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kind of a mix of spam plus combined arms. i never find it effective to build ONLY one type of ship, but it is often effective to build MOSTLY one type of ship. most of the type the dominant ship in my fleets is an LRM frigate (if TEC or Vasari) or a carrier (if Advent, and sometimes as Vasari as well) or if its late game then mostly heavy cruisers (for any faction). but in any case you need support ships to cover your weaknesses. if you've got a fleet of mostly LRMs you'll have a natura

Vasari ships are individually much tougher and deal more damage than other factions' ships though they cost more resources and fleet logistics to compensate. This has a couple of different effects. First of all it makes it possible for the Vasari to muster a powerful fleet faster with the same number of shipyards, because you're building fewer ships to achieve the same results. Second, it significantly reduces vulnerability to focus firing. During focus fire only one ship is

ok, here's an interesting discussion point. on a larger map, do you need multiple cap ships early? i think thats a very good question. this also goes to the issue the original post, which was "how worthwhile is scrapping the cap ship factory after the first ship?" my opinion is that in terms of the mid-term to long-term economic development of your empire the greatest benefit comes from choosing a colonizer as your first ship. it greatly increases the rate at which you acquire

the game i described usually take about 3-4 hours before its clear who the winner will be and everyone surrenders. its easy to arrange at a LAN center or online if you know the people you're playing with. and not for nothing, some people also play against the AI from time to time when they can't be buggered to find a partner. i don't begrudge you enjoying a faster pace game and i enjoy 1on1 small maps quite a bit as well. your strategy guides for those maps are very good, i've used the

look dude, for all your vaunted wisdom and strategy, you seem to have failed to learn to communicate respectfully. you think your ultra-aggressive macho crap gets you any degree of respect? we get it, you think that the game is all about rushing. i guess you play almost exclusively 1on1 duels on small maps. wow, you're talented, you figured out a way to win on 1 of the dozens of different ways that people play this game. there's nothing badly reasoned about any of my statemen

i'm sorry, but that just seems wrong to me. capital ships are the anchors of fleets, and they have abilities that have significant synergy if you pick your ships well. i find it crucially important to have access to a powerful disabling ability like Ion Bolt (on the Akkan) in addition to the raw firepower of a Kol battleship. I find that the anti-matter destruction of the EMP Bomb (on the Dunov) is a critical factor against enemy repair cruisers. i think your missing out on way too much if you o

edit: sorry, double post

oh i dont think there's much of a question that you don't want to leave the cap ship yard at a distant homeworld under any circumstances. you need the ships built close to the front. its obvious that in later stages of the game you scuttle all shipyards (frigate too) in your interior worlds and replace them with trade ports or whatever civilian structures are most useful to you. the more interesting question is whether or not its worth it to scuttle the yard immediately after getting y

two points. first, on the phase missile swarm thing. huntingx is basically correct. the damage listed on the tooltip is its total damage. if the level 1 swarm does 200 damage to 3 targets it will deal 66.67 damage to each target. if it hits fewer than its max number of targets, those targets will take more damage. 2 targets would take 100 damage each, 1 target would take all 200 damage. the ability is on par with the Kol's Gauss Gun for a direct damage causing abilities. The Kol is obvi

well, it doesn't really surprise me anymore because the behavior is a repeat offense at this point, but the first time i saw this happen i was incredibly surprised. the AI will routinely abandon economically important planets to reduce damage to their fleet. you can show up in a grav well, destroy all of the trade posts, broadcast centers, and extractors, and then leave. the AI will not try to bring in a fleet to stop you. if they have an existing fleet there they will run away to an ad

well thats awfully vague. what cap ship were you using and what skills did you get for it? what cap ship was he using and what skills did he get for it? i've found that without exception a Kortul Devastator with Power Surge and Disruptive Strikes can beat any other cap ship 1 on 1. The Disruptive Strikes are incredibly unfair in a 1 on 1 fight.

i generally scuttle it after building my 2nd cap ship. i will usually get a 2nd cap ship very early, usually right around the time i've finished colonizing local asteroids and whatever lightly defended terran or desert planets are nearby. its usually so early that i haven't even researched ice/molten colonization. i find that the net gain from getting cap ship #2 early is immense in the extra experience the ship will give you and the ability to easily take out heavily defended terran/desert plan

the math on phase missile shield bypass looks something like this: assume that you're firing on a target that has already achieved max mitigation (~60%. also assume that each missile does exactly the same damage and so corresponds 1 to 1 the DPS sum of the all missile weapons in the fleet. 100 DPS worth of phase missiles would be reduced to 40 DPS with no shield bypass. With 10% shield bypass, 1 of every 10 missiles will ignore the shield. So 90 of that DPS will be

Vasari strategy for 1on1 is very different than their large map Returning Armada strategy. Basically you can't go wrong if you play very aggressively because you have the best Battleship (the Devastastor) and the best Dreadnaught (the Desolator). The battleship in particular is spectacular and will completely dominate all other cap ships at levels 1-5, things don't get even remotely close to competitive until large fleets supported by level 6 cap ship abilities and high tech tree support cruiser

i was under the impression that a culture building can never extend its influence more than 2 grav wells distance. that is to say the culture it generates will reach the grave well it is built in, all adjacent grav wells, and all grav wells adjacent to those grav wells. this still results in the possibility of a single broadcast center covering a large number of grav wells (i've had up to a dozen covered by a single broadcast center) depending on the layout of the star system. you definitely can

why would you assume that the developers want to discourage micro-management of a battle? isn't that an opportunity for skill and interaction? if anything i would assume they would want to go out of their way to increase the importance of micro-management, and thus implemented a shield mitigation mechanic that increases survivability in large engagements. i mean, lets get real here. lets analyze the mechanic in terms of the effect it actually has on the game and not on the effect that

maybe the point isn't to discourage focus firing. maybe the point is to increase the survivability of ships on a curve related to the amount of damage they are currently sustaining. this would make the in-combat regeneration of shields and armor much more important (as opposed to just having a higher starting health value) and would prevent scenarios in which a very large fleet can one shot a ship with its focused fire. the deliberately slowed pacing enables factors such as movement, range, spec

and how would you determine which one should cost the most and which the least? the developers opinion seems to be that the ships are all approximately equally potent but their potency is manifested in different attributes. some ships are better with their guns, some are more durable, some have better special abilities, some have more strike craft, etc. any give cap ship is available at the same point of technological development and each cap ship benefits from the same fleet support t

i'm a huge fan of the skiranta carrier and i almost always buy it as my 2nd cap ship (the first is almost always a battleship or a colonizer). i find that the skiranta makes an ideal anti-cap ship weapon when decked out with all bombers and levelling up its micro-phasing aura and its spawn bombers ability. this is a more specialized sort of carrier but it is devastating to enemy cap ships. the micro phasing aura makes your bombers almost immune to enemy fighters trying to shoot them down. in the

any fleet dominated too heavily by a single ship type will be countered easily by a fleet with numerous ships of the appropriate counter type. a fleet of heavy cruisers is countered by a fleet of carrier cruisers with bombers. a fleet of light frigates is countered by a fleet of LRM frigates. generally you need to cover your weakness. heavy cruisers + flak frigates is a hard to counter combo. it gets even better with repair cruisers around as they are extremely effective at supporting

this seems like alot of non-sense. a mixed fleet, when managed properly, will wipe the floor with any single ship strategy. bomber strike craft are the natural counter to heavy cruisers and even a relatively modest fleet of carrier cruisers (let alone a high level carrier cap ship) can destroy a huge number of heavy cruisers in just a couple of minutes. if you add in skirmish frigates to take out any flaks the enemy might be screening his fleet with you basically can't lose. heavy cruisers are a

i've noticed that there are several types of non-colonizable grav wells with some pretty exotic looking names and graphics. These are your plasma storms, magnetic clouds, etc. My question is this: do these types of grav wells have any effect on your ships or are they just for show? I've tried to examine this myself a little bit and haven't come up with anything yet. I haven't looked very carefully, but i did briefly monitor things like rate of hull, shield, and anti-matter recove

Flaks are just a good bargain, thats the main thing. They excel at their specialty of shooting down strike craft but become worthwhile because they are moderately useful for other tasks. Despite the fact that there are more effective methods for dealing with LRMs, Flaks do a good enough job cheaply enough while simultaneously shooting down strike craft that they are extremely useful in a fleet. Its not like you're going to mass Flaks in the way that you mass LRMs. The LRMs deal good da

i think alot of people haven't quite realized what a network of PJI's can actually accomplish. they don't lockdown a system, they create a "drag" effect on an opponent attempting to flee pursuers across multiple grav wells. each time he goes through a PJI the pursuing fleet gets a few more seconds (3-5 seconds in my observation) of free shots at the fleeing enemy. the effect is cumulative and after 4 or 5 jumps you've probably inflicted critical damage to the fleeing fleet while sustaining basic

i think the mechanic is working exactly as intended. you really can "corner the market" on a commodity if you have a very large credit income or control most of the extractors for that commodity. in my view thats an extremely well designed mechanic and makes economic competition an important vector of gameplay, one of the many reasons why this game is such a masterful fusion of RTS and 4x Stategy.