Post by acecow on Jul 18, 2016 9:41:36 GMT -5
Welcome to dry dock.
"Listen up scrubs! You're all here for one thing and one thing only! You can't even make a simple ship out of Legos much less one of these top-o-the-line Mesa Hawk Fighters! So I'm gonna teach you and you better listen cause I'm only going to say it once.Of course reading's a different matter. So here's the basics. You guys work in this here factory, but somewhere up there some mastermind is putting together all the plans and blueprints to make sure that our butts don't get fried by some stinkin' Xenos! So all you gotta do is put these things together exactly how you read them, I don't care if there's no torps on them, I don't care if they're missing close in defenses, you just build 'em how you see 'em and leave the planning to the smarts! Understood?!"
Greetings Commander,
While there may be times indeed where you wish to forego torpedoes or CID, let's try to make sure that those times are with purpose and not because you didn't quite understand them or simply forgot them. As our fearless leader, our commander-in-chief, top researcher, and sector's founder, you have the voice of decision amongst our often quarrelsome factions. Please, don't squander this opportunity. Let's begin then.
Purpose
I'm creating this thread to hopefully consolidate a lot of information about ship in ST4XE. I've got mechanics to cover, research, tactics, ship models/builds, and some other theory that I'd like to put in here. Hopefully, I can get links to all the places that I've found this information and I may end up copy/pasting/quoting a lot too. I'm unsure of the title Fleet Building 101, while I do want this to be a primer (hence the 101) in my head it was more focused upon the research, theory, and other foundation work of building our ships. But here we go.
Basics
"Commander, you're running an empire here, not a hobby store. Your little ships costs us $30 million, not $30...don't make any mistakes please."
Every ship is precious, our Templar escorts included. In fact, I'd say that little Exo-Scout is one of our most prized possessions early-game, don't lose it! Ships are great, but there's one purpose, and one purpose only, in spacing a fleet beyond our first three ships. Eradicating the Xeno threat. We don't need to police our quadrant for pirates, we don't need to parade our fleet to show off our power, all we need is some guns and missiles to burn those Xenos to the ground. So what does that mean?
Upkeep
Ships cost money both upfront and every turn after. Some of these can be stupidly expensive at the beginning of the game. (Hello $100/turn maintenance vs my $200/turn income, oh I have 5 of you? Hahaha, who needs money to run an empire?) At the beginning of the game, you're more than likely equipped for everything with just your little Templar fleet. I haven't yet played on difficulties higher than hard, however, so YMMV, my assumption though, is that you simply won't be able to afford the resources on the ships anyway. So, beyond building some colony ships you probably will not have a fleet larger than 3 or maybe 5 at the beginning. Templar ships are nice and cheap for us to maintain (damned Templar magic that they won't share with us), and will be plenty enough in the early months.
So how can we keep our maintenance rates down? One, you can design your ships to be specialized or just make them lighter/less powerful. Ship modules are the #1 thing that affects ship maintenance rates. Beyond this, follow the chart which comes from this thread.
- Being damaged
- Being out of fuel
- Being in the red zone
- Being in the yellow zone
- Being in an alliance (good)
- Being in a trade embargo (bad)
- Using a fast reactor (bad)
- Using a heavy reactor (good)
- Playing on difficulties higher than "Normal"
As you can see, only two things will reduce the cost of your ships' maintenance rates below normal (okay maybe 3): positive politics: alliance, using a heavy reactor, and playing on Easy, I'm assuming. Everything else listed will hinder your costs. Because you can't get to heavy reactors until mid-late game unless you rush them (and only for certain ships), and reliably getting alliances is difficult as well until later, the best way early on is to simply space a smaller fleet until you have the infrastructure to back it up.
Speaking of modules:
Research
There are two primary branches of the research tree, planetary development and what I call "ship modules." Beyond Easy or Normal difficulty, you'll need to balance these two in order to win or even survive sometimes. The part we want to focus on (ship development) is the top half, though there is the one branch in the center (leading to the Cadar-specific and awesome Torpedo Crit Strike) and there are a 2-3 various mods in the lower planetary development branch as well.
Side note: There are also Planetary Space Port 2 and 3 mods (and 4 way at the end) in the planetary development part of the tree as well. Those are quite nice, and personally, I tend to rush those in my games, but YMMV.
So the biggest thing we're looking for are those nice little ship icons with the green '+' symbol. These research unlocks give us new ship designs with which we can blast those Xenos to bits. The first one is our Transport Craft, this is probably our most important ship. It's the heart of our infrastructure and the heart of our warfleet. Transports are able to colonize new planets and/or invade Xeno planets. Granted, you won't get Invasion capabilities until you research Planetary Invasion 1.
Anyway, all this to say that without researching proper ship designs, modules, and techniques, we're gonna be sitting blind and on our butts waiting to get rained upon by those Xeno. Put your scientists to use, sir!
Ship Designs
Seguing nicely into our next point, let's talk about all those nice ships that we're going to research. Right off the bat, we can only build one type of ship. I'll list the stock designs and stats if they're available and also the hull "outline," which mods it supports. (Side note: I've never understood why the weapons are an "or" factor, you can choose to have both. Armor, on the other hand, is limited to one type.) (Additional note: one of the '+' symbols doesn't actually give a ship, rather it gives a very important ability, "Planetary Invasion." I'm unsure if the '+' was an oversight or intentional, either way, we need to research this to win.)
Strike Fighter
Stats: AP 1 | MP 4 | Hull 106 | Fuel 48
Costs: 19 cp + $116; Maint $31/turn
Fighter Outline
Weapon: Light Gun and Close In Defense
Armor: Plating or Cladding
Upgrade: Propulsion and Crew
Colony Ship
Stats: AP 2 | MP 3 | Hull 137 | Fuel 34
Costs: 24 cp + $150; Maint $47/turn
Transport Outline
Weapon: Lance and Invasion
Armor: Cladding or Barriers
Upgrade: Orbital and Troops
Wolf Cruiser
Stats: AP 2 | MP 3 | Hull 192 | Fuel 82
Costs: 55 cp + $430; Maint $85/Turn
Cruiser Outline
Weapon: Railgun and Torpedoes
Armor: Plating or Armored Hull
Upgrade: Propulsion and Prow
Assault Fighter
Stats: AP 2 | MP 3 | Hull 106 | Fuel 48
Costs: 33 cp + $204; Maint $56/Turn
Assault Fighter Outline
Weapon: Boarding and Close In Defense
Armor: Plating or Cladding
Upgrade: Propulsion only
Paladin Carrier
Stats: AP 3 | MP 3 | Hull 220 | Fuel 102
Costs: 73 cp + $557; Maint $112/Turn
Carrier Outline
Weapon: Lance and Torpedoes
Armor: Armored Hull or Barriers
Upgrade: Bridge and Bays
Solar Exo-Scout
Stats: AP 1 | MP 4 | Hull 122 | Fuel 68
Costs: 47 cp + $622; Maint $108/Turn
Uses Fighter Outline
Heavy Carrier
Stats:
Costs:
Heavy Carrier Outline
Weapon: Plasma Cannon and Shuttle
Armor: Armored Hull or Barriers
Upgrade: Structure and Bays
In terms of actual ship designs, there's a couple of threads out there already, but hopefully our good friend tenbsmith can put together a nice thread that I can link to.
Modules
Let's talk about some theory now. A ship is only the sum of its parts. These parts are modules as I called them before, the building blocks of your ships. We've got all sorts of things: weapons, armors, defenses, crews, bridges, etc... but a ship can only hold so many parts. Each ship is made up of 3-5 parts at most. You can have 1-2 weapons, 1 type of armor and 1-2 upgrades in a ship. Ahh, there's also reactors and ship design levels, and then captain and ship skills (with these two not being modular). So 5-7 modules, plus skill points make up a ship. Let's break this down some.
Weapons
Weapon Modules are what we use to put some hurt onto those Xenos. Without weapons, we've just got a hunk of metal that can move around. Pretty useless.In no situation would I make a ship without a weapon (maybe...maaaaybe on a Colony Ship, but probably only if I'm colonizing in my own space?), (Edit: I actually found out you literally can't make a ship without a weapon.) I might make ships without two weapons, but at least one is a necessity. We're in a war here, commander, don't be dumb. If those little cargo transports or cruise liners want to make defenseless vessels, by all means let them get robbed or destroyed, but we're trying to burn some Xenos here. In terms of weapons, there's all sorts, just remember, the type of ship determines the modules going into it. So that means, unfortunately, no fighters with Guns and Torps (barring Alta Mesa's master shipwrightery). This isn't all bad though, it's easy enough to work around, and for the most part you'll probably specialize your ships to one weapon or the other, so you wouldn't be missing out on too much.
One thing to point out, though, is counter-attacking. Any ship will counter with the first attack that you equip it with (this is on the "Training" section of our ship designer). These attacks cost water-fuel (except your basic Gun Barrage) and some are more accurate or hit harder than others. Attacks can only come from the equipped weapons, sometimes you may find it useful to equip a cheap gun just so you can possibly counter-attack for free.
Ex: Let's equip a Strike Fighter with a Valiant Autocannon under step 4 of our designer, the "Weapon" step. Now, let's move ahead to step 7, "Training," to assign what attacks or other things we want our Strike Fighter to have. If we've correctly selected our weapon, then we'll get a few options: Gun Barrage, Heavy Barrage, etc... Here's the thing to note. What you place in the FIRST "Training" slot will be what your ship attempts to counter-attack with. Thus, if you're making a gun/close-range focused ship but also put torps on it, make sure you put a 1-range attack there, and vice-versa. If not, you'll be attacking with whichever you're not specialized in and will be less likely to hit. Normally, I'll put my basic Gun Barrage in the first slot, it doesn't take any water-fuel, thus I can always have the option to counter-attack, even if I'm low on fuel. However, sometimes you may want to put a Precision Barrage, or even a Heavy Barrage if you feel like it's worth it. (It works for the Templars...kind of.)
Additionally: here's a short-explanation.
Whew! Long example. Let's talk a little more theory.
Weapon Specialization - I mentioned this above and before. It's almost always better to specialize your ships. Why? One, it potentially reduces costs OR it allows you to spend the same cash on better modules. Two, you'll have better hit/crit ratios if you're only focusing on close-range or torp-range. Third, it allows you to use more of the great skins! Okay, the last one isn't really important, but you should totally buy the skin packs! And you can even get them for free through Google Play Rewards (if you're on Android), check out the thread here. So what do we do? Well, initially, not much. Our fighters can only be equipped with guns, so we'll probably just go with torpedo cruisers. As we continue to develop our tech and expand our empire, though, we'll be able to make gun cruisers, ECM fighters, refuel carriers and torp carriers and...yeah, idk, I actually haven't gotten that far myself, haha. Anyway, try to specialize your ships, spread them out amongst your factions, and build away (Please though, within your budget, don't go overboard, fighters don't need the most up-to-date tech every day.)
Boarding - In the first branch that extends upward, the 2nd from the top (or the first one with the green '+') is "Fighters 3" research. This unlocks the Assault Fighter, a very important ship for difficulties higher than normal (I'm sure they're useful on normal and easy as well). But the ship isn't useful without something else that's unlocked, Boarding 1. This is the only debuff in the game AFAIK. It's very powerful too. It reduces the targets defense AND damage. (Albeit, the damage reduction is a low, but still...) This is primarily useful for those pesky World Killers that come charging through your front lines. However, I've found that they're beautiful for everything, because...honestly, the attack so little water-fuel that you can use it on everything! This thing also does damage based on what type of Boarding Pods you have as well. Not bad! There's one more level of Boarding, waaaaay towards the end, under "Material Weaponization 1" (it's at the end of a double branch that extends upward, go to the far right, it starts from the research just to the left of the Strike Cruiser's '+').
Some specific weapons to look for:
VM Whirlwind Mark II - If you're playing Elite, this is under "Fighters 3" (the very first branch the extends upward right before the Alta Mesa-only research). This thing is AMAZING. It only uses 1 AP/attack and hits for 12-22 WITH a +2 ATK and +1 DEF. The damage is great for the early game, the stats are pretty good too, but most importantly, because it only takes 1 AP, you can equip a 2 AP reactor and hit twice with this thing, putting your potential damage at 24-44/turn (not counting counter-attacks). It costs a bit more cp and $, but it's also lighter than some of the other options, it makes it great to pair with Blackrock System CID (located under "Space Colonization 3", an Elite-only research option in the first bottom extending Engineering branch).
Armors
I'll use the broad categories from the ship outlines. So here we've got plating, cladding, barriers, armored hulls, is that all?
I'm just going to post this as-is...hopefully in order to motivate myself to finish it.
"Listen up scrubs! You're all here for one thing and one thing only! You can't even make a simple ship out of Legos much less one of these top-o-the-line Mesa Hawk Fighters! So I'm gonna teach you and you better listen cause I'm only going to say it once.
Greetings Commander,
While there may be times indeed where you wish to forego torpedoes or CID, let's try to make sure that those times are with purpose and not because you didn't quite understand them or simply forgot them. As our fearless leader, our commander-in-chief, top researcher, and sector's founder, you have the voice of decision amongst our often quarrelsome factions. Please, don't squander this opportunity. Let's begin then.
Purpose
I'm creating this thread to hopefully consolidate a lot of information about ship in ST4XE. I've got mechanics to cover, research, tactics, ship models/builds, and some other theory that I'd like to put in here. Hopefully, I can get links to all the places that I've found this information and I may end up copy/pasting/quoting a lot too. I'm unsure of the title Fleet Building 101, while I do want this to be a primer (hence the 101) in my head it was more focused upon the research, theory, and other foundation work of building our ships. But here we go.
Basics
"Commander, you're running an empire here, not a hobby store. Your little ships costs us $30 million, not $30...don't make any mistakes please."
Every ship is precious, our Templar escorts included. In fact, I'd say that little Exo-Scout is one of our most prized possessions early-game, don't lose it! Ships are great, but there's one purpose, and one purpose only, in spacing a fleet beyond our first three ships. Eradicating the Xeno threat. We don't need to police our quadrant for pirates, we don't need to parade our fleet to show off our power, all we need is some guns and missiles to burn those Xenos to the ground. So what does that mean?
Upkeep
Ships cost money both upfront and every turn after. Some of these can be stupidly expensive at the beginning of the game. (Hello $100/turn maintenance vs my $200/turn income, oh I have 5 of you? Hahaha, who needs money to run an empire?) At the beginning of the game, you're more than likely equipped for everything with just your little Templar fleet. I haven't yet played on difficulties higher than hard, however, so YMMV, my assumption though, is that you simply won't be able to afford the resources on the ships anyway. So, beyond building some colony ships you probably will not have a fleet larger than 3 or maybe 5 at the beginning. Templar ships are nice and cheap for us to maintain (damned Templar magic that they won't share with us), and will be plenty enough in the early months.
So how can we keep our maintenance rates down? One, you can design your ships to be specialized or just make them lighter/less powerful. Ship modules are the #1 thing that affects ship maintenance rates. Beyond this, follow the chart which comes from this thread.
- Being damaged
- Being out of fuel
- Being in the red zone
- Being in the yellow zone
- Being in an alliance (good)
- Being in a trade embargo (bad)
- Using a fast reactor (bad)
- Using a heavy reactor (good)
- Playing on difficulties higher than "Normal"
As you can see, only two things will reduce the cost of your ships' maintenance rates below normal (okay maybe 3): positive politics: alliance, using a heavy reactor, and playing on Easy, I'm assuming. Everything else listed will hinder your costs. Because you can't get to heavy reactors until mid-late game unless you rush them (and only for certain ships), and reliably getting alliances is difficult as well until later, the best way early on is to simply space a smaller fleet until you have the infrastructure to back it up.
Speaking of modules:
Research
There are two primary branches of the research tree, planetary development and what I call "ship modules." Beyond Easy or Normal difficulty, you'll need to balance these two in order to win or even survive sometimes. The part we want to focus on (ship development) is the top half, though there is the one branch in the center (leading to the Cadar-specific and awesome Torpedo Crit Strike) and there are a 2-3 various mods in the lower planetary development branch as well.
Side note: There are also Planetary Space Port 2 and 3 mods (and 4 way at the end) in the planetary development part of the tree as well. Those are quite nice, and personally, I tend to rush those in my games, but YMMV.
So the biggest thing we're looking for are those nice little ship icons with the green '+' symbol. These research unlocks give us new ship designs with which we can blast those Xenos to bits. The first one is our Transport Craft, this is probably our most important ship. It's the heart of our infrastructure and the heart of our warfleet. Transports are able to colonize new planets and/or invade Xeno planets. Granted, you won't get Invasion capabilities until you research Planetary Invasion 1.
Anyway, all this to say that without researching proper ship designs, modules, and techniques, we're gonna be sitting blind and on our butts waiting to get rained upon by those Xeno. Put your scientists to use, sir!
Ship Designs
Seguing nicely into our next point, let's talk about all those nice ships that we're going to research. Right off the bat, we can only build one type of ship. I'll list the stock designs and stats if they're available and also the hull "outline," which mods it supports. (Side note: I've never understood why the weapons are an "or" factor, you can choose to have both. Armor, on the other hand, is limited to one type.) (Additional note: one of the '+' symbols doesn't actually give a ship, rather it gives a very important ability, "Planetary Invasion." I'm unsure if the '+' was an oversight or intentional, either way, we need to research this to win.)
Strike Fighter
Stats: AP 1 | MP 4 | Hull 106 | Fuel 48
Costs: 19 cp + $116; Maint $31/turn
Fighter Outline
Weapon: Light Gun and Close In Defense
Armor: Plating or Cladding
Upgrade: Propulsion and Crew
Colony Ship
Stats: AP 2 | MP 3 | Hull 137 | Fuel 34
Costs: 24 cp + $150; Maint $47/turn
Transport Outline
Weapon: Lance and Invasion
Armor: Cladding or Barriers
Upgrade: Orbital and Troops
Wolf Cruiser
Stats: AP 2 | MP 3 | Hull 192 | Fuel 82
Costs: 55 cp + $430; Maint $85/Turn
Cruiser Outline
Weapon: Railgun and Torpedoes
Armor: Plating or Armored Hull
Upgrade: Propulsion and Prow
Assault Fighter
Stats: AP 2 | MP 3 | Hull 106 | Fuel 48
Costs: 33 cp + $204; Maint $56/Turn
Assault Fighter Outline
Weapon: Boarding and Close In Defense
Armor: Plating or Cladding
Upgrade: Propulsion only
Paladin Carrier
Stats: AP 3 | MP 3 | Hull 220 | Fuel 102
Costs: 73 cp + $557; Maint $112/Turn
Carrier Outline
Weapon: Lance and Torpedoes
Armor: Armored Hull or Barriers
Upgrade: Bridge and Bays
Solar Exo-Scout
Stats: AP 1 | MP 4 | Hull 122 | Fuel 68
Costs: 47 cp + $622; Maint $108/Turn
Uses Fighter Outline
Heavy Carrier
Stats:
Costs:
Heavy Carrier Outline
Weapon: Plasma Cannon and Shuttle
Armor: Armored Hull or Barriers
Upgrade: Structure and Bays
In terms of actual ship designs, there's a couple of threads out there already, but hopefully our good friend tenbsmith can put together a nice thread that I can link to.
Modules
Let's talk about some theory now. A ship is only the sum of its parts. These parts are modules as I called them before, the building blocks of your ships. We've got all sorts of things: weapons, armors, defenses, crews, bridges, etc... but a ship can only hold so many parts. Each ship is made up of 3-5 parts at most. You can have 1-2 weapons, 1 type of armor and 1-2 upgrades in a ship. Ahh, there's also reactors and ship design levels, and then captain and ship skills (with these two not being modular). So 5-7 modules, plus skill points make up a ship. Let's break this down some.
Weapons
Weapon Modules are what we use to put some hurt onto those Xenos. Without weapons, we've just got a hunk of metal that can move around. Pretty useless.
One thing to point out, though, is counter-attacking. Any ship will counter with the first attack that you equip it with (this is on the "Training" section of our ship designer). These attacks cost water-fuel (except your basic Gun Barrage) and some are more accurate or hit harder than others. Attacks can only come from the equipped weapons, sometimes you may find it useful to equip a cheap gun just so you can possibly counter-attack for free.
Ex: Let's equip a Strike Fighter with a Valiant Autocannon under step 4 of our designer, the "Weapon" step. Now, let's move ahead to step 7, "Training," to assign what attacks or other things we want our Strike Fighter to have. If we've correctly selected our weapon, then we'll get a few options: Gun Barrage, Heavy Barrage, etc... Here's the thing to note. What you place in the FIRST "Training" slot will be what your ship attempts to counter-attack with. Thus, if you're making a gun/close-range focused ship but also put torps on it, make sure you put a 1-range attack there, and vice-versa. If not, you'll be attacking with whichever you're not specialized in and will be less likely to hit. Normally, I'll put my basic Gun Barrage in the first slot, it doesn't take any water-fuel, thus I can always have the option to counter-attack, even if I'm low on fuel. However, sometimes you may want to put a Precision Barrage, or even a Heavy Barrage if you feel like it's worth it. (It works for the Templars...kind of.)
Additionally: here's a short-explanation.
Whew! Long example. Let's talk a little more theory.
Weapon Specialization - I mentioned this above and before. It's almost always better to specialize your ships. Why? One, it potentially reduces costs OR it allows you to spend the same cash on better modules. Two, you'll have better hit/crit ratios if you're only focusing on close-range or torp-range. Third, it allows you to use more of the great skins! Okay, the last one isn't really important, but you should totally buy the skin packs! And you can even get them for free through Google Play Rewards (if you're on Android), check out the thread here. So what do we do? Well, initially, not much. Our fighters can only be equipped with guns, so we'll probably just go with torpedo cruisers. As we continue to develop our tech and expand our empire, though, we'll be able to make gun cruisers, ECM fighters, refuel carriers and torp carriers and...yeah, idk, I actually haven't gotten that far myself, haha. Anyway, try to specialize your ships, spread them out amongst your factions, and build away (Please though, within your budget, don't go overboard, fighters don't need the most up-to-date tech every day.)
Boarding - In the first branch that extends upward, the 2nd from the top (or the first one with the green '+') is "Fighters 3" research. This unlocks the Assault Fighter, a very important ship for difficulties higher than normal (I'm sure they're useful on normal and easy as well). But the ship isn't useful without something else that's unlocked, Boarding 1. This is the only debuff in the game AFAIK. It's very powerful too. It reduces the targets defense AND damage. (Albeit, the damage reduction is a low, but still...) This is primarily useful for those pesky World Killers that come charging through your front lines. However, I've found that they're beautiful for everything, because...honestly, the attack so little water-fuel that you can use it on everything! This thing also does damage based on what type of Boarding Pods you have as well. Not bad! There's one more level of Boarding, waaaaay towards the end, under "Material Weaponization 1" (it's at the end of a double branch that extends upward, go to the far right, it starts from the research just to the left of the Strike Cruiser's '+').
Some specific weapons to look for:
VM Whirlwind Mark II - If you're playing Elite, this is under "Fighters 3" (the very first branch the extends upward right before the Alta Mesa-only research). This thing is AMAZING. It only uses 1 AP/attack and hits for 12-22 WITH a +2 ATK and +1 DEF. The damage is great for the early game, the stats are pretty good too, but most importantly, because it only takes 1 AP, you can equip a 2 AP reactor and hit twice with this thing, putting your potential damage at 24-44/turn (not counting counter-attacks). It costs a bit more cp and $, but it's also lighter than some of the other options, it makes it great to pair with Blackrock System CID (located under "Space Colonization 3", an Elite-only research option in the first bottom extending Engineering branch).
Armors
I'll use the broad categories from the ship outlines. So here we've got plating, cladding, barriers, armored hulls, is that all?
I'm just going to post this as-is...hopefully in order to motivate myself to finish it.
Hope you will finish as well, big +1!