This is where I ask for strategies. I don't seem to be getting very good at this game.



For one thing, I suck at the combat. My ships are rarely as good as other affinity's ships. How do you all get your fleets to be dominant? I seem to never be very powerful. I know how to unlock most of the good stuff, but it seems that I am missing something... at some point, my ships just become irrelevant and more or less cannon fodder. It seems everyone else has ships that are faster and more powerful, and also, easily able to deal with what I am throwing out as far as offense. Although I've usually been making general purpose ships that can "do it all", which they don't, or trying to make fleets in which there are missile based ships, beam based ships, etc. None of this seems to matter.



Not the way I like to play this kind of game... I usually rely on having the most and best technology, and build my little empire around that, so that I can win that way. But it's just not working out for me.



Thanks! I'm sure to have more questions as this thread progresses.

Hey man! I kinda had to go through a couple of stages for my ships to get any better (at one point I couldn't colonize planets because I didn't have the Seed Mod and I ended up raging because I never saw that it had been de-equipped)



These are 2 strats I tend to play by



1. Progressive build up



You build up your small fleet of not so good ships and have them explore and do basic fighting. All the while, researching better weapons (Go for Slugs and Missiles first, lasers require a specific material that you may not possess early on). When you fight, make sure your fleet is completely specialized in ONE area of fighting (Usually melee) and use the Nano Repair, Nano Repair, Overclock combo as much as possible. Once you reach the Radiation Proofing (or equivalent) level of research, start diversifying, instead of full melee, start to move your main weapon forces to Missiles or Lasers. (Keep at least 1 (I go with minimum 5) of weapon type as it helps prepare for all situations)



remember, you can upgrade your fleets without rebuilding them by going through the Military menu and clicking on your fleet and clicking "Retrofit". This option only works if your fleet is on one of your colonies/systems and you have the required Dust



2. Death from long range



Research Missiles only. equip your ships with flaks and missiles. Annihilate your opponents as soon as possible to avoid damage taken at mid-short range combat. This should keep your faction's dominance while incurring the least damage (unless the opponent has better missiles)



Good luck and have fun

Missile-only fleets are a terrible idea. Anything-only is terrible. Period.



1. Missiles are the easiest weapon to defend against.



2. Long-range Kinetic are much better.



As far as playing against AI, even bad ideas work (unless they are really really bad or so poorly executed). Against humans....depends on the human.



Rules of thumb:

1. Tech all weapons\defenses

2. Stick with one and only one weapon type per ship (fighters and bombers not counted). You can have different ships (some kin, some las, some mis) making up the fleet.

3. Long range Kinetics\Medium range Lasers are the way to go when you choose the bulk of the weapons in the fleet. I usually throw in some missile ships to make sure the enemy has to equip flak.

4. At least some deflectors and shields on all ships for some damage mitigation. At least some flak in the fleet. All 3 on each ship is nice a lot of the time.



There's lots of other stuff to figure out, but there is little point going into those details until you embrace the good ship building practicves I mentioned. Once you get that down, you can figure out heroes, cards, techs, builds, strats, tactics all you want.

depending on what race you are your ships could just be really bad. for example amoeba and sophons generally have weak ships while more aggressive races like cravers and sheredyn have better ships.