Strategies for Vasari & TEC?

For vasari at the start of the game. I dont think i'll list it all because there's so much to to do.. but here's something. SP game.

- Colonize a second planet as soon as possible (anything will do).
- Build two empire research stations (1 each planet).
- Start researching upgrades for basic metal & crystal "mining" (at least 2/2).
- Research hangars & Repair station when possible (req. two warfare stations)
- Build up defenses to your new planet. Mix of Missile towers/hangars/repair stations.
- Upgrade weapons / missiles / hull & shield regeneration.
- Now comes the tricky decision: Either build capital ship factory or keep on researching empire & warfare technology with the economy both are good in the long run.
- If pirates or your enemy is a problem you might need that capital ship early.
- Keep in mind that the first type of Vasari frigates doesn't cost crystal to make. It alone can provide added defense.
- Sell excess metal/crystal at the black market if you need money.
- Scout for a chokepoint planet that can block an access inside your empire.
- If found: do everything you can to get it.
- If the chokepoint is an asteroid, dont colonize it too soon. You'll need economy so you can quickly fortify it with upgrades/defenses.
- I also like to focus on improving metal & crystal harvesting since it's easy to do with Vasari. At least up to 4/4 (basic & advanced).
- Then back to warfare for a while; upgrade everything you can until you cant.
- If you have enough logistic slots left on these three planets & enough empire research stations it would pay off to research "Trading Post" for extra profit.
- At this point you should have your first capital ship if you didn't earlier.
- When you can research upgrades for Fleet.
- Keep in mind how many research stations you need for next Tier and decide what to get first. Unlocking Vasari cruisers is a good idea but so is getting more minerals.

There

No offense, but I think that is terrible advice even for SP.

The first thing to do is always building a capital ship (the first one is free/costs the resources to build a capital shipyard).
It has the survivability of 10 frigates and the firepower of 4.

Defense buildings that early are a waste too.
Your empire is still small, and your fleet should never be far away.
If there is a threat that can kill your colony before your fleet arrives weak static defenses wont save it.
And the wasted resources! One Hangar costs about twice as much as a light frigate.
That early in the game the investment is simply too steep.
A repair dock is the best defense that early, cause it can repair your fleet while it defends the planet.

I would also strongly advice against researching mining techs that early.
You get a 10% increase of your VERY SMALL resource income for a huge amount of research costs. So instead of 1.5 metal you get 1.65, at the cost of what? 1000 credits, 200 metal and crystal or something?
You would be better adviced spending it on expansion/defense.

No offense taken but that's what i do (in a nutshell) and it works for Me. There's millions of ways to play some are less effective than others. Those that aim for major perfection dont need to follow these in any shape or form as i'm sure they already have adapted their own way of playing.

That list i wrote is not carved in stone either, it's not like you have to go them in that order. I'm not min/maxing my routines for sp. Alot depends on what the AI enemies forces upon me.

Basically for the TEC you want to grab a cap ship ASAP (the exp lost from militia is too valuable) and go straight to the Trade port and spam one per planet, then head to refinery if your early battles go well. But rember, no plan survives first contact with the enemy. After trade port it might be better to get some military technology or spend time fortifying your capital and other major planets. It might even be worth rushing your opponent a bit.

For vasari I've found two routes that work equally well.
1.) Focus on massive expansion and a large and supremely powerful early military - use a kortul as your capital ship as it is simply the biggest tank.

2.)Focus on holding the amount of worlds you deem neccessary and run up the tech tree to returning armada using the smallest defense force possible. Enlist your ally/allies to help you defend if possible.

3.) Use a similar strategy to #1 but work with imperial labs to boost your economy - it may be necessary to balance the approaches of massive military build up and quick tech to prevail in some scenarios, seeing as teching to returning armada takes lots of resources and some maps don't allow the time for it.

Maybe we could make this the Good Idea/ Bad Idea thread.

I just got the game yesterday. After a little random sampling, I decided to learn the game playing as TEC, because the descriptions of equipment seemed more relevant, and I decided to learn by playing Point Blank, since it seemed very simple and very combat-oriented.

The first two games were long, tedious struggles that had the enemy whittling me down as I kept expanding, buying stuff which would then get destroyed again, and falling back. At first I didn't even know how to build a capital ship. Then when I saw how tough they were, I started building ALL cap ships, trying to find the right combo to let me spread my rule with impunity. I would always spend a lot of time and resources building up more cap ships and colonizing asteriods, only to lose it all to the next wave of pirates or an enemy action my cap ships couldn't reach in time.

Then this morning, I started a new game. With my first, freebie cap ship (I made it the one with the Raze Planet ability, can't remember what it's called,) I sent it across to the enemy homeworld, did a little dammage then retreated. Cranked out about ten LRM frigates while basking in the healing glow of my repair platforms, bought a couple of levels, and went back for more.

Eventually, I seized their homeworld. Learning from something someone had said in this forum, I made it my mission to chase down the enemy, matching the jump-for-jump. It turns out I spent a lot more time developing my captured planets than I needed to. I learned that in a ring-shaped universe, it is trivially easy to wipe out the enemy once you have the upper hand in terms of fleet size. In fact, the only way to lose is to spend way too much time consolidating your forces and allowing the enemy to do the same, when the AI knows more tricks than you.

So basically, here's what I've learned so far about playing as TEC:

GOOD IDEAS:
-Building your one free Capital Ship right away, as soon as you develop your planet.
-Backing it up with some figates.
-Building a repair platform or two near your homeworld, or at any planet you hope to use as a staging area. It makes a great place for a dammaged Cap Ship to fall back to, and the AI doesn't seem to understand the tactical advantage you have there.

BAD IDEAS:
-Building tons of planetary defense early.
-Trying to go all-Caps.
-Sinking tons of money into tech wne you could just as easily go wipe them out now with brute force.
-Building on asteroids. There's just no future to it. Whatever you build will get destroyed by pirates in the next five minutes anyway. I haven't crunched the numbers and I'm not likely to, but it seems to me if you can't protect it, you shouldn't build it.

Spread yourself too thin in a game like Point Blank and you'll just make yourself crazy trying to put out all the fires. Yet, at the same time, you can't let the enemy have those planets. The most effective thing I've found so far is to protect the most valueable planets and don't build anywhere else. Drive your main armada around wiping out the enemy. If the planet's a keeper, colonize it but build defenses. And keep in mind that the defenses are really just there to buy you some time to recall your fleet. They won't actually defeat the threat for you.

That's what I think I know about playing as TEC. What areas can I still improve upon?

number 2 is the dominant way to win ffa's and the like even on small-medium maps.
you only need 3-4 planets(not dead asteroids or the like) to successfully get returning armada/have and have enough logistic slots for a few media hubs and 2-3 military labs.

I must admit that from the start I was playing Vasari and I stunk. Then I moved to TEC and found it far easier. And lately I've been trying Advent and kicking butt.

For TEC getting trade stations early helped, it was all just managing production after that. I have no useful advice on Vasari though, they seem incredibly weak until you can tech up to phase gates and then build them all over the place.

WarpZone, do you really just constantly move your fleets from well to well? Aren't they always at zero antimatter after all that? I guess if you aren't teching then it doesn't matter.

oh I was referring to number 2 in skunker's post.

Well i love TEC, the industrial juggernaut style fits me so well, I usually stick to 1v1/2v2/2v2v2 and in these map types you sometimes start relatively close to your enemy. The first thing i do is Cap ship factory>Crystal extractor>Colony frigate>2X scout frigates>the rest of your extractors in your system. The ships should be building as your finish up your extractors.

Marza dreadnought FTW, the dmg this ship can put out is simply fantastic early on. with the Marza and some frigates you should win most even engagements, If your really tricky and have good ship micro take the Sova carrier and go for Embargo, use your scout frigates to see where his cap ship is and go sit in his home planets gravity well, there seems to be an issue with embargo not wearing off though, because lvl 1 steals 40% of the planets income, however with 2 casts you can get it to 80%(but the duration should have expired... it just doesn't) This will allow you to throw down alot more cobalts early on and if things get to hairy in his System you can always run away. I'm usually teching Civic for colonization bonuses, and with embargo on someones home planet long enough i can pay for another cap ship to collect on Militia experience

Vasari get their more advanced forms of ships at Warfare level 1 and iirc the Assailant missile ship gets a dmg mod against capital ship armour, it is a heavy investment early on because of crytal cost but if you can secure an ice planet it's simple enough to maintain. get some of these going and simply target cap ships right from the start(normally i'd say frigate hunt for experience first) a player never wants to lose their capital ship so when he retreats(if he's too late you win) or he also retreats his frigates(again you win) and he will be slow so you can chase and kill. Just don;t get caught with your shields down surrounded by frigates.

I havn't progressed much after that as vasari... never much had the need to yet

So what are the different Cap ships- What do they do?

For me, this strategy has worked good with TEC so far.

It's built around early offense and getting more planets as quickly as possible while having a decent offensive fleet.

Apart from what most people should know to start out with (resource capping, free capital ship building, etc) the main thing to do is research the LRM frigate, you will need a couple of military posts for this.

Once you have them learned pump out as many as you can afford at the time. Then group them together with your free capital ship (normally most people pick the cap ship with the colonize ability).

After this is done this should be your main fleet you use to take over other planets. The LRM frigates have excellent range and the AI for the most part will use this and stay back far away from what ships can usually hit them at.

Remember to up the pop at each new planet you get at and pop a trade route down and then as you get the resources you can research/build what you want.

This is just a simple offensive geared planet hopping strategy that I've used a few games and it's worked me well.

I played my first MP game last night, but even though it didn't finish (host quit then the others ) this strategy worked great for me and with the LRM/Cap ship + a few siege frigates I was winning a lot of battles against the other players.

The capital ships for all factions follow the same format

The far left capital ship is your direct-combat battleship. Big guns, little support, most of its attacks are either directed at MOAR DAKKA or "tanking" (like the Vasari battleship, which has an ability to make all enemies in a radius attack it...VERY useful for pirates around terran/desert worlds who like to pick off your frigates in early-game)

The second-left capital ship is your carrier. A carrier with big guns, however, and more than capable of stomping down a pirate raid by itself.

The middle capital ship is your colonization/support cruiser. These usually have abilities that either boost the attack power/accuracy/whatever of your surrounding ships, and can also colonize planets, making them a great pick as your first capital ship.

The second to the right capital ship is your "Planet Killer" capital ship. It always has at least one ability designed to annihilate planets faster.

The far-right capital ship is your support cruiser. It has a lot of unique abilities for boosting your fleets attack power, etc.

Yep. The tactic I randomly tried that ended up carying me through to my first two wins was Marza +LRM, a combo I noticed two other people have suggested, but not in the same post.

I like the Marza because it can nuke planets faster witht he Raze Planets ability. Especially if you get it up to level 5 before you hit the enemy's homeworld. I think building a seperate colony ship isn't too high of a price to pay. I might think otherwise if it were an open map with lots of crossroads.

Gauss turrets seem surprisingly effective as defenses. You can plant them all close together in a circle between your planet and the jump-in points, and enemy ships will practically seek them out. Drop a couple of repair platforms in the middle, and you've got the isnpiration for a subversive sea shanty. Certianly in a multiplayer game, fleets would circle around, which would mean you'd need 8 equidistant gauss turrets centered around the planet to have any effect at all, and only one or two turrets would actually be able to fire.

I don't know why AI ships don't circle around back looking for a weak point, especially since no gauss turret can be built out on the edge of the gravity well. In mid-to-late game, of course, pirates and enemy fleets are strong enough to wade right through the turrets, at which point there IS no defense, but I've noticed that my first couple of long games only went long because I was mis-managing my empire.

Basically it looks like the Uber tactic with TEC is to nuke enemy worlds as quickly as possible.

I just finished up another game, this time Quick Strike, which is a little larger and moew sprawling than Point Blank. I picked up a couple of new concepts, this time around. The scout frigates exist for a reason, you can send them out ahead of you to map out the 'verse, and this becomes incredibly useful for at least knowing where the good planets are.

Also, it turns out that those crappy little asteroids are perfectly defensible, IF you own a well-fortified planet on the other end of all its jump routes. I could easily immagine choke points or long chains of asteriods being reasonably protected from the AI, as long as your defenses are in the right place and the game doesn't run long.

It's curious that the AI avoids the defenses late in the game and tries to destroy them early in the game when it's weak. My guess is it's trying to remove the nearest turret first, to reduce the ammount of dammage it takes from defenses during the course of the seige. Good idea if the planet is surrounded by turrets. If the turrets are just built in a cluster, though, and backed up by healers, attacking a turret is the stupidest thing you could possibly do. U FAIL AT TRUING!

I'll have to try that trade route thing some time. No doubt Influence and economics become more important in a drawn-out game. I plan on working my way through the maps one by one, just to get a feel for different tactics before moving on to random maps and going after all the crazy achievements.

Overall I gotta say this is a pretty cool game. I really hated my first couple of games, it felt like work and nothing ever seemed to pay off, but like any asymetrical war game, the more I understand the different units, the easier and more interesting the game becomes.

So if there are few worlds and you want to clear out your opponents expansion, going for the Tank Capitol ship is the way to go, or the planet killing one. If there are several planets around the place, regardless of being Vasari or Advent (both are rather specialized in their need for resources) you're going to go for the colony ship, and if you really are going for something interesting, go for the cruiser. The way I see it the epic-assist one is more for later game/middle game. Am I right? Also, does anyone know who has the best of the category? Or if their all balanced so there is no "best" Capitol Cruiser/tank/assister/colonizer/planet killer, just better in different areas?

One last thing, as far as frigates go, can Vasari upgrade them early? TEC get an "upgrade", so I'm just wondering.

And before I forget. Advent T.2 Culture, TEC T.2 Trading Centers, Vasari T.2... Pirate defense? What do they get? Or is it that their T.1 is better, or their T.3 is better, or what :-/

Advent get Culture spreading at T.2(harmony) TEC get Trade posts at T2(Civic) and Vasari get Advanced ships at T.1(Warfare)

Honestly i would never in 1 billion years take the Colonize capital ship unless i were on a map with more then 60 planets. iirc it moves slower then every other capital ship in the game because the logic was that all colony vessels have to travel slower then their counterparts. Like colony frigates moving slower then light frigates.(in the beta it moved 100 seed slower then other capital ships) and in combat Speed is life, my game play revolves around winning engagements and if i do ever have the need to run from a fight a ship that goes slower is more time i have to spend running. Personally i think it's a waste as your first capital ship, take something combat oriented, especially as TEC with marza/LRM's that way you only need focus on Missile tech's for the most part instead of lasers, Auto cannons and missiles

When I play TEC (which I usually do) I always get an Akkan battlecruiser first thing and give it the colonise ability. That way I dont have to waste time or money making colony ships in the early game. Then I'll keep adding LRMs and basic frigates to that fleet until I've got several worlds (I tend to expand very rapidly).

After that any world that I deem to be 'Front line' IE: not just linked to my worlds, gets a fleet of ships within one jump of it at all times. Any world that isn't front line gets a trade center. From there I'll take 'sections' of the map, moving rapidly from one of my front line worlds annihilating everything until I reach another front line world. That makes it easier to defend my newly acquired worlds as I develop them. Rinse and repeat, make sure that your front line worlds ar always one jump away from a fleet at most, or better if you can afford it.

So early up would a Capitol Cruiser or Tank be better?

I'm not sure if it's the same for the other two races, but the BIG advantage to the Advent colonize cap ship is the cost reduction in planetary improvements. THIS IS HUGE.

Why spend 700+ credits on building, and even more on researching, trade stations early, for a measely +1c/s when you can just upgrade your planets for nothing, giving you... alot more than +1c/s anyway. You have to upgrade your planets anyway, since the running cost starts negative. At early in a game, you defenitely want this as cheap as possible. 40% reduction is easy to get. 60% attainable still early in the game.

Unless you are rushing the enemy I see no reason as to why you wouldn't start with a colonize cap ship (if the other two races get the bonus too).

NOTE:
Although it appears to be buggy. The first minute after a planet cap, the improvements appeared to be just as high as normal. When I checked back a minute later it was at it's proper LOW cost. Like 250 cash 20 metal 50 crystal or something for a pop upgrade, instead of 550+ etc.
Not sure if the colonize cap ship ability bonuses stacks with advent explore planet ability, but if it does you could have planets up and running in notime for a minimal investment and also have them fully explored.

All the colonize caps have that I believe. TEC certainly does. I usually go five lights, one colony, then extractors, cap factory, then the colony battlecruiser for TEC. This allows me to get my lights and colony out to colonize asteroids (they usually can't take the welcoming party at planets) and let my cap capture the planets

I understand what BRN is saying about the colony caps, but the tec one has the disabling special to keep ships from running away, as well as accuracy increase for ships around it. Advent colony has the shield recharge which is a must have with them(off topic). No clue what the vasari one has that makes it worthwhile, but I don't remember using it for much.

I never take the colonise ability up past the first level with tec. I hate wasting a perfectly good anchoring ability.

Well, a lot of ideas floating around here.

I tend to play as the Vasari. My basic strategy depends on the planet configuration, but when I want to have more of a fun beginning, I create a cap ship asap along with a couple support ships for it and then I harass the crap out of the enemy.

I find it engaging and if all works out, in the long run I have a high level cap ship and the AI's economy is flagging behind mine. It's a bit risky, though and pirates can make things even more difficult. Then again, that's what I like about this game . . . so many options.

Vasari Colonizer has gravity bomb which slows down enemy and prevents them from jumping, it drops armor of enemy ships and does damage over time and it can drain planet for resources/credits. So yes, its very important ship Usually second or third cap ship i build in the game. Order of building usually: Tank, Carrier, Colonizer. This gives strong offense, colonize ability, repair and decent fighter cover.

The vasari gravity bomb would be awesome if it was more than twelve seconds. The nanites ability is incredible though; -5 armor and damage over time.

Vasari Colony ship is better than the other colony ships because the Vasari scout has the asteroid inhabitating ability. With the Cap and the scout, you don't ever have to build a Col frig. Oh, and the Vasari Egg is awesome
My usual start is 3-4x scouts(depending on start), and then a egg, followed by a trickle of combat frigs which bolster the cap's fleet as they are available. I go for 2x Imperial lab for the colony techs, and don't get advanced military labs until I have 3 planets, at which point I'll take repair cruisers as soon as I can. Sometimes, I will take Assailants if I can't wait for the cruisers...