The Ship Strategy Conversation

[Shrugging Khan]

My two usuals.

Spire Stealth Battleship
What I almost always use, true to the mantra "Use something that always works.". Flame Wave damage has no targets resistant to it, their high damage to multiple targets with fast refire rate makes them viable in almost any offensive situation, and their cloaking and dampening means that you can just have them low-power their way through an enemy system, make stop at a guard post, power up, take it out, power down, run off, and cloak again. Short-ranged enemies are easily defeated by their powerful shots, and long-ranged ones can't attack them at all. Watch their health and retreat them for repairs when it gets low (they are *not* good for tanking), and these ships can do just about any job that doesn't require them to soak up constant fire.

Not very specialised, but highly useful.


Zenith Bombard
Slow to build, easy to lose, but have the longest range of any non-sniper, non-fortress mobile unit unlockable right at the start. Take a bunch of these, add some Riot Starships for close range protection, and you have an incredible force multiplier (unless the riots get overwhelmed). You can literally just send a team like that through a cleared wormhole and have them pick off one target after another in an enemy system. Excellent for cleaning out priority targets like Guardians. On defence, they easily multiply the efficiency of any fixed setup by adding fire support over an entire planetary system. Minimal micro-management makes them blow highly dangerous units like Plasma Siege Starships, Spire Ships, Guardians and the like right out of the field.

Awesome, but require some micro-management to keep them from wasting their shots or getting rushed by fast units.


And the Youngling Nanoswarm
Really fun to use. Just set a Space Dock to FRD them into another system, attach an Engineer, and watch the fireworks. Unfortunately also very ineffective; use them if you want something that goes very easy on your economy.

[chemical_art]

nenzul as a whole I find useful, but they all require three things:
1. Nenzul regen chamber
2. Continuous FRD
3. Continuous production

Nenzul are meant to be swarmed. They are best sent into a system and sent onto FRD while your "standard" fleet / defenses accomplish their objectives. They have firepower and are tough for their cost, at the detriment of caps. The regen causes them to flee at low health, leaving a chance they escape on their own, further reducing costs.

Right now I'm doing a snake map with 3 units of them. Sending 800 units on low caps of expendable units is effective.

[Orelius]

I'd say that there are five main types of fleet ships that you normally might want to choose:

Triangle ship clones (Bulletproof fighter, Tachyon Fighter, Space Tank, MLRS, etc.)
These ships are basically a triangle ship but with some sort of gimmick.  The bulletproof fighter is immune to shells, tanks have armor, MLRS has a more efficient distribution of shots.  Generally, these ships are pretty weak.  It's not because they're bad ships, they just don't fill a niche that another bonus ship can.

Raiders (Raiders, Teleport Raiders, Autobombs, Neinzul Ships, etc.)
These ships excel in being cheap, fast, and excellent options for destroying guard posts (often as a result of these traits).  These are the types of ships I generally prefer, though I don't like neinzul ships because they can't be put into a ship blob without extensive micro because of their attrition.

Sluggers (Electric Bombers, Bombards, etc.)
These ships are really good at throwing an initial volley that kills things far to well.  Naturally, because of their low cap, they're generally more useful for the AI since the AI will always have more of these.

Snipers (Sniper, Sentinel Frigate, Blade Spawner, etc.)
These ships can be used to snipe off ships from a distance.  Again, because of low caps, these will generally be better for the AI.

Melee ships (Cutlass, Vampire Claw, Shredder, etc.)
These ships attack by throwing themselves at something else.  These are pretty much worthless for the player unless they're shredders, in which case they're really powerful because of their replicating ability.  This advantage is primarily in the early game because higher mark ships will destroy the shredders before they can get enough build points.  These ships are a constant frustration from the AI since they ignore force fields, allowing them to destroy your reactors with frustrating ease.

The rest are pretty much gimmicks and really not that great.

[chemical_art]

I know that the ai gets reduced units from lower cap units, but I still the majority of the time fear low cap units they send more then the high cap units.

[PokerChen]

We may also add a section on general rules-of-thumb with ship-type uses, such as balance between high-cost/low-cap and low-cost/high-caps:

- Dealing with ion-cannons on AI planets (a regular occurance in most map layouts).
 Part of the coded targeting preferences for, say, ion cannons, means that your low-cap/high-cost shiptypes will always be taken out first. For example, if you send in a triangle fleet, they will always target bombers first of the highest mark that it can insta-kill.  Those ions taking out 4 ships at a time is of lesser consequence when you send in 200 laser gatlings + 200 fighters, instead of 20 bombards + 200 fighters.
- Better integration with Neinzul enclave starships (the mobile space-docks you can unlock).
 If you decide to sink some investment into mobile reinforcements (a wise-choice IMO if not on Fallen-spire), consider the time taken to make one ship/make a full-cap of ships. The required time is much smaller for ships such as fighters, minipods, etc. and will make your carriers more effective.
 NB: While taking engineers with your enclaves is a good idea and mitigates the difference, they end up dying fairly frequently until the engineer mark-III comes along. You may also be fighting out-of-supply, where the enclaves can still build things, but your mobile builders cannot replace lost engineers.

= = = = =
We also don't seem to have a Neinzul specialist on this forum at the moment.

[TechSY730]

I know that the ai gets reduced units from lower cap units, but I still the majority of the time fear low cap units they send more then the high cap units.

I think this is in part due to the AI not caring about resource costs, and more importantly, build costs.

Sure, the AI cannot spam low unit ship caps like they can with high unit ship caps, or at least not as quickly, but let's say they can only get 3 of them given the "reinforcement" or "wave" points they get. Well, they can "build" their 3 instantly, where you would have to wait a good chunk of time to get 3 of them.
So basically, the AI can get their low cap units earlier, and replace them faster, even if they are held back number wise by their low cap and planet wide ship cap.


The other issue is that although they do have planet wide ship caps for the nastiest of low ship cap units, these are just that, per planet. They can still build up ridiculous numbers of them from across multiple planets, which can start going after you in those large numbers during things like CPAs or border aggression. Sure, this is an issue with any ship type, but it is particularly noticeable and painful for low ship cap units.

[Martyn van Buren]

Wow!  This is great.  Thanks so much!

I did Mantis adding a player Wiki; they responded that they had trouble before with spammers, but you can indeed write to them and get an account for the main Wiki easily enough. 

One thing from a new player, responding to this:

I think ship descriptions should be in a positive light.  A new player who reads a description for a ship they just got from an ARS that says, "eh, basically this sucks" is going to be turned off and not really try and have fun with it.  I read a lot of negative things about teleporting units and I have found the TBS extremely useful, but I was upset when I unlocked it initially thinking I had gotten a "worthless" unit.  The more I play with the different units, the more useful I find them.

I'd really like to see negative views --- some ships are worse/harder to use/more specialized towards a rare situation than others, and it's helpful to be cautioned off them when you're choosing a bonus ship.  But that said, it does seem like most ships have at least a few people who like them.

[Commiesalami]

I'm a fan of Spire mini-rams, they are pretty bad as a blob ship and really aren't all that great on their own.  But they work well when combo-ed with other units.  Transports/cloaker starships/Jumpships all let you drop the mini-rams right where you want them so they can instantly take out a core guard post or a large group of defensive hybrids.  Also they work really well at busting up exo-waves, either killing the lead ship giving your gravity turrets a chance to shine or making a mess of the picket ships at least.

It would be nice if Kieth or Chris stopped by and have a little insight to how much all the self-damaging ships hurt themselves with each hit so we could get an idea to how useful they are. 

[PokerChen]

 In a particular game I picked vampires claws and also obtained vorticular cutlasses from an ARS - so was able to do a short comparison study of the two. These melee ship-types definitely require regular replenishing after a heavy engagement, so I'd treat them as something of a generic force-multiplier (zenith viral shredders multiply themselves for you, so you shouldn't need to ever build them more than once. )

 The main advantage to getting melee ships is that they're immune to both tractors and forcefields. Note forcefields, since you'll be able to kill annoying ships hiding under them: ion cannons, counter-spies especially. Mass-drivers, guardposts, and starships are generally immune to fusion cutters, so cutlasses are the best for this job. Vampire claws and shredders are more creatures of fleet-battles.

 Aside from the wider variety of attackable targets, you'll also get more offensive bang from cutlasses due to a higher ship-cap (200, althoguh less than a good sized shredder force). Just keep building them to counter the high attrition rate.
 Vampire claws are oriented as hunters and work more defensively. They are 108-speed on normal compared to cutlass's and shredder's 52, more of a utility ship to take down enemy fleet ships you don't want hanging around. These last longer as a 60-cap fleet than the 200-cap cutlasses (of course, since cutlasses hurt themselves and vampires do not), and the critical difference is that you *can* use these to catch bombards and snipers.

 Unfortunately, in the overall comparison blade s'pwners are better because they spawn for free, and fly much faster than everybody else.

Summary
Vorticular cutlasses: Upsides are blade damage can kill things which are immune to fusion cutters, like guardposts and starships - can snipe these things under forcefields for the player. Downsides are high attrition rates, and build slower than fighters despite double-cap. Outclassed by spire blade spawners in this field.

Vampire: Upsides are high-speed (108, just slightly faster than raiders and equal to space-planes). Will last a long time if you can keep it fed in battle. Note 3x polycrystal bonus. Downsides are also attrition rates, but you'll build a cap of these in the same time you can build fighters. Again outclassed by spire blade spawners in this field.

Zenith Viral shredders: Probably the main reason you'd ever crack open any zenith cache lower than mark IV. They replicate for you, and would be better than cutlasses if not for its fusion-cutter damage type. You'll have slightly more than twice the cap per mark when well-maintained. Downsides: The zenith caches mean that you don't really need to unlock these as a starting bonus.

[Orelius]

If I remember correctly,  you get a higher replication cap if shredders are your bonus ship.

[Shrugging Khan]

If I remember correctly,  you get a higher replication cap if shredders are your bonus ship.

!!!
Are there other such bonuses for different bonus ship types?

[Hearteater]

I don't believe so, and it was a fairly recent change made because otherwise it was somewhat of a waste to pick them as a bonus ship type when every cache is effectively an ARS for Viral Shredders.

[keith.lamothe]

If I remember correctly,  you get a higher replication cap if shredders are your bonus ship.

I don't see that in the release notes (only checked the most recent two lists, so back a bit more than a year).  I did fiddle around with the replication costs significantly a while ago, but I don't think it actually checks to see if you have the bonus type.

[Orelius]

Yeah, I think I may have read something in a thread that suggested the idea.  I guess I just confused it with the patch notes.

In any case, I think that would be make sense.  In any case, shredders aren't as useful as they used to be, which makes me sad.  The fact that you can get a shredder fleet for a hunk of AIP makes it a less attractive bonus ship.

[Hearteater]

Of all the solutions, I'd actually probably prefer the Shredder not appear in caches.