People have debated this over and over and with some very good points and counter points. What I have yet to see taken into account are two very important factors.



1. Traits.

2. The Economic Step Problem.



Traits



With the addition of custom factions this allows every race you make to have master of destruction. This allows glass cannon fleets to be produced for half the cost of a mixed fleet. While the opposing race could also get masters of Destruction, if they use defensive and support modules, the cost of their ships is increased proportionately. It is also possible for a race to focus solely on defensive ships and make them cheaply with masters of illusion, however because of how this trait works any weapons at all negate the advantage of that trait. Consequently while you may be able to defend cheaply, you will eventually get overrun by numbers, not to mention MOI is 40% while MOD is 50%.



The Economic Step Problem



When comparing economic output as it relates to ship production you come across the situation where cheaper ships can be produced faster than more expensive ships. What this means is that even if all else was equal a faction producing destroyers might be able to produce a single destroyer in each system while it might take the opposing faction 4+ turns per system for dreadnaughts. What this ends up meaning is while in the end each faction has equal strength, in reality almost all the time the one producing destroyers is capable of more strength in action.



How this works is that for the destroyer producing systems on turn 6 they would have produced 6 CP while the Dreadnaught systems would have produced 4 CP, only on turns like turn 8(multiples of 4 in this case) would both be equal, you can see that at best you have equilibrium, but usually it is in favor of the systems producing destroyers.

[HR][/HR]



Glass Cannon Fleet Tactics



So what is this strategy about? Basically you build cheap ships with all weapons and throw them at your enemies. The key here is if the ships are cheap enough you can build more than your enemies can and you basically win economically.



This is done through these factors.

[LIST=1]

Optimize your Race: Maluses are your friend.

Non Military Expansion: get there first so you have a place for infrastructure.

Spend: I lose 5 you lose 1.

[/LIST]



Optimize your Race



What you need to know is that certain maluses will not effect you in the least with this strategy:

• Fragile Hulls(- Health): less health means almost nothing when you expect your ships to die, especially if those ships are missile boats. I saw someone use the opposite tactic and went high health with mostly all weapon ships and he did good, as well.
• Wasted space(- Space): you only need so much weaponry to kill other ships so weapons past that point only increase your ships cost.
• Offense First(- Defense): you won't have any defenses so this literally does nothing.
• Space Cadets(-10% Science per Level): this can be bad at the beginning but with Knowledge Gathering(+50 science per CP kill) it fast becomes no an issue at all.
• Eternal War(No Peace): If you plan on peace your doing something very wrong.
• Anarchist(- CP): Early on you can send in single ships with missiles and even versus fleets of 5 you will still destroy one of there ships loosing a cp or two doesn't do a whole lot early on, later you will be ahead of people tech wise which will make up for it.
• Isolationist(-1 trade route): With eternal war no reason not too, you could get blockade breakers however trade doesn't do real well until mid game and since your goal is to conquer as much territory as possible it's likely not worth the points.
• Sloppy Sawbones, Dust Impaired & Feeble Warriors: Never really effect anyone so practically free points.
  
  

I personally always take everyone of the above maluses except anarchist, though I will take that if I need a few points.



Must have traits:

• Growth(+ Food): This and Rich soil jump start you original planet allowing for super fast expansion.
• Legendary Heroes(level 3 Heroes at start):Allows for forge worlds pronto, a must for fast war and expansion.
• Rich Soil(+3 Food on HW): see growth.
• Optimistic(+approval): very important if you plan on expanding.
• Militaristic(-10% ship cost per level):Reduces ship costs
• Master of Destruction(-25% module cost for weapons): Reduces ships costs.
• Knowledge Gathering(+25 Science per CP destroyed per level):
• Snipers(+accuracy): a must if you plan on rotating in kinetic weapons, and very helpful early in the game.
  
  

Non Military Expansion



Simply put non-military expansion is about two things. One, increasing the amount of planets you will have to support your military. Two, deny your enemies expansion. Remember in the end this strategy is about beating their economy, even though it is played out over your militaries.



Always make sure planets that are not full on population have food exploitation the faster you grow the greater all of your FIDS, and with this much food it will only be turns before you turn your planets into industry bases. I personally try not to switch any planets to industry until my system is maxed but it maybe that strategically at times switching a few planets to industry is necessary.



Once you have built a Heavy Isotope Refinery planets should either be producing military or colony ships to expand only when you start running low on surplus dust a turn should you start building other improvements. Don't worry about your dust per turn going negative as many of those colony ships will become new systems and those military ships will be used up freeing up more dust. If you need to you can change over a few systems to Ind -> Dust.



Remember even after starting to conquer you need to continue to expand non militarily as well. You may need to focus a bit on approval tech to help out on expansion disapproval along with the anti expansion disapproval techs.



Spend



This is the key to victory, not spending dust but spending and throwing away your military. At least to others it will look like you are throwing away ships.



Understand that the exact same ship should cost you far less than them. Not to mention, because of the Economic Step Problem, even if your ships were not cheaper you should always have more firepower than they do. What this means (if you are not facing another player using this type of strategy)is at worst your ships cost you 1/2 what theirs cost them, often even less. Beyond this you most likely have an economic advantage from your expansion meaning losing 5 ships to their 1 ships is breaking even for you.



The final tidbit to this strategy is to rotate the weapons you use if they start using specific defenses since you can afford to and will be turning out multiple ships per system. A turn switching what weapons you use, every few turns is very easy, this should even be done preemptively.



If you have any questions please feel free to ask.

So i guess u using beams, destroyers and the power damage mod with less hp? Why not deadly weapons? Also u know there is a trait, a power mod and many cards to boost defenses? In my opinion if the enemy is well specced u will do 0 damage. And that will make your cards easily counterable. And really a well specced battleship cant realy die to this. Also if u stack loads of this the upkeep will start to raise and is a problem early game if u spec a lot into industry. Also fleet heroes ...



No really this will never work...

The Traits I put out are minimum what you need, it is fairly easy to add more.



And yes a well specced battleships can die to this it happens all the time, more importantly even if it takes 5 fleets to kill your one fleet the strategy still works.



Lastly part of the strategy is the fact that they will have vast fleets in your systems before you ever get to battelships.

The only problem i have with this is that the game rewards number of fleets too much since u cant destroy many at once... U could even block a single big fleet in a system with loads of 1 ship fleets and intercept... This is a bug with the game obviosly and rewards rush tactics like this one.

And really a well specced battleship cant realy die to this...Also if u stack loads of this the upkeep will start to raise and is a problem early game if u spec a lot into industry.

That's where the weapons rotation and cheaper production costs kick in. You may be limited to 22 destroyers vs 11 BS per battle but you can send 4 destroyer fleets for every BS fleet your enemy has and even though you can make your BS resilient against one weapon type, in the next turn he can just switch to a weapon you don't have protection against. And your BS will crumble, eventually.

Also, upkeep doesn't matter because these ships aren't supposed to stay in duty for very long.

U can retrofit only on your systems so maybe when defending or when u have a base close can be good. And even the enemy can retrofit defense spending much less and send kamikaze scouts. Im my opinion this is a matter of economy not a matter of glass cannons.

Did you read where i said the strategy comes down to economy vs economy?

I did and theres the whole point of it : why would i make glass cannons my economy is already stronger than my opponent?

Because it exploits that advantage better than any other strategy especially early in the game.

Glass cannons = missile destroyer spam



Should only be used to handle military superior races and if your economy is weaker.



Else there is no point in using this tactics

I am concerned that this fails to take into consideration ship/hero levels. In my last game, my 5 level 3 cruisers (I was playing as UE) with a level 1 hero encountered a 20 fleet stack of ships. On the far side of that engagement, I had a level 20 hero and 5 level 10 cruisers. While the first few battles were close calls, once my ships hit level 5 the enemy ships could no longer damage my ships.



If your opponent is ahead in tech, glass cannon spam can make the situation worse. (Not usually vs. the AI, but beware of intelligent players)

With the recent patch its possible to test whether or not heroes help dealing with this strategy. Although the most important consequence is probably tuning the custom trait costs making malus trait stacking more of a choice.

Sisma89 wrote:
I did and theres the whole point of it : why would i make glass cannons my economy is already stronger than my opponent?

This is a rather late reply, but I wanted to add something. This is actually a very good strategy, considering the number of times it's been used in real life and worked for the one using it. Just look at what the allies (U.S. to be specific) did in WWII: they used their superior economy to mass produce glass cannons like the M4 Sherman. Yeah, they sucked when compared to the German tanks such as the Tiger tank, and for every Tiger tank which was destroyed several more M4 Shermans were lost, but in the end the fact that the German economy couldn't keep up along with how long it took to produce a Tiger tank meant that the vast number of cheap and quickly produced Sherman tanks were able to win.



Basically, the idea in this thread is to use the same strategy in the game, and there's really no reason it wouldn't work (as long as your economy is good enough to keep mass producing them, but that was already covered).

EasyCo wrote:
This is a rather late reply, but I wanted to add something. This is actually a very good strategy, considering the number of times it's been used in real life and worked for the one using it. Just look at what the allies (U.S. to be specific) did in WWII: they used their superior economy to mass produce glass cannons like the M4 Sherman. Yeah, they sucked when compared to the German tanks such as the Tiger tank, and for every Tiger tank which was destroyed several more M4 Shermans were lost, but in the end the fact that the German economy couldn't keep up along with how long it took to produce a Tiger tank meant that the vast number of cheap and quickly produced Sherman tanks were able to win.

Counter-example might be WWII air supremacy struggle between Germany and Britain. I believe the german fighters were cheaper and thus more numerous, yet pilots require a lot of training and losing more of them is very detrimental. This would apply here if you used heroes in glass cannon fleets.