I'm pretty new to this game, and have only played 3 games so far.

That being said - it has become obvious to me that I am really bad at building ships. not particularly the number of ships,

but rather designing them and creating fleets. And while there are guides out there and info about pretty much everything (or so I think)

I thought I'd cheat and ask you people to share some wisdom with this lowly one.

so that I might conquer the galaxy one day.



*without auto upgrading them - because that is only so helpful...*



I haven't really tried that many factions so far, Harmony, Vaulters and Horatio , but I'd like to give them all a try at least once...

so any tips regarding just about anything is appreciated. try to keep it simple though.



Well then, how do you get your fleets to stay in space?

What I want to know is how do I get to a 200 ton ship design?



The Ai likes to build huge fleets so you really need good ships in this game.

indeed you do, and I think it might be a good idea to use a hero/commander whatever they're called to lead your troops to battle...

I've met a few AI troops like that and They do make a bit of difference. but ... well If I don't get any concrete tips I guess I'll just have to try my way forth.

perhaps it'll work better in the future.

So, two big questions for me:



1) What do I research to have 200 ton ships?



2) What do I research to have more than 3 hero's?



The research tree in this game is pretty much useless. I think you have to play the game 2-3 times, research everything, and write down as you go what the hell the thing you just researched actually does.

Alright, to get a ship with 200 tons or more you have a few options. The first is to go down the colonization and exploration tech tree and research different types of ship hulls. Depending on your faction they each have different traits and names but are oftentimes used for similar reasons. The new ships that you research in this tech tree should each have more and more tonnage and health, at the cost of increased command point cost. The other way to get higher tonnage ships is to go down tbe applied science tech tree. It should have various techs, marked with a red star I believe, that will increase the tonnage of all hull types by a certain percentage. These bonuses do stack. Now, to get more than three heroes you need to go down the economic and diplomacy tree. The increased hero amount techs are near the end of the tree however. As for the usefullness of heroes, you should always have at least one dedicated combat hero ( preferably one that is a pilot and commander to allow the greatest amount of combat bonuses ) these heroes can provide huge bonuses to damage, defense, healing, speed, siege and much more.

Now then as for optimal ship design you should have your ships have an even defense against everything so that you won't get obliterated when you encounter a new enemy or your current one changes his weapon design. Second, you should focus most of the remaining tonnage on large amounts of weapons. Now you will probably want to be constantly changing your weapon type in order to exploit any weaknesses in weapon defense. Then you just change your ship by adding whatever modules you think would work better. However I would suggest that you start off with long ranged weapons as you can usually use them to defeat an enemy before their own weapons can come into optimal range, or at least pick off a few of their ships so that their weapons aren't as effective. Also, lazers are usually best in early game as they are best at long range and don't require any strategic resources. If you want the best for early game rushes and you have titanium-70 then you should use the first missile as while missiles arethe easiest to block the AI usually doesn't have flak on their ships that early.

Thanks for the advice, I shall keep it in mind.

Offense is the best defense. If you have enough long range kinetics or beams (or both), you'll destroy most of the guns that are aiming at you before they can fire. I use long range kinetics the whole game, but I'll put one beam and one missile (if the tech and strategic resource is available) just to keep the AI on it's toes.



For defense, I generally take one armor on my fighter ships. They also get 1 deflector for kinetics, 1 shield for beams and 1 to 3 flak for missiles. I top up the flak last to take up any leftover room on my ships.



Otherwise, it's as many long range guns as I can jam on there. They fire 4 times per round, ya know. Spray someone with that and you're likely to put out an eye at the very least.



You'll eventually get used to the tech trees and figure out which techs you can skip over to get to the good stuff quicker. It's different for each faction, but there's a definite pattern to it, no matter who you play as. (Other than Vaulters. I don't know anything about Vaulters).