upgraded fleet VS larger fleet ?

I prefer an upgraded fleet rather then a large not upgraded fleet. When playing the game I had better luck with an upgraded fleet and taking on an enemy then I did with a large fleet. The ships stand more of a chance in battle and don't need to be replaced as often.

rule of thumb in rts games is that more units is better because the % increase given in the upgrades is usually fairly low.

Do both, imo. Lab structures are expensive, so going deep into the tech tree without buying up the low level upgrades (which are quite cheap anyway) is kind of foolhardy. Getting a larger fleet without buying basic upgades is costly on two fronts. First, you pay the up front cost of improving your logistics, second, the 9 to 10% tax on your economy for maintaining higher fleet deployment.

Before I get into major engagements I upgrade my armor by atleast 3 and hit up 3
boxes of health and regen and I can then take fleets that have 50 more ships then I do.
It also really depends on what factions are in the battle (differ tech trees).

I would prefer and upgraded fleet me and a friend played a game and i was able to push a much larger fleet back with an upgraded fleet

well, i prefer an upgraded fleet, but like mentioned earlier, the upgrades amount to a small percentage. your better off spending those credits into a fleet that's twice as large. but again, end game, when fleet cap is near the max, the upgraded fleet will win (equal # of ships)

Kinda like Elite Military Divisions, 1 Squad of Commandos or 250 Light Militia?

Upgraded fleet always. Taxes and everything...

upgraded fleet is easier to maintain, because you don't have to keep replacing ships

look at Black Hawk Down and tell me who wins in real life.

It's a game about the colonization and conquest of outer space. Real life has nothing to do with it.

Early game its not a good idea to expend a lot of money on upgrades. For example, the Cobalt has a base damage of 9.5 dps. Early game, you might get eight of them before you max out the first level of fleet capacity. That's 76 dps altogether. The first two laser upgrades gives your Cobalts a 10% boost and together cost 900 credits and 75 crystal. You go from 76 dps to 83.6 dps. The same amount of resources, however, will be 2 more non-upgraded cobalts with a little bit left over. Adding two non-upgraded Cobalts brings you up to 95 dps. Plus having 2 additional ships gives the enemy more targets to split his fire between. Basically, you need to wait until you have enough ships that purchasing a weapons upgrade adds *at least* as much DPS to your fleet as simply buying more ships would. For example, with Cobalts the tipping point for the tier 1 laser upgrades would be when you have about 21 or 22 of them.

Of course remember certain weapon upgrades apply to multiple ships when doing your calculations. The laser upgrades will also beef up your capital ships for TEC. So if you're cap heavy or planning on going cap heavy, getting the laser upgrades a bit sooner might make sense for you.

Shield, hit point, and armor upgrades are more worthwhile to get early. Shield, hit point, and armor upgrades apply to all your ships, fighters, and structures, so you get a lot more for your money. I usually go in for these upgrades before I do weapons.

Yeah, and those two extra cobalts will cost you an arm in the logistics research and a leg in taxes lost.

That's highly situational. It depends on how much fleet cap you have remaining at your current upkeep level, how many of a certain class you've built, and how many different classes a weapons upgrade will affect.

If you're early in the game and have only researched one or two levels of fleet capacity and you're not wanting to go up to the next fleet cap level yet due to upkeep, you're probably better off saving your money so you can buy a big fleet as soon as you unlock the next fleet cap level.

Weapons upgrades just don't make sense until the early-mid game. Shield, armor, and hit point upgrades early are more useful and less costly.

You need a WHOLE lot of ships before upgrades matter. The first upgrade in fleet supply gives you 150 more supply to mess around with, for a 9% tax. TBH this is fairly inconsequential. It is far far far far far far more useful to pop up to 9% and add in more ships then it is to spend much money on upgrades.

Other than that there are a few upgrades almost everyone gets for other reason. Picking up the first three hull upgrades as vassari allows you to get reintegrate, which is very nice on enforcers. Getting the first three shield upgrades allows advents to research guardians, which is basically a must have unit for this patch. But other than those it's like I mentioned before. More ships >> upgraded ships until you start hitting much higher levels of taxation.

You behave as though the costs for upgrading your weapons and the costs for fielding a larger fleet are similar, though. Nothing could be further from the truth. Your first hull upgrade takes all of one lab and 400 credits and 25 crystal. Compare that to the HUGE cost of building 150 supply in ships. While the fleet upgrade is comparable in price, the cost of the FLEET is by no means similar.

Here's a more rational comparison: Compare the effectivness of a fleet equipped with the first hull upgrade to a fleet with just slightly fewer ships, but no hull upgrade. The comparison isn't quite so stark as the 'numbers > all' folks would make out. What's more, is that once you've researched the hull upgrade, it not only applies to your current fleet, but every ship you'll ever build again. Fleet casualties, on the other hand, are gone forever.

The additional advantage of upgrades is that the hull and shield upgrades make your own fleet more resilient versus focused fire, and the weapon upgrades make your own focused fire more effective, better cancelling the effects of maneuver. No matter how good your fleet micro-management is, there is a tendency for units to spread out during maneuvers. Stronger weapons and tougher ships better compensate for this unavoidable circumstance.

Finally, the last argument in favor of upgrades is that a ship that survives with 5% of its hit points will be repaired to full health in relatively little time. A ship that's destroyed must be rebuilt. Every time your upgrades save a ship that would otherwise be destroyed, you've effectively recouped the resources of replacing it.

Make no mistake, the value of upgrades scale with the size of your fleet, so you can't simply upgrade a tiny fleet and expect it to demolish a massive one, as the player with the massive fleet has spent far more resources to build his armada. But that's no reason not to get upgrades.

I believe its a mix, early on bigger fleet

Later one higher technology, Fleet upkeep gets to become $$$ towards the end. Therefore if you can make 1 ship work 1.5 ships then its worth it later on cause your still paying taxes on that 1 ship.

Well, that's not really a cost for cost comparisson, but even so: if you're having to choose between doing a bunch of upgrade research v's popping up and building a fleet then building a fleet is far superior. If you can't manage to fill your pop cap with ships due to cashflow then you're doing something wrong.

If, OTOH, you do want to compare cost-for-cost: lab is 750/60/80 and first research is 400/0/25 = 1150/60/105. Let's say you can get 50 credits for your minerals: 1200C. Light frigates cost 300/55/0; let's call it 300C for simplicity. 1200C is 4 light frigates! With a supply cost of 5 it means your face-off is (assuming no scouts):

10 frigates v 6 upgraded frigates

If we round your 5% hull upgrade up it equates 10 v 7

I can't remember how much the second upgrade costs, so let's say it costs the same: 400C ~= 1 frigate. Now you're at 5 ships, with 10% gain, which is 0.5. Even kindly rounding up this takes it to 10 v 6, which is worse than at 1 upgrade. And from there on out you need more labs, so the cost difference only gets worse.

An argument for upgrading early is the time involved. While ships are far more valuable early on, if you leave it too late to start upgrading it will take you an absolute age to get to the higher tier upgrades. For example, if you want to get the planet killer as tec and you haven't done any LRM research, you're going to be a long way behind an opponent who has. For this reason it's a good idea to grab research whenever you can. Early on your build-rate for ships is limited by build speed more than economy, so throw any spare cash into getting upgrades. Popping up the second time is more daunting than the first, especially if you've been busy attacking the enemy and haven't taken as many planets as you did for the first fleet cap increase, so you should consider doing some upgrades once you've maxed out ships at 250 cap, while you capture another couple of planets / wait for pop/metal/crystal research to complete.

tl/dr; if you have to choose between ships and upgrades then always pick ships, but you should still try to pick up upgrades whenever you can.

Upgrades pay for themselves over time, since you don't pay for the continual tax.

But, numbers will win a battle. 9 colbats will win against 6 upgraded cobalts ( assuming tier one ). If you run the tech all the way out, spending the thousands of credits, your cobalts will kick butt ( as will your HC's, LRM's, and cap ships ). But, it takes time, credits, crystal, and metal to get there. The big questions is, do you have that time and could those resources be better spent else where at that point in time ?

I throw a few upgrades in here and there. Hull and repair upgrades are the best bet from an investment perpsective, since they affect all ships. Weapon upgrades depend on your projected fleet build. LRM upgrades are sweet ( they also benefit my hanger defenses and Sova's ), plus it puts you closer to a Novalith. Autocannon upgrades are nice too, if I plan to spam Kodiaks and Kol's. Lasers are cheap, but really only work for cobalts and Cap's.

Usually, I'll find that toward the end of the game, I have armor/hull/repair upgrades to the third or fourth tier, weapons a bit higher and around a 1000 fleet cap ( when playing against the AI ). Humans it depends on your opponent. If he's going to turtle, I upgrade like crazy since I know where he is and when I go to dig him out it'll be bloody toe-to-toe duke out. If he's fluid/aggressive, I go for huge numbers because I'll need several fleets to counter any back door or multi-front attacks or to allow myself a harrassing fleet.

So, in answer to your orignal question : Upgraded or Larger ?

My answer is YES ! I'll have both ! Or failing that, a little bit of each.

These are straw man examples of the most blatant variety. I have never advocated letting your fleet size languish for the sake of getting upgraded ships. What game are you playing where you built only 10 frigates?



This is another misrepresentation of costs. You're going to have to build the labs anyway, or your light frigates will be shredded by your opponent's LRMs. Fail to tech up, and you'll find your fleet outclassed no matter how large it is, because after 30 or 40 minutes, the pirates start showing up with heavy cruisers, to say nothing of your enemies.

Let me be clear: I suspect that most of us are in more agreement than disagreement about the cost/benefits and time advantages of getting upgrades compared to those of buying fleet logistics. What we seem to be doing is the classic forum game of picking up on trifles and conflating them to mean something other than what the poster who wrote them intended. (It's a classic game in the media too, ever watch U.S. election coverage?).

So: Sideshow, General_Harada, you're right. Maintaining a sizable, powerful fleet is your first priority. But ignoring upgrades altogether is a grevious mistake. I doubt this is a position you'd disagree with.

I don't think you know what a straw man is (which is weird, since you link to the wiki article). The game I'm playing with only 10 frigates is the first stage of sins, before you pop fleet cap. Unless you don't build a capital, which I'm assuming everyone does.



Well, of course neither of us would disagree with it, since it's what we both say in our posts.

Very true. I do say that, and I do agree.

But when you upgrade is critical. At the very beginning ? Hell no. Thats when you'd find the theortical 9 cobalts versus 6 arguement ( limited resources dictating quality versus quantity ). End game ? Oops ! Too late.

But, we're all in agreement. Balance is whats needed. If you had a choice :

A - 1200 fleet points, no upgrades
B - 1000 fleet points, tier 3/4 upgrades
C - 800 fleet points, tier 7 upgrades

Most of us are choosing option B. At least I am.

I had three lvl 2 kol's and two lvl 1 suport caps

lost all of them to two lvl 5 caps

upgrade always wins!!!  

And what does levelling your cap ships have to do with this discussion?

I like to go All Caps, then once I have them built, I wait to have all of my technologies before researching the rest of my supply. By building just Caps verses AI very rarely do experience any losses. I may lose a battle, retreat repair and try again though. Early on I make sure to get repair bays, after that it is all gravy.

Due to Fleet Logistics, i tend to much prefer an upgraded fleet to a larger one.