Dantin

Join Date 09/2009

Choice of a race

and a couple of other questions

I am wondering which race would fit my playstyle better and could use advice of more experienced players. Generally I tend to do one of the two: having mobile fleet to harras the enemy, striking where he's unprepared or focus on my own defenses at the choke points of my empire. Or mix of the two. My question is: which race would be more fitting to my playstyle? Vasari Loyalists seem to be highly mobile (especially with proper capital ships) and have technologies that allow them to see incoming fleets even a few jumps away, gates for switch redeployment and mobile rulership that I like. The other race I am considering is TEC Rebels. They can call for pirate aid via broadcast centers (I am not sure if it works when the Pirates are inactive/dead though) and seems to be especially potent when attacking worlds themselves (better planetary bombardments and pirate raids that earns you money).

Things I am not certain about:

- Any hints regarding fleet composition? More often than not my fleet gets massacred by enemy warships. I don't really get which of my units should counter which enemy unit. There are some notes, but I seem to do something wrong. To give an example: I make Vasari Ravastra Skirmisher as frontline unit, one capital ship, some Vasari Kanrak Assailant and then I add a few ships of later designs. Point is my fleet seems to be annihilated by Long Range Frigates and counter for them is - if I am not mistaken - heavy cruiser, but Vasari Skavoras Enforcer is quite late. Will Vasari Lansurak Transporter be better? What kind of unit I should use as frontline unit of the fleet in bigger numbers?

- Capital ships and cruisers: I realized it's easier to get to capital ships (especially the first one) than cruisers (especially the later ones). Is that correct? It seems kind of strange to have 1-2 capitals ships yet no heavy cruiser operational. Another problem is that ships (all of them) are really expensive and I have some trouble while trying to balance expansion, upgrades and fleet size. Lost of an entire fleet (save for capitals) is really hurting.

- How to destroy mine fields? I made a stupid mistake and jumped straight into enemy system with no recon. Almost entire fleet has been lost, only a handful of ships made it out of there alive (capitals, titan two or three cruisers). There must be a way to clear minefields, but sadly I've no idea at this point of learning the game.

- Siege Frigates seems to be really weak and doesn't survive any space encounter, even when accompanying the bulk of the force. They are aslo very slow, making them rather poor harrasment unit. I wonder about coupling it with some other ships that could speed them up, with some anti-aircraft carriers against hangar aircrafts and some ships for protection.

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Vasari in general are best for mobility....try them out, they are fun...phase stabilizers allow you to jump between any of your planets in one jump, and kosturas allow you to jump to any enemy planet in one jump....lots and lots of fun...

General counter system:

Light Frigates, or LFs (cobalts, disciples, skirmishers) are countered by Long Range Frigates, or LRFs (LRMs, illuminators, kanraks), which are countered by corvettes, which are countered by flak ships (gardas, defense vessels, sentinels), which are countered by LFs...

To reiterate, flak -> corvette -> LRF -> LF -> flak...

All 4 of those units are beaten by Heavy Cruisers, or HCs (kodiak, destra, enforcer), which are countered by bombers, which are countered by fighters and corvettes, which are countered by flak...

To reiterate, flak -> corvette/fighter squadron -> bomber squadron -> HC -> flak/LF/LRF...

Note that while HCs may beat all those frigates, they aren't as good as the proper counter and have other disadvantages (mainly susceptibility to bombers)....for example, HCs may beat LFs, but LRFs would beat LFs better....

There is one important exception, to the above general counters, and that is that illuminators WILL NOT be counteredy be corvettes once the illuminators have sufficient numbers (this is due to the fact that illuminators shoot on 3 sides)...you will have to use HCs or fighters to kill large amounts of illuminators....

Before titans, don't get lots of capital ships unless you are Vasari Loyalists...XP is distributed amongst all caps, so you'll never get high level caps if you have lots of them...also, caps don't produce a lot of firepower, so large frigate fleets willl destroy them...you want caps to support your fleet, not be your fleet...once titans come out things change, you tend to see fleet of either HCs+fighters or LRFs+flak+bombers...people tend to go for more caps wants titans exist...

Destroy mine fields by using scouts....scouts have a passive ability that reveals all mines within a certain range....move the scout closer to the mines to reveal them, then any ship can shoot the mines...

Siege frigates are meant to speed up the bombing process after you've already destroyed the enemy fleet defending....

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Vasari are nice.. but learning how to play them is a little more of a struggle compared to other races.

Excellent post from Seleuceia. Cap ships are important if you can get them to a high enough level. All 3 Expansion captials have good uses.. The advent one less so. Unless you use it's ability well with another cap ship. It takes the level of a destroyed capital ship and transfers it to yours.

Akkan has a nice escape ability.. but can just be annoying :]

The egg.. i don't remember the name.. (vas) is the best l6 ability imo for pushing, it'll nearly destroy a roid at level 1 and give you res.

Ships you really want at l6 is the Marza.. it rapes..

The corsev high level is also rapage.. but i really like the radiance, cleansing brilliance works soooooooo well if used correctly and your enemy doesnt notice.. works well with fracture and psychic scream from the discord.

If you want, i would say clever play, or high skill high reward, advent is the faction for you, only because they are awesome if you can pull off the micro with a good fleet, advent's fleet is also the best synergistic fleet. Things fit together nicely and compliment each other.

Ima put an advent guide together soon.. just cba right now..

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First of all - thank you guys for answering. It's a good read.

Destroy mine fields by using scouts....scouts have a passive ability that reveals all mines within a certain range....move the scout closer to the mines to reveal them, then any ship can shoot the mines...

I thought more along the line of minesweeper or another specialized vehicle which can disarm mines. I'd go around the mines (or below/above them), but sometimes they're placed very close to enemy's structures and they need to be cleared out before the fleet can proceed.

I think I'll go with Vasari. I have a few ideas how to play them. A few question though:

- When colonizing is it better to colonize fewer worlds and upgrade infrastructure to the full before colonizing more or take more worlds as fast as possible?

- When colonizing is it better to target fewer more valueable planets (with more minerals) regardless of distance between them (let's say two jumps away) or take all possible colonies which are as close as possible for better integrity of your empire?

I have a few ideas thinking over it (for example: I plan to set minefields not in my home systems, but in "colonizable" ones he'll have to pass by, where the enemy won't expect a surprise). I think Asteroids are best as defense worlds and can be colonized even two jumps away from my empire, research of cheaper structures sustaining the planets against orbital bombardment should do the trick to allow the base survive for as long as it's needed for the fleet to arrive. After I research gateways that'll allow me to jump from gate to gate distance shouldn't be a problem anymore.

Ice, Volcanic and Terran worlds should be best for colonization as they can be upgraded with more slots and populace boost, allowing to get me more income. They also seem to hold more resources more often than not.

I also wonder about starting fleet. Should I create capital ship as soon as possible? Or save the money to expand faster or get bigger fleet (to expand faster)? Is it better to colonize more worlds to build more research centers or upgrade slots at the homeworld to get labs there?

I'd like to see your opinion on the matter.

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Colonization takes lots and lots of practice...good players will colonize on two fronts...on random maps, you generally have an asteroid and moon by your HW, and those should be colonized first....send your colony cap to one of those planets, and 2 LFs+scout+colony frigate to the other....colony caps generally are used to grab planets with larger militias...

The two things that guide your colonization are location and militia counts, not necessarily the quality of the planet...planets with small militias are good targets, and generally you want to be expanding towards your enemy to get chokepoints....

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What? Am i reading that mines are invisible and you need scouts for reveal them?

I might swear i´ve seen enemy mines without scouts

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Noooooo, misunderstanding....

Mines are "visible" in that you can see them, but they will be in "phase" space so you can't actually shoot at them....scout ships have a passive AoE that takes nearby mines out of "phase" space and puts them into "normal" space, allowing anything with weapons to shoot them....

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