Ship Highlight: Kylo Ren's Command Shuttle

With the Ships 2.0, I thought I might take the opportunity to put together a series on the viability/usefulness of some ships. I say some because I’m not sure if I’ll do them all. I’d like to discuss the utility of the ship itself as well as the usefulness of the pilots throughout the game.

Today’s ship is Kylo Ren’s Command Shuttle

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Classified as a support, the Command Shuttle is very effective at control. Especially with only 3 starting ships, the ability to maintain control of a battle is paramount to your success. Utilizing this ship as a reinforcement, even outside a First Order fleet, can be quite effective.

Farming

The first thing everyone should consider is the difficulty of farming the ship and pilots. The Command Shuttle is one of the most difficult ships to get, as of now. It requires three pilots:

Kylo Ren (Masked)

A very durable attacks located in Cantina battles 4-C, 6-C, and randomly in Guild shipments, Kylo Ren used to be the driving force behind FO teams. With newer characters, he’s become less key to FO success. With a Zeta, he used to be commonly used to beat P1 of the Heroic Tank. He’s a moderate farm and with his Zeta can be used to beat the BB-8 event entirely on his own (G10+).
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Captain Phasma

The original FO leader, Phasma has all but been regulated to fodder teams now. She’s good early on as a universal leader, but with so much of the game based around synergy now, she’s a relic of a bygone age. That being said, she’s the easiest FO farm in the game as she is located in Galactic War Shipments
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First Order Stormtrooper

From the easiest FO in the game, we move on to the hardest. FO Stormtrooper is a pain to farm and gear, but is in every high end FO team to date. Having a good tank is important and FOST is very good at what he does. His Zeta makes him formidable and he can be used in non-FO teams.
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Seeing as everyone is FO, I supposed I should talk about the team in general and their uses. As of right now, FO is not arena-viable at end-game play. If we get Hux or Snoke, that may change, but for now it’s a solid B+ team that has strong PvE use and is very good in Territory Wars.

Depending on your guild and level, TW might not be that important, but higher end guilds do like to see a strong KRU (Kylo Ren Unmasked) FO team. They’re a pain to fight and can survive several attacks if the other guild isn’t careful.

FO is a strong team for DS Territory Battles. With few amazing DS teams in the game, FO can fill the need. Zetas are recommended, but with that and some good mods you can go 4/4 on every phase even without platoon bonuses.

There is also some used for them in the Heroic Sith raid. They can be used in P2 or P4 (Sion). They won’t hit the big numbers like Jedi Rey or Nightsisters, but don’t underestimate the value of a 1% run. Not many teams can do it.

The Shuttle itself can be farmed on LS 9-A (Hard). This is not an easy node, so unless you have a G11 team or better, it’ probably out of reach for you. If you can beat it, you are going to want to farm it. Darth Sion is located on the same node, so you can farm both at the same time.
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Ship Utility

Because the Command Shuttle has so many pilots, it boasts a considerable number of moves to work with. Obviously, it is designed with FO synergy in mind, but most of it is neutral. My suggestion is for it to be used as a reinforcement.

Defensive Fire

The basic attack. This grants the Shuttle +50% Protection Up, which keep it around for as long as possible. This can become important with it’s Unique for survivability.
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Advanced Jamming Array

Being able to dispel buffs has become crucial to dealing with annoying tanks like Slave I. Full maxed, you also get to remove 30% TM and apply Ability Block and Healing Immunity. I mentioned Slave I because that has become the first reinforcement of choice for almost everyone. The Command Shuttle can shut it down.
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Surprise Raid

Here we get to the next level of control that the Command Shuttle gives you. Being able to give 100% TM to anyone can be very useful in dealing with tricky opponents. Maybe you’re fighting a TIE fighter and don’t want to risk it dodging? Give TM to your TIE Advanced and get a guaranteed hit. Maybe you want big damage against a Target Locked enemy? Give TM to Biggs and use his assist attack. You also give them Advantage and reduce their cooldowns, but the price is you lose Protection in the process. This might not matter if you’ve already lost all your Protection on the ship you want to target or you give it to your own TIE Fighter. If they have no Protection, there is no downside at all.
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Strike Team

In addition to giving a single target TM, you can choose to boost the TM of your entire team. You do end up ’sacrificing’ all the TM on of your own, but the rest of your team will get +40% and 25% of the TM on the ship you removed it from. So, let’s use an example where you target one of your ships with 50% TM. It will lose all it’s TM and the rest of your team will get +52.5% TM. This can also be used to delay a ship you don’t want to attack yet. Let’s say the other side has a taunting tank without Target Lock. You might choose to remove your Biggs’ TM with the hope to get Target Lock on the tank so you can use your assist attack.
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Zeal of the First Order

The Unique of the Command Shuttle gives itself +40 speed if it has Protection and 100% counter chance if it doesn’t. The speed will let you use your specials more often. The counter chance will increase survivability, since your basic attack gives Protection Up.

The rest of the Unique is used with other FO ships. Whenever another FO takes damage, the Command Shuttle gains +15% TM and reduces its cooldowns by 1. This could be useful in an eventual FO team, but FOTP has really fallen from grace and few outside of FO fans have SF FOTP geared up. The only immediate use this could be for you is with the TIE Silencer. It’s a strong attacker with its own level of control through stuns
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Enforcer of the First Order

Because I’m recommending this ship be used as a reinforcement, we need to talk about it. When maxed, the Command shuttle removes 20% TM from all enemy reinforcement and gains +20% when that happens (other FO allies gain +10%). This is a lot more useful than you might think at first. Whenever a reinforcement comes in, they normally get 100% TM, so they can immediately perform an attack. That means as long as you have the Command Shuttle in battle, they only get 80% TM. That can be enough to counter them before they use one of their attacks. With the Shuttle getting TM, you get the opportunity to get that control move out sooner.

I’m going to use Slave I as my example, though this can work against many ships.

Situation #1: The enemy Slave I is brought out before your Command Shuttle. When you bring it out, you can use you Advanced Jamming Array to remove the taunt and buffs, rendering Slave I impotent.

Situation #2: You get your Command Shuttle out before their Slave I. Because you already have your Shuttle out, Slave I only gets 80% TM. You get 20%. Depending on where you were before, you could use your Advanced Jamming Array. If not, you delay Slave I’s Ability Block a little and maybe are able to use your other ships to deal with it.
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Either way, you end up with a ship that gives you lots of control. One other reason to bring in the Command Shuttle as a reinforcement is because it is currently the slowest ship in the game. It relies almost entirely on TM manipulation. Starting with 100% TM upon being called in is very useful to starting it’s control train.​

Final Verdict

Kylo Ren’s Command Shuttle is not for a beginning player. The node to farm it on it difficult and the crew are really only going to be for someone in the late game where they can afford to build niche teams for specific events. Because we’re talking about end game players, you should already have beaten the Zeta Tarkin Challenge. That means the Command Shuttle is not useful for that. We’re all still working on which ships are the new meta and which work best as reinforcements, but right now you’re starting to see some clearly in one category or the other, like Slave I.

The other part to consider is the future. There is nothing concrete, but I think it is safe to say there will be a FO capital ship down the road. The current FO synergy is decent, but a good capital ship could really bring it together