First game questions

[Hearteater]

Anti-Armor ships are best treated as specialist Fighters in the sense that they work great against Bombers.  They do 68% of the damage to Bombers as Fighters, but they've got 2.5 times the range.  This means unlike Fighters, they out-range the Bombers.  They don't quite match Bomber speed, but on defense with Command Station speed boosts, they can kite Bombers forever.

On the other hand, Anti-Armor ships have bonuses against the big boy toys in the form of Heavy and Ultra-Heavy multipliers.  They even have a Structural modifier which isn't very common.  This means they actually act a little bit like long-range Bombers.  Which brings up another little feature: they don't cost ANY metal to make.  This means they are really easy on your economy if you are building metal heavy things...like Bombers.  As a result, if you end up losing all your Bombers and Anti-Armor ships on say a suicide raid against Guard Posts, you can replace them at the same time much easier than you might expect.  Also, because they have a higher cap than Bombers, against insta-kill weapons like Ion Cannons, Anti-Armor ships are superior because they half the firepower of Bombers to Ion Cannons.

Note that while they are great against anything with a decent chunk of armor, they are paradoxically for a ship called "anti-armor" not at all effective against max armor.  This is a weird feature of the armor/armor piercing system.  But against any golem except Armored, they'll do wonders.  Same for several other large AI ships, including notably Carriers and Spire Siege Towers.

[Vacuity]

If I remember right, they have really high armor piercing so they should do really well against units with high armor. They also have a longish attack range so maybe some micro is required?

I've noticed that they seem to be doing much *better* now than when I first started, despite me not really doing anything different.  I think it's just that I've got a lot more alternative targets for the AI to shoot at now (particularly my gravity drains...), so they don't get slaughtered quite as quickly.  I don't think I would ever want to put these up to Mk IV though; they're too fragile.

This means they are really easy on your economy if you are building metal heavy things...like Bombers.

Interesting info about the bonuses, but I think one problem in my current game is I am short on crystal compared to metal, and almost every extra ship type I got/unlocked/captured is crystal heavy (except the warbirds and Mk IV bomber starship).    It makes me really dislike the constant drain rebuilding them all the time.
Against golems, I kinda feel that against anything but an artillery golem it'd be like feeding peanuts to a hippo.  They'll just disappear.

I believe what happens is that when a ship is 100% built like that but can't deploy, it sits in the dock fully built until in can deploy. So if you had 10 starship constructors queue to build raids, the first one to finish would deploy, the other 9 would finish construction to 100% and wait until they could deploy. So yes, you are paying for 10 raids and only getting 1, but as soon as a raid is lost, you get the replacement immediately at no charge at that time.
[snip]
Just note that a unit sitting at 100% in the constructor stalls the build queue, it will not start on the next unit in its queue until that unit that is 100% built is deployed.

That does seem to roughly follow what I've observed.  I think my comment here is "ugh."  I do understand that system, and it does have some advantages, but... ugh.  I lose a single Mk II raid starship and my economy tanks.  It is really quite painful.

Thanks for the information!

[Diazo]

How I've dealt with that is each unit (or each mark of unit if you have a lot) gets its own constructor.

Note that I run a starship fleet, when I lose units I'm not losing only a single type, I've lost multiple types, so they all build in parallel.

If you have lost just Raids because you sent them solo that does not work.

Note that I think cancelling a unit under construction at a fabricator refunds 100% of resources consumed to build it so far, but this needs testing as it is again something I've never tried.

Scapping a placed unit, such as a fortresses, returns only the normal 10% scrap resources though.

D.

[Bognor]

I only ever use one starship constructor and I've never had any problems.  This avoids the situation where you might have six half-built starships that can't do anything, when you could instead have three fully built starships that could actually fight for you.

One nice thing about Anti-Armors is that the low marks are still useful in the final battles against core ships.  Many mark I ships struggle against cores because their low shot damage is mostly blocked by the core ships' armor; Anti-Armors' armor piercing negates that.  But Anti-Armors are very weak on their own - you want something short-ranged and tough like fighters to take the hits.  Anti-Armors are similar to Raiders in both respects.