Ship combos

[Kahuna]

This is a list of ships that work very well together.
You should consider unlocking MarkIIs of these ships early in the game. MarkIIIs only if you either already have an Advanced Factory or you know you will soon have one. You must also make sure you will be able to hold the AF or you will waste 3000 Knowledge.

Sniper + Bomber + Fighter/Zenith Starship
Snipers counter Fighters, Bombers, Close Combat and Guardians.
Bombers counter Missile Frigates and big stuff.
Fighters/Zenith Starships counter Bombers, Close Combat and Guardians.

Munitions Booster + Missile Frigate + Riot Starship
MarkI Munitions Boosters increases Missile Frigates' (and others') damage by 80%. This means Missile Frigates basically have 1,8 damage multiplier against everything. MarkII Munitions Boosters boost damage by 110%. Riot Starships make sure the Missile Frigates will always out range the AI ships.

You might wanna add MarkII Bombers to protect the Munitions Boosters since they have Refractive hull and thus are countered by Missile Frigates. Munitions Boosters are very fragile and you will have to replace them quite often. Luckily they're dirt cheap.

Turrets + Munitions Boosters + Leech Starships
The "Munitions Booster + Missile Frigate + Riot Starship" strategy can be combined with this one.
Munitions Boosters work insanely well with heavy defenses. Especially Sniper, Spider, Missile and Gravitational Turrets and Heavy Beam Cannons. Select all MarkI Munitions Boosters and keep half of them (press L) constantly boosting the turrets. Keep the other half with your fleet. A cap of MarkI Munitions Boosters can boost hundreds of ships/turrets so half of them is enough.

With MarkI Munitions Boosters your defenses will do 80% more damage, stop the waves 80% faster which means you will have much less stuff to rebuild.. which means you will have much more resources to use for something else. Add MarkII Gravitational Turrets protected by MarkI Hardened Force Fields and your defenses will be nearly indestructible.

While turrets boosted by Munitions Boosters slaughter the AI ships.. which are slowed down by Gravitational Turrets.. MarkI and II Leech Starships reclaim half of the wave.

Anti-Armor + Missile Frigate + Riot Starship
Anti-Armor Ships counter Bombers and heavy stuff.
Missile Frigates counter Fighters, flies and mosquitoes.
Riot Starships will make sure Anti-Armor Ships and Missile Frigates will out range the AI ships.
Add MarkI Bombers and MarkII Basic Turrets to take care of the Missile Frigates.

Vampire Claw + Missile Frigate
Vampire Claws counter Guardians, Missile Frigates and Bombers. Vampire Claws are immune to missiles so Missile Frigates wont counter them. Vampire Claws are very cost efficient. A cap of MarkIs costs only ~25k.
Missile Frigates counter Fighters, flies and mosquitoes.

Neinzul Youngling Weasel
These guys work with almost anything. Especially defenses. They're basically mobile, cheap and spammable cannon fodder and Counter-Missile Turrets. They also counter Bombers and some other ships quite well. Just build a Space Dock dedicated to spamming Weasels and put it on loop when a wave is about to hit. Missile Firgates have a bad habit of out ranging Gravitational and Tractor Beam Turrets.. which will lead to your defenses being overrun and owned by Bombers. Weasels will help with that. A lot.

You could also take Neinzul and Cloaker Starships with your fleet and spam Weasels with them.


EDIT: Zenith Bombard + Missile Frigates + Riot Starship
This combo is quite similar to Sniper+Bomber.

[TechSY730]

Never tested this, but it might be nifty.
Armor ships + armor boosters + fighters (or something that can counter bombers):
Armor ships are one of the few fleet ships that have enough armor to actually make a noticeable impact in battles. Combine that with armor boosters, and you got yourself a very chunky ship. Bringing along something that can count those things that can actually hurt those armor ships (like bombers and their ultra-heavy bonuses) will round things out. If you have fleetship shield bearers, throw them in too for even more crazy longevity.
The biggest problem with this combo though is that you aren't going to go anywhere fast, thanks to the low speed of armor ships. (If you have speed boosters as well, that might alleviate this somewhat)


Of course, this requires 2 bonus ships, making it quite situational.


Spire tractor platform + Missile frigates + Fleet starship (or muni-booster if you have them) or fighters or leech starships:
The missile frigates have great range, but suffer from slow speed, meaning that once things do catch up with them, they probably won't escape.
Spire tractor platforms fixes that problem, allowing missile frigates to strike without worrying about being chased down (or at least not as much)
Missile frigates also counter the most common counter to spire tractor platforms, standard fighters (the fighters get a bonus to medium hull, which the honeycombs have, but the frigate counters the fighters).
The third ship is up personal choice and situation. The fleet starship (or muni-booster if you have them) is for boosting the power of the missile frigates even further. The fighters are for taking out the few remaining fleet ships types that neither the Spire tractor platform nor the missile frigates deal well with.

As this is a primarily anti-fleetship combo, you can also use Leech starships (and/or parasite fleet ships if you have them) for the third slot to help capture some of those kills. The parasite damage "overflow splash" logic will work very well as the tractor platforms will force the fleet ships to remain near each other.

To make effective use of this some clever kiting will be required (either auto-kiting, or manual micro).


Spire tractor platform or Spire gravity drains + (any melee ship)
Melee ships have a huge problem of living long enough to get to their target. Yea, if they do reach, they hurt, but it happens sadly infrequently unless you are good with microing them.
Spire tractor platforms or Spire gravity drains fixes the problem of the enemy moving out of the way quite nicely.

Again, you can throw in reclaiming ships if you want to reclaim some of the poor fleet ships about to get meleed to death.


Again, this is also a 2 bonus ship combo, making it rather situational.

[Kahuna]

The problem with Flagships is that they boost VERY few ships. I think 1 Flagship can boost as many ships as 1 Munitions Boosters. The difference is.. Flagships have a cap of 4.. and Munitions Boosters have 19. The amount of ships Flagships can boost needs to be quadrupled.

Spire Tractors are very good for defensive purposes. You could park them under a Mark I Hardened Force Field next to a Gravitational Turret. They do pretty good damage too so they counter Fighters and some other flies. So you're probably not going to need to unlock additional Missile Frigates.

[LordSloth]

Have a lot of slow ships? Consider unlocking Zenith Spacetime Manipulators. I believe you can find ZStM under support, and unlocking them costs 1750 knowledge. You can build up to 20 of them, but each requires 20,000 power. They boost speed by 20, stack with each other, system ownership, and logistics command stations. While they can move, they unfortunately cannot travel through wormholes.

Examples:
Zenith Viral Shredders (52)
Plasma Siege Starship (36)
Zenith Bombard (44)
Armored Golem (44)
Artillery Golem (32)
Spire Mini Rams (56) the full-sized asteroid version is immune to speed boosts
Fallen Spire campaign ships (56)

With just the system ownership speed doubling, Zenith Viral Shredders can have trouble reaching anything that isn't nailed down by tractors. Throw in just one or two ZStM and you'll spend a lot less time closing the gap on ships trying to threaten your frontier planets. And since Zenith Viral Shredders reproduce slower when you have too many on one planet, your ZStM network will make it easier to spread them out among all your planets and still pull everything back in a hurry without the hassle of transports, if you're in danger of being overwhelmed.

If you feel like going overboard in one system, rather than spreading out the benefit, you can easily get Plasma Siege Starships to 300-400 speed. How's it feel to be kiting Hybrid Hives with your slowest ship? Be sure to turn on auto-kiting for maximum fun.

If you only have one chokepoint, ZStM are a little lackluster, since you can nail everything down with gravity and tractor turrets. If your galaxy map/settings makes Warp Gate raiding prohibitive, such as a crosshatch or cluster map, then ZStM can make defending your borders so much easier. Transports are still, of course, the fastest option for getting around, but your fleetships will be so much more responsive wiping out incursions and FRD will be so much more effective once ships chase stragglers less and get back into position that much quicker.

If you have that distributed front line and cannot afford to plop down logistics everywhere (military, economic, warp jammer command stations), then you'll also have a much more fun time kiting threats with missile frigates and riot starships (lasers, of course). You'll waste less time fighting inferior forces, chase down starships bypassing your turret balls, and other fun.

While you can build them into a beachhead, the sad fact that you cannot take them with you means this isn't a game-winner. But if you have either melee units, exceptionally slow units, or particularly long ranged units, or even just moderately slow and longranged units like missile frigates and anti-armor, the sheer rush of outmaneuvering attackers is hard to beat. That is, if you don't kill everything directly on the wormhole or FRD everything anyways.

[LordStryker]

With respect to the leech starships... these work insanely well on defense against a Starfleet AI. Double up on tractor beams for large waves and I recommend two leech starships at chokepoints. Early to mid game you can amass a nice chunk of expendable lower Mark ships from the AI.  This is particularly useful if you're all about brute force on AI planets with an ion canon.