Battlevoid Sector Siege is a brand new game by Bugbyte, maker of Battlevoid: First Contact and Harbinger. First Contact was a tower defense of sorts where you control the battlestation and can bring in reinforcements, outfit weapon slots, fighter bays, etc. Harbinger is a roguelike in space where you travel sectors taking out enemies and upgrading equipment. This game is more of a real time strategy game where you control resource nodes to gain scrap and research points to conquer a sector. These types of games have historically been difficult to make because you need enough depth to be interesting, but it has to be workable on a mobile tablet or even a phone. Thus controls need to be intuitive and details limited. The tutorial explains the basic concepts of the game, capturing nodes, etc. I want to immediately touch upon some key concepts that the tutorial does not really go over very well. Detailed strategies will come later. UPDATES: -------- Dev added two new large stations for humans. Added Trademark ship. "Fixed" bug where reinforcement bays did not count towards total. HIGH LEVEL KEY POINTS: ---------------------- * Your battlestation has a repair beam that will fix damaged ships that are nearby. It is rather slow, but does not take resources unlike using Repair or even using repair drones that you can get lategame. * Your battlestation has a SECONDARY tab where 8 point defense slots are. Yes, it took me a few days to figure this out... Its the ONLY ship in the game that is like this. * Repairing with the button is not really awesome. It literally takes just as much scrap to fix a nearly destroyed ship as it does to make a new one...AND eats up research points. And disables the ship until repairs are done. You are better off selling the beat up ship and replacing it, or going to base for an extended repair. It is fairly rare that repairing is a good idea though possible. * Enemies start with 3 WarpStations. These are small stations not connected to any nodes that periodically summon reinforements. It is VITAL to find and kill these, preferably in the early game. If not, it will be very very hard to win a value-game when the enemy continues to get free reinforcements and marine attackers. * Something really wierd is that the warpstations are basically just ENTRY POINTS! That means ONE warpstation is just as bad as THREE of them! Well, except for the location most likely. As such, killing two makes you THINK you are doing well, but until the last falls, you will be at a big disadvantage. * It is important to realize that a turtle strategy does not work well, especially in harder difficulties. You MUST go forth and conquer nodes to get cash, plus deal with the warp stations as per above. * In general you want to stick with ONE weapon, ONE fighter type, ONE PD gun. This is because you can invest tech points and have all your slots benefit. It also tends to make combat more consistent. Everyone shoots at the same time, has same range, etc. Sure it is not as interesting I suppose, but it is effective. * Make sure that you immediately go register for the cloud save, then do an upload. I don't think you even need a valid email address to do this, if you really hate the idea of it. This will unlock the CLOUDSAVE ship which is one of the best ships in the game. * In the harder difficulties, you will not be able to fight the enemy fleet effectively early on. Instead you will need to learn to outmanuever them, find ways to split them up and keep taking their nodes right back when they move on one of yours. This tends to make them turn around and head back to that node. * Human ships are generally not as good as the enemy ships as far as slot configuration, etc. However, they do tend to have more hull and are quite a bit faster (well, some of them anyways). You can use a weaker but faster force to keep the enemy busy running around in circles while you tech up and build stronger forces. * The key to the game is to manuever your forces so that the maximum amount of your stuff is shooting at a minimum amount of their stuff. That means doing things like having a big line of your ships (NOT the default V formation) waiting for the enemy fleet to engage once they are strung out. They will approach a few at a time and your Wall of Death can obliverate them! * Stations are much cheaper than ships per slot and shield/hull strength, but they are obviously immobile. Filling the slots costs the same regardless of platform which can reduce the overall efficiency gain. Having armed stations everywhere tends to spread out your firepower too much. * Note that fighters/bombers have unlimited range. As such, I always put them on stations in relatively safe nodes. This is cheaper and more effective than trying to put them on ship bays. In fact, I consider ship bays to be nearly worthless despite that they are valued higher by the developer, just like in harbinger (where there were no bay limits). * Fighters also respawn rather quickly and for FREE. They are the gift that keeps on giving and set to Offensive mode will troll enemies endlessly plinking away at them and wearing them down...or at least keeping them busy. Their speed makes them really good at defending large areas and keeping smaller enemy ships from stealing your nodes. * When you first start the game, your tech and ships will be very limited. By winning games you will get experience which you can use to unlock key tech trees. Go ahead and start out on easy to get a few games under your belt first. PLAY MODES: ------------ CAMPAIGN - This is the primary game where you fight in a persistent map filled with sectors and 5 races. You can choose one move per turn which can be an attack which is the standard game where you destroy the enemy battlestation. Or you can defend a sector to prevent it from being taken over in which case you must play a modified version where you simply have to survive a number of incoming waves. Enemies have no battlestation. The campaign difficulty determines how much starting cash and research points you have, as well as the general strength of node Guardians, along with the general strength of the enemy. Furthermore, each mission will have a NUMBER from 1 to 5 which determines how difficult the enemy will be in that mission. Higher numbers mean faster and more reinforcements from warp nodes, and faster production and bigger ship limits from the enemy. SCIRMISH - By itself it might not seem all that interesting, but they did add a cool TEAM MODE which is pretty entertaining and unusual, with 4 players possible. STARTING OFFICERS: ------------------ When you start, you have 4 different officers that you can assign to various roles. SCIENTIST - Affects research speed AND bonus cash and RPs! The best conventional choice by far as more resources are obviously a good thing, plus faster research. It is a significant boost, +20% research, +10% all cash when maxed. This pick helps give you a big advantage early and midgame, but it is the only pick which does NOT increase your lategame potential. In other words, all the other ones give you a higher max limit of stuff. What this means is that in some cases you may wind up having a hard time finishing off an enemy because you just don't have enough ships and bays to plow through. On the other hand, actually surviving to lategame is kind of important too... ENGINEER - Affects build speed and max ships. Basically useless. Build speed is not particularly important and the max boost is 16% which is really weak. Max ships is usually redundant with marines. You typically wouldn't want both though you'd always max marines first if that was the case. Typically set this to 5. PILOT - Affects number of stations buildable AND fighter bays you can populate. This is another KEY personnel, especially for "fighter blanket defense" strategy. Stations are surprisingly useful, which we will go over later. It ranges from 2 stations/3 hangars to 12 stations/15 hangars. If you are using a fighter strategy, you have to max it. If not, stick with 10 minimum. Going down to 5 restricts you to only 2 stations which is difficult to deal with. MARINES - +25 marines adds 50% more marines to ALL your ships and stations plus increasing max number of ships just like engineers. Marines are way better than engineers since they are key for takeover strats obviously, and just in general to resist enemy attacks somewhat. More marines is almost always stronger than a tiny build speed boost. Keep in mind that BETTER marines always trumps MORE marines so this is not as much of a boost as you might initially think. SHIP DISCUSSION: -------------------- Your engineer+marines will set your ship limit somewhere between 3 and 7 typically, going as low as 2, to a max of 10. A "ship" can mean one dinky 800 cost scout, OR a 10,000 cost overseer. Therefore, you typically want the largest ships to give you more room to grow, right? Well, not exactly. You see, if you look at the ship stats you quickly notice something. The bigger ships are less efficient. Like.. a LOT less efficient. Let's go ahead and look at the ships, with particular attention to the best ones. * SCYTHE 800 cost ship. Super fast. 1 big gun, 2 point defense. 200/400 shield/hull. This is a great ship if you have 6 or more max ship as you can mass them cheap and easily early game and clear nodes quickly. The problem is that your firepower per ship is pretty low, such that you hit the limit very fast with only modest overall firepower. Having two of these as scouts is not a bad idea but they tend to get killed one at a time when attacked by fighters, as opposed to one more resilient ship. * PHOENIX 1600 cost ship. SLOWWW. 2 big, 4 PD, 350/700. The Phoenix is a warrior with no wasteful bays. Just 2 big guns and 4 PD, double the firepower of the scout, at double the cost. You can see however that you do lose some efficiency as this ship is MUCH SLOWER than the above scout. However, you cap out at basically double the firepower relative to a horde of scouts which is good. This is the cheapest way to get the most gun turrets fielded, other than the scout. It is pretty good in Defensive mode where its lack of mobility does not really matter all that much. Keep in mind however that your main advantage over the enemy is your speed and this ship does NOT help you at all in that regard. X Crap Ship 2600. 2 big guns, 1 bay, 2 PD. 450/900? This turd of a ship costs over 50% more than the phoenix and adds one bay and loses 2 Point defense! It is a bit tougher but not enough to justify usage It is just bad. Not enough marines to really capture anything either. *** AFTERTHOUGHT 2800. 2 big guns, 1 bay, 4 PD. 400/1000 This is an improved version of the above turd ship. It is an unlockable ship. The difference is that it is tougher, faster, and has 2 extra PD guns for only a tiny cost increase. It also matches speed nicely with your typical endgame Cloudsave ship and has increased visibility over the smaller ones. Although I am not a fan of bays on ships, the bay does come in handy here since you can outfit it with a fighter and since this is an early game ship, you will not need to worry about hitting bay limits. You can always sell the fighter later if you needed to, in order to add another gatling drone or whatever. If you are not going with a fighter based strategy, then having the fighters locally is much more useful than putting them in your battlestation. Note: This ship does not have enough marines to be useful for capturing except in extreme edge cases. X Crap Ship 3500. For a modest cost increase over the afterthought, this ship gets an extra bay and also more marines, making it useful for taking over ships potentially. Typically the extra bay is not very useful though and so I never use this one. X MEDIOCRE SHIP 5500. 3 big guns, 5 PD. 800/1600. This ship is really tough and fast too. But, you lose a lot of efficiency. This ship is similar to an afterthought except with a gun instead of a bay and an extra point defense, but it costs twice as much. It is almost twice as tough but its low firepower and high cost just are not worth it. Two afterthoughts for 5600 will give you 4 gun, 8PD, 2 bay by way of comparison. X Crap Ship. 5600 1 big gun, 3 bays, X PD. ???? This unlockable ship is truly bad. It focuses on bays which is not great under the best of circumstances. It sacrifices speed, toughness, etc for some reason. X HARBINGER 8000 2 big gun, 4 bay. 4 PD. ???? Another unlockable horrible ship. It is incredibly slooow and there is really no reason to put bays on an 8k ship when you can buy 2 1200 stations instead. Also, by the time you can afford this, you will be hitting Bay limits. *** CLOUDSAVE 7200 for 4 big guns, fast, good vision, 5 PD, and a bay. Not quite as tough as the 5500, but the extra gun, plus bay, and extra speed make up for it. You can see that two afterthoughts for 2800x2 is not only cheaper, but provides 4 big, 8 PD, 2 bays with similar speed and better overall toughness. So you'd never want to START with a Cloudsave. However, it is the best human ship for general purposes once you start hitting ship limits. You will typically replace any destroyed Afterthoughts for these when you can, or sell and replace. It has enough marines to take over valuable targets, assuming you went with sufficient +marines and researches. ? Overseer. 11,000. 4 guns, 2 bays, 4 PD. TONS of armor, but slower and I dont feel it is worth the extra cost over the Cloudsave. Shields aren't great. The 2nd bay is not really value added in most cases. This used to be the biggest human ship so could be used for slugfests. But now it is worthless even for that purpose. Cost was raised too. ** Siege. 15,000 6 guns, 0 bays, 8 PD. The flagship of the human fleet, I begged for months to get this one created for you as a beta tester, so enjoy! This is a beast of a vessel, on par with the biggest alien destroyers with SIX main gun turrets and 8 PD. Reasonable speed and collosal shields and armor make this a true warship. Still, don't get carried away. Consider that two cloudsaves costs a bit less and gives you 8 main guns, 10 PD with similar overall shield/armor and faster. This is an awesome ship when your ship limits are close, but building one of these instead of two cloudsaves when you have space for 4 ships or so is not a great idea. On the other hand, consider that once you load up with guns, the siege will likely only cost about 50% more than a cloudsave and is easier to swap them around during a battle to preserve armor. ? TRADEMARK - A favorite from Harbinger. An improved Harbinger ship actually, with much better speed, armor, shields. 3 guns, 4 bays. Awesome in that game, but sucks in this one. Siege is much much much better for every conceivable situation. ---- What you can see is that you want to start with SMALL ships which are the most cost effective, but give you enough room to grow to field a decent force. This depends on your max ship limit... and bay limit to some degree. If you have 6+ max ships, then a horde of scouts is really efficient and fast. However, you need to back it up with a lot of fighters since you hit the ship limit so quickly. In most cases, you will use Phoenix or Afterthought. Phoenix is more efficient to fight with but afterthought is more versatile, faster and a better scout. As such, I almost always start with Afterthoughts. Endgame you should almost always go with the Cloudsave. Its speed and extra PD and cheapness make it a lot more useful overall than the Siege for most cases. However, when ship limits start coming into play, the Siege is the clear winner. STATIONS: --------- Human stations are really bad compared to all aliens. Try capturing one and you will see what I mean...huge monsters with 4 bays, 3 slots, 4 PD! The basic one is 800 with 2 big gun, 2 PD and a hefty 700/700 shield/armor. You might note that this is WAY stronger than a Scythe scout ship! The main problem is that 2 point defense is a bit weak. Next is the 1200 one with 2 bays instead. And 2 PD. These guys are the backbone of the Fighter Blanket Defense strategy. Each one can hold 2 bays for pretty cheap. You put these in your back somewhere safe and crank out 5 or 6 of them. They will generate fighters/bombers and you set them to AGGRESSIVE and they will fly all over. You can also theoretically use these as MARINE CAPTURE stations, if an enemy is incoming without backup. However, this is tricky since the enemy would need to practically run into your station before a launch is likely to be successful. From here, things get wierd. For 1600 you can unlock a bigger station with 3 big guns. But...only 2 PD! WTF? Also, has LESS shields (500), but more hull (1200). Not really much of an upgrade... For 2000 you can get a basic station effectively but it sucks up any nearby resources. Whether you will get 1200 resources out of it is pretty dubious so I rarely use it. Note that it will start working as soon as you start building it! So drop it if a huge battle is imminent since they can suck up a good amount of RPs in particular from a big fight. Not much harvest range however so do not build them preemptively. Then there is this crappy teleporter which can pull your ships to IT. Yeah you read that correctly. It does NOT teleport ships somewhere useful... just recalls THEM back to the station. If it had a repair beam it might be useful... but it doesnt. So it stays unused. NEW: Two new stations added for humans! Well three, but the third one is extremely bad with 8 PD, less armor than the 800 one, and costs 1800! WTF? But the other two make up for it, one having 2 guns, 2 bays and 6 PD. This allows it to "replace" any of your baystations and/or place it more aggressively since it can defend itself much better. I like placing one or two of these up front in dubious worlds then have the lesser ones behind it. The second is a straight up warstation with 4 main guns, 6 PD for 2800. Good armor, marine count. Effectively similar to a 7200 cloudsave. This allows you to use your station count to add to your ship count basically, by letting you create a stronghold that the enemy will not easily be able to break. Thus you can counter-attack, flank, or be freed up to manuever and take their worlds. RACES: ------ There are 5 races in this game. CELESTIAL - 0% attack/10% marine defense. They use energy weapons exclusively which gives them excellent anti-shield capability but typically less hull damage. Their guns have good range and accuracy. They can use the plasma eclipse tier 3 weapon which gives them area effect anti-shield capability. However, the hull damage done is very limited fortuntely. They also tend to use laser drones in their bays which makes them more effective against your fighter swarms than typically found. To face them, note that your shields will not be very useful as they get taken down fast. BUT, your high hull values will be really helpful. Prioritize hull research more than normal. TROLGAR - 30% attack/30% marine defense. Trolgar marines are feared for good reason. Be careful when you see their reinforcements arrive if they are too close to your battlestation. Trolgar use physical weapons mostly such as missiles, rockets, flak guns, and projectile guns. They will occasionally use NUKES which makes them very dangerous for big fleets all clumped together! The nukes are incredibly hard to shoot down which will probably get nerfed one day, and makes them my second-most hated race. To deal with them, strongly consider FIGHTER based strategies which cannot get nuked. It is also better in this case to have fewer stronger ships instead of a bunch of wimpy ones. The Siege shines in this regard. Use long range guns and try to chip away at them. Nuke range is quite long though so they are hard to avoid. If they have a big fleet, figure out which one has the nuke and get your fighters to focus it. WANDERER - 0% attack/20% marine defense. Wanderer are missile and rocket specialist, occasionally using flak guns too. You will definitely want to use PD lasers set to target missiles if up against them. Upgrading the PD laser recycle rate is crucial to swat the missiles quickly. This is one time where you may want to NOT use energy gatling PD guns...at least not in all slots. PD lasers do WAY better at missile hunting. SHILLEAH - 10 attack/15% defense? These guys use a mix of technologies. As such there is not really a particular strategy for dealing with them or countering. Consider them a default/basic race. UNKNOWN - 40% attack/40% marine defense. The unknown are the ultimate race in the previous two games. Toned down a bit in this game, they are still very nasty with no real weakness. They favor fighters more than most other races and most of their ships contain bays, as well as their huge stations. They are similar to celestial in that they use mostly advanced energy weapons. They can use a very long range orange ball weapon that is quite potent. I got it nerfed so you can thank me for that, but it still outranges anything that you have. Thus, you cannot really outrange or plink away at them. TECH TREE THOUGHTS: ------------------- Know that each tier up costs quite a bit more than the previous. Therefore, it is generally better to pick up multiple bottom tier bonuses rather than focus on a single tier. There are exceptions of course. The first five techs are general enhancements, with the 4th tier giving you some tech which is absolutely useless as you will no doubt discover. VISION is by far the most useful of these. I almost always start with Vision1 then come back for Vision2 and 3 later on. These help scouting a lot and give you much more early warning of an attack. It helps prevent your fleet from face-checking a stronger enemy or running into marine squads giving you more reaction time. Finally, it is key for success with fighter based strategies as they need vision to be able to attack since you cannot order them to a specific place. SPEED is the second most useful, especially good for fighters so they can engage faster and get a chance to shoot before dying. Since much of the game is based on manuevering, speed is obviously very useful in this regard. ARMOR is third most useful and affects everything. Since humans always have more armor than shields, this tech gives more overall gain in most cases. MONEY is obviously very useful to have, but it is only 5% per tier vs the 10% bonus of the other techs. Also money is subject to ship limits and only helps future production, whereas the other techs make all your existing stuff better immediately. It is worthwhile to put 1 point into it relatively early if you can squeeze it in, but no more. SHIELDS are very useful in theory, since a bigger shield buffer means more time before taking actual damage. Shield is a renewable resource unlike armor. In actual practice though it is difficult to get damage applied to only shields particularly when controlling multiple ships. It also does not help fighters at all, making it slightly weaker than armor in my opinion. MARINES combat capability is the next tech and a single upgrade can make your stuff much more resistant to being taken over by random warped reinforcements. Depending on who you are fighting of course. Several techs can give YOU the capability to take enemy ships which is very cost-effective for larger ones. Next up are the weapon tech trees that are unlocked. I will go over weapons in more detail later, so these are just general thoughts. PROJECTILE TREE - Missiles, Photon Torps, 2 bombers. Decent tree and on the cheaper side. Photon torps are quite strong. Don't care for the bombers. A bit awkward since missiles pierce shields but photon does not, making upgrade problematic. GATLING TREE - Two strong point defense guns, best fighter in the game, and a decent main gun. Particularly strong for fighter based strategies. AREA EFFECT TREE - All weapons here do damage in an area effect AND do shield and hull damage at the same time. (i.e. penetrates shields). Each weapon is slightly better than the previous and has some added utility. ENERGY TREE - Four main guns. The first of which is really good (Orb) and the rest are expensive and worthless. UNLOCKABLES: ------------ As mentioned before, the Afterthought is probably the first thing you should get. Next, I recommend obtaining the Energy tech tree to use the ORB. From here, get the rest of the tech. You can also buy 1 shot reinforcements for your next battle. This is an interesting idea and a way to beat tougher missions or against the Unknown. The big ones are the ship reinforcements which give you ready-made ships at the beginning of the game. Not only does this provide a lot of money-worth of stuff, but it insta-builds so you can go forth IMMEDIATELY and conquer. This is a game-changer and allows a few new strategies. The bonus +50 Research Points are particularly good for fighter-based strategy since one can immediately buy Burst and double the fighter damage before the first fighter even comes out on Med/Hard/Legend. This is a big advantage. BEST EQUIPMENT: --------------- This is a bit redundant with the above tech tree discussion since they are intertwined, so bear with me. I will list the Damage per second of a fully upgraded gun vs SHIELD and HULL and its range, which are the key stats. This does not entirely reflect the weapon power but it gives you a decent idea. I mark with * for best, ^ for decent, ~ for so-so, - for sucky. NOTE: Game balance has changed a LOT in the last month of beta, so numbers keep getting tweaked. MAIN GUNS: ---------- * Plasma Gun - 25/5.5 at 700 range. Basic anti-shield gun. Surprisingly decent when upgraded, which however is kind of pricey. ^ Laser - 19/4 at 600 range. Honorable mention for having perfect accuracy and they are pretty good unteched. Damage is even better than Plasma gun and it takes out enemy fighters really well (unlike the majority of guns). Unfortunately, it does not tech up well and is restricted to weak range and low hull damage. ~ Projectile Gun - 3.5/12 at 600 range. Basic anti-hull gun. Weak shield damage and bad range makes it a bad all purpose gun. However it provides a passible anti-hull gun early in the game to deal with warp nodes and other threats. It used to be cheaper, but now I'd likely just play a Laser instead. - Rocket. NA/7.0 at 600 range. UNGUIDED. Can be shot down. HORRIBLE weapon. Usually misses. Damage sucks. Slow. Shot down easily. ~ Missile NA/9.0 at 600 range. Guided. Shield penetrate. Guided projectile which can be shot down. OK damage and shield penetration but weak range and you need a LOT of missiles to overwhelm enemy PD guns. Also does not work great with other weapons or fighters (except missile bombers). Keeps getting nerfed. Very marginal now. * Photon Torpedo 44/19.5 at 700 range. guided. Guided projectile which CAN NOT be shot down. VERY strong damage and a great overall weapon. Does not penetrate shields but does lots of shield damage. Research time is not too bad, though first 2 techs are not very useful. ^ Energy Gatling 26/8 at 700 range. Multishot gun that is great at hozing missiles (by accident) and good against fighters (which it can target). It is a tier 4 gun so takes quite a while to come online. Typically only researched when going with a gatling fighter strategy. ^ Energy Manipulator 2/2 at 800 range. Area effect. Stops enemy ships. Hard to use due to weak damage. However it is extremely strong vs marines and great at tying up enemy ships for long periods of times and even locking them in place while they slowly get destroyed. Note: Upgrade RANGE ASAP for maximum utility. ~ Turret Manip 3/2.5 at 800 range. Area effect. Slows enemy shoot rate. Slightly better in theory than Manipulator, but its effect is MUCH weaker and does not stack. It basically increases enemy reload rate. Does not prevent firing. Better to bypass and move up the tech tree. ^ Plasma Eclipse 32/8 at 800 range. area effect. Big area effect and ruins enemy shields. Very expensive gun to use. Much better damage than Manip guns above though. Great with fighters. Note: Hull damage starts out horrid. Prioritize that first with RPs! * NUKE - 9.5/13 at 800 range. Area effect. Large area effect ubermissile that is very difficult to shoot down. While its damage per second is not super impressive, its long reload means that the initial volley of a group of these is completely devastating. Most expensive gun in the game. Incredible for hit and run in smaller quantities. In bigger groups it's Hit and Win pretty much. * Orb 14.5/9 at 700 range. A good basic all purpose weapon. Range nerfed but gained more hitting power. This is basically the default Tier 1 gun. - Vulcan 2/16 at 600 range. Very fast firing anti-hull gun. Really good against fighters due to fire rate and also against missiles (by accident). Unfortunately its weak range and low shield damage make it fairly worthless in most cases. It is only marginally better than a basic projectile gun. ~ Flak 4.5/23 at 700 range. Very powerful anti hull gun with big burst damage. Weak shield damage limits its usefulness as a general purpose weapon. Compare to the much more useful photon torpedos at the same tier. ^ MegaLaser 50/12 at 700 range. Extremely strong general purpose weapon with perfect accuracy. The main issue with this gun is that the research cost is ridiculously high. The other guns in the tree are not all that useful in the interum and one could pick up a nuke/eclipse/photon/etc much much faster. POINT DEFENSE: -------------- -- Bolter 2.5/6 at 350 range. Cheapest and weakest PD gun. Slow projectile speed means it misses constantly. Utterly useless. -- PD Projectile. 1.5/11 at 350. Anti-hull PD with good upgrade potential and lots of hull damage. Shield damage sucks making it useless against marines. Slow projectile speed means it misses constantly. Pretty much useless. * PD Laser 6/7 at 400. Fantastic PD gun with good balanced damage, best range, ALWAYS HITS. Never use any other basic PD gun ever. Always boost range and cooldown first. ^ PD Gatling 6/13.5 at 350. So-so PD gun that suffers from the fact that just 1 tier up is a much much better option. * PD Energy Gat 30/16 at 300. SICK damage indeed with a very fast projectile speed. Cannot seem to target missiles very well being the only weakness. Recommend setting to LARGE SHIP so you don't waste all that damage shooting at a random fighter instead. Loading up PD slots with these guys can make an early game force MUCH stronger and a deadly threat at short range. You can literally do more damage with these than teching a main gun! Enjoy while you can as I'm sure they will get nerfed soon. BAYS: ----- *Basic fighter 7/7 x2 per bay. Cheap and effective. Has more hull and faster cooldown than others and slightly more range even. Strong upgrade potential. Mediocre vs enemy fighters. ^ Drone 6.5/8 x2 per bay 50% more expensive but less damage initially due to longer cooldown. Slightly better upgrades via tech. These are decent but I cannot see a clear reason to pay 50% more than basic fighters. They might be a bit better vs enemy fighters due to manueverability but it is not very obvious when comparing them. ^ Laser Drone 9.5/2.5 x2 per bay. A very accurate fighter that is best against fighters and missiles. When massed they are not all that strong due to weak hull damage. This means they are interesting in that they are best attached to bigger ships (Cloudsave) in Defensive mode. Make sure to change their targeting to fighter/missile so they will prioritize! * Gatling Drone 10/21 x2 per bay Very good. Similar to normal drone but has a BURST attack so it does TONS of damage. And its cost is reasonable. It is a tier 3 research but will swing the game in most cases if you can pull it off. * Missile bombers 1/9 x1 per bay Actually really strong and even ok vs fighters. But they are very slow. And you only get ONE bomber per bay instead of 2 fighters per bay. Therefore their stats are effectively halved in comparison. And, they are VERY expensive! Missiles can get shot down too. This all sounds bad but here's the kicker: Ironically their missiles keep their pre-nerf stats and are WAY better than normal ship missiles. :-) They do more damage, more range and move much faster. Also, they ignore shields which means the enemy cannot ignore "chip damage" from a few missiles periodically, although they do minor damage to shields for some odd reason. Finally, their range is 700 max which puts them out of reach of all PD guns, although they tend to get closer. - Plasma bombers 22/7 x1 per bay. Weak. Expensive, lousy hull damage. SLOW. useless vs fighters. They can be used in "defensive" mode on a ship where it will engage and drop shields of targets...making it kind of like an extra gun turret. Decent range. ~ Photon bombers 11/10 x1 per bay. Rather underwhelming for a tier 4 research. Good range, projectile is guided and cannot be shot down, with good balanced damage. Just not enough of it! A basic fighter bay has more firepower than this! Thus, range is really the only advantage, but not worth the very slow movement speed, horrible expense, and of course extremely long wait. RANDOM EVENTS: (aka losing) -------------- Keep in mind that there is a LOT of randomness in this game. This comes from the roguelike elements in previous games. This can make the games a lot more interesting, but there is a downside. At higher difficulties especially, there are random events that will practically ensure that you lose. And there will be very little you can do about it. Here are the things that you can expect to lose to. a) Cheese drop - All the sudden, random reinforcements appear close to your battlestation. Early on especially, enemy marines are basically immortal with big SHIELDS and hull. Even with +25 marines and if the race has no built in attack bonus, you will STILL lose to 4 shuttle drops. To survive, try to CEASE FIRE on any other ships in the area so you will focus the marines (which the game does NOT naturally do!) The devs were cool and made it so they cannot appear RIGHT ON TOP of you anymore since I whined about it so much during beta. ;-) b) Protected/Hidden Warp - Every game there are 3 warpstations which can have a big impact on the game. Since their placement is random, they can literally be hidden or protected somewhere that is nearly impossible to get to, such as the first world they occupy (with 4 huge stations), or on top of the enemy battlestation. In which case you will probably lose to the onslaught of free marines and ships. c) Stacked reinforcements - Sometimes the very first event will be Enemies Sighted, aka reinforcements to the same side you are currently fighting! This is super bad because it gives your enemy a free fleet that they can capture nodes with, steal guardian ships with marines, etc. This tends to happen after the enemy has already cranked out 6 or so small ships, so they wind up with a huge fleet of stuff. If this fight was going to be hard already, this will likely push it over the top. Reinforcements for any other race are not as big of a problem, depending on where they land. In some cases they will fight your enemy for you! In others they will just rush to your battlestation and get easily killed and give you free tech points. d) Black Hole Blowout - So you went with the turbo-scout strategy... and first event of the game, a black hole drops right on your fleet. There goes all your ships. That is pretty much game. Bigger ships are not nearly as vulnerable. A second variation is when the hole lands inbetween two of your nodes that happen to have a bunch of fighter stations and kill them all. e) Wonky Warp Weaponry - This is when there is a warpstation nearby and once you find it, it warps in a HUGE force of 4 marines and 3 big ships and heads right toward your base. If you are unlucky, you face-check the marines and get your stuff taken over. Even if you survive the attack, it will put you WAY behind and making winning very hard. f) Sneaky Reinforcements - Occasionally, as above, one of the very first events will be free reinforcements from some race. Even if the race is NOT the one you are facing currently, it can sometimes cause problems. And, sometimes it can actually help you out. The problem comes from the enemy marines. Many reinforcements (except yours) come with marine carriers. Early in the game, they are basically unkillable unless caught in the open. So what can happen is that your small fleet is exploring and all the sudden you facecheck 4 marine squads that are just kind of hanging around in space. They see you and you will try to run, but they will usually catch you and take over your ships no matter if you have +25 marines. This is generally a loss. As such when you see ANY reinforcements, be careful! And be ready to restart the game if all your ships get taken over. MARINE OVERVIEW: ---------------- Marines can be used to capture enemy stations and ships. You can outright WIN by taking over a battlestation. The viability of this depends on the race you are fighting. With 25 starting marines you get MORE DUDES, but they still start at 0% fighting skill. First step is to grab a few marine techs. Then, when ready to capture, you sell any existing bay, equip with a 1250 cost marine landing vehicle. You will need to move your ship ON TOP of the enemy ship. Make sure to use CEASE FIRE mode on the enemy ship to avoid killing it. This also helps by ensuring all your guns go toward enemy fighters or other nearby ships, which helps marines survive. When almost on top, you ensure your capture ship is selected, then tap the enemy ship and click Focus, Marine boat. Hit MAX TWICE to send all the dudes over. They will launch and land on the enemy and capture hopefully. YOUR MARINE LANDERS have no shields and are MUCH weaker than all alien versions. You cannot do what they do and just randomly launch them. They have to be really close and the enemy ship MUST BE heading towards you, or stationary. Once captured, you want to immediately bring up the BUILD menu and look at the ship. Set any fighters to OFFENSIVE if desirable. Sell any junk weapons such as PD blasters and replace with PD laser or whatever. CHECK their weapons, as what they have will have random tech improvements. You usually want to keep them, but get rid of any basic weapons like rockets,etc. Replace with whatever and SAVE. You can now BUILD them yourself once Saved! In several cases, alien larger ships are much nicer than human ones, with up to 6 slots and 8 PD guns! They are usually slooow but powerful. ALL alien big stations are substantially better than human ones. They are a fair amount more expensive too, but can be really strong. Note that a ship can NEVER get more marines. No reloads. So always sell the marine bay after capture attempt. Marines are based on the SHIP, not the bays so making two marine bays is a big waste of money. Splitting up your men would probably ensure one lands, but also means you are unlikely to capture with only half the usual dudes. You can use your BATTLESTATION to capture enemy ships that get too close. This is usually pretty rare as the attacking ships tend to be smaller ones. Or there are so many of them that sending marines in would just get them killed. Also, once your battlestation is out of dudes, ANY marine attack would mean that you LOSE THE GAME. Consider a battlestation capture strategy if: a) You start right next to a Guardian 3 node. Capturing their guardian carrier can be a big boost. ONLY do this in conjuction with a real attack force however, or your marines will just get killed. b) Enemy early reinforcements capture a planet and then forward-build a huge station on top of you. While it is building you can take it over and keep them from hedging you in, and providing a big defensive boost! c) Enemy fleet attacks and a larger ship is among the back row of them. In this case, go ahead and CEASE FIRE on the big one, kill everyone else and THEN send in the marines while another ship distracts it, preferably from another angle. STRATEGIC ELEMENTS TO CONSIDER: ------------------------------- * Be sure to MOVE your ships around. Have shielded ships move in front of ships that are getting beat up and shuffle them around to avoid hull damage. * When attacking a node with a fleet (or another fleet) try to use the Drive-By strategy. Or broadsides. If you aim straight for them, it takes a LONG time to turn the fleet around and several ships usually go awry. But if your ships are facing sideways, then it is pretty easy and smooth to turn them closer into the enemy to engage or turn them back. Also, you can pause and click just the nearest ship that is getting damaged and move it behind the others, to help shuffle the damage around. Finally with a drive-by your ships naturally tend to move around such that the enemy shoots at different ships as you go past. Try to get your ships OUT of the wedge formation before the drive-by so they are a big mass instead of allowing the outside ship to get focused. * If you are using ships with bays and not using fighter-spam strategy, be sure to go ahead and use those bays to good effect. If vs trolgar and they are spamming missiles, equip with laser drones and have them target missiles! You might even try the hull/shield repair drones. * If a world is being fought over, drop an 800 station! As long as it is closest to the enemy they will shoot at IT instead of your valuable ships! It is like buying a 1400 point defense shield for your navy for 800 scrap. Heck of a lot better than losing or taking damage to a 12,000 fully armed Cloudsave. * If marines are going to hit and you know they will take over, quickly SELL YOUR WEAPONS! That way they get an empty hull. LOL. This might even mess up their unit limit. (yeah probably not...). Ditto with stations. * Saved ships full of weapons is great. But, if time is a priority, you can always build a BASIC empty ship instead to get it out the door, THEN as you are moving it into position, arm it later. * If your fighter bay stations DO get taken over, it is not necessarily the end. The fighters from that station STICK AROUND UNTIL KILLED and they will attack the new enemy station immediately. The new station will not have any fighters spawned, so it is very unlikely that the station will be able to hurt you... well except for the fact that you lost a bunch of cash on it. * Always build your useful stations back away from the enemy. Leave room forward for decoy stations. If under attack you can build decoy stations to give enemy marines something to take over (they will do so even when under construction), or attackers something to shoot at. Better to have an 800 station taking damage than your 3000 cost fighter bay station. * You can use cease-fire to prioritize targets. Selecting everyone and having them focus fire can be tedious. But if there are 3 ships attacking, then cease fire on 2 of them will by default make the last one the only target! If marines are attacking, use Cease Fire on the enemy SHIPS temporarily so you will stop attacking those ships and have reloaded and readied weapons for when the marines get into range. This can make the difference between dead marines and ones that are badly wounded but still make it and take over. * You can also drop a station to prevent an enemy capture. This is really good if you have lots of fighters as it gives vision, delays capture, and will pull their big gun firepower. Thus giving your fighters a good chance to kill the attackers. Your station will even re-take the node if it survives! * Stations are also great for providing advanced warning. Plus decoy enemy marines. They are fairly cheap for the vision they provide. This is really their main use. * Fighters without vision are absolutely HORRIBLE. They will fly in blindly in and get killed without doing any real damage. If this happens, do your best to build a nearby station or move a ship in so they can see. This is why making a cheap station during an attack is so valuable...if you lose the planet and have no station, you lose that vision and your fighters will stop attacking. It also means that if the station survives, it will re-take that node without you having to send in your fleet. (if your fighters took out the attackers). * Therefore, when using lots of fighters, VISION research upgrades are VITAL for them to perform well! With any fighter strategy, VISION 3 is the first thing to obtain after teching (if any) to the fighters themselves. * When an enemy attacks a Guardian world, it is helpful to Cease Fire the guardians so that your fighters (and ships) will be sure to only attack the actual bad guy. Unfortunately the guardians will not return the favor, but as long as the bad guys are closer, they get shot at anyways. This is a great time to engage the bad guys and damage or destroy their fleet. When to attack depends on your attack angle. If you can sandwich the bad guys then you attack immediately so you and the guardians both fire at them. Usually you are on one side and bad guys are on another side of the guardian node, so you can only approach from an oblique angle best case. Or you just have to wait until guardians are almost dead then move in immediately after. * It helps to attack from different directions to provide decoy action. For example, you want to land marines from a ship coming from below. Having other ships move to one side will help as the enemy will shoot at those ships with their main guns instead of your marines. If you approach from the same direction, then their shots will just hit the marines instead. Ditto with fighters. Your fighters swarm and come from the left side to attack the right side. Your FLEET needs to attack from the top or bottom! You want their main weapons to be shooting away from your fighters so only the PD guns can defend. You definitely do not want shots that miss your fleet to kill your fighters. Fighters are vicious when massed, but near useless when the enemy has enough firepower to kill them as they approach. * The best way to make your fighters stronger is to kill enemy fighters with your ships. You don't even have to engage with your big ships, but keep em close enough to shoot down enemy fighers with PD lasers with range upgrade. Sweeping the skies makes a huge difference in how strong your fighters are. If your fleet will help them, they will help you against the large ships. * With fighter strategies, the best way to go is a mix of Large Ship targeted and Any Ship. If you go all default Large Ship, your fighters will endlessly divebomb big targets and get shot up by fighters and not be able to mass and do much of anything. If you go ANY SHIP, then they will engage in endless dogfights and not do much of anything either. If you go about 1/2 and 1/2, then some fighters will dogfight and draw off the enemy fighters, and the rest will shoot up the primary targets and chip away at them. * I hardly EVER arm my stations. They never have enough damage to resist marines and getting them taken over is a big liability. Stations are cheap, but the guns are still FULL PRICE! Having 3 groups of stations seems nice, but when their full fleet hits one of them, you've cut your firepower by 3! * Exception to the above is when you get Point Defense Energy gatlings. They are so powerful that you CAN arm stations with them cheaply and they will resist marines and fighters very well. Also, you will want to add PD guns to your fighter stations. This might help them if reinforcements land on top of them, but is particularly useful for when enemy fighters harass them. * Occasionally it is entertaining to capture the enemy stations then SAVE them so YOU can build them! Not that effective most of the time, but definitely lots of fun playing with their monster 3 bay, 4 gun, 6 PD stations! * Saved stations full of weapons is.. well. not a good idea. It is really bad in many cases because as soon as your station starts building, the enemy shows up and starts shooting it! Losing an advanded station costs 1600. Losing one full of nukes/PD? That sets you back 8000 and they may never fire a single shot! Fighter/bomber stations are ok since they will be put in a safe location typically. * Do not forget about your marines! With any 25 marine strategy and a couple of researches, you can turn the tides in a fight by Cease Firing their mothership or whatever and stealing it! You can even go over the ship limit this way, and even bay limit. * Bombers set to Defensive mode can act as another gun turret. Sort of. If you are not going fighter spam and happen to have photon torpedoes, you could load up Overlords with photon bombers on defensive and they will only engage when the Overlords engage, instead of flying around dying needlessly. Make sure to set them to attack big ships as I've seen them stupidly try to engage enemy fighters. 
* It is not a bad idea to set your PD Energy Gatlings to anti-ship.  This 
seems odd, but they do so much damage that most of it gets wasted swatting at
enemy fighters.  I think it is better to have them apply all their damage to
wipe out big ships first, then clean up the other stuff.  Try it!  The PD Gats
are surprisingly vicious when actually shooting at something they can hit!


* You CAN control your fighters individually.  It is not real obvious how, but
 what you do is select your fleet like normal then select your battlestation
 and ALL your stations.  Just leave them selected and never de-select.
 You then contol your fleet like normal.  Click new ships to add them. Giving
 move orders with the stations selected does not hurt anything.  BUT, you can
 tap any enemy and hit FOCUS, then direct all your fighters anywhere you want!

--Alternatively you can select all the fighter stations/battlestation and use
the squad keys (I use #3) so you can quickly select them, focus something,
then go back to your main fleet selection.


* Make sure to undo your Cease Fire orders!  If you plan to take over a ship
 and it fails for whatever reason (say the ship starts running away, or 
 it resists your marines or marine vehicle gets killed), then you will want to
 go ahead and kill the ship normally.
I have caught myself wondering why some large ship just won't die then it dawns
 on me that I left it on Cease Fire mode!!  Meanwhile it is blowing away my
 stations and taking over nodes.


* When enemy reinforcements appear which are NOT aligned with whoever you are
currently fighting, they will typically do one of two things.  They will either
head straight for YOU, OR straight for the enemy.   When they first arrive 
their heading does not actually matter.   Wait for them to stop rotating and
see which way they are facing.
In many cases if they are heading toward your enemy, CEASE FIRE them!  
Especially if they are a fairly large group.   Your fighters will still shoot
at their spawned fighters which is annoying but once vision is lost they will
stop doing that.

The idea is that instead of fighting them yourself, let the enemy deal with 
em instead!  I like to get my fleet and follow them from a safe distance,
easily recapturing whatever they took over, and then taking advantage of 
whatever destruction they may have caused to push my way in further.  Its a
great if unusual way to crack a heavily defended area.

This only works if it is a BIG force... a smaller one will just get wiped out
and help consolodate their forces so when YOU go in, they are all gathered
which is NOT what you wanted...


* Interestingly enough, any REINFORCEMENT ships you get that have bays DO NOT
COUNT toward your total.  These guys are GOLD and you will want to set their
bays to Aggressive and hide them next to your battlestation.  It does eat a
ship slot, but it is generally worth it for some extra fighters since they
rely on massing so much in order to be effective.
EDIT:  Bad news guys... they fixed this.   Does not work anymore.  As such 
you are better off selling the bays if they are preventing you from getting
maximum number of whatever your main fighter/bomber type is.  If you happen
to already have 12 bays and these take you above that?  Awesome!  But if
a station gets killed you wont be able to rebuild it without selling these
bays.



* When enemy reinforcements spawn and do go after you, this can sometimes be
a blessing. Especially if they are a non-marine race.  You can Cease Fire on
their biggest ship, wait for it to get close then use your BATTLESTATION marine
to capture it!  Your station has TONS of dudes and even with weaker fighting
capability, they can tend to capture things. i.e. 130  0% marines can take a
10% defense ship with only 50 dudes.
You can then let that slow mothership use its fighters to assist and defend
your battlestation or some other key point. They tend to be too slow to be
useful with your other ships.
Also, killed ships will give you free RPs which is another reason you might
even CEASE FIRE their entire fleet till they are close enough to feed you.
You have to balance this against how many nodes they would capture or stuff
lost of course.



DETAILED STRATEGIES:
--------------------

When developing strategies, you must consider several things.

First, you MUST be able to field enough force to kill a waystation.

Next, you ideally need a relatively fast exploration fleet.

Finally, you want to make good use of your cash pretty quickly, one way or
another.  You do not want tons of cash to pile up while you are waiting on
some research.  This will get you steamrollered.



A) TURBO SHIP, FIGHTER SPAM 
---------------------------
The theory is to use the fastest and most efficient ships in the game, then 
support them with a ton of cheap fighters with no delay.  This gives you good 
board position and pressures opponent and gives the best chance of wiping out
Warp stations.
Fighters do a lot of work for you automatically and spawn endlessly for free.
As they tech up, they become quite powerful.  You then research some bigger
guns and create larger ships to follow up.


- Take 25 pilots, 25 marines. 
Research VISION, possibly a gun, Then 2 more VISION. 
Then whatever.

Start with 6+ scouts with 2 PD laser.  I have started leaving the big gun empty
and fill with gun when I get it.  OR, you can give them projectile cannons.

Start exploring with your first one and try to capture any nearby neutral node.
As more build, have them join the others.  DO NOT send them all different ways
as they will trigger guardian worlds and get shot up.   Queue up more until you
hit the ship max.

Once you have 3 of them, you can take any Guardian I world.
Use any RPs you have to boost PD laser's COOLDOWN which helps overall
firepower.

Once you have all 6, start roaming.  You want to take all worlds, even guardian
3 UNLESS they are directly between you and the enemy.  In that case, I like to
keep those around as buffers of sorts.  Ideally to jump on the bad guys just as
they clear that guardian 3... :-)

Your main job is to find and kill the 3 waystations if possible.  Steal any 
nodes you can, and pick off any isolated ships.   When fighting KEEP MOVING 
AROUND. This helps ensure they keep targeting different ships which protects 
your hull and lets shields absorb most of the damage.

Once you have your 6 scouts, you will use your money to buy 4 fighters of
whatever kind on your battlestation.  I prefer standard cheap ones for this 
strat, since your money is limited. SET THEM TO OFFENSIVE, and have one of them
set to ANY SHIP.

Then, start cranking out 1200 stations with bays and fill them with fighters 
set to offensive then save, then make more until bays are full at 14/15.  You 
save one for later MARINE usage.    All set to OFFENSIVE, one set to ANY SHIP.

This means most ships will attack big ships as first priority, but some will 
engage enemy fighters too which is important or they will all get shot-up as 
they approach.

This works well because all the spammed fighters will start flying around 
engaging
the enemy as they poke at your systems.  If one ship starts capturing, DROP AN 
800 station which will prevent capture and delay it AND provide vision so your
fighters can keep fighting.

UPGRADE fighter BURST mode first.  Then, add shield damage, range, hull damage.

Remember your 6 scouts are not THAT strong.  Upgrade PD laser range and 
cooldown but keep in mind that you are only worth about 2-3 medium sized ships
in all.

They will eventually get shot up and you will start building CLOUDSAVE 7200 
ships. With 25 marines and a few marine techs you can capture any 
non-UNKNOWN/TROLGAR.

Your fighters which you should also be teching will do a good job of making 
life difficult for the attackers without any help from you!

Research VISION 3 right after your weapon, then whatever else.  I usually go 
with speed,shield,armor, etc as I have no need to research new fighters or 
weapons. Best to boost what I've got already.

Your biggest problem here is the transition.  At some point if you blunder into
a bigger force or engage without your fighters, you will lose ALL your scouts
and if you don't have a weapon teched, you could hit a big lull while 
rebuilding.  This is why you need to be careful and why you research a weapon
relatively quickly even though your scouts will probably not ever use it.

You may need to sell a ship at a time after the fighters are all set and build 
Cloudsaves to transition, loaded up with your Orb or whatever weapon.

Note that you probably do not want to sell your particle gun and load up 
scouts with Orbs or whatever.  It is situational, but generally you want to
use the money to create large ships and outfit them instead.


** DO NOT tech up and try to use advanced fighters with this strategy. The 
scouts NEED quick reinforcement or you will lose your momentum quickly.


This is a pretty decent strategy and resists enemy marine cheese (since your
ships are small and numerous PD guns).  However, your scouts are fragile and
getting them picked off hugely affects your overall firepower and can make 
your force rather impotent.   Black hole is also game-over if it occurs on top
of you.



B) TECH FIGHTER SPAM 
---------------------
The theory here is to be less aggressive but still maintain a presense, while
teching to your advanced fighter of choice.  Once research is done, you will 
create lots of stations with them.  Once upgraded, they will be a powerful 
force.

- 25 pilot, more scientists.

Research straight to your fighter of choice.  Gatling is best.  Missiles are ok.
Photon are good but really slow.  I will assume gatling.

Start with two AFTERTHOUGHT (2800).  Load up as soon as you can afford it with 
4 PD laser, 1 fighter bay, 1 laser, 1 particle.

DO NOT tech up your PD lasers yet. You want to tech up the PD Energy Gats.

Go capture nodes like usual. Avoid Guardian 3, but take all others.  I recommend
4 fighter bay at your battlestation for early game usage too.

Take out warpstations when you find them.   Make a third Afterthought when you
can.
BUT do not build anything when you are halfway to gatling fighter tech.

After you get gatling energy PD, retrofit your ships with em. They rock!
Upgrade them with RPs to boost range, then damage, burst.   Set them to ANY
SHIP.  You might keep some PD Lasers if against missiles though.

Right before obtaining Gatling fighters, make several baystations next to your
battlestation, on the left and right (or top/bottom).  i.e. Safe areas.

Then once you have the research, sell all fighters, replace with Gatling at
your battlestation and populate all bay stations with them too.

Use all RPs to boost gatling fighters. Add one to SHIELD as their shield dmg
starts off horrible. Then, add range and burst.  Then hull damage.  All options
are pretty balanced so buff in response to what you need.  Are they dying 
before they can shoot?  Get the range buffs ASAP.  Bouncing off shields? Get
the shield boost.  You get the idea.


You want to research VISION 3 which helps your fighters a LOT to be able to make
attack runs, then also hit ARMOR (since fighters are unshielded), and SPEED
both of which help them quite a bit.

You will use unarmed stations quite a bit to help give vision to your fighters.

From here, you can either research Gatling Energy main gun (which is mediocre)
or swap to ORB which I like better.   OR, go research something else.

Then, you will make more Cloudsaves or Siege and go win!

This strategy is fairly strong, but the lack of early game power can cause you
to be overwhelmed before you can get the gatlings out.   You need to delay
the enemy as much as possible by outmanuevering them.



C) TURBO FIGHTER SPAM
----------------------

For this strategy, you want to use most of your initial money to invest into
fighters quickly.  Normally you use your cash to get starting ships to explore
and capture.  But instead, you only create a limited number of ships for
scouting and let the fighters do the work, early game.

Start with 25 pilot. You decide the split between scientist and marine.
As discussed, more scientists means faster research and more cash.  But more
marines gives you take-over capability, resistance to marines, and more endgame
potential due to higher ship limit.


Start with VISION upgrade. Then vision 2, then Armor/Speed, money.

You will want to start typically with a single Afterthought.  It has good speed
and vision and is tough enough to not get killed when it runs into something.
Its main job is that of a spotter/capturer.

IMMEDIATELY also fill your battlestations with fighters/aggressive mode.
Fill the afterthought with 4 PD and 1 fighter bay, also aggressive which you
would normally never do.  Leave the big guns empty.
You will only fill them IF needed when you run into a warpstation.

As you explore, you want to drop bay stations nearby and fill with fighters.
Therefore, take the closest and easiest node you can for immediate production.

This allows you to get a full complement of fighters really quickly which is
great for defense.   Meanwhile with your afterthought you will be SCOUTING
ONLY, and if you find something, ideally your fighters will take care of it.

You will quickly get the fighter Burst, then shield/hull dmg upgrades while
your research focuses on vision so they can see, speed so they can engage
faster, and armor so they last a bit longer.

Eventually you will research a main weapon and build 3-4 big ships to help
push your way to victory.   Once you get your fighter stations all built, you
will generate money extremely quickly.  Getting a full fleet of even cheap
phoenix with orbs costs you 3600 each, times 8 = 28,800!   
Getting 4 outfitted Cloudsaves costs 50,000ish.
Cranking out 15 fighters costs you only 300x15=4500, plus 5 stations (6000), 
as your battlestation has 4 slots and your afterthought has one.  Thus, you
can get a rather strong force out very cheaply and quickly. 

This strategy is one of the strongest available since fighters are not only
very cheap and effective, but they replentish themselves for free! It also
works well because you are focusing entirely on fighter teching early, then
transitioning to ship weaponry later on as you build them.
The main issue with this strategy is finding a nearby node that you can take
over fast to drop the stations.  Having two guardian 3s next to you can be 
fatal since your attack power is very limited with only one ship.  Also,
at first, the enemy fleet tends to stay together pretty well.  This means that
when they attack they have so much "mass" that they can blow away your 
fighters before they can really do much of anything.

You may need to outmanuever the enemy and take their undefended nodes and help
break up their fleet into bite-sized chunks.  Also, you may need to manually
direct your fighters. (See tip in strategy)



D) BIG FLEET
-------------

You want to forego fighters for the most part, saving all your RP and tech to 
get strong weapons as quickly as possible.  Then use your large ship count full
of efficient ships to kill the enemy.

max scientists, 25 marines, 5 engineer, 10 pilot.
I recommend teching up to some useful weapon immediately, such as Orb or 
missile or Manipulator even if you plan to use Photon or Megalaser or whatever.


You will want to choose between Phoenix ships and Afterthoughts. 
The phoenix is only 1600 for 4 PD, 2 main guns.  This is good for firepower 
since you will have more PD lasers.  You can leave your red slots empty.  Once
you get Orb/Missile, you will add them to your ships immediately and have a lot
of firepower. Therefore, I like this approach if using Orb/Missile instead of
teching up further.


The Afterthought is 2800 for the same 4PD, 2 main but adds vision, speed, and a
bay which is actually useful when not doing fighter spam.  Plus they are 
tougher.
This also transitions easier into Cloudsaves later on as they match speed, and
you get more money-worth of stuff on the board before hitting any limit.

If you go with afterthought, go ahead and populate the bay with standard 
fighters on defensive.  You wont have enough bays to go aggressive and it will
be ineffective. But they are a very cheap way to add some extra firepower to
your team. You will probably want/need to equip them with big laser and 
projectile guns unless you are planning to use Orb/Missile.  They will need
some kind of weapons to fight with since there will be a longer delay while you
tech, AND you won't have near as many ships (and thus less PD lasers) to fight
with.

The main different in this strategy is that you will continue to build up your
fleet instead of transitioning over to fighter blanket.  

If using phoenix, you will move to Overseers(10k).  If afterthoughts, you will
move to Cloudsaves when you can afford it.  

Once you have your main weapon teched, you will want to research a few visions,
a couple of marines(if vs a capturable race), and shields, then armor/speed.
Or you can work on a higher tech tier to use as an eventual primary weapon.

This is an ok strategy but you do tend to be outgunned early game.  f you try 
to tech straight up, it can leave you with a fleet with very little firepower
and you get run over.




E) BIG EFFICIENT FLEET
----------------------

In this strategy you have a huge max-ship limit and keep cranking out Phoenix
warships to provide overwhelming firepower early on.  You do not have as much
flexibility and overall power as an Afterthought-based strategy, but the
phoenix ships are very cost-effective and have a LOT of turrets when massed.

The key to this strategy is to NOT LOSE SHIPS.  You MUST maintain a firepower
advantage so that you can not just win a fight but win convincingly.  If you
come out even, then their superior production will ensure you lose.  You have
to be aggressive, seek out intelligent fights that you can win easily and NOT
get bogged down fighting their node stations AND fleet at the same time.


Start with 25 marines, max engineers(!), 5 pilot, 10 scientist.
Research ORB immediately!   Then transition to VISION 1,2,3.
Then whatever. Suggest tier 1 speed, armor, shield, then repeat.
OR consider gatling PD.

Create a phoenix ship, load up with 4 PD laser and save. Leave big guns blank!
Crank out phoenix as quickly as you can.
Use them to scout and clear guardian 1 and 2.

Once you have Orb, equip your existing ships with it first, tech its range x2,
and Burst. Then whatever.  

Keep cranking them out.  With your big ship limit you can make a rather huge
fleet of very efficient and tough Phoenix.  The idea is that with the great
Orb range, you can have all your ships firing and can blow away enemies as
they approach without taking much losses.
By applying overwhelming force, you destroy smaller groups of their lesser
forces easily. 

With this strategy you do not need to worry about selling ships and making
bigger ones.  There IS no transition to endgame.  With 8 or 9 phoenixes with
maxed out Orbs, you have enough firepower to win the game and take their
battlestation.

If all else fails, you can slowly build up larger ships until you have an
overwhelming force.

This strategy is probably the weakest of the bunch.  Phoenix are VERY slow and
if you run into a big fleet or node defense you are not very mobile and cannot
retreat easily.  This means you can get picked off and lose fleet strength.



F) FIGHTER SWAPSPAM
-------------------
This strategy is very similar to the turbo fighter, where you start with a 
single afterthought and then crank out max standard fighters.   The main
difference is that instead of researching ship weapons and building a large
fleet to followup, you instead follow the gatling line and replace your normal
fighters with superior gatling drones instead. 
Then work on your fleet.

Start with 25 pilots, max scientists.   Vision upgrade 1 and 2.
Then go to gatling researches.

Not much to say as this strategy is similar to (C) above.  You still want to
tech up your basic fighters to get the burst mode and one shield and one hull
damage upgrade because they hugely increase the firepower of your fighters.

But instead of maxing them out, you will seek to swap them with gatling drones
as soon as possible.   Money will not be a problem since by the time you have
the gatling drones researched you will be long done with building fighters.

Then switch to get some kind of ship weapon and build a fleet like normal.



G) REINFORCEMENT GATLING SPAM
-----------------------------

This strategy uses the Reinforcements to cover your weakness early game while
you tech up to get gatling fighters.  Similar to strategy B except it avoids
the uncomfortable early game where you can't do much.

One thing I recommend is to use your money to buy a single CLOUDSAVE.  Normally
a bad idea, but in this case, you will be starting with several ships already
so you will be close to your ship limit.  Thus, buying one big endgame ship
makes more sense than a few smaller ones.   You will not be buying anything
anyways until you have gatling fighters researched.

Make sure you have at least 4 ship limit so you can actually build a ship!


H) REINFORCEMENT RUSH
---------------------

In this strategy, you purchase both sets of reinforcement ships!  You take
25 pilots and put the rest in Scientist, with 5 engineer and 10+ marine. You
won't be able to build any more ships anyways, so no need for ship limit.

You can either tech up your plasma guns, or research a tier 1 gun so you can
very quickly build up power.

The idea is that you clump your ships together and explore and conquer with
them.   Immediately start building basic FIGHTERS and stations.  Go ahead and
fill any ship bays with fighters too to avoid station costs.  If they get blown
up, you can add more stations.  Mine as well use the bays you've got.

If you researched, retrofit all your ships with the weapons and 
ideally PD lasers.  Be sure to save some cash so you can do so as soon as
research is done.  Do not tap yourself out getting the stations when research
is close to done.

Once you have 15 fighters and gun tech is done, you start buffing fighters
 to make them stronger.

Keep in mind that you field a lot of power very early on which should let you
dominate and easily sweep even Guardian 3 and Warp nodes. The main goal you 
have once orbs are online is to FIND the enemy fleet and ambush them.  A
decisive win against their early game fleet is likely all you need to win.

No need to take every planet they have... just go wipe them out.   If things
go poorly somehow, you will have built up a TON of cash since Gun and Fighters
are all you have to pay for (and a few stations).   In that case, crank out
the game-ending Siege ships.

This is an expensive, but insanely powerful strategy.  Use it on the #4 and #5
campaign maps and especially against the Unknown.   DO NOT USE against trolgar!
Their unkillable nukes will do tons of area damage and blow up your entire
fleet!



BAD STRATEGIES:
---------------

CAPTURE GUARDIANS - Start with marine tech, make ships and go capture enemy 
Guardian ships.  Free ships right!?

This is actually a horrible idea in practice.  First, a capture costs 1250 
(with a 300 rebate), so its not free.
You have to have TWO marine techs to be able to capture, and turns out an 
Afterthought just does not have enough dudes to reliably capture the larger 
Guardian Carrier.

You can't really sit around and wait for 2 marine techs to finish, so you'd 
have to use the crappy 3500 cost ship.

So assuming it works out ok, you wind up with 2 inefficient ships and 2 
guardian ships.
Thats ok, but the guardians are SLOOW and nearly worthless for exploring.  
Since you capture them pretty early on, you won't even get a free 
(if temporary) boost over your normal ship limit.

Feel free to try it out, but just be aware that it does not work very well.



BIG SHIP - Start with one cloudsave (on medium) or 5500 ship (hard).  This is 
easier to work with of course, but go re-read my ship analysis.  Two 
afterthoughts cost 5600, has more slots, more overall toughness, same speed.
You just lose too much efficiency taking a single big ship early.  Plus, you
are VERY vulnerable to enemy marines!!  With only 5 PD, one warpstation marine
group will take your entire fleet (well, your one ship) and you lose.
Having multiple smaller ships will give you a lot more PD slots and a better
chance of taking out marines... and losing one hurts but doesn't lose the game.



CAPTURE ENEMY SHIP/STATION - The idea is to start with a cloudsave or some big
ship and go therefore and capture a large ship of the enemy.  Then save it and
start spamming it!

Well, it does not work.  Doing this means ignoring the warpstations which means
YOU LOSE.
Even if you do find one huge ship by itself (instead of the usual fleet of 
small ones), or one big station and capture it with marine 2 tech rush, then 
what? Enemy still outproduces you bigtime, and has 3 warpstations.  You will 
still probably lose.   Having big stations is not all that great either it 
turns out.

It is highly entertaining to capture when the opportunity presents itself, but
trying to do so as a primary strategy is generally a Fail.
Now that humans have the SIEGE ship, this is not even a good theory anymore.


MOBILE FIGHTERS - Idea is to build the ships with lots of fighter bays but
keep them in DEFENSIVE mode.  You can then cruise along and have your fighters
do the fighting when against an enemy fleet.   No need to have a long trip
from a station as the fighters are at your fleet already.

Sadly this fails horribly because ships with bays are too expensive.  They just
slow down your rate of fighter acquisition too much, plus they basically waste
your 4 battlestation slots.
Defensive fighters don't have much engagement range, so you wind up having to
go Offensive mode or direct them yourself which kinda defeats the purpose.

Also, when your fleet engages their fleet (usually accidently), your ships
tend to be super slow and once your fighters die, your ships will get blown up
too.  Or taken over by marines.
Unlike a station-based strategy where they will respawn and come back again.



REINFORCED TECH - Start with 2x reinforcements to sweep the sector and fight
and stuff.  Meanwhile you are teching up to build gatling fighters or whatever
or teching up to a megalaser or nukes!   Your initial ships buy the time for
you to do this.

OK, it works sort of.  BUT, you basically have no way to spend your starting
cash!  OR any of the cash you gain for a long long time.  You are trying to
tech up to better fighters so they don't get built.   You cannot make anymore
ships obviously due to ship limit.
So you just sit around and all that money stores up.   Meanwhile your fleet
is strong but without an actual GOOD weapon, they are no match for enemies in
Hard/Legend who have tech weapons.    Without vision it is easy to blunder
in and get them killed.

BUT, if you do try to tech vision and orb, then you just keep delaying your
ultimate weapon and/or gatling fighters/whatever bomber.   It is just not an
optimal plan, even though it is workable just because you get some much
free stuff to start with.




DEFENSE MISSION STRATEGY:
-------------------------

In defensive mode, some planets have Guardians like usual.  The enemy has three
warpstations like usual.  The difference is they have no battlestation and they
do not try to capture nodes per se.  They just spawn and try to kill you, and
happen to capture nodes as they move in.

Enemy will also spawn ships all over the top of the map too and they will do so
pretty quickly.
You start with LESS MONEY than normal!

Enemies will spawn at a steady rate, capturing various nodes as they move
toward you.  This means that nodes to the left/right tend to remain safe as
the enemy is NOT trying to capture per se.  They are just attacking you, and
their nodes do not really help them.  It just prevents you from making money.

Reinforcements go a long way here because they effectively count for a bigger 
percentage of your starting resources since you are so poor.  They will let you
take over nodes much faster and maybe even take out warpstations early.

Note that enemy marine spawns from the warpstations can hugely affect the game
difficulty.  With even less money than normal an early marine spawn can take
over your figher stations or your single ship which is a disaster.


I recommend ALWAYS going for basic fighter defense because it is the cheapest
way to defend and do so quickly.  I ALWAYS use ORB for the same reason. Engine
manipulator is also viable and entertaining.

Therefore, 25 pilot.  Max marines.  Scientists not as necessary.

Start with 1 vision upgrade, then a gun. Then 2 more vision.  Then whatever.


I ideally start with an Afterthought but at higher difficulty that is ALL your
money.  So that isn't great.   A phoenix is too slow...

A scout or even 2 of them is ideal too, but they tend to get killed by enemy
fighter spam UNLESS they stick together.  Hence, this is what I do.  The first
one goes to capture the first world, and the second one goes a different
direction, and they meet up at the third world and stick together.
Arm with 2x Point defense only.  Leave the big gun empty.

I also build 4x fighter/aggressive at the battlestation immediately.

You will build fighter bases to the left and right planets where they are
relatively safe.   You will explore with the scouts.  With any luck you can 
kill a few warpstations, by letting your fighters deal with them.

Once done with fighters, build probably Phoenixs to defend your station. Their
low speed does not matter and they are a cheap way to get lots and lots of
point defense and main gun slots fast. IF there is a node in front of your 
battlestation, you can add 4 stations with guns and make your stand there
instead with the ships just behind the tougher stations.  You can even use
unarmed front row stations to absorb damage and have the ships right behind
them.

In contrast to offensive missions, I have had a lot better luck with a turtle
strategy.  You cannot hold all the planets due to the random spawns everywhere
and you do not really need to either.
I like to try to expand quickly and take nodes to give me some early tech
and cash, then collapse my defense down to my battlestation or the node just
above it if one exists.

In any case you generally DO NOT want to tech up very far.  These battles are
faster and more intense early game.  Thus, you want to get a defense up and
running quickly.  No waiting around for tech.

Keep in mind that since the enemies are nice enough to head straight for you,
you can many times use your battlestation to capture a particularly large ship
that gets too close and use it to defend yourself.  Its lack of speed is not 
an issue in this case!