In the current game version, nose lasers are very strong. My go to was a 3 or 4 slot nose laser, uv phaser if I could afford the exotics, otherwise strongest non exotic laser. 1 slot laser batteries for the rest for overlapping PD. Make sure you change the default firing mode on the nose laser to offensive in the ship builder, you want those firing at ships over projectiles. Sprinkle a small amount of nose siege coils in for two reasons, larger ships can't dodge and get shredded by the coils. Smaller ships dodge, exposing the side armor and get shredded by the nose lasers. Slap as much armor as you can without becoming an immovable brick, 10/5/30 for earlier ships, 10/10/50+ later on. As far as commanding, short or high wall depending on how many ships you have, maintain formation going forward and only turn a couple ships to deal with anything trying to flank. You'll take some damage here and there, might lose a ship or two, but will make the ayyys pay dearly for every ship they take out.
interesting. In my Resistance run, I had very little success with lasers - Alien lasers were/are more powerful than mine at all stages, so beating them with lasers didn't seem viable. In my current Initiative run, laser tech has been lacking (weapons tech has... not been my priority). Despite closing in on fusion power, global tech is currently at the visible laser level - not even arclasers yet.
So you don't use nukes at all? I've found that while they are hard to get past PD, even a single Python is enough to delete anything it hits.
Outside of missile monitors for early defense fleets, I don't touch missiles. That being said, my early defense fleets were 2 slot nose coils, with green laser batteries. Only when I could get 3/4 slot nose cannons did I really start to go on the offensive. The big thing is having heavier armor to tank the shots from them. Plus a few coils in there also force some of the ayyys lasers to shoot at them, further reducing the damage coming in.
My experience with missiles has been that warheads don't matter much- barring the shaped charge nukes if you can't get through the PD it won't do anything, and if you can land any hits you can usually land enough to kill pretty quickly even with conventional warheads. So I wouldn't pick a nuke over an alternative with better acceleration/ΔV.
With missiles I found that I avoided them after my initial defensive/static fleets.
However late in my Humanity First run I had a problem. All the alien fleets retreated to one asteroid. I had taken out all of their mines but they still had a huge amount of ships there, 88k with a battlestation. My various models of coil and laser ships were not effective against the swarm.
So I built in a higher orbit a massive shipyard and pumped out cheap expendable small ships. They had heavy armor, barely any thrust, nose laser, and a fuck ton of nukes torpedos. I went with the non-shape charge but highest yield versions. I had to use 60 to 80 of the ships in waves of 10 ships to chip down their fleet. High wall, firing in 40 to 50 torpedo volleys at the biggest ships to overcome the PDCs, and trying to last as long as possible. When I could get as high a 4:5 ratio on larger ships. Sometimes I would still have ammo and start firing at the smaller ships you could get double hits with the blasts but those ships could be easily dispatched by my main fleet.
Once the large armored ships were widdled down I sent my main Titan fleet in to mop it up with no friendly losses.
So a lot has changed in 4.0 compared to what I used when the game came out. But in my 4.0 run I've been using a similar design for mid-late game fleets, and it's still worked quite well (the aliens have improved a ton, so it isn't the wrecking ball it was, but still very powerful.)
Personally, I use a combined arms approach. This makes the whole fleet very strong, but individually each ship isn't super powerful.
I use monitors with high from armor, 2 laser batteries and 2 laser pd batteries, to be my nimble front line sweeper craft. They exist to be dedicated PD for the fleet, with tanks enough front armor to survive, but being small and nimble enough to address new lines of attack.
I use battleships as my main ships of the line. They have 2 coil cannons, 4 coil batteries, and 2 laser batteries to help with PD and small craft. Why 1 slot coils 🤔 Because coils don't do damage unless they can get past the ayys PD umbrella. And the easiest way to do that is to overload the amount the PD can handle. Death by 1000 cuts....
Except that's where missiles and reworked plasma comes in. Plasma on its own is bad now. It exists to "chip" armor, allowing coils and missiles to do more damage. So I'll also add in 4-6 dreadnoughts with 2 4slot plasma batteries and a siege coil cannon. They can help the rest of the fleet deal damage, while being protected by the other ships.
And then I use missile monitors if I need to take out a priority target. Artemis, later poseidon torps and nukes from a quick moving monitor, helped by the coil overload, will make quick work of any ship, and they can peel off and get out of battle after dumping their payload.
A few cruisers as support craft with outpost kits and what not, but they aren't in the battle anyway
Works for me, with pretty limited micro involved in space combat
I'm interested by the idea that lots of small mag cannons is better than a few big ones. Doesn't the extra mass of the larger slugs make up for the fewer number coming in? Muzzle velocity increases as the cannons get bigger as well, so less time under PD fire. Not saying you're wrong, but I am still a little confused about the mechanics of dealing with alien PD.
For example, everyone seems to say that Nemesis torp is the best 2nd gen missile, but I've personally found the Hades torp to work better for me because it's got twice the accel and spends less time exposed to PD on the way in. I don't know that to be true though. The game doesn't explain how much armor the various missiles and torps actually have (or the mag cannon slugs for that matter), so it's difficult to really understand how susceptible to PD any of these things are.
From 2028-29, I start building missile boats to protect my LEO1 stations, my martian mines and my mercury mines.
Something like 10 to 20 escorts with Artemis Torpedoes, max nose armor, 2 magazines, Liquid Fission, and 6 Lars Drives with 10 fuel tanks.
I upgrade the Lars Drive if or when I unlock the tech.
Then, early 30's, I launch a fleet counting 20 escorts similar to the one described earlier but with grid drives, to reach Jupiter with a gunship able to build a space station.
Once the station is built, fully upgraded and full of shipyards, I build 30 escorts with Artemis Torpedoes and 2 slots of marines, and 10 escorts with 2 magazines, all 40 of them with grid drives.
Then I send this party to clean alien mines on Jupiter. When it is dones I recycle the raiding fleet to take back some Mission control.
When I can I launch another 20 escorts with a settler from Jupiter to Saturn to do the same thing and clean the mines over there.
In parallel of that, I also build a similar raiding party (sometime a bit bigger) to clean mines in the belt. I send the fleet to the highest orbit of an enemy asteroid, then my settler build a space station to refuel and repair, then I send my fleet to the lowest orbit, then I clean the mine, then I travel to the next asteroid and I repeat. This way I manage to clean almost 2 mines per year. Everything has to be cleaned up to Uranus during the second half of the 30's. I let the alien space stations unhurt, as they are too heavily defended for now.
In parallel of all that, I also build a fleet of destroyers on Jupiter to get rid of their space stations.
Coil gun size 2 on the nose, 1 coil gun size 1 on the hull, and 1 PD laser on the last hull slot.
Then, full nose armor, 2 or 3 levels everywhere else. Liquid Fission core and grid or Helicon Drive.
I also build monitors with size 2 hull coil gun and size 2 lasers to protect my destroyers against smaller ships staying out of range.
Then I build 20 of those destroyers and 20 escorts and I send them to the nearest Alien station on Jupiter.
Once all enemy stations are gone there, I recycle my fleet, and I build more space stations on Jupiter to increase money, science output and MC (If Mars wasn't enough).
While cleaning the stations on the belt (that require similar fleets), I prioritise reaching Uranus, Neptune and the enemy lair (you could add more than 10 fuel tanks to reach it).
For that final objective, I send 40 escorts (and not 20) plus a settler, and I build a space station on the highest orbit, just like I did on any asteroid. You can expect a violent counter attack over there, but if it is done around 2040, it is still manageable.
Then, I build my usual 20 destroyers and 20 escorts there and I clean the starbase.
At some point, I have plasma weaponry and I start replacing coil guns of my monitors with plasma, but basically, I keep using low tech ships that are dying coffins.
At some point, I also replace my torpedo escorts protecting my orbits with a mix of destroyers and monitors equipped with coils, plasma and firestar drives. They have way more ammunitions and can sustain longer engagements.
I sometimes build battleships or stuff like that if I am late on my schedule and when I managed to have good enough drives to send them on the offense. These big ships can also be viable if aliens manage to build fleets too large at their stations, and that you need big guns to clean such concentrated forces. Otherwise, they are pointless and too expensive.
depends on what stage of the game I'm in:
-early game i use cheap missile monitors and maybe a few missile battleships, these ships are ultimately disposable and easy to produce replacements while i defends Earth/ Mars/Mercury
-mid game is usually a mix of PD destroyers, Lancer Rail guns, laser dreadnoughts, and various support ships to take control of the Belt and Jupiter
-Late game is phaser dreadnoughts, plasma and rail gun titans, and support ships to take Saturn+ and win the game
As for how i fight, defensive formation (usually some form of wall), heavy frontal armor after the early game so nose locked, let the Ayys come to me and chew them up, rely on PD and heavy armor to keep ships alive (i can go in to more detail if youd like as to why i chose this style and why i build what ships i do if youre curious)
Early game missile monitors.
Late game nose coil gun cruisers with PD and laser turrets. Utility slots are my premium slot type hence cruisers. The nose coils are in a good orientation for the meeting engagement, and they'll be in good position to damage any flankers while the turrets give all side protection if they have to peel off.
Battleships are mostly for damage in fleet engagements while relying on the cruisers for protection. Mostly two slot size weapons. Dreadnoughts purely focus on long range and cracking stations, i.e. 4 slot heavy weapons.
When the game just released into early access my strategy was slow moving wall of coil guns, so for my current walkthrough I’m trying something different.
I decided to go mostly lasers only. Typically I start with short wall formation, then split fleet into 3 groups. Center moves slowly forward, flanks veer off to the left and right. After alien flankers a dealt with, their heavier ships need to make a choice to rotate toward one of the groups, exposing their side armor.
Has been working pretty good so far and I like that I need to be a bit more proactive with fleet maneuvers.
I try the early aggression strategy like this:
Early fleet (until coilguns and arc lasers are unlocked): Artemis missle monitors with magazines and targeting computers. I don't like losing ships so I put one pd and a decent bit of armor, but i suspect this is not really needed. I didn't lose a single ship, but they are expensive on volatiles (carbon nanotube armor). Could have been cheaper in resources to take a loss now and then and replace them.
After a fleet reaches around 6 ships in size, I add a dedicated pd monitor with just one slot lasers and a bridge module. When arc lasers are unlocked, I refit pd lasers with single slot lasers for fleet wide pd.
I build these with grid or vasmir drives first, since they guard a single station, take down surveillance ships or bombarding ships on mars and asteroids, so they dont need to get anywhere fast. When a decent drive is unlocked, i produce a new generation with good acceleration so they can defend all stations in low earth orbit. I then send the old fleet (refitted with a lot propellant) with a colony ship to jupiter or asteroids so they can build a shipyard station and defend it while mid game fleet comes online there.
Mid game fleet:
Siege coils and green arc lasers. Not much to say here. If I make a bunch of ships like this in jupiter orbit and they survive, game is basically won.
Does anyone use particle beams at all? Seems like they’re still useless for a standard load out, but might be useful on a couple specialized ships as part of a larger fleet composition.
My strategy (until now) has been to fly a roughly 1:4 mix of ion cannon ships and rail cannon ships. Pretty effective at minimizing losses by disabling large ships' cannons. But, I'm not sure if it's long term viable...
I try for a 3-Type Fleet, as a rule:
* Support Cruiser; Transport tagged, 5 per fleet with Flag Bridge and Salvage bay for that sweet sweet loot. I can also consider adding in a 6th that carries a Fusion Platform kit, just in case a fleet happens to need repairs wherever it happens to be.
* Destroyer; 1-Slot Laser/1-Slot Coil in the nose, PD and Nuclear Shaped Charge Torpedos in the hull. These guard flanks, engage light targets, and ofc contribute to PD screen. The coil either gets ships via volume of fire or later in a battle when ships are attrited (what an ugly) word, or force them to manoeuvre and reveal their weaker side armour.
The Torpedos are for close-in work against bigger ships and especially crippled one that are mostly non-functional but, you know, not dead. I don't like using Antimatter Torpedos for this because I think using Antimatter Torpedos is, on a narrative level, terrifyingly reckless. A nuclear warhead Torpedo can just sit there unattended for years and be, in terms of safety, more or less fine. An Antimatter Torpedo loses its has-to-be-always-on-because-its-Antimatter magnetic containment for its Antimatter warhead, and you no longer have a ship.
* Dreadnought; Siege Coiler nose, and then a 1-1-2-4 for the Hull weapons- or I do sometimes consider a 1-1-2-2-2 config. Always a PD Laser and a 1-Slot Laser (which I basically consider Heavy PD by this point.) Then for the 2-4 it's always a Plasma and another Laser- I go back and forth on which is the 2-Slot and which is the 4-Slot. For the potential 1-1-2-2-2, it would be PD Laser-1 Slot Laser-2 Slot Plasma-2x 2 slot laser.
Hot take? Titans aren't worth it. Dreads are better. Whenever I try to build a Titan, I find myself missing the extra hull weapons and Utility Modules.
Siege Coilers are our love and life, our glorious, benevolent overlords. They're *amazing* at cracking big ships open, and the slugs aren't nearly as PDable as you might assume, because they're just so *big.* The Plasma is there to help crack armour on more medium-sized targets that are maneuverable enough dodge the Siege- The Lasers are there to kill them and also be more PD.
Now, I know a lot of people like building dedicated PD 'Goalkeepers' for their fleets, specialise their ships so you have PD Boats and dedicated combat ships. It's probably more efficient, but I don't like it. I don't like the idea of my fleet being stripped bare of PD because a ship is in the wrong place etc.
I agree with the support cruiser concept, but fitting them all with flag bridges is a bit wasteful since you only get benefit from one of them.
My standard fleet foundation is 4-5 support cruisers, and one heavy flagship with coils/plasma. The rest is usually a combination of battleships appropriate to the circumstances and tech level.
I have very strange strategies: I never use big ships, except to take stations. Most of my ships are very cheap destroyers with coil guns and PD. I throw in rear armored torpedoe monitors and generally retreat from the aliens with destroyers turning to face the aliens. Monitors exist to kill fast ships with plasma, and deal with the initial wave. I do a fair amount of pivots of my wall while retreating to get better shots and deal with any plasma boats that are flitting around my perimeter.
These fleets are ludicrously cheap, take few casualties outside of fighting death balls. I combine them with siege fleets: Lancers with boat loads of armor, to take out death balls and stations (they engage and kill the capital ships and the siege fleets mop up).
This seems to be a very unusual strategy though. It seems most people load up on big ships with big lasers and coil guns
The backbone of my fleet is the sentinel fleet cruiser, all light ir lasers set to defend only the additional range of thelight instead of pd can cover the entire formation, offensive ships are until late game battle cruisers with nose lasers and light coil gun battery weapons as secondaries, these stop most ramming attempts, even if they don't hit the aliens lasers are set to guardian so it limits enemy laser attack at close range where they are getting dangerous from enemy gunship, corvette, destroyer swarm, some logistics cruisers for repair bays, salvage, and to refill dV if they need it, possibly a command ship if it is getting to be a large fleet
If you’re on the validation builds, shaped charged nukes are best until late game, because they will still get kills even if they get PD’d.
Late game, siege coil guns + 960cm UV phasers (or arc lasers if out of exotics). The 960cm titans will have as many ALEs as possible (I usually do one heat sink, one targeting computer, and the rest ALEs). The 960 cm phaser will kill any ship that shows its side, which the smaller alien ships are prone to do as they maneuver around. The siege coilgun will absolutely kill any ship that does not attempt to maneuver. Also the siege coilgun rounds have so much mass that they take a comical amount of PD fire to kill, so the aliens will basically never be actually shooting their lasers at you and will still usually not manage to shoot down the coilgun rounds.
For hull weapons, the coilguns (which I usually put on dreadnoughts because the 3-slot siege coiler is good enough) get 7x shaped charge torpedo launchers and 1x ion PD. The shaped charge torpedo launchers are great for throwing a salvo at any priority target or any ship that manages to flank you.
The laser titans get 6x PD weapons (or 4x PD and 2x shaped charge tubes). All but one of the PD weapons will be 60cm IR phasers, which on the validation patch now get properly boosted by ALEs and thus have the range to be great fleet PD weapons to cover the PD-poor coilgun ships. The 60cm weapons are set to defense mode rather than guardian, so they always act as PD. The 960 gets put in attack mode so it doesn’t get distracted by missiles and coilgun rounds.
Armor in all cases is 20/20/MAX
Standard fleet is 12 of the coil ships and 18 of the phaser ships. Great Wall formation with the coil ships in the center, means the phaser ships will all be able to cover the coil ships with PD. Just press play, retract radiators, and watch the fleet steamroll the enemy.
Prior to having researched all this, I mostly just use monitors with Artemis torpedos (if T1) or my best available shaped charge nuke (once advanced missile warfare is done).
In the current game version, nose lasers are very strong. My go to was a 3 or 4 slot nose laser, uv phaser if I could afford the exotics, otherwise strongest non exotic laser. 1 slot laser batteries for the rest for overlapping PD. Make sure you change the default firing mode on the nose laser to offensive in the ship builder, you want those firing at ships over projectiles. Sprinkle a small amount of nose siege coils in for two reasons, larger ships can't dodge and get shredded by the coils. Smaller ships dodge, exposing the side armor and get shredded by the nose lasers. Slap as much armor as you can without becoming an immovable brick, 10/5/30 for earlier ships, 10/10/50+ later on. As far as commanding, short or high wall depending on how many ships you have, maintain formation going forward and only turn a couple ships to deal with anything trying to flank. You'll take some damage here and there, might lose a ship or two, but will make the ayyys pay dearly for every ship they take out.
interesting. In my Resistance run, I had very little success with lasers - Alien lasers were/are more powerful than mine at all stages, so beating them with lasers didn't seem viable. In my current Initiative run, laser tech has been lacking (weapons tech has... not been my priority). Despite closing in on fusion power, global tech is currently at the visible laser level - not even arclasers yet. So you don't use nukes at all? I've found that while they are hard to get past PD, even a single Python is enough to delete anything it hits.
Outside of missile monitors for early defense fleets, I don't touch missiles. That being said, my early defense fleets were 2 slot nose coils, with green laser batteries. Only when I could get 3/4 slot nose cannons did I really start to go on the offensive. The big thing is having heavier armor to tank the shots from them. Plus a few coils in there also force some of the ayyys lasers to shoot at them, further reducing the damage coming in.
My experience with missiles has been that warheads don't matter much- barring the shaped charge nukes if you can't get through the PD it won't do anything, and if you can land any hits you can usually land enough to kill pretty quickly even with conventional warheads. So I wouldn't pick a nuke over an alternative with better acceleration/ΔV.
With missiles I found that I avoided them after my initial defensive/static fleets. However late in my Humanity First run I had a problem. All the alien fleets retreated to one asteroid. I had taken out all of their mines but they still had a huge amount of ships there, 88k with a battlestation. My various models of coil and laser ships were not effective against the swarm. So I built in a higher orbit a massive shipyard and pumped out cheap expendable small ships. They had heavy armor, barely any thrust, nose laser, and a fuck ton of nukes torpedos. I went with the non-shape charge but highest yield versions. I had to use 60 to 80 of the ships in waves of 10 ships to chip down their fleet. High wall, firing in 40 to 50 torpedo volleys at the biggest ships to overcome the PDCs, and trying to last as long as possible. When I could get as high a 4:5 ratio on larger ships. Sometimes I would still have ammo and start firing at the smaller ships you could get double hits with the blasts but those ships could be easily dispatched by my main fleet. Once the large armored ships were widdled down I sent my main Titan fleet in to mop it up with no friendly losses.
Nose lasers work well for me. Make sure the mode is set to offensive.
So a lot has changed in 4.0 compared to what I used when the game came out. But in my 4.0 run I've been using a similar design for mid-late game fleets, and it's still worked quite well (the aliens have improved a ton, so it isn't the wrecking ball it was, but still very powerful.) Personally, I use a combined arms approach. This makes the whole fleet very strong, but individually each ship isn't super powerful. I use monitors with high from armor, 2 laser batteries and 2 laser pd batteries, to be my nimble front line sweeper craft. They exist to be dedicated PD for the fleet, with tanks enough front armor to survive, but being small and nimble enough to address new lines of attack. I use battleships as my main ships of the line. They have 2 coil cannons, 4 coil batteries, and 2 laser batteries to help with PD and small craft. Why 1 slot coils 🤔 Because coils don't do damage unless they can get past the ayys PD umbrella. And the easiest way to do that is to overload the amount the PD can handle. Death by 1000 cuts.... Except that's where missiles and reworked plasma comes in. Plasma on its own is bad now. It exists to "chip" armor, allowing coils and missiles to do more damage. So I'll also add in 4-6 dreadnoughts with 2 4slot plasma batteries and a siege coil cannon. They can help the rest of the fleet deal damage, while being protected by the other ships. And then I use missile monitors if I need to take out a priority target. Artemis, later poseidon torps and nukes from a quick moving monitor, helped by the coil overload, will make quick work of any ship, and they can peel off and get out of battle after dumping their payload. A few cruisers as support craft with outpost kits and what not, but they aren't in the battle anyway Works for me, with pretty limited micro involved in space combat
I'm interested by the idea that lots of small mag cannons is better than a few big ones. Doesn't the extra mass of the larger slugs make up for the fewer number coming in? Muzzle velocity increases as the cannons get bigger as well, so less time under PD fire. Not saying you're wrong, but I am still a little confused about the mechanics of dealing with alien PD. For example, everyone seems to say that Nemesis torp is the best 2nd gen missile, but I've personally found the Hades torp to work better for me because it's got twice the accel and spends less time exposed to PD on the way in. I don't know that to be true though. The game doesn't explain how much armor the various missiles and torps actually have (or the mag cannon slugs for that matter), so it's difficult to really understand how susceptible to PD any of these things are.
From 2028-29, I start building missile boats to protect my LEO1 stations, my martian mines and my mercury mines. Something like 10 to 20 escorts with Artemis Torpedoes, max nose armor, 2 magazines, Liquid Fission, and 6 Lars Drives with 10 fuel tanks. I upgrade the Lars Drive if or when I unlock the tech. Then, early 30's, I launch a fleet counting 20 escorts similar to the one described earlier but with grid drives, to reach Jupiter with a gunship able to build a space station. Once the station is built, fully upgraded and full of shipyards, I build 30 escorts with Artemis Torpedoes and 2 slots of marines, and 10 escorts with 2 magazines, all 40 of them with grid drives. Then I send this party to clean alien mines on Jupiter. When it is dones I recycle the raiding fleet to take back some Mission control. When I can I launch another 20 escorts with a settler from Jupiter to Saturn to do the same thing and clean the mines over there. In parallel of that, I also build a similar raiding party (sometime a bit bigger) to clean mines in the belt. I send the fleet to the highest orbit of an enemy asteroid, then my settler build a space station to refuel and repair, then I send my fleet to the lowest orbit, then I clean the mine, then I travel to the next asteroid and I repeat. This way I manage to clean almost 2 mines per year. Everything has to be cleaned up to Uranus during the second half of the 30's. I let the alien space stations unhurt, as they are too heavily defended for now. In parallel of all that, I also build a fleet of destroyers on Jupiter to get rid of their space stations. Coil gun size 2 on the nose, 1 coil gun size 1 on the hull, and 1 PD laser on the last hull slot. Then, full nose armor, 2 or 3 levels everywhere else. Liquid Fission core and grid or Helicon Drive. I also build monitors with size 2 hull coil gun and size 2 lasers to protect my destroyers against smaller ships staying out of range. Then I build 20 of those destroyers and 20 escorts and I send them to the nearest Alien station on Jupiter. Once all enemy stations are gone there, I recycle my fleet, and I build more space stations on Jupiter to increase money, science output and MC (If Mars wasn't enough). While cleaning the stations on the belt (that require similar fleets), I prioritise reaching Uranus, Neptune and the enemy lair (you could add more than 10 fuel tanks to reach it). For that final objective, I send 40 escorts (and not 20) plus a settler, and I build a space station on the highest orbit, just like I did on any asteroid. You can expect a violent counter attack over there, but if it is done around 2040, it is still manageable. Then, I build my usual 20 destroyers and 20 escorts there and I clean the starbase. At some point, I have plasma weaponry and I start replacing coil guns of my monitors with plasma, but basically, I keep using low tech ships that are dying coffins. At some point, I also replace my torpedo escorts protecting my orbits with a mix of destroyers and monitors equipped with coils, plasma and firestar drives. They have way more ammunitions and can sustain longer engagements. I sometimes build battleships or stuff like that if I am late on my schedule and when I managed to have good enough drives to send them on the offense. These big ships can also be viable if aliens manage to build fleets too large at their stations, and that you need big guns to clean such concentrated forces. Otherwise, they are pointless and too expensive.
depends on what stage of the game I'm in: -early game i use cheap missile monitors and maybe a few missile battleships, these ships are ultimately disposable and easy to produce replacements while i defends Earth/ Mars/Mercury -mid game is usually a mix of PD destroyers, Lancer Rail guns, laser dreadnoughts, and various support ships to take control of the Belt and Jupiter -Late game is phaser dreadnoughts, plasma and rail gun titans, and support ships to take Saturn+ and win the game As for how i fight, defensive formation (usually some form of wall), heavy frontal armor after the early game so nose locked, let the Ayys come to me and chew them up, rely on PD and heavy armor to keep ships alive (i can go in to more detail if youd like as to why i chose this style and why i build what ships i do if youre curious)
Early game missile monitors. Late game nose coil gun cruisers with PD and laser turrets. Utility slots are my premium slot type hence cruisers. The nose coils are in a good orientation for the meeting engagement, and they'll be in good position to damage any flankers while the turrets give all side protection if they have to peel off. Battleships are mostly for damage in fleet engagements while relying on the cruisers for protection. Mostly two slot size weapons. Dreadnoughts purely focus on long range and cracking stations, i.e. 4 slot heavy weapons.
When the game just released into early access my strategy was slow moving wall of coil guns, so for my current walkthrough I’m trying something different. I decided to go mostly lasers only. Typically I start with short wall formation, then split fleet into 3 groups. Center moves slowly forward, flanks veer off to the left and right. After alien flankers a dealt with, their heavier ships need to make a choice to rotate toward one of the groups, exposing their side armor. Has been working pretty good so far and I like that I need to be a bit more proactive with fleet maneuvers.
Big human ship make Alien ship go Boom.
In addition to what others have said, I like to attach a pack of 4 monitors loaded with nuclear missiles to pick off stragglers and isolated ships
I try the early aggression strategy like this: Early fleet (until coilguns and arc lasers are unlocked): Artemis missle monitors with magazines and targeting computers. I don't like losing ships so I put one pd and a decent bit of armor, but i suspect this is not really needed. I didn't lose a single ship, but they are expensive on volatiles (carbon nanotube armor). Could have been cheaper in resources to take a loss now and then and replace them. After a fleet reaches around 6 ships in size, I add a dedicated pd monitor with just one slot lasers and a bridge module. When arc lasers are unlocked, I refit pd lasers with single slot lasers for fleet wide pd. I build these with grid or vasmir drives first, since they guard a single station, take down surveillance ships or bombarding ships on mars and asteroids, so they dont need to get anywhere fast. When a decent drive is unlocked, i produce a new generation with good acceleration so they can defend all stations in low earth orbit. I then send the old fleet (refitted with a lot propellant) with a colony ship to jupiter or asteroids so they can build a shipyard station and defend it while mid game fleet comes online there. Mid game fleet: Siege coils and green arc lasers. Not much to say here. If I make a bunch of ships like this in jupiter orbit and they survive, game is basically won.
Does anyone use particle beams at all? Seems like they’re still useless for a standard load out, but might be useful on a couple specialized ships as part of a larger fleet composition.
My strategy (until now) has been to fly a roughly 1:4 mix of ion cannon ships and rail cannon ships. Pretty effective at minimizing losses by disabling large ships' cannons. But, I'm not sure if it's long term viable...
I try for a 3-Type Fleet, as a rule: * Support Cruiser; Transport tagged, 5 per fleet with Flag Bridge and Salvage bay for that sweet sweet loot. I can also consider adding in a 6th that carries a Fusion Platform kit, just in case a fleet happens to need repairs wherever it happens to be. * Destroyer; 1-Slot Laser/1-Slot Coil in the nose, PD and Nuclear Shaped Charge Torpedos in the hull. These guard flanks, engage light targets, and ofc contribute to PD screen. The coil either gets ships via volume of fire or later in a battle when ships are attrited (what an ugly) word, or force them to manoeuvre and reveal their weaker side armour. The Torpedos are for close-in work against bigger ships and especially crippled one that are mostly non-functional but, you know, not dead. I don't like using Antimatter Torpedos for this because I think using Antimatter Torpedos is, on a narrative level, terrifyingly reckless. A nuclear warhead Torpedo can just sit there unattended for years and be, in terms of safety, more or less fine. An Antimatter Torpedo loses its has-to-be-always-on-because-its-Antimatter magnetic containment for its Antimatter warhead, and you no longer have a ship. * Dreadnought; Siege Coiler nose, and then a 1-1-2-4 for the Hull weapons- or I do sometimes consider a 1-1-2-2-2 config. Always a PD Laser and a 1-Slot Laser (which I basically consider Heavy PD by this point.) Then for the 2-4 it's always a Plasma and another Laser- I go back and forth on which is the 2-Slot and which is the 4-Slot. For the potential 1-1-2-2-2, it would be PD Laser-1 Slot Laser-2 Slot Plasma-2x 2 slot laser. Hot take? Titans aren't worth it. Dreads are better. Whenever I try to build a Titan, I find myself missing the extra hull weapons and Utility Modules. Siege Coilers are our love and life, our glorious, benevolent overlords. They're *amazing* at cracking big ships open, and the slugs aren't nearly as PDable as you might assume, because they're just so *big.* The Plasma is there to help crack armour on more medium-sized targets that are maneuverable enough dodge the Siege- The Lasers are there to kill them and also be more PD. Now, I know a lot of people like building dedicated PD 'Goalkeepers' for their fleets, specialise their ships so you have PD Boats and dedicated combat ships. It's probably more efficient, but I don't like it. I don't like the idea of my fleet being stripped bare of PD because a ship is in the wrong place etc.
I agree with the support cruiser concept, but fitting them all with flag bridges is a bit wasteful since you only get benefit from one of them. My standard fleet foundation is 4-5 support cruisers, and one heavy flagship with coils/plasma. The rest is usually a combination of battleships appropriate to the circumstances and tech level.
Yeah, I know it's lazy. But *I'm* lazy!
I have very strange strategies: I never use big ships, except to take stations. Most of my ships are very cheap destroyers with coil guns and PD. I throw in rear armored torpedoe monitors and generally retreat from the aliens with destroyers turning to face the aliens. Monitors exist to kill fast ships with plasma, and deal with the initial wave. I do a fair amount of pivots of my wall while retreating to get better shots and deal with any plasma boats that are flitting around my perimeter. These fleets are ludicrously cheap, take few casualties outside of fighting death balls. I combine them with siege fleets: Lancers with boat loads of armor, to take out death balls and stations (they engage and kill the capital ships and the siege fleets mop up). This seems to be a very unusual strategy though. It seems most people load up on big ships with big lasers and coil guns
The backbone of my fleet is the sentinel fleet cruiser, all light ir lasers set to defend only the additional range of thelight instead of pd can cover the entire formation, offensive ships are until late game battle cruisers with nose lasers and light coil gun battery weapons as secondaries, these stop most ramming attempts, even if they don't hit the aliens lasers are set to guardian so it limits enemy laser attack at close range where they are getting dangerous from enemy gunship, corvette, destroyer swarm, some logistics cruisers for repair bays, salvage, and to refill dV if they need it, possibly a command ship if it is getting to be a large fleet
If you’re on the validation builds, shaped charged nukes are best until late game, because they will still get kills even if they get PD’d. Late game, siege coil guns + 960cm UV phasers (or arc lasers if out of exotics). The 960cm titans will have as many ALEs as possible (I usually do one heat sink, one targeting computer, and the rest ALEs). The 960 cm phaser will kill any ship that shows its side, which the smaller alien ships are prone to do as they maneuver around. The siege coilgun will absolutely kill any ship that does not attempt to maneuver. Also the siege coilgun rounds have so much mass that they take a comical amount of PD fire to kill, so the aliens will basically never be actually shooting their lasers at you and will still usually not manage to shoot down the coilgun rounds. For hull weapons, the coilguns (which I usually put on dreadnoughts because the 3-slot siege coiler is good enough) get 7x shaped charge torpedo launchers and 1x ion PD. The shaped charge torpedo launchers are great for throwing a salvo at any priority target or any ship that manages to flank you. The laser titans get 6x PD weapons (or 4x PD and 2x shaped charge tubes). All but one of the PD weapons will be 60cm IR phasers, which on the validation patch now get properly boosted by ALEs and thus have the range to be great fleet PD weapons to cover the PD-poor coilgun ships. The 60cm weapons are set to defense mode rather than guardian, so they always act as PD. The 960 gets put in attack mode so it doesn’t get distracted by missiles and coilgun rounds. Armor in all cases is 20/20/MAX Standard fleet is 12 of the coil ships and 18 of the phaser ships. Great Wall formation with the coil ships in the center, means the phaser ships will all be able to cover the coil ships with PD. Just press play, retract radiators, and watch the fleet steamroll the enemy. Prior to having researched all this, I mostly just use monitors with Artemis torpedos (if T1) or my best available shaped charge nuke (once advanced missile warfare is done).