of his max bombing damage comes from having 3 Siege Platforms deployed and if you do not get rid of resistance first, those platforms are easily killed by *anything* in a few shots. So your idea is using a Capital Ship merely as a siege frig doing 15dps to a planet.
And what makes you think that you have already won any battle, since you freely send a CAP to tickle a planet instead of helping the fight?not nearly such as the Kortul. Read aboveMarza is actually big-battle-capable, unlike Vulkoras, which makes sense to have it flying with the fleet. Vulkoras is IMO a pure planet bomber, so the escort is actually wasting its time on flying around and watching red rayz of doom fly instead of being in a real battle-capable group.which means that against a strike craft heavy player you simply need to max this and you have a useful ship -> level 5 and thats it, you bought yourself 80% immunity to strike craft for 2-3 minutes. This does not make Kortul an awesum battleship, but it makes him a very powerful support ship, which Vulkoras simply lacks any option to become.

 

Summing it up:
Every other ship needs to take part in battles to level up and every other ship has means of becoming useful in any battle.
Vulkoras ALSO needs to take part in battles to become powerful in what he does (planet killing) but has NO good utility there. This is the thing!! If Vulkoras could level up by doing what it is good at - bombing - I would have no problem with it. But he NEEDS to fight to BECOME good at his main job, while not giving much help in due course, unlike any other more or less battle-oriented cap in the game. 

And I believe wasting a cap ship slot on a vessel only to have it parked somewhere in the grav well, peeing on the planet is a JOKE.

 

                    Vulkoras Attacks

          Planets While Fleets Fight Nearby

                Watch out for Bombers

Yep. Assuming the enemy is idiot enough not to overcome your fleet, which you just stripped off of one capital ship, that could have been casting Volatile Nanites, Repair Cloud, Weapon jamming, Replicate forces or Nano Disassembler.
Or even a freakin' Phase Out Hull on focused ships so the enemy's LRM dps is essentially wasted or on enemy caps so they do nothing good for them / bad to you.

 

              Unless You Are Skilled

      Fleet Distracts and Your World Dies

               Factories Won't Work

I like them quite a bit.  I never use them as the only cap ship in a fleet for all the reasons you have pointed out.  However, past that they seem to do very well.  As amazing as volatile nanites is(are?) - it does not stack with itself while all the Desolator abilities do.  I'd much rather come up against 3 Devastators than 1 Devastator and 2 Desolators.  It's a whole (fleet) being greater than the sum of its parts type of thing.

I haven't playing long but I don't like it either. It's hardly a time saver, given that it takes up a cap ship slot and 3000 worth of bombardment frigates are quite capable of getting the job done quickly along with whatever more useful cap ship you threw into the mix. I do enjoy its standard weapons though. All those phase missile can get brutal once they start ignoring shields regularly.

I'm starting to get the impression that if you want to waste structures and other cap ships quickly though, the Evacuator with a fleet is the best choice in the game. Nothing is safe when its armor is at -6. I'd still use it if the weapon only did 1 pt of damage a second.

Oh yeah and he's doing nothing, just watching you kill the planet for like five minutes and letting your fleet hang there in the meantime. Godlike plan. You know, stop using mods that introduce AI levels below 'easy'. It really isn't doing you any good.
Give me a replay of your game against someone with wits where this silly theory works.
You have 15 years to find a record.

 

As for axul - I'd pretty much love to have my fleet meet three lone enemy caps anytime. Easy XP.
Now seriously, if I had 3 caps and met 3 enemy caps - surely Volatile nanites is crap. Nanites are for taking out masses of ships, not 3 caps. Lol. And if Nanites have a weakness it is that they sometimes tend to end right before the enemies start blowing up en masse. Having a second Devastator cast another right after would be a death sentence carried out.
Still, if I had 3 caps and met 3 other caps, I would pretty much hate meeting 3 Devastators, because as of 1.1 the Surge + Disruptive Strikes = no antimatter , while Surge means lots of shields to lose. So unless you kill them quickly, you're screwed. And their hit point count and Surge doesn't help them go down fast.
But yeah, in a 3 vs 3 fight a Desolator could be good, because its PMS would hit all enemy targets and 3 Disintegrations could actually do a lot of harm, particularly against Devastator which has no interruption for it. Plus high phase missile damage evades shields.

HOWEVER, cap ships never travel alone, unless they are looking for a grave. Everybody knows that, even Cykur on crack or whatever weed he was smoking before posting.

If both cap ship trios were backed by a decent fleet, as they SHOULD, I would like to meet desolators above anything else, for all the reasons I mentioned in this thread.

 

                          Armchair Generals

                   Talk Much But Never Online

                           Forums are Safer

I do not play online because I have a life, a family and everyday work to do. I do not have 2 hours of time to spend exclusively on gazing in the stupid monitor. Since I could never finish a game, I don't begin them at all, so you lifeless so-called pro players don't whine about another leaver.

So, Cykur. Making a replay is pretty simple in sins. Actually, it makes ITSELF, automatically.

Why don't you go and prove this fancy tactic of yours really works?
Post a replay.

You ain't gonna do that though. And not because you don't care. If you didn't care, you'd have shut up a long time ago, once you've said your share of nonsense.
You won't post a replay because you'd have to spend days on looking for a sucker stupid enough to fall for this 'tactic'.

The only moment it might "work" is when you do it AFTER the game is won, which isn't really helpful.

This is sad . I actually expected this to be a fair exchange of sensible arguments backed by game mechanics. I tried my best to back all my opinions with reasoning. Instead, all I'm getting recently is laughable tactics of how to hide a vulkoras behind a planet to leech experience or arguments saying that meeting 3 lone devastators is less scary than meeting 1 devastator and two desolators. As if they were the only thing a fleet should constitute of.

                   Why So Serious?

         Horse has been Beaten to Death

                 The Joke is on You

 

 

Y'know what? Forget it. You complained about getting "stupid" responses, but you have honestly become the insulting jerk here. And that, on a board that is among the nicest boards I have ever seen. I can only imagine how you do on the rest of the internet. Instead of trying to debate you, let me just offer a simple solution; forget the damn ship even exists, build another Kortul, play the game, and shut up about it. I do the same thing by never using that stupid Marauder; as far as I am concerned, it's only two functions are for running away like a little sissy and calling up back-up for a fleet that was either used wrong or poorly constructed. But so what! We have 3 civs and half a dozen patches and 30 mods and 100 maps 5 cap ships all so we can play our own way. I hope they do make PMS use actual phase missles, and somehow make Disintegrator more useful. There. We've agreed on changes we would like to see. That's more progress than this type of topic would get most anywhere else, so take it, and smile.

 

pass

   Umm...  If you are playing Vasari you should be massing Phase Missles so you should be fielding The Vulkoras.  The fact that it is Bristling with Phase Missles is enough to field them.  With Bombers/fighters and 20 assailants plus two Vulkoras you can destroy a fully lvl ten Marza in a single pass..

 

  Learn to use the Vulkoras before you whine about it... Or just learn to play the game...

 

 

  Vasari players worth their salt should be fielding anything with Phase missles as the Vasari can Focus fire enemy fleets into oblivion.... Evacs while nice become redunt when the fleet battles become bigger then one cap ship.  Why?  Because all of their damage will be mitagated by the Shields.  Phase Swarm is used while you are Focus firing an enemy cap ship so you can spread out the damage....

 

   A proper Vasari fleet should be able to kill all enemy capships in a minute.  

just when I thought nobody else will try to piss me off.

A level 1 Vulkoras has his phase missile dps lower than that of two Assailants, while a level 10 Vulkoras has a phase missile dps of less than 5 assailants. AWESOME, considering it costs... say... over 7 times the price in credits, over 8 times the number of fleet points, an extra command research ( = more cash) and takes a lot of time to reach that level.
Also, Phase missile swarm, as I mentioned a number of times, doesn't do phase missile damage, i.e. does not bypass shields at all. So in your scale of usefulness it is "redunt".
ALSO, check and see that it will take your fleet roughly 1-2 seconds longer to finish that said level 10 Marza alone, without the two Vulks, while it will take the Vulks a year longer without the fleet. That is how useful their dps is in battles. Even if they disintegrate the Marza - it will annihilate its SHIELDS only. Yeap, anutha funny thing about disintegration. Vulkoras gets repaired for damaging the enemy's shields. Interesting , aye?

Don't throw l2p's at me. Show me a replay of how it's done if you're so much better that me.
Not that I expect to get one.

To be clear - Vulkoras, for its purpose and idea behind it, is my favorite Vasari ship. I've played  a number of games with it as my flagship and as much as I like it, I do have my eyes open enough to see that however cool it looks and shoots and throws those PMSs about, it really loses to many other ships. In turn, I hate the space egg for how it looks (the design is correct and well done, but I don't like to have an egg for a flagship) but I know how useful it is.

Not trying to get involved with the immature part of this conversation, but as an observation, I had a lot of luck with this ship by building about 3 of them, maxing P.M.S. and the Orbital Assault Platform, and using the Vulkoras as the main attack crew for forward assaults. (Of course Desintigration by level 6 or 7, depending on the need).  This is assuming there is a game worthy of that many capitals, only the <20min games some play random-online forego the need for this.


Initially id use them with modest hit and run squads, or modest local defense groups on multi-star games, until they reached some level of maturity.  Purchasing levels and the level-tech that goes with it helps to speed this along.

By the time I got that many, even an endless swarm from two Hard computers as a testing ground, was quickly wiped out at their home planets.  Concentrated fire from 3 of these ships at level 5+, and the tech for phase missiles, can end capital ships faster than they will turn about to escape.  Not to mention 3 simultanious Desintigrations, Kol or not, its going down damn quick.  Thats a capital ship ender right there, major laughs against level 9/10 Battleships 

As with a few other capital ships, this is not one of those ships that can shine by itself as well.  Its role is a bit too niche for something like that, much like your "Damage Per-Second" class of RPGs.

It doesnt have the "flashy" abilities of some of the support capitals, and the defense abilities of the battleships.  What it does have, is tremendous firepower and good unassisted staying power, multiply their numbers and their role is very well defined ; on the other hand, multiply some of the support capitals and you can overdo it a bit with the support role, not enough staying power or damage delt.  Multiply the battleships and you get good staying power and damage, but not enough of both, which can be countered by support role frigates and capitals.

A squad of 3 or more Vulkoras is easily recognizable, and enemies cannot put nearly enough distance on it when it arrives to do bid'ness, ambush tactics are key here, which we should be used to as Vasari.  It requires tremendous staying power, support, or excessive and unbalanced numbers to take out several of them before they clean house, not an easy task at all, possibly the most powerful group of capitals for seek & destroy in the game.  Im sure in some way the other Dreadnaughts could be used to some effect, but in this case, the Vulkoras has the best of stats I belive.

Another good way to test this is to try heading out to the local pirate haven with 3 of these badboys at level 5+, and see how quickly you squash the fight, frigate assisted or not!

• Great unassisted planet damage (with the bug fix)
  
• Severe building/planet damage by itself
  
• Severe, although channeled, ship to ship damage level 6
  
• Great mix of defense, damage and speed with the right techs (lattice armor, gravity well reduction, and phase misssile tech lines are the key here)
  
• Severe concentrated damage with the right techs
  
• Capable of wiping out large groups of enemies in short order, with 3 or more Vulkoras (remember stars help anti-matter regen tremendously, so engage near them if possible)
  

So there is a lot to love, as a single ship leading the flock, usually its not a good route to go.  But I guarentee building 3 of them or more, you'll be stopping fights before they can even start, which is the whole point of going to war anyway. 

I also noticed those soon-to-be-fixed-bugs with this ship a few months ago, and im very happy it is being fixed! Even more to love.  Thanks Stardock!