Cavalier Cutter

"The swiftest ship in the Altairian fleet, its Catalyst Overdrive converts stasis energy into shield defense and a powerful burst of speed."

General
The Cavalier Cutter is a Tier 7 cutter that travels quickly in a straight line and has a built-in stasis resistance. Its Catalyst Overdrive ability activates whenever it is affected by stasis, causing the ship to regenerate its shields as well as increase its speed.

Beams with the Overcharge ability have extra duration when equipped onto this ship.

Advantages
In addition to its bolstered health and maximum mass over previous cutter classes, the Cavalier Cutter also has built in stasis resistance, which means stasis weapons such as the NET Torpedo and the Arrestor Beam are much less effective at slowing it down and keeping it at arms length.

The above is also further supplemented by its Catalyst Overdrive, which allows the cutter to regenerate its shields as well as increase its forward speed everytime it is affected by stasis. This additional boost to speed and shield regeneration allows the cutter to regenerate its shields and withstand much more damage, thus allowing the cutter to get within Firing range and thus destroy its targets quicker. The recommended weapon for this ship is the Surge Beam as it can benefit from the Overcharge duration bonus.

It is a great counter to battleships as it deals bonus damage against them. As an Altairian ship, it deals bonus damage against the Pharmakon faction.

Disadvantages
The Catalyst Overdrive only activates when the Cavalier Cutter is affected by Stasis. This makes it ineffective if the opponent chooses not to bring stasis weapons into the battle, causing the cutter to lose its supposed advantage in battle against kiting fleets.

Tier 7 cruisers gain a DPS boost against cutters, and is thus able to more easily bulldoze through a fleet of Cavaliers.

Like all cutters, the Cavalier is usually always placed in a situation where it will take lots of damage, thus causing it to usually have high repair times after each battle.

The Vindicator Cutter has Harmonic Agility built into it, meaning it is able to run away from the Cavalier if faced in a battle, even though Cavalier Cutters are stronger.

Trivia

 * The armor health bonus was added as part of a balancing patch during April 2018.
 * Along with other T7A Herald ships before the Renascence Battlecruiser, this ship has received complete resistance to Alien Nebula and Plasma Nebula in the early April 2019 update.
 * All player ships had their Resurgence values modified as a result of the late February 2020 update.
 * The repair time of all Tier 7 ships apart from dreadnoughts has been standardized to a flat 2 hours (similar to existing Tier 8 ships) in the late September 2020 update.