Hey guys,



I noticed some players are able to amass very large fleets in early games. I am talking about around 24 ships or more by turn 25 with considerable mp.



How do they build so fast? It's as if they started building battleships very early and ignored system improvements.



Also, how can they afford the maintenance? That would cause huge negatives in gold.



Anyone?

A jungle home world (hissho) with the mineral rich trait will give a player a ton of early game industry.

You can take militarists trait, and even masters of destruction, to make ships cost very very little industry.

If you are able to get a monopoly on titanium early on, a ship with nothing but missles on it will take very, very little industry, conceivably you could build 2 or 3 of these a turn, on just your home planet.



As for upkeep costs, usually they will take anarchists. Currently, ship upkeep is determined by max CP. So if you have only 3 max CP, each ship will only cost .4 * 3 = 1.2 dust per turn, compared to 2 dust per turn for 5 CP.



overall, this strategy is probably too easy to pull off. It is probably harder to defend against it than it is to do, so it is very strong. Hopefully, you will have access to titanium yourself to build your own missile destroyers. If you are able, quickly research to the 2nd level flak. once you do, equip your ships with ~80 MP in flak, and the rest kinetics. as soon as you get a fleet with 5 ships that have enough flak, it doesn't matter how many ships they have, you can beat them all unless they retrofit.



If you can't put ~80 flak on a ship, you are better off just making your own missile destroyers. That way at least you can trade 1 for 1.



Honestly though, players who do this are doing a very all-in strategy. If they can't kill or cripple you quickly, they will most likely start to fall behind. In my experience, these players are one trick ponies who quickly leave the game if their attack doesn't go as they planned