TEC All Capital Ship Fleet (Well, Almost)... Thoughts, Comments, Discussion and Debate Wanted!

My only real thoughts are that unless you're playing a really easy AI, you are royally, royally screwed with that fleet composition...your econ cannot be good enough to support that until way late game.

Thats it? Not particularly helpful... care to elaborate or offer a suggestion on augmentation? To be fair, you did say that these were your "only real thoughts", so maybe that IS all you can offer...?

If it's just capitals, then not even 10 sovas will be enough. You simply NEED strikecraft. Even the upgraded flak burst of 5 kols won't be enough against carrier spam (or simply a carrier-heavy fleet), especially if it's you that's attacking. And the cost of rebuilding a lost capital ship, plus all the XP required, is just too much compared to the enemy just replenishing their SC. You won't stand a chance.

Now, you could have a fleet where the basic attack force is capship-only, if you simply have a support force of fighter carriers (keeping them at the edge of the well), and a flak task force following, and just capships to deliver the heavy punch while your support deals with enemy SC. That's feasible. Not the best tactic regarding cost, time and experience, but feasible.

In such a case, your composition is pretty good. 5 Kols is a good choice, and you need at least 3 Dunov for support (maybe 4 is better- lose one Marza, 3 are enough). Most will disagree with the 2 Akkans,  but I think that one more ion bolt can't hurt.

Your other problem, however, will be hard to overcome: With all 16 caps in the same fleet, it will take forever for them to gain enough experience to reach their full potential (so they won't go down like flies). The only way this can work, IMO, is if you build your all-caps fleet very late in the game, having kept all your capitals apart (or in small groups) and gaining XP seperately until then. But by that time, either you'll be dead or winning anyway.

Could be fun to try but you've made some basic assumptions that will give you difficulty.

1. The XP value you see on enemy ships is divided by every ship in the gravity well. If you have only one cap, you get all of it. If you have 16, each cap gets 1/16 of the XP it says is given. Basically, having 16 caps in one gravity well will mean it will take a long time to lvl up.

2. Large fleet limit doesn't increase cap limit, its stuck at 16 no matter what (without a mod), so basically your just making it easier for the AI to send more frigates to attack you.

3. While you would think bombers would be better agianst all non-strikecraft vessels, in reality they are only really good against caps, heavy cruisers, and structures. Have AT LEAST 70% (if not 100%) fighters, as you won't see many HCs till later, and as you can expect to have air inferiority on any AI level past normal (and possibly on normal as well).

4. If you find yourself against a dedicated carrier spam (the AI also does it), I'd recommend having Flak added to the list of frigates you'll allow to support your fleet, even with Kol/Dunov anti fighter abilities blazing.

Your fleet compisition looks decent, the only thing I might do is switch a Kol to a Dunov. Its shield restore ability can keep your caps going even agianst over wellming numbers, especially with repair frigates supporting. Hope it works.

Okay, now we're getting somewhere. But I'd like to point out again that this is for SINGLE PLAYER ONLY, and I've never seen the enemy AI carrier spam, or even really be all that carrier heavy.

An all-capital strategy is a novelty, and unless someone shows me strong evidence to the contrary I wouldn't even attempt it in multiplayer.  Capital ships are lovely for their special abilities, but if you want sheer combat power or a support niche it's frigates and cruisers all the way.  Capital ships provide invaluable and irreplacable abilities to your fleet, but you need to get the experience in them before they really pay off.  If you have lots of capital ships, getting that experience will be a problem.  Typically I like to keep my fleet split into two or three groups, each with two or three capital ships.  This gives a very nice advancement pace in levels for the capital ships.  Any more capital ships, and they just advance too slowly and stay in the low level range.

Now, I don't usually play massive multi-star scenarios with 6 or 7 stars, but I've never actually brought out all 16 capital ships as any faction except Advent, who get a boost to level 4 for free and a significant experience advantage with mass transcendance.  With every other faction, I find it's better to make fewer capital ships to allow the ones you do have to level up, and fill out the rest of your fleet with those ruthlessly cost-effective frigates and cruisers.

This is good.

I'd also like to point out that I won't have 16 caps all at once. The fleet will grow as I can get them built. This means that the early caps will have a LOT of XP, since they will be getting all the XP. By focusing almost all my resources on caps, I can pump them out faster than the AI. I will also have lots of money to spend on buying levels for the caps.

Right now I'm about 1-1.5 hours into a large map, 2v2v2v2, all on hard, and I am decimating my nearest opponent. Maybe this won't last, as the game progresses further and further in but so far its been pretty awesome

Interesting, what difficulty are all the AI on?

All on hard

I use this strategy against hard/unfair AI's, and dominate... i mainly go TEC, 2 fleets of 8 capital ships each supported by a small squad of repair/command cruisers. Capital fleets consist of (3 kols, 2 dunov, 2 marza, 1 akkan)x2. 

On map with 35-50 planets, ill expand till i find a nice choke point, mostly building that first 8 capital ships and economy upgrades, once the first fleet of 8 is up i go with a star base at that choke point and wait for the inevitable onslaught from the AI, once i beat back a wave or two i usually have enough saved to start on the 2nd fleet of 8 and launch the 1st fleet on counter attack missions to take resource rich planets.

Fully upgraded starbase with 2nd fleet's 3 or 4 cap ships and some repair/command cruisers has beaten off massive fleets.  Within a couple hours i usually have the full 16 cap ships, and all of 1st fleet is approx level 10 by that time, also, 2nd fleet usually has a couple level 6's and rest are 4's depending on the attacks of the AI. The map i mostly play is vs 4 ai - 2 hard / 2 unfair, 1 of each setting.

Sometimes using the Mad Scientist mod iv run into problems late game with the unfair reseacher and economist AI's, fully upgraded vasari star base is truely a death start and have to be carefull not to attack those planets until the ai launches its fleet, or i use all 16 capital ships and combine repair/command support to assaut that juggernaught.

Overall your strategy is very similar to the one i use against the AI and it works very well. I recommend trying the Mad Scientist mod as it allows for some sweet upgrades to planets and capital ships, playing as TEC on a terran planet that is fully upgraded gives weapon range bonus ! the star base with an akkan nearby can cover  just about the entire phase lane entry area. Once half the fleet or more hits level 8-10 we are talking some serious firepower with survivablity, key is making sure the Kol's are the main targets and having at least 4 dunovs (2 per fleet) - sometimes i only go with 1 marza per fleet and add in more dunov's.

so it CAN work... sweet!

I overall like the fleet composition. The sc should be totally fighter if you dont figure in light carriers or flak. I sometimes use this when playing hard level AI with nothing else. Yes it is very very difficult but can be done.

1. It will take a long time to build the first few that aren't free.
2.You will have a hard time colonizing the more heavily defended planets.
3.Your enemy will be colonizing at a much faster rate than you.
4.You will not be able to research nearly as much because you're saving all of your credits for the cap ships and fleet expansion upgrades
5. You will be less able to defend multiple fronts, so you will necessarily have a smaller empire...meaning less resources gained per second.

On the other hand, if you play a traditional opening game and go for this cap fleet late in the game, you still run into problems, just not as big as, oh, crap, he's got an empire with 5 times as many planets as I do. Once again, sheer expense will be a big problem. Also, capital ships are meant to be te flagships of your frigate fleets, and to have abilities that help their frigates. If you take the capital ships out to put into their own fleet, you have a suddenly much less effective fleet on your hands. Also, if you have an entirely cap ship fleet, the enemy will not be stuck between 'Do I destroy the cap ship to convince him to run?' and 'Do i destroy those annoying Hoshikos?' He'll only be able to go for your cap ships. In any late game battle, you can reasonably expect to lose one or two of your cap ships with that fleet composition. So adding frigates to that fleet suddenly looks A LOT better, even if its just a handful of supporting frigates.{EDIT} I'm speaking as a mostly Advent player, where support frigates are the bread and butter of your fleet. Maybe TEC support isn't quite as useful, or the TEC cap ships can replace the support frigates' abilities?{END EDIT}

Anyway, in conclusion, I think it's a bad idea to start out with only cap ships, and almost as bad an idea to seperate them out later to make them their own fleet. I guess my point was 'Nothing to excess.' Again, sorry about biting your head off.

even if you go with a predominantly cap ship based fleet, just for fun, i would still recommend adding a few support cruisers just because they do things that none of the caps can do on their own. you need those support abilities.

bring some Hoshiko Robitics cruisers along because its the only thing in TEC army that can repair in the field. cap ships in particular are good repair targets because of their high armor level and shield mitigation.

bring some Cielo Command cruisers along because Designate Target is the most powerful offensive buff in the TEC army and none of the cap ships have anything comparable. its a very necessary damage boost. 

i think you'll be fine on squadron cover between the Kol's flak bursts and the squadrons of the cap ships themselves so no carriers necessary in my opinion. 

i'll also echo what some others have said about this kind of strategy. its just a novelty. its for fun and probably won't work even against most AI opponents. you can have some fun with it against Easy or Normal AI but it will totally ail against Hard AI or any human opponent. 

You just inspired me to have an all caps match against some comps. 

Good luck!

thnaks for all the good advice people, and to FlameBurn for coming back and being helpful

So, you guys were right (as it seemed you would be). I'm sure it CAN be done, but I didnt do it right. I wasn't lying before; I was about 1.5hrs into a game, with 4-5 planets, and 5 cap ships. I was playing 2v2v2v2 on a map with 3 stars and maybe 60 planets. I had already taken 2 neighboring planets controlled by my nearest enemy away from "him", with relative ease. I then moved up to take the third, and thats where the trouble started. He had a starbase, and a cap ship and some frigates, and i got decimated. I pretty much put the game aside as that point. Sure, i DID give up early, and I probably could have strung it out a while longer, but it seemed like at that point my expansion was already halted, and that I was going to need to turtle to get a more powerful fleet to keep going.

Problem is, while I turtle (actually, I wouldn't be turtling; I would be if I was building up star bases and shoreing up defences, but what I would acutally be doing is just trying to build more caps), my enemies would be building up too, AND expanding, and probably would begin to counter attack.

So, I put that game on hold and started the map over; this time, with a different (and probably familiar to many of you) strategy: cariers. I asked about carriers here:

https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/342456

Then, from what I read, I started as Vasari (since their SC's are suppposedly the best), and built up only transporters with assailants for support, and just 2 caps: the "egg", and the carrier. Now THIS fleet was good. For military upgrades, I could focus on ONLY ones that would benefit the transporters and assailants (missles, shields, hull, etc). I used this to expand, and as I got bigger, I built a bigger and bigger fleet. I then started adding caps. I'm about 6-7hrs in, and I own an entire star system, which holds 80% of the planets. I also have 4 fully upgraded starbases guarding the star, which is the only entry into my system. At this point I pretty much have the game on complete lockdown, since I'm generating MASSIVE resources and have a fleet consisting of all 16 caps, enough carriers to produce 186 SC (!!!!), and about 20 or so assailants to boot. Oh, almost all my caps are fully leveled up as well, because of all the massive amounts of killing I've done (so far I am the only one to wipe out a player). It seems that the vasari are pretty awesome, as long as you stay agressive and keep expanding so you can pay the higher costs for ships.

Now, I was playing this with all opponents on "normal" difficulty, so it was porbably easier than I'm used to. So, now that I've got the biggest star system on lock down, I've switched the difficulty to "impossible" on the 3 remaining opponents and changed them all to defensive players; I'm hoping that this will give me a nice challenge for mopping up these 3 remaining players at the other two solar sytems.

PS - sorry if you guys didnt really want to read all about my game. I got home at 10pm last night, played the all cap ship game a bit, then started over, and played the new one until 8am... DAMN this game is SOOOOOO addicting.

So yeah, caps are fun, but you really need support of some kind to keep them alive. On the other hand, a fleet of mostly carriers with some missle guys is great fun, and then you can add caps at will. It was truly fun to watch 150+ SC come swooping in to decimate anything in their path, while my caps flew arounds and killed at will.

Thanks for all the advice!!!