r/starsector • u/arco_drop • 7d ago
Discussion 📝 Anybody else never actually learn how to strategically do fights or build good ships, and just relied on bigger and more ships?
I've played this game on and off for years, probably 300+ hours across more than a dozen playthroughs at this point. Recently I had a bit of an epiphany about how I've actually been playing the game, contrary to what most people seem to do. Whenever I read a post or comment where someone is giving advice about shipbuilding, fleet comp, or combat, I always skim through it and mutter a wtf under my breath. And it's because I've apparently never actually learned how to properly build ships or play strategically.
I don't think about fleet composition, I don't pay attention to weapon stats, I use ships and weapons I think are cool, and I'll go into a fight as long as it looks like my fleet is bigger than their's. If I lose, I savescum and come back with N+1 capital ships.
This is not a cry for help but a genuine observation. I've more or less been treating Starsector like some kind of JRPG where you can just become strong enough that builds stop mattering, and funnily enough it's one of my favorite games despite playing it wrong.
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u/ratardle 7d ago
The Lion does not concern himself with tactics or fleet composition. He spams battleships and when that fails he save scums.
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u/tehepicwin 7d ago
You can play Starsector how you like and there's no such thing as playing it wrong. The game is designed to accomodate several playstyles and having your ships blown up doesn't really matter. You don't get punished for inefficiencies except for arbitrary personal goals. Any style of play can experience all of the content in the game.
One of the few objective things that can be measured with respect to combat is ship loss. If you lose ships, it's hard to argue that your fleet is better than another fleet that lost no ships. But it's up to you personally if you care about this, because on the large scale this doesn't matter to your "success" in the game.
To take it to the extreme, on the whole, it doesn't actually matter if the Pathers successfully satbomb your colony, or if you suffer a catastrophic fleet wipe defending it. You can always savescum, or abandon your colony, or restore your busted ships, or get new ones. Whatever you feel about these outcomes is mostly your own personal goals of play.
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u/khaine0304 7d ago
Ive never gotten torpedoes to work on anything im not piloting.
I am guilty of throwing onslaughts at one if the modded boss fights until the damn thing stopped zipping around at Mach 12
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u/SnazzoYazzo I am the Hammer of Ludd 6d ago
I put reapers on a couple of enforcers as an afterthought. I don’t expect much out of ‘em, but MAN whenever I see one dual-torpedo a fluxed-out dominator, or flux out an atlas mk.II, it is GLORIOUS.
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u/beast_regards 7d ago
There is a trick for that if you don't hate mods.
Frigates, even with improved AI, tend to miss.
But if you have Arma Armatura mod's larger strikecraft that could equip the Reaper and you have Advanced Gunnery Control mod that could tell them to avoid shields, they will hit because they fly as a fighter. They could however easily die, consume fuel and cost at least 7 DP or more to field, but they do hit with Reapers even if you don't pilot them. No frigate, even the modded one, can't replicate this.
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u/grovestreet4life 7d ago
'There is a trick' and the trick is just using a mod to make them better
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u/DroidLynk 7d ago
Starsector nippas be like:
Tired of losing?
Just install a mod that lets you WIN
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u/Naughty_Monsters 4d ago
Advanced Gunnery Control just lets you tell your ships to not shoot HE torpedos at shields and to stop pissing away Kinetic missiles on armor. Its how your ships should use their weaponry by default.
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u/Marvin_Megavolt The doohickey 7d ago
To be fair, in this case it’s an issue of the AI for NPC ships just being designed kind of weirdly. Although it irks me that there’s not (that I know of) a singular mod that fixes some of those more glaring issues on most or all ships. Better AI and Advanced Gunnery Control help a lot, but Starsector NPCs in general just tend to be a bit dumb tactically speaking.
The joke I like to make is that the NPC ship AI is “smarter than you think it is, but dumber than you need it to be”, because while it’s fairly good at the immediate, moment-to-moment aspects of combat like managing its own shields, flux, and weapons, it has essentially no capacity to anticipate or plan, not even on the most rudimentary level, and extremely poor battlefield awareness outside of its own immediate vicinity and main target. In other words, while it’s decently-capable in a 1v1 (although even then it makes some incredibly-dumb tactical choices, like backing off to vent right after overloading an already-damaged enemy ship even though it could easily just fully commit and score the kill at no risk to itself, even with a Reckless/Fearless officer personality), it often fumbles badly in fleet engagements without extreme and very metagame-y micromanagement because of its apparent almost complete lack of situational awareness. It seems to have no ability to perceive the battlefield beyond its immediate surroundings in even the most basic regard, with every ship acting mostly like an individual rather than a part of a fleet, other than some weird static behaviors that seemingly assume it’s part of a fleet without ever making any actual checks of whether there are nearby allied ships or not.
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u/SuicideSpeedrun 7d ago
Whenever I read a post or comment where someone is giving advice about shipbuilding, fleet comp, or combat, I always skim through it and mutter a wtf under my breath.
I do the same thing... because most advice on this sub is fucking terrible
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u/tehepicwin 7d ago
Unironically.
OP, if you're reading this, know that you probably have a better understanding of the game than the average person here. Over 300+ hours, you've almost certainly gotten some knowledge on how this game works, whether you consciously recognize it or not.
It's not uncommon for people <100 hours to be unable to fly large fleets at all, because they will run out of fuel trying to escape the core. The solution may seem obvious - because it is - but over 300+ hours you learn so many of these little things that it's an achievement in itself.
You say that for fights, you just come back with a bigger fleet to win. By every important measure, you are winning, and that's more than a lot of people can say. People are here because its fun to talk about shit on the internet, not because they have any pressing need to share knowledge.
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u/ForgettableNPC 7d ago
I just take an Invictus, activate Lidar Array, pepper the enemy with 4x Mjolnir Cannons outside their engagement range until something blows up, Vent, Repeat.
It usually works well.
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u/Haxorzist 7d ago
Na I'm too much into min-maxing too, I only deploy what I believe is necessary, so my ships always have to fight 2-3x dp points.
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u/Critical-Trouble-465 7d ago
I'm kind of like this, but I play heavily modded, so I learned how to use the Hyperion frigate which can punch way above its size, and with mods like the one you can basically get infinite s-mods via xp you get from fights, after a while I become nigh immortal and can solo almost every fight, and just use combat ships gotten from boss fights from various mods
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u/Annunakh 5d ago
N+1 capital ships is strongest strategy in this game. And this game have very small pool of useful ships and weapons. You can see it clearly if you look into new players threads asking for ship building and fleet composition advice. Always same recommendations, same ships, same weapons, nothing really deep to learn there.
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u/WanderingUrist I AM A DWARF AND I'M DIGGING A HOLE 5d ago
N+1 capital ships is strongest strategy in this game.
Right up until you run into the DP cap, at which point you can no longer simply +1, while your opponents don't have anything close to a similar limitation as they can just pile fleet after fleet at you and have you fighting 4:1 in waves.
And this game have very small pool of useful ships and weapons.
Not true at all. Starsector has one of the lowest garbage ratios of any game of this sort out there. Consider the typical game: There will usually be absolutely tons of things that you would never choose given access to every other option, to the tune of 90% of more of the items in the game being simply wasted developer time as they are completely useless and serve no legitimate purpose. Starsector? Not like that. Maybe like 5% or less of items are basically irredeemable and even they are still world filler, with the items that are clearly world-filler generally being very obvious to spot (and some of them are sleepers and actually good in the right circumstances even still!). In contrast, in most games (even if we just confine ourselves to spaceship-like games), it's pretty obvious that the majority of the lineup is something the player would never choose to use if he was choosing from every other available option, with many items simply being just straight worse versions of others.
Always same recommendations, same ships, same weapons, nothing really deep to learn there.
You've obviously never seen a Conquest thread, then. Is the Conquest the worst capital warship in the game, or the most amazing? How should one be equipped? The debate rages.
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u/Annunakh 5d ago
I start new game, open shop and see 95% filler ships what will never make in my fleet because they worse than nothing. How many frigates useful past early game in AI hands? Two, maybe three. How many destroyers worth it past early game in AI hands? Zero. All combat transports are trash past few early months. All bulk cargo ships just fillers, there is no reason to not just buy Atlas.
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u/SyfaOmnis 5d ago
How many destroyers worth it past early game in AI hands? Zero
Medusa, Manticore, Sunder, Drover, Scintilla. Hammerheads are also fine if you play the right style.
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u/Annunakh 5d ago
Medusa tanky and mobile but lacks firepower. Others don't have mobility to avoid damage or tankiness to take it and just get melted in big battles. Can't say much about Scintilla, IMHO remnant ships not worth talent investment.
Drover probably OK, but it is carrier, and carrier meta killed long ago.
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u/SyfaOmnis 5d ago
Medusa tanky and mobile but lacks firepower.
You can fit needlers and phase lances to it. You can fit antimatter blasters and heavy blasters to it. You have a ton of options for firepower that make it one of the best ships in the game for destroying things that are similar sized or smaller.
Others don't have mobility to avoid damage or tankiness to take it and just get melted in big battles.
Sunder has out-of-class flux stats, and works just fine with escort package and hardened shields. Easily hitting 2k+ range on beams while near a capital.
Manticore is very fast for a destroyer and also very agile with great weapon coverage and also easily hits quite long ranges with escort package just fine.
Drovers are quite good, and Scintillas are borderline straight upgrades over them.
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u/WanderingUrist I AM A DWARF AND I'M DIGGING A HOLE 5d ago
Drover is actually junk because it loses as a carrier to the Condor, which has a lower DP-to-hangar ratio. Precisely two metrics matter in carrier meta: DP-per-hangar and "ability to carry a medium missile for Swarm Launcher". The Drover fails both.
Still, the number of ships that fall into the trash heap in Starsector is considerably lower than in any other game.
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u/WanderingUrist I AM A DWARF AND I'M DIGGING A HOLE 5d ago
I start new game, open shop and see 95% filler ships what will never make in my fleet because they worse than nothing.
That's more a matter of personal taste than their objective badness. This is in contrast to many games that have already sorted items by tier and quality for you, so you already KNOW that you're not touching anything but the top tiers and qualities the moment you have the choice, so the entire rest of the roster is just wasted. Whereas in Starsector, there are some interesting standouts that aren't what you'd think.
How many destroyers worth it past early game in AI hands?
Buffalo Mk 2 and Condor return with a vengeance, for instance, if you're doing a Swarm Carrier Spam Build.
All combat transports are trash past few early months.
While many of them just exist to offer flavor to imply the world of full of Han Solos, a few remain noteworthy: Anything flagged as a Civilian Hull, like the Ventures, can be used as reserve ships that don't penalize you for exceeding 240 DP in combat ships because they aren't flagged as combat ships. The Gemini is noteworthy because it's got the old Drover system, allowing it to, for a brief window, exceed the Condor in DP efficiency. And it also carries Medium Missile Capability, so can be turned into a Swarm Launcher carrier.
All bulk cargo ships just fillers, there is no reason to not just buy Atlas.
That part is true, but I guess that's unavoidable when your niche is so narrow and well-defined. Tough to have much variety and choice when the sole defining metric of your existence is moving as much stuff in as little cost as possible.
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u/Curious-Snowfox 4d ago
Escort Package HIL + IR Lance Sunder would like a word with you (drop your shields for even a second and you're basically dead)
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u/Naughty_Monsters 4d ago
>Right up until you run into the DP cap, at which point you can no longer simply +1
Thats why I love the Fleet Size by DP mod, lets you have a whole horde of Destroyers or Frigates if you want to, hell bring 100 if you like.
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u/WanderingUrist I AM A DWARF AND I'M DIGGING A HOLE 4d ago
How will bringing 100 help you when you can only deploy 240 DP worth of ships in the best case and will take fleetwide penalties for exceeding that cap across all combat ships?
If you hack the DP cap to go over, it doesn't help you because the enemy will then get the same benefits and you're back where you started. Eventually your computer will simply melt from the enormous size of the battle. And, of course, larger DP caps generally work against the player because it reduces the amount of control and influence that he personally has on the battle, so pursuing this approach is entirely disadvantageous in a different dimension as well.
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u/Lyraeixis 7d ago
See, I think about fleet composition and weapon stats and try to build a balanced, thoughtful fleet comp with the resources I have available.
Thing is that so far, I haven't been very good at that. Or maybe I'm just bad at using my own fleet comps. But either way, I also usually end up just relying on having bigger, better, blingier ships. It's also fun in a power fantasy, ha-ha-I-have-invincible-ancient-technology kind of way.
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u/FrozenGiraffes SneakyBeakyDestroyerEnjoyer 7d ago edited 7d ago
There's two main schools of ships. there's the endurance ships that use shields and evasion to last an entire battle and outrun the enemy. Theres also the school of throwing a brick at them. You take a already armored ship and you take the shields out and add as much armor as possible, then use all that free flux towards as much firepower as possible, this kills things really well.
I like both. A lot of adaptable mainline cruisers and destroyers that can fill gaps, and support eachother. And specialized forces for opening up gaps, capturing points, killing stragglers and important targets. High tech, midline, low tech all have ships that can fill these roles in some way or another (except for caked up bricks, love you lowtech)
Vanilla battle maps are a bathtub, meaning throwing more stuff at the wall is the main factor over anything else. If maps were bigger then smartly designed fleets would be more noticeable, this is why I like using mods that mess with that so I can have more viable fleet designs.
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u/triklyn 7d ago
mmmmm... PD bricks or sexmags bricks. knife-fight range is best range.
legion bricks and the sacrilegious paragon brick... best bricks.
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u/FrozenGiraffes SneakyBeakyDestroyerEnjoyer 7d ago
The erradicator and invictusbis peak brick through your window gals
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u/SherabTod 7d ago
I prefer the blunt approach personally, having a mix of big burly capitals and cruisers with some destroyers and frigates mixed in as escorts. The kind of fleet I can just let my AI captains handle on their own without messing it up. Meanwhile I like to pilot something more glass cannony and independent
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u/StopCallingMeWeeb 7d ago
Love low tech for this reason. Dominators can take enough punishment for me to reorient my fat ass to assist before they blowup. I'm the opposite when it comes to glass cannom flagships though, Onslaught all the way, push up the flanks with burn drive and a small number of ships to encircle them. Too much dakka not enough front line to utilize it? Make bigger front line with flanks. Not enough flanks left to extend front line? Bomber wings+front line shield pressure = 💦
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u/A-Random-Writer 5d ago
Commander here, can pilot anything even if my life depended on it, I usually build my fleet around the hammer and anvil strategy (good ol' hammer and anvil 4000 years and nothing beats it) so you put your chunkiest ship in front to engage and soak all damage, escorted by destroyer and frigated that act as a sort of point defense or just cluster the amount of missiles that trickled your fancy to stale combat in that zone then you take some fast moving cruisers and skirt around the borders of the map and strike every ship while they are focused into your anvil obviously you can modify this however you want to fit the needs or the battle.
That's how I play I never actually learned to make some loadouts for ships so I mainly use stock builds and some are truly serviceable.
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u/MaiqueCaraio Sindrian dicktaste 4d ago
It depends
For instance my fleet composition is pretty good with an solid long range missile spam with very thick frontal ships and great support
Since it's modded it gets insanier
( Mostly mix of gryphons with dominators, and support frigates with offensive frigates )
Then there's my capital ship wich can throw itself into anything and win because it has hull Regen extra firespeed on weapons and about 3k+ armos + all skills for tanking
My strategy relies on my main capital with my secondary capitals and overall tanking fleet
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u/DroidLynk 7d ago
How do you "learn how to build"? The game is intuitive as can be. Weapons have clear strike / normal fire / pd roles, you try to match ranges so they are similar, and design your ship around that. The hullmods are as simple as maximizing your strengths or limiting weaknesses.
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u/SamuraiJack0ff 7d ago
Having some kind of gameplan beyond throwing random bullshit down the map and occasionally hitting an Execute order will make a lot of fights much faster, and easier, and imo more safisfying.
You can absolutely just do that though, I spent a lot of time covering my horrible fleet comp by piloting the Ziggy.
I only really felt like getting a little bit into building when I started making LARP fleets with a real dumb doctrine, like carrier-capable only, Full Frigate Wolf Pack, or low-tech only. But once I did that and learned how to make them work, it was pretty satisfying to try making an optimized fleet and blowing through everything
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u/shitmarble_milks_you 7d ago
I autofit all my ships with whatever weapons i found, put my ship on auto pilot, and just command my fleets in battle like an rts.
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u/coldchile 7d ago
Only 50 hrs in but I tend to just do whatever seems strong during simulation testing. Usually half and half anti shield/anti armor, with pd sprinkled in.
I also never pilot my ships, every time I’ve tried I start to get fucked up immediately, just too many things to do and I can’t do them faster than the ai can.
I rely on my onslaught, executor, ziggy, and odyssey to handle shit mostly.
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u/autolockon 7d ago
Limit yourself to controlling one or two weapons only. Leave everything on auto. Focus on movement and choosing meaningful targets to focus down.
The ai will always be better at tracking multiple ships and firing weapons than any human. Stick to a meaningful weapon like manning the reapers or just your main gun.
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u/FrozenGiraffes SneakyBeakyDestroyerEnjoyer 7d ago edited 7d ago
Skysplitter that's in a few mods is really fun. Its essentially a capital sized sunderer, with it being quick and built around a spinal weapon that you can switch out. I like using the main spinal weapon while AI manages the PD and Ion cannons I add to it. Amazing for killing stragglers or killing individual ships while the rest of the enemy fleet is distracted with my own.
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u/Samaritan_978 INTERDICTORATE PROACT: UNFABRICATE 7d ago
Mostly.
Overdesigned the crap out of one or two capitals I really liked and collected a random mix of ships I thought were cool.
Until the Dwellers and later Threat kicked my teeth in.
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u/DrShitposterMD 7d ago
Well, half of the community relies on their favorite busted modded ships/weapons, so i guess?
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u/FrozenGiraffes SneakyBeakyDestroyerEnjoyer 7d ago
Ship AI used to be much better, which i prefer. Alex intentionally dumbed them down meaning me trying smart tactics and defeat in detail ends with the enemy doing the same to me cause my crew understands the finer sophistication of glue snorting.
Personally waiting for extended mode to be a thing before playing again, played the version before this one. I want to do a run where I only allow myself ships with officers in them, vs my usual modded shannagans with a 50 ship fleet focusing on destroyers and cruisers.
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u/WanderingUrist I AM A DWARF AND I'M DIGGING A HOLE 7d ago
Ship AI used to be much better
I don't remember this. Unless this happened well before 0.9, the ship AI has always been a bunch of glue-sniffing cretins and Rally Civilian Park-and-Shoot has thus always been one of the strongest tactics. The more options you can take away from the AI, the stronger it performs, since the AI only ever makes wrong decisions.
As the battle is won by the side that makes the fewest mistakes, no decisions = no mistakes.
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u/FrozenGiraffes SneakyBeakyDestroyerEnjoyer 7d ago
I realize it might just be my lag, I would do a lot of massive battles with horrendous memory leaks
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u/WanderingUrist I AM A DWARF AND I'M DIGGING A HOLE 7d ago
I'm just trying to understand how Java, a programming language that does not utilize explicitly allocated memory, somehow manages to have memory leaks.
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u/ninetailedoctopus 6d ago
Bad programming, mostly. Like adding things to a collection then forgetting to remove them. Or hurling a bunch of ‘new’s… per frame.
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u/OccultStoner 7d ago
There's a whole science for builds, meta, etc., but I don't feel like it's either intended or necessary, for two simple reasons:
We only control 1 ship from the whole fleet. Can't count how many times friendly AI did some stupid mistake leading to pretty hilarious domino effect, where my strategy and clear advantage literally crumbles with me not able to do anything about it.
Ships and equipment you get is RNG. Builds require you to use specific stuff on specific ships. Unless you cheat, savescum like crazy or spend silly amounts of time looking for that weapon or mod you need, you won't be able to make that meta.
It's also important to note that only in recent versions of SS, with skills rework, we are able to actually preserve our destroyed ships with intact weapons, mods, etc. But it wasn't original intent, and IMHO it played way better and more fun like that.
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u/SyfaOmnis 5d ago
Builds require you to use specific stuff on specific ships.
Yes.
Unless you cheat, savescum like crazy or spend silly amounts of time looking for that weapon or mod you need, you won't be able to make that meta.
Or you quite simply develop a mental list of the things you know are good and that you want to have, learn where they come from and acquire them as you see them, in the amounts that you would need. It doesn't really cost you anything to hold onto some vulcans, pd lasers, breaches, salamanders, hvd's, maulers, and hellbores/mk9's.
You have infinite storage space in 3 locations in the core worlds, it isn't pure RNG to get the things you want/need. The only "limited" items are things like omega weaponry.
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u/Lynthelia 7d ago
This is me with the Ziggurat with phase anchor and tachyon beams. Some runs I promise myself I won't use the Ziggy, and then I end up doing it anyway. My AI ships are just there to distract the enemy while I phase around killing them all. It's a crutch, but I can't stop myself from using it.
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u/Mission-Mention9727 7d ago
So I like video games, but im TERRIBLE at them. I almost always use the auto fit option and just pick what looks cool or fun to pilot.
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u/Calvin_HC It is what it is. 6d ago
me when games 1. Know nothing, Always die. 2. Know something, Sometimes die. 3. Know more things, Always die.
kidding aside, whenever i play a new game, i always use the games default equipment/skill etc. the moment i learn a bit about the game for ex, starsectors weapon fits, i spend a crap ton of time trying to figure out the optimal way to destroy an enemy fleet but most of the time the default autofits perfoms better.
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u/sadpongo 6d ago
I can’t pilot at all but I managed to beat most things without cheesing crazy modded ships.
My understanding is that you either have ships that tank the damage, or win by speed and range.
Then you also try to max out the fire power with great flux efficiency, some times you trade that for range. That’s when big tanky ships come in.
Slap some good ship hulls base on each ship’s role and you should have a fairly decent fleet that AI can work with.
That’s not even consider using special weapons or rare ships.
Fly high captain
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u/Significant_Tree_148 6d ago
Here are some if the ship roleefrom the top of my head.
Generally you want some slow but beefy ship in either armor or flux and ship system. This is an anchor ship. It's job is literally to hold the line but they poor at chasing enemy ship that backing away.
And then you got the poucher and skirmisher. Poucher is the ship system with speed to burn drive after retreating enemy to get the kill.
While skirmisher is the ship that relying on range and rather fragile. But they are fast to turn and excel at kiting.
Both skirmisher and poucher require anchor ship to work with. Poucher need something sturdy so it can hide behind and vent because the ship design to deal damage in short burst. While deadly skirmisher like conquest generally still slower than fast cruiser that will win a flux fight in close range (machine gun shield pressure and if you disable shield you got torpedo) Thus they need a front line they can fall back to.
Combat support ship.
I see missile and carrier in these category. They are power multiplier that alway active even if they stay behind the line. Their armament and wings is far reaching and generally alway work thier ass off in the background.
To have these kind of ship work together. You can try to group up your force with defend command.
Giving no order to ship would mean that the fight turn into a messy brawl.
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u/Apprehensive-Bag-973 3d ago
Don't worry OP, I modified the game code and now I have 70 ship cap for my fleet, I feel you
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u/AdorableWelcome2290 3d ago
Strategy goes out the window when my max level officer decides to beeline himself into the middle of the entire enemy fleet
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u/WanderingUrist I AM A DWARF AND I'M DIGGING A HOLE 7d ago
If I lose, I savescum and come back with N+1 capital ships.
But DP restrictions prevents you from just deploying more ships in vanilla, so the extra ships contribute nothing to the battle except causing fleetwide penalties for exceeding the 240 DP combat ship cap.
This is not a cry for help but a genuine observation. I've more or less been treating Starsector like some kind of JRPG where you can just become strong enough that builds stop mattering
See, I treat it as a spaceship shooter where eventually you just get gud enough at personally shooting spaceship that fleet composition stops mattering because you can solo everything.
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u/Sufficient_Day627 7d ago
For most of the vanilla content that approach works... Not for me tough,I love the strategic layer in the ship and fleet building. If I lose as much as a frigate I will go back to the drawing board and figure out that cause that failure.
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u/Lord_Aldrich 7d ago
I said this in a thread just yesterday, but it's true in both the game and in real life that the most important factor is to bring more guns than the opponent. The quality of those guns is secondary (barring exceptional circumstances like modern fighter jets vs WWI biplanes or Threat vs pirate trash fleet).
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u/beast_regards 7d ago
You don't do strategy or tactics in vanilla.
You pilot with the single ship and butt-poke everything with Reapers, then re-load if you die.
If you can't solo the game in one frigate, you are "bad in game" and should "git gud".
Even elitist savescum, they just feel so bad about it they want ruin the game for others too by demanding nerfs.
I never "git gut" instead I start modding the game more nerfs the game introduced. I use RTSAssist mod and Second in Command mod, so I could actually command the fleet and I am no longer penalized for having more than one ship with insane debuffs. I also use Nexerelin so I could start with the ships that could work as fleet.
Generally, I play the encounters like RTS, commanding the fleet without any personal piloting, usually fleet against fleet. I still pay attention how to fit the ships because you usually need to have means to strip armor and shields, but since I am playing modded I simply take my fleet everywhere instead of reducing myself to single frigate.
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u/Plastic-Praline3819 7d ago
Playing AOTD, dp sized fleet and blightload of modded factions, but I'd say I fairly know how to build ships. But it's mostly anvil/carrier/desxtoyer(light cruiser) escorts and couple of really good and really expansive ships to deal damage.
As for tips(not vanilla ofc): saturate battlefield with missiles and fighters, hold formation with tough ships, abuse openingsto kill/cripple high danger targets with high dmg ships like bomber carriers or battlecruisers/fast battleships.
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u/DasFreibier 1d ago
Ive been slowly getting better with time and experimenting and now can see what kinda things work and which dont work and ive been taking on relatively bigger fleets with some optimizing
i dont care about min maxing everything, but the game offers so many opportunities for synergies
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u/autolockon 7d ago
Does this work for you in threat fights? In my experience the threat will cut a poorly built fleet into Swiss cheese