Starship Advice

[quickstix]

Hey all, just looking for some advice on the topic of starship research paths.

I've recently started messing around with starships a bit more in my games, but with the recent changes (dreadnoughts, force fields, ect) I've been a bit unsure about which starships to use.

I started out with Raid Starships when I was faced with the situation of a special fortress outpost with a force field over the top. As expected, this worked fairly well and I was soon placing them within my attacking forces as a sort of 'special forces' unit which I would call in for tricky situations. Leech Starships are good fun too, so that all works quite nicely.

What I'm wondering about now though, are the real differences between Dreadnoughts and the Spire Starship path. I've shyed away from Dreadnoughts as I'm yet to really get into situations where starships were my primary concern, but changes lately have made them more attractive as a general purpose sort of unit. However, the Spire path of starships do a similar thing, leading me to not really move out of the Raid path, as I've found them to be fairly sufficient for my needs.

One more thing, I haven't had a lot of time to install pre-releases, so I've only got an official 2.0 release going, but the Spire path is listed as being effective against force fields. Does this still hold, because lately there were a few changes regarding force fields and Starships. I know the Dreadnought description has been changed, but I can't remember if Spires are still effective or not.

Thanks!

[RCIX]

Generally the Spire line are more general-purpose shorter range combat vessels, and the Dreadnoughts are longer-range ships with anti-engine weapons designed to combat fighters and other similar ships.

The forcefield thing was supposed to be fixed, only the Raid starships (and maybe Leech ones) are good against forcefields.

[TheWordWillSetYouFree]

The spire line is generally good in close-medium range ship to ship battles, while the dreadnought is good at long range bashing of fortified enemy lines.

I find the dreadnought is great when reaching the end game. After the wormhole is breached send (all you can produce) dreadnoughts through with all cruisers you can produce and watch the enemy die at extreme ranges.

[quickstix]

Sounds pretty good to me. Just what I was looking for, thanks a bunch.

I can sort of imagine now in an epic space battle the Spire ships are the ones in the middle of the fray with thousands of ships flying around them, whilst the Dreadnoughts stay back and hammer away with artillery. 

[raptor331]

I recomned you start off with the flagship and the dreadnought mark 1, they bot are very useful for the beggining of the campaign

[Echo35]

I recomned you start off with the flagship and the dreadnought mark 1, they bot are very useful for the beggining of the campaign

I'm a huge fan of the Flagship for early games. It can lay waste to most AI raids at low progress.

[Spikey00]

Flagships provide bonus damage multipliers to nearby ships--remember that these also stack (or at least different flagships stack).  Basically, from my assumption you can have a T1 Cruiser do upwards damage of 5K [at school, not too sure].

Still, I prefer the Raid => Leech tree over any of the others. 

[raptor331]

I recommended the flagship because it is just a tank for heavy assualts, but yes leech starships are good for raids

[Axiom]

I am rather firmly convinced of the raid&leech starships, due to the insane amount of carnage they can deal out to both ships and installations.
I've posted a rather big post about it just now and the basic statement is:
Get raid asap, 5-6 of them can wipe Mark IV planets.
"Upgrading" to leech and taking a handful of MK II Engineers along simply means insta-beachheads whereever you go.
As long as you take care to rotate ships back out via the warppoints for repairs, you will rarely lose one of these, but you have to be a lot more careful at 1.3M Hitpoints than with the 3-7 of the Spire/Zenith/Flagship type.

All of these ship types only cost 4000 research points tops, which is 2 planet research raids, i.e. not that much to invest. Once you have 8-10 ships which each can crush a warppoint including turrent defense swiftly(raid+leech) you will find it rather a lot easier warping into and destroying systems imho..

Just don't forget the teleporting repairman..

[Lancefighter]

Teleporting repairman + FRD mode as far away from the combat as possible (zoom all the way out, click somewhere)... Awesome.. it takes forever for anyone to get out there to kill them

However, I am a fan of the fleet starship line.. Flagships are awesome once you get one out, and can wipe most mk1 or mk2 planets with very few.
Add dreadnaughts for bombardment... Fleet starships do point defense against anything that gets close, dreads knock out anything else from beyond the range of all turrets. Enough dreads pounding on low level forcefields works fine, but against core planets i tend to suicide raid starships killing the forcefields

[Spikey00]

Since defenses leave wreckage now, I am not certain this strategy will work (converting defenses)--I need to see for myself.

Nevertheless, I still see the Raid line as being the top solo choice. 

[raptor331]

so far he only good thing about a raid starship is that its fast and it can shoot through sheilds? why is it so favored

[Axiom]

so far he only good thing about a raid starship is that its fast and it can shoot through sheilds? why is it so favored

If you need to blast away for minutes at a force field first without hitting anyhting inside it, that means minutes of being exposed to full on enemy fire -> compare to being able to just flat out destroy or convert their own defenses with just a few shots as the raid/leech have a massive bonus vs installations/turrets/stations compared to all other starships.

That's why they got so little hit points - with more they would singlehandedly Juggernaut through whole systems..(which, with a little help, they already do)

[raptor331]

wow I was sooooo wrong about the raid starship lol  its a beast!!!!

[Lancefighter]

a few raid starships will still wtfpwn mk1 or 2 or maybe even 3 planets.
Id still prefer fleet starships, they are a lot less fragile