i have always loved playing the harmony and their unique abilities make the game quite interesting. however, with the new patch including the spectacular early game advantage of the harmony, strategies are going to have to be revised significantly. i would love to hear some plans and strategies on how to play early game harmony with the new bonus. i would also think it would be nice if people could post custom harmony builds. i will take whatever is said in this thread as advice and i thank you who post in advance.

We've discussed a few in this thread. /#/endless-space/forum/27-general/thread/10591-new-harmony-bonus-possible-with-empty-hulls

I want Math ; )



its hard to estimate when i should rather build Buildings,Coloships, or Ships for Orbiting.

I think you are better off spreading early game than trying to max the affinity bonus. Maybe you could max it at your homeworld but even then +10 production is tiny and will take 5-6 turns to get to, at the same time you will be growing at half the speed, and you could easily make 2 colony ships instead.... Probably better just to make the colony ships.

Astax wrote:
I think you are better off spreading early game than trying to max the affinity bonus. Maybe you could max it at your homeworld but even then +10 production is tiny and will take 5-6 turns to get to, at the same time you will be growing at half the speed, and you could easily make 2 colony ships instead.... Probably better just to make the colony ships.

I feel the intent was to let Harmony get a navy and not just be free planets to whoever happened to be near by. Yes you CAN spread, but then you're gonna lose systems constantly to the AI realizing that you're fresh meat.

in my experience its best to not rush early with the harmony, pick off factions one at a time during mid game, i think these ships might help harmony get more fis out of their systems early on

I agree with Hashinshin. The bonus given by fleets now allows the Harmony to field a navy and bolster their economy at the same time. You can place the fighting fleets at bottleneck systems and then colonize the worlds at their station - that way you can keep other empires out of your constellation, and still be able to take advantage of Resonance. Empty hulls can tend to your other colonies, but only once your bottlenecks are secure.



Keep in mind that your fleets are now a portable resource bonus, so you can move fleets to fledgling colonies to get them basic improvements, and then move the fleet to the next colony that you establish. Research that increases your command points is now much more important for the Harmony, as they increase the size of your fleets. Good for increasing the Resonance bonus, and to make your military tougher to crack.

Yes you can move them, or you can just have your established colonies build the ships for your new system's resonance fleet so you don't lose the bonus at the older system. Since the resonance bonus is added to the system before multipliers, you're losing more than just the 2 FIS per ship.



Sure you might want the initial resonance ships to be "empty" hulls and can't upgrade them the way the Automatons can for their per ship bonus, but you don't have to keep the design "empty" after the first few colonies are established. Lately that's exactly what I've been doing. The first design will have a single LRK as that's the cheapest and you always have to put at least 1 of anything on a design to be able to build it. Once the home system has built it's initial improvements, resonance fleet, I have and I've researched the first beans and missiles tech, I upgrade the design to have 1 of each defense and at least 1 of each weapon type with the rest of the tonnage in one of the three types, unless I don't have the titanium for the missiles. Which ever combo of weapons is the cheapest is usually what I end up going with. Then I have the established systems build the new versions to send to the other systems. With Masters of Destruction those "empty" (1 LRK) designs are about 42 production, while the fully loaded designs (1 of each defense, 1 LRK, 1 LRB and 4 LRM, all tier 1) are 66 production if you use the Volcanic hull (that's the one the default colony ship uses) instead of the Cutter hull, because it has less tonnage. On the Cutter hull, with the 1st +tonnage tech and a titanium monopoly you can fit 2 more LRM and the cost only goes up to 69 production.

why long range kinetic? short range is cheaper.

Adventurer_Blitz wrote:
why long range kinetic? short range is cheaper.

All weapons have the same industry cost no matter what range it is configured for. The difference between the ranges is the tonnage, damage, at what ranges they only deal half damage and for kinetics number of rounds fired. The melee range has the lowest tonnage, which means if you're filling this ship with as many as possible, you end up putting in more weapons, which increases the total cost of the ship.

thuvian wrote:

• The Volcanic is inferior to the Cutter Hull for every purpose other than a colony ship. It still costs the same, but has less weight to fill. I never use it except for colony ships.
• Long Range Kinetic Modules are effective weapons for virtually the entire game. Melee Range Kinetic Modules require very specific ship designs to be useful. Your Glass Cannon Ships should virtually always have Long Range Weapon Modules.
  
  

The points is, with the Volcanic hull as a resonance ship with it's reduced tonnage you can max out its weapons for a lower cost than a Cutter with max weapons, because you can't fit as many weapons on that hull. This ship isn't meant for the front lines or even major defense battles. It's meant for boosting FIS and with have more than just the 1 weapon on the ship it can function for early defense against scouts and pirates, while remaining cheaper than your main GCD fleets ships.

The points is, with the Volcanic hull as a resonance ship with it's reduced tonnage you can max out its weapons for a lower cost than a Cutter with max weapons, because you can't fit as many weapons on that hull.

But you don't have to fill the ship with weapons, you can just leave it with some empty tonnage.



A maxed out Volcanic has a weight capacity of 80 and costs 40 (for the hull) + 32 (for 8 LRK) = 56 Industry total.

A similar Cutter has a weight capacity of 100 and costs 40 (for the hull) + 32 (for 8 LRK) = 56 Industry total. The cutter also has 20 empty weight.

At this point, as long as you put the same number of weapons on the ships, there doesn't seem to be a difference.



However, I neglected to mention this earlier, the Volcanic has a 10% Evasion value, whereas the Cutter has a 50% Evasion value. In noncombat situations this doesn't matter. However, in Combat, the Cutter has a +40% chance to dodging shots. As colony ships this doesn't matter. However, the Cutter Hull is better than the Volcanic in every way, except for the Support Module bonus. So unless you need the support module bonus, it doesn't make any sense to use the Volcanic Hull. The only reason I could see why you'd do it is for aesthetic purposes.



As an aside, I'm not sure that almost empty hulls make sense for Masters of Destruction (-50% weapon cost). The additional cost isn't that much. You would lose some turn advantage, but then you'd also have useful ships. In contrast, Militarists (-30% ship cost) would make a little more sense to build these empty hulls. I'm a big proponent of GCDs and Masters of Destruction.