Favourite Extra Unit

[superking]

maybe a dps nerf  

I'm trying out armour ships atm and like them alot, but they dont scale up very well (mkI to mkII is a big improvement, but MKIII & MK IV are very small improvement).

[SonicTitan]

Can you clarify on that?  I've not seen raptors yet.   Hang the main fleet out on the AI planet somewhere and raid the guardposts with the raptors?

If you mean attacking the AI turret ball with the main fleet, won't it take out the guard station there anyhow?

Dropping the main fleet on the AI planet serves two purposes: One, and probably most importantly, it takes up tractor beam space so that the raptors can slip by. Raptors are fast but flimsy. The main fleet is also there to distract sniper shots. When you're going onto a planet with dozens (or more) of sniper turrets, they tend to chew through your raptor fleet fairly quickly. Once the raptors are through, you can get them to raid around the rest of the planet, and not just the guard station on the wormhole, if there is one.

I didn't realize how bloody amazing raptors were until I decided to raid a core world. The planet had five data centers, ten guard posts, a spec ops post and two warp gates. A lot of objectives, and I'd already put the planet on alert to gain a Z generator. I was preparing for a hell of a slog of repeated raids and repeated rebuildings of my fleet to get them all. I dropped the entire fleet on the planet and began to divide my forces among different targets. When I unpaused the raptors blew past everything in my fleet, everything in the AI's fleet and killed their first objective before anything else got started. Before my raptor fleet bit the dust it had killed eight of the ten guard posts and four of the five data centers. I couldn't stop laughing.

[superking]

Teleport Battle Stations:

1. They are absolutely amazing for early defense, throw nice group of them into FRD and they will dominate most early AI threats
2. They are pretty effective against starships
3. Rapid defense
4. Raiding, have a nasty station you want to pop but raid starships can't make it? Teleport battle stations in a big group will one shot special forces/command centers easily
5. Trying to keep them alive? Macro them, attack -> move to edge of screen (missiles/bullets will instantly disappear) -> repeat

In someways i think they are a little too powerful.

I've mentioned this on a different forum, I find it very hard to play now without having telestations, at least in single player(haven't done multiplayer).

My standard planet capture tactic: send in fleet, send in stations, insta pop enemy comm station, mop up. Clearing planets of guard posts/warp gates is similarly trivial with them. Defending a 10-20 planet empire on an 80 planet map and too lazy to build turret balls? Tele stations will let you do it. Hell, I've defended pockets of planets with hostile MkI/II worlds in between them and repeatedly hopped my stations in between the action. And they make Ion cannon/Mass driver/you name it capturable planets a boon for you, guaranteed every time(barring a handful of AI types). Just jump in, pop the station, engi-speed build your own and presto! enjoy your new ion cannon. Totally bypassing enemy ships/turrets/whatever.

I definitely like playing with them, to the point where it's impossible for me to justify picking up a different bonus ship and they shape the way I play the game to the point where it feels like they break it. I can't think of any ship that I use so universally for whatever I need doing. They're the go to ship for killing anything that isn't immune to minor electric/has a forcefield around it. Defense, offense, raiding they do it all and they do it in seconds.

They might be more balanced in multiplayer given that their cap stays the same but the AI has more ships but in single player they are just absurd, they're low risk to use(in the only important sense, ie. time between losing a cap of them to a minefield and having that cap of them back on the frontline), extremely time and resource efficient, and their flaw of frailty can pretty much be ignored against a huge array of ships just by doing some decent micro(or bringing a repair station in system).

Not sure how you would fix them without breaking them(or ruining the extraordinary satisfaction you get from learning to play them well). One thing I would like is for AIs of all types to learn to build forcefield barriers or minefields around command stations if these targets keep getting popped by teleporters. Or more AIs should use grav drills, or a new type of building that just prevents teleportation. Even against Grav Driller/Mine Enthusiast, which theoretically counter tele stations pretty hard, they still make astonishing defensive units for non grav driller worlds(and defending grav drill worlds with riot starships is so easy-mode you don't need the extra oomph there anyway).

Maybe the answer is just to accept that AI War with tele stations is a completely different experience than AI War without them and go from there.

best way to decide for yourself if teleport battlestations are op is try out this seed:

1229003906

and set the red AI as a tag teamer. tag teaming teleport battlestations = accidently my whole army

[soMe_RandoM]

electric shuttles where my first favourite unit at the begining of me trailing the game. they work well as on defence and with minimal micro managment (low power mode, then when all visible, bAm) when waves come.
but becides having it with rediculas kill to death ratio. in start game like 4000% and when there huge ammount like 20000 near per worm hole or guard post then it well worth it. Higher the unit count greater the profit. the electric shuttles are probely for me one of the most micro managment demanding if you want cost effectiveness. also you can have full fleet in the first 3mins of the game.

[PineappleSam]

Bringing this thread back to life rather than starting a new one.... I've something useful to add, so I hope believe it falls within the rules. I searched for "FAVOURITE" and then picked the most recent thread mentioning favoured ship choices.

In the last few games I've been learning to love spire stealth battleships. They're cloaked, have radar jamming, rock a strong attack that can mow down ships, structures and guardians and are immune to both ion cannons AND mass drivers! I start the game by unlocking level 2 and 3, build up to cap and then send them in to clear out planets.

Their immunity to insta-death means that I can happily take out every other threat so my colony ship can float in unmolested! When I need my full fleet to handle a particularly tough planet they seem pretty good at taking out forcefields and popping the AI eye lurking underneath too...

[superking]

yeah, pretty sure those are still op 

[Red Cossack]

yeah, pretty sure those are still op 

yeah, I'm expecting further modification before the expansion goes live.  I sent 14 of them into a lvl 4, and lost 3 (I did have some help from a zenith ship box I popped open). 

[Echo35]

I usually go with Beam Frigates unless I can snag a Viral Shredder or Cutlass, because those are totally OP

[PineappleSam]

I usually go with Beam Frigates unless I can snag a Viral Shredder or Cutlass, because those are totally OP

I loved viral shredders ...up until I realised they couldn't hurt structures. I still enjoy leeching them or picking one up from a box of zenith ships (300 mk.III in my current game after opening one box and letting them loose) but I feel no desire to pick them as a starting unit atm unless there's nothing I'd prefer.

[Echo35]

up until I realised they couldn't hurt structures.

No, but Cutlasses can, and boy do they damage buildings. I cry a little bit when the AI sends waves of them at me, because I know my command station is going down in a matter of seconds if they make it past my defenses. I've had them knock me into a major power shortage before as well, destroying my Zenith power station and regular power plants almost instantly.

[ShadowOTE]

Yeah, cutlasses are bad to see in large numbers. Still, there are effective counters to them - i just can't recall what off the top of my head, since the last time I had to deal with them was numerous patches ago, when playing an AI that loved sending vampires and cutlasses in large numbers on deep strikes at us. THAT was fun...

[Suzera]

up until I realised they couldn't hurt structures.

No, but Cutlasses can, and boy do they damage buildings. I cry a little bit when the AI sends waves of them at me, because I know my command station is going down in a matter of seconds if they make it past my defenses. I've had them knock me into a major power shortage before as well, destroying my Zenith power station and regular power plants almost instantly.

Cutlasses have a .1 or .01 multiplier vs command grade. They barely scratch the paint on CCs. They DO get a bonus vs neutron which is power plants and annihilate those in a blink.

[zoutzakje]

I think vampires are my current fav (they were one of the types that can pass through force fields right?)
I wasn't sure what I was doing (still a noob, but learning ^^), but a while ago my main fleet was being destroyed while I attacked the second AI homeplanet... suddenly those big green "you won" letters appeared in the screen... I was like "wtf, what did I do?" . turns out one of my vampires (I think) slipped through and killed the home command station all by itself, while all enemy ships were busy killing my main fleet. I don't even remember ordering him to attack the command station lol, but he gave me a victory nonetheless

[Fleet]

I'm a fan of the paralyzers. They do a great job of negating enemy firepower.

[unclean]

I've had some weird obsession with Space Planes for a while now. I always try to use other other specials, especially the cool new Spire ones, but I always end up restarting because they're just not Space Plane-y enough.

(no, not even Stealth Battleships. Even though they're pretty much just big fat stupid space planes.)