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The NX-01 is a ship which is mainly targetted at one specific type of hostile, the Xindi Aquatics. It has very high hull, and almost no shields, which has some interesting crewing possibilities. In the end, it's a ship like no other so far in STFC. With it comes a new loop.
Basically, you use it to kill Aquatics, which gives you a new type of loot that you can turn in for chests in the NX-01 Refinery.
These give you gambling chips, the "Choice Opportunity Chips."
You can use these to buy one of two bundles, a safe option or a risky one. Right now, that math works out for tier one that the safe one will, over time, net you less uncommon, but more rare and epic loot. It might change, but we need to see the higher bundles from higher level NX-01s. I'd recommend safe for now.
There are two types of hostiles you kill. The first are the interceptors, the second battleships. Both of these hostiles hit super hard, neutralize all crit damage, and ignore shields. The battleships have ten times as much loot, but with a caveat -- they have a 30% chance of shooting a gun that will send you home round one. However, if they don't, they are only about twice as hard as an interceptor. So you can gamble on the loot.
The best strategy currently is to get some warp research, and then go as far as you can with a specific crew that will get you a lot of loot with only one kill. The crew is Leslie(captain)/Moreau/Nero. The way the crew works is by Leslie keeping the ship alive with temporary hit points until the burning from Nero slowly whittles away the health at 1% a round. The temporary health disappears at the end of the round, which causes your ship to explode but you still get the loot from the hostile. Below decks you want Tom Paris to keep your mitigation high, and then the Doctor for more loot once that slot opens. If you have a t5 Neelix, he can burn from below deck and you can put Five above deck for even more loot.
Graphic from JulesVern
Once your NX01 gets to a higher tier, you can use the second crew. This crew is Pike(c)/Harrison/Data with Chapel below deck for max first round damage. The goal is to destroy a level 40 Battleship before it can fire the fourth gun -- which is the ship killing gun with the 30% chance of blowing you up. Basically you do a ton of damage as quickly as possible. At T6, with Max Fortify I was able to do this. I'm thinking at T7 I won't need the fortify anymore, and can just kill to my heart's content. This basically gives you unlimited tokens for the Special Opportunity Chests, which means you can max pull these every three days.
Xindi Aquatics can be found in the following systems.
| System | Level |
|---|---|
| Demetrium, Estellion | 40 |
| Juuska | 42 |
| Faden | 44 |
| Dahkso | 46 |
| Tahmluch | 48 |
| Paynax | 50 |
| Emissius | 51 |
| Anorlo | 53 |
| Taskeh | 55 |
| Meedra | 57 |
| Tebith | 59 |
| Mobhi | 60 |
| Glensha | 61 |
| Yoton | 62 |
The ship's ability is interesting, as it uses a currency you get daily to peer into Deep Space systems. This will let you start an armada in Deep Space from far away, or find out if there are nodes available in token, or just spy wherever you feel like before you send a ship. When you click on a system, you'll see an icon to spy on it when you have the ship selected. It lasts for one minute.
