Unless you can afford to do both at the same time... then you might as well. I often have 4 or so frigates already cued to build ... then I just get upgrades to go with them so I don't waste time. Better if your money is doing something rather than just sitting around. I only save when there is a purpose in it so I also don't usually cue more than 4 ships at a time unless i will have to leave my factorys alone for a while to do something else. If I cue more than that my money is just sitting around.

Could be wrong though.

you are forgetting about upkeep cost of more ships (assuming you are talking about spamming ships past tech up grades)

you're right Aasch. it's a matter of economics. i reckon you got this from the japanese "Just In Time" production technique

For weapon research this is without a doubt true (those are all so expensive and climb in such little increments, the only one I look to with some regularity are the TEC missile ones because they're decent, and a stepping stone to the Novalith), but I wouldn't shrug off Shield and Hull research since it can impact the early game. I would always be striving to use my full fleet cap first (the 20 ships you mentioned generally would do it) but looking toward researching Hull and Shields early can sometimes yield benefits.

These fields of research just don't add to the maximum hit points, but also add to the regeneration rate of all of your ship's in your fleet. This can be a noteworthy factor early in a game where the fighting is fairly low intensity (especially with militias), and ships have time to regenerate during and immediately after a battle (even running in and out of one).

For Advent, you can do both levels of Basic Shield Projection for a grand total of 900 credits and 75 Crystal which results in 10% more shielding and 10% faster shield regeneration. They also pay the same amount (900 credits and 75 Crystal) to get 10% stronger hulls and 10% faster hull regeneration, but since Advent has lower armor levels the worth of this can be contestable (although with Phase Missiles this can start to matter). But for no Metal (which Disciples often eat early game) and for less than cost of four Disciples you increase survivability of your entire fleet, and the basic shielding is necessary to climb to the ever-useful Guardian.

TEC can pay the same amount (again, 900 credits, 75 Crystal) and get 13% more hitpoints and 5% faster regeneration, and can also sink those same resources into research allowing them to have an increase of 1.5 Armor to all of the ships in their fleet. Not as much regeneration as Advent isn't so great, but getting an Armor increase isn't half bad, and if on the defensive with Repair Bays this can look kind of attractive.

Vasari only has the ability to pay for more Hull and Regeneration at T1, resulting in 13% more hull and 5% faster regeneration, again at the same cost of 900 Credits and 75 Crystal. They seem to get the raw end of the deal here, although they do have stronger ships as a whole so more innate survivability, I guess, and this research is needed for their Reintegration self-repair ability.

With all that said, I agree with you and definitely would not forgo fully utilizing my initial fleet cap in favor of doing this research, but often once I max it out I consider these research fields before upgrading making my first fleet capacity upgrade. Whenever you're not fully utilizing your fleet cap you're at a disadvantage, afterall.

And I'm much more weary of the research beyond T1 that sets you back significantly more Credits, Crystal, and also costs you Metal and generally climbs at about the same increments. But those first upgrades are oh-so-cheap compared to the later ones.

I'm just going to point out that while firepower upgrades are not such a big deal at the start, the health+healing rate hit points let you micro out ships much more easily when you're power expanding your empire in the early game.

This is usually what I do. I find that I get better results from getting a bigger fleet earlier than getting a better, but small fleet early. I start pouring on the upgrades once I have a fairly large fleet (around 40 ships). As the OP pointed out, tech upgrades are worth more the bigger your fleet is.

I also tend to go in for the hull, armor, and shield upgrades before the weapons upgrades. A weapon upgrade will only help certain ships; but hull, shield, and armor upgrades helps all of your ships. I usually start getting better weapons after I've got a few techs up on those.

ok, as a primarily economic player, here's what I found as Tec. Early game you get your initial armada going, then expand and build up you econ as best as you possibly can the quicker you get metal and crystal and tradeport upgrades the faster you can recover from an assault. Tec's ability to recover is it's advantage over the other races. in all Honesty against rivaling fleet of another Race TEC has a rather tough time, especially if you don't have a recovery strategy. Repair and Armor are their strongest advantage. you simply can't kill a Kol if it has the proper back up. So Military upgrades why get them? they buy you time.

I get a max initial fleet and possible get the second upgrade to overwhelm any rebel armadas. After which if I'm attack I'll be forced to defend or if I feel threatened I'll lay off the military mode until completely necessary so say I have tier 2 upgrades? with my current situation let's say the armada I'm facing is one upgrade ahead of me. but I have the better tech, I'm going to last longer than he expected and with my econ I can make the necessary actions to repel him. I then can decide whether to give myself another fleet slot and start fleet production or stay with the current fleet and send in reinforcements, during most of these engagements I've found the enemy is not smart enough to target the defences easier, I honestly don't even deal with Hangar Bays until the I feel it's required for raider defence.

My points Squeeze out the most money you can while you can. Upgrades aren't cheap ships are. you can always get ships later.

At some point you're going to want to unlock new ships. You'll want the first couple before too long, since they're LRMs and Flak, both of which are quite helpful. Then you can wait a while, but the other ship types do help. Heavy Cruisers are pretty nice, when the time comes to get them.

As TEC, I go with the Kol first then the Donuv for backup then I get a second donuv to prevent people from tagreting the donuv's... AKA they'll regen eachothers shields

I disagree. Most of the ability unlocks are of immense value. What is an example of an ability that does not impress you?

edit: ok, I won't bother posting the explanation then

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It's usually the case the more ships >> more upgrades, however, it is the case that (cheap upgrades) x (a lot of ships) is better than adding a few ships to your fleet.

Quantifying this tactic relies on which specific upgrades you want versus what types of ships you are getting, etc, and so it will be up to individual players to make the call as to when to get upgrades (unless they are blindly copying a build for, say, rushing assailants and getting the upgraded armor after they have 20).

Keep in mind though that you only need upgrades as soon as you get into combat, and so getting upgrades very early is always a bad call no matter whether they are "worth" the cost or not in terms of potency. The idea is to have all of the upgrades you want as soon as you get into combat, and so getting the upgrades will depend on the OP and on when you need to attack or are going to be attacked.

Also, remember that build time often matters more than cost. If you have 5 ships queued in your frigate factory but are not planning on making more frigate factories for whatever reason (not enough logistic slots?.. or don't have the resources?... or simply won't be filling your build queues after those 5 finish?.. ) then it may be better for you to "dequeue" a ship from your factory queue to upgrade some armor or lrm damage etc.

Try to have a dynamic strategy though, but in general yes it is true that you should get like 20 ships and then buy the armor or damage upgrades, so if you blindly did that you would do fine.

Also, I want to note that it is generally better to upgrade damage than it is to upgrade armor, although one must be careful.. the vasari bypass shield upgrade for assailants is useless until later levels because it doesn't actually increase their total net damage.


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All that really matters in a battle is having overwhelming firepower, so you don't lose any of your ships (having an enemy attack group jump away from you is as satisfying as it is annoying though)

Upgrading your ships can make the fleet you already have less vulnerable to having them picked off one by one (but I agree it is a bad idea to spend 10 upgrades if you only have 5 ships!)

Also, you can go out and destroy all the enemy homeworlds and cripple their economies, but the fleet logistics don't let you split your forces into 5 massive fleets to get all the enemy homeworlds...

...Oh. and another thing, it seems the fleeing enemy fleet will run directly to it's homeworld (if you stay in their tail), so if you follow it, they will make a stand and fight you)...