Cap Ship Army vs Cruisers/Frigates

from Sins Forums

As I said in another post, I just bought this game last week and I have been trying to get my head around all of the strategies.  A friend of mine bought it also and we have been discussing our recent single player experiences.  He has been creating a lot of Cap Ship only fleets and using those.  While I have been using my cap ships more as like the hero guys in Warcraft III, like a special unit that augments a fleet of normal ships.  I have also been reading some of those war stories and it seems others have been creating this cap ship exclusive armies as well.

What is the reasoning for this?  Is this a common strategy?  To people do it just to avoid until the end game increasing their fleet size because of the resource cost?  Is it really more bang for your buck to have 2 cap ships in the beginning instead of 1 cap ship and a bunch of frigates when taking early planets?  Thanks for any information, this seems like a cool community and the game is awesome!

8,217 views 6 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top

I think it just depends on your play style.  Some players can use the abilities on capitol ships ver well.  I'm not that good and reinforce my fleets with cruisers.  I find frigates don't last long at all in pitched fleet battles.  I also find that hard and unfair AI's increase their fleet supply to the max of 2000 or just one level below.  These fleets are usually too large to take on with just caps.

I usually build the 16 max caps, split them into two fleets 6 and 10, first for defense and second for offense.  The defense fleet is usually just caps, because they are supporting structures, usually star bases.  These caps are the support ships like the Dunov for the shield restore, and a Marza at level 6 for it's missile barrage.

My offensive fleet usually has 3 Marzas, 4 Kols, 2 Dunovs, and an Akkan.  I flesh this out with 40-50 carriers, a couple dozen heavy cruisers and about six each of the robotics cruiser and the comand cruiser.  BTW, I play TEC exclusively.

At the beggining I build one capitol ship, a colony frigate, two scouts and fill the rest in with light or lrm frigates.

Hope this helps some.

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

Yeah that makes sense.  I guess I need to crank up the difficulty to know what you are talking about.  On Normal I manage to run around with like 2 or 3 cap ships and 30ish ships and that has never lost me a battle.  Most of the time it is less.

I'm also super bad at micromanaging battles.  I get nervous when I have been watching ships attack because I am not tending my construction/research enough.

Star Control: Origins
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top

If you play online, it is rare to see much more then 3 caps in a game as

1) The cost

2) Caps go down to focus fire

3) The exp gets split amongst them so it is hard to get  high level cap (see point 2 - higher lvl ships last longer)

Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top

 

 

Against good competition (read as "real human opponents and not feckless AI), a capital ships-only fleet would get squashed.

Suppose that you could have 800 fleet supply of any ships you wanted.  Would you rather have, say, 133 Vasari Assailant LRMs or 16 Level 10 Evacuators to nanite them?  The Assailants would demolsh the capital ship fleet.

Even a fleet of 16 Level 10 Marzas that could missile barrage would probably fall to a fleet of 800 supply's worth of carriers with bombers.  The carriers would just keep away from the Marzas.

Basically, capital ships have utility value for your fleet.  They can colonize, bomb planets, and sometimes do other things (shield restore, nanite enemy ships, heal, repel strikecraft).  It can be very dangerous to them to bring them into large battles simply because they are large and expensive targets and large enemy fleets would like nothing more than to focus fire on them.  Ironically, it's somewhat harder to use them later in the game than eariler for that reason; they're more useful against small fleets where they aren't in as much danger.

Anyway, come play the game in online multiplayer and you can learn more about these issues first hand.  You'll also get to enjoy more challenging competition, having human allies, and perhaps making friends and the camraderie of other poeple.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top

I don't play online.  I'm not dissing it, or anything, it's just not my cup of tea.  Everything I said in the previous post was for games against the AI.  Against the AI, I'd rather have more abilities with my caps than more frigates.  I don't think the AI prioritizes its target ships, as in an lrm frigate has the same priority as a level 8 capitol ship.  I haven't seen anything in game play that suggests other wise.  I do know that once I take the enemy's caps down, his fleet falls apart pretty quick. 

Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top

simple spamming of cap ships doesnt work,they need at least the repair's support,then they'd better have some carriers with fighters to shoot bombers and enemy long range frigs.also better will be to add flak frigats support,and to guard all the support you need long range frigs. - this is just to not lose them to tech 1-2-3 fleet....if enemy brings hes own support/disrupt and cruisers you have to build a task force of light frigates + more carriers,with bombers this time, + heavy cruisers just for any case...

 

now,all this can make capital ship worthless (:because the only exclusive role of capital ship is an armored planet bomber.

that huge fleet ofcourse will be effective without capital ship,but then - you use capship abilities to boost fleet effectivness.

This is the idea of fleet warfare in short :D