Defending Your Base With Dreadnoughts

Base defense is one of the keys of a successful time with Astro Empires. If you fail to properly maintain your base and its protection, you can end up with a world of hurt. So, as your economy and technology gets higher and higher, you should focus on different strategies for ultimate protection.

When you finally start getting planetary rings for defense on your base, your defending strategy should change from having a large stack of fighters to having one dreadnought per 2 upgrades of planetary rings. You're probably wondering why this is effective and I'll tell you why:

There are many ways to make a profit from combat in Astro Empires and especially combat over astros. A player has 2 options available, 1 option is kill the defending fleet, leave the base unpillaged, and pillage the trade routes, the second option is kill the fleet, kill the base, and finally pillage the trades. Because of fleet profit strategy, you should be concerned about not leaving enough fleet over your base that you can be profited from. The dreadnought strategy fixes that dilema.

Dreadnoughts cannot be effectively shield raped by any type of ship nor can it be effectively dropped by heavy bombers when it's over base defenses. So, if a player was hitting your fleet for profit, it is near impossible to do so. A player, if they're planning on hitting your fleet, will end up spending more credits than they meant to and will discover that your base is unprofitable.

Attack in Astro Empires the Right Way

Image by gIadius via Flickr

So you know the basics of the ships of your fleet, but do you know how to attack another player correctly? In Astro Empires, the best way to play the game is to attack your fellow player often and PROFITABLY. And so, again, the key to "winning" (can't really win AE) is to profit off the annihilation of those weaker than you. This guide will be a brief overview of they areas of your game that you should focus on so that you more likely to succeed.

Technology

The key to winning many large and small battles when fighting other players is your technology. Your tech levels can determine how much damage your fleet does, how long your fleet lasts, how fast you can move your fleet (for a logistics victory), and finally the debris that you're able to scoop up at the end.

Here are the technologies you should focus on if you want to be on the winning end of your fights (ranked on importance):

1. Armor. This is the number one tech for succeeding in Astro Empires. Armor determines how much damage your ships can take before they die and also how much debris they leave behind when they do die. So, not only will your ships take a whole bunch more damage you'll be able to make more credits off them when they shuffle on this mortal coil. You can never have enough armor tech and hopefully you can see why.
2. Laser. Hopefully through the overview on ships you saw the major importance of having fighters (a LOT OF FIGHTERS) in your mobile fleet. Anyways, if you didn't know that now you should. Ok, so laser tech is what boosts the damage of your fighters, corvettes, and other small ships. This tech is the 2nd most important to be researching because your fighter heavy fleets can do a crap load of damage to everything that opposes it.
3. Plasma. In your fleet you should have a lot of destroyers, cruisers, and in some cases heavy cruisers. Plasma is what buffs up their damage. Besides armor, getting laser and plasma is what will decide who wins battles against you.
4. Shielding and Warp. These two are together because they should get equal attention from your research bases. Shielding will boost the shields on your base's turrets as well as the shields on your shielded ships. The higher the shield tech you have, the more resistant to damage they are from ships like fighters, corvettes, and their ilk. Shielding boosts longevity of your fleet. Warp tech is great for getting your fleets around. The more warp you have the faster your fleets will go and hopefully can beat the enemy to your base when it's under attack.
5. Cybernetics. A boost to your production is great because you can quickly and easily replace the dead ships of your fleet and also grow your mobile to an unbeatable size.

The Ships in the Winning Fleet

Ok, now that you know what you should be researching let's talk about that killer fleet that will wipe your enemies off the map. Here are the ships, how many you should have, and their importance. With fighters, you will need the appropriate number of carriers/fleet carriers to ferry them along so assume they're on the list.

• Fighters. Again, you need an ungodly amount of fighters in your fleet. Just keep building those suckers because a fleet full of fighters is something to be reckoned with. Just keep in mind to keep your fighters protected from shield rapes. (Where a heavy cruiser or larger ship fleet hits your fighters and due to their high shielding take no damage from your fighters). So to avoid shield rapes have other ships to protect your fighters.
• Corvettes. These ships are sexy, fast, and make meat out of everything not a fighter. Use corvettes to get better ratios against bases and cruisers. You should have about 700 corvettes per 10k fighters in your fleet.
• Destroyers. These little guys are optional but they are like corvettes and are very sexy about killing cruisers and heavy cruisers. You should have 300 destroyers per 10k fighters if you decide to build them.
• Cruisers. Cruisers are the counterpart, the yin to the yang, the other half, etc., of your fighters. You should have a LOT of these guys hanging around. Cruisers will nuke most things trying to shield rape your fighters and are really hard to fight against (especially when you have a TON of fighters). The only thing cruisers need to worry about are leviathons and bigger ships because they can shield rape cruisers.
• Recyclers. Recyclers are the guys that never should be in combat but are THE MOST IMPORTANT part of your fleet. Recyclers are what wins wars and battles. When you get the debris from any battle, you are the winner. So when getting recyclers you should have a lot of them. A good way to guage how many recyclers you should have is by how much debris you generate. If your typical battle makes 10k debris, you should have 1k recyclers in your fleet. If you typical battle is 50k debris, you should have 5k recyclers so that you can scoop up all the debris in 1 tick so that other enemies have less time to steal your debris or kill your fleet waiting to pick up the debris in space.

The actual attacking part

When attacking you should do it 4 stages of attacking: moving the ships in; clearing the meat; killing the fatties; and securing the carnage.

Moving the Ships In

Many mistakes are made at this stage and you can end up losing a lot of recyclers, carriers, and other important ships by screwing this stage up. Number 1: Don't move your fleet right on top of your enemy. If you enemy is online they will shoot your fleet when it lands and then you'll feel really stupid when you lose all your recyclers. So, to avoid that kind of crap, land your fleet on a seperate, empty/friendly/neutral astro. Number 2: If you're in hostile territory (you're at war with a guild) move your recyclers seperately from your fighters/cruisers/carriers. If an enemy fleet DOES decide to greet your landing, you can save your recyclers from death by having them recall because they were 10 minutes behind the main fleet. ALSO, during all stages of fighting, make sure your recyclers are safe and that you never attack with your carriers.

Clearing the Meat

Now that you've successfully landed, you need to attack the enemy. A fleet is comprised of 3 parts, MEAT, FATTIES, and SUPPORT. The meat of the fleet will be all the unshielded units which include fighters, bombers, corvettes, heavy bombers, destroyers, frigates, and recyclers. Use your meat to kill their meat (that's where having an ungodly amount of fighters comes in handy). Also, when clearing the meat up, do not use more fighters than you have to so you don't take unnecessary losses from cruisers, heavy cruisers, and larger ships as well as from a base's defenses like turrets. Once all the meat is gone you move to the next step.

Killing the Fatties

Ok, so you popped all the meat, now it's time to clear the rest of the fleet as well as the base's defenses if you're attacking a base. Using your amazingly large force of fighters, corvettes, destroyers, and cruisers, hit the enemy. AGAIN, make sure their meat is gone before you do this. Woo hoo! You killed their fleet for amazing ratios and conquered their base and now it's to the aftermath.

Securing the Carnage

You've destroyed the enemy so now its time to dance in the debris you've accumlated. Move your recyclers and remaining fleet into the sector a scoop up the debris. Hopefully you brought enough recyclers to get the debris in one tick. Also, if you attacked a base, pillage those wonderful trades they have going for some extra money. Once you've finished, leave a fighter for the occupation and move on.

Introduction to the Ships In Your Fleet

Astro Empires features a variety of different ships that a person can choose and use but not all ships are created equal. Building the wrong ships or too many of the "right" ships can spell disaster to your mobile and quite possibly ruin your day. This guide is a quick helper for people new to the Astro Empires game.

Fighters

The bread and butter of every fleet are the fighters. Fighters are the BEST ship in the game in terms of damage / armor to credit ratio. Against unshielded units, fighters will rape everything for a mean profit. You can add fighters to just about every attack to lower your losses. You really can't build enough fighters. The only thing you need to worry about with your fighters are Heavy Cruisers or larger ships because those ships can attack your fighters with little to no loss. So while yes, you can never have enough fighters, you should also have protection for those fighters.

Bombers

Same armor as fighters with twice the firepower and twice the cost. These are less efficient, but still tied for the second most efficient meat. Their ability to harm cruisers makes them especially handy. Don't go overboard with Bombers, but they make a good addition to any fleet that needs to absorb a lot of damage, or one that's hitting a large group of cruisers. Since most people use a lot of cruisers, bombers can be very useful.

One of the greatest uses of Bombers is to take out enemy fighters and Cruisers/Carriers on a fortified target in preparation for dropping Heavy Bombers once all the enemy fighters are cleared. While a fighter drop would take out the enemy fighter compliment if you have enough, you'll be taking a loss once the other unshielded units are gone. If you drop Bombers instead, this stage of the assault should yield a small profit, making the overall strike more profitable.

Heavy Bombers (HBs)

Heavy Bombers pack enough punch to take out main fleet units-- Cruisers and Heavy Cruisers-- but they're vulnerable and expensive, as well. Heavy Bombers are best used in waves after you have used fighter waves to destroy the enemy's unshielded units. Heavy Bombers are inefficient against unshielded units, and therefore should not be used in main fleet engagements. Enemy fighters will cut them to ribbons. HBs are also the best ships for breaking occupations if you have a proper amount of Command Centers. Heavy Bombers are absolutely essential in hitting heavily fortified fleets, so you should have a lot of them handy once you've built your core fleet up to a reasonable level.

Ion Bombers (IBs)

Double the price of Heavy Bombers, with the same power and armor. All they gain is one point of shielding, which does practically nothing for their survivability, and their weapons become Ion based, so 50% penetrates shielding. Oh, yay. These things suck. They're so expensive that they're not even efficient in waves. If you send a wave of Ion Bombers against capital ships of equal value-- be they cruisers, HCs, or BBs-- it's impossible for the Ion Bombers to come out ahead in the exchange against cruisers and HCs, and they barely pull a 1:1 ratio against BBs. The first ship class they can attack efficiently is Dreadnoughts, and that's not by much. Bigger ships are vastly more efficient, so don't waste your money on these.

Corvettes

Corvettes are extremely handy because they're extremely fast. I don't include Corvettes in battle fleets, personally, unless I'm making a big hit and need lots of meat. They can be used as meat with the same efficiency as bombers-- which makes them tied as the second most efficient meat in the game-- but they're too useful in their other applications to waste them as meat when you don't have to. I keep Corvette fleets of 1000 or so at jumpgates for recycler hunting and/or reinforcement of damaged fleets that are almost out of fighters. They're fast enough to make excellent raiders, and that speed also makes them great to use as emergency meat. Fighters are twice as efficient, but if you don't have enough and you've got a fleet that's about to get hit, get your Corvettes there instead.

Recyclers

These are not combat units, but that doesn't mean you don't need them. You need a ton. Resource denial is key to waging war. You can almost never have enough recyclers. A good rule of thumb is 1000 recyclers per 100k of fleet.

Destroyers (DD)

This is your first Plasma unit. Since the bulk of your fleet should be Plasma units, your Plasma research should be high, making Destroyers even more handy. They can be used as a combination attack/meat ship in attack fleets, but their low survivability makes them poor units to include in fleets that will spend much time in enemy territory unless you have them in bulk. A few fighter waves can wipe them out very efficiently if you're caught while you're not online. Destroyers are the best ship for efficiently killing Cruisers, but the fact that Destroyers are unshielded means they're vulnerable to meat ships. If you find some naked Cruisers, wipe them out with Destroyers. I like to keep a fairly large Destroyer unit on standby at my jumpgates to facilitate rapid reinforcement of my bases if I see an enemy fleet coming. Destroyers pack a punch sufficient to damage Cruisers and HCs, which are primary fleet units. When you have Command Centers behind them, they play hell with enemy ratios, therefore creating larger debris piles over your planets. Handy! They're also fast enough for some Recycler hunting.

Frigates

Many people say that frigates suck, and for the most part, they do suck. Only worry about them if you're an expert player, and if you're an expert player, you'd know why they are good for different scenarios.

Ion Frigates

Just like Frigates, only with Ion weapons and one point of shielding to go with a price tag 50% higher than it's counterpart. Think that makes them better? Not really.

Carriers

All those fighters don't do much good without a way to get them around. That's what these are for. They have less survivability than Fleet Carriers, but they're also faster. I keep a group at my jumpgates for rapid reinforcement. ALWAYS RETREAT YOUR CARRIERS BEFORE ATTACKING. Nothing makes the enemy laugh more than seeing your carriers hit a base or a fleet.

Cruisers

This is the most efficient capital ship in the game. Build lots and lots of them. At least 35% of my total fleet strength is Cruisers. (Fighters are another 35% or so.) Cruisers are the most efficient ship for taking out anything up to Dreadnoughts (although Heavy Cruisers are more efficient against Dreadnoughts if they have fighters accompanying them). Cruisers are also the most efficient way to take out Planetary Rings, but it takes a whole lot of them. Make sure you have enough. Cruisers should be the backbone of your main battle fleets.

Heavy Cruisers (HCs)

The only thing HCs can't hurt is a Death Star. HCs are handy against the big stuff, but I don't use them in main fleet formations unless I'm attacking something with BBs or higher. HCs are fairly efficient, but Cruisers will get you better ratios. HCs are great for taking out BBs and above, and as a bonus, they have enough shielding to be effectively immune to fighters, unless they have CCs behind them. HCs can be included in main battle fleets if you don't mind taking something of a ratio hit.

Battleships (BBs)

The sad fact of AE is that the bigger the ships get, the less efficient they get. Every ship is vulnerable to smaller ships. That holds true for Battleships as well. The efficiency drop from HCs to BBs is huge. Most people have far too many. Still, Battleships have their uses. For taking out Levis and Death Stars, this is one of the most efficient ships. Battleships are also immune to fighters, making them a good ship for taking out weakly defended planets or for holding an occupation. Battleships are poor ships to include in most battle fleets due to their terrible inefficiency against Cruisers/HCs (which is what most enemy fleets are built around).

Fleet Carriers (FCs)

FCs sacrifice speed for survivability. They have strong enough shields to shield-rape small units. If you have a calculator and you are very careful, it's possible to include FCs in attacks to improve ratios. This is dangerous, though. Don't do it if you're not experienced. You should have lots of FCs to move all your fighters around.

Dreadnoughts (DNs)

The bigger you get, the less efficient you get. The big stuff is best used against things that can't hurt it. The strength of these units is their shields. They're great for taking out bases that have defenses weaker than Disruptors, so long as there aren't fleet units big enough to have a chance at taking you down. Dreadnoughts can make a fair addition to a combat fleet if A) you're fighting things that won't be able to kill one, given the dispersion of damage amongst your units and B) you're prepared to slow your entire fleet down in order to include them. If you might lose one, you're better off leaving it out. If you can safely add one without losing it, feel free; it'll soak some damage away from your other units.

Currently what I use DNs for are base defenses. They provide some of the best protection to loss ratio. Dreadnoughts are too powerful to be simply dropped with meat like fighters and corvettes and so an attacker cannot clear the them without to make a profit from pillaging the your trade routes and recycling the debris. The rule of thumb for dreadnoughts is one per 2 levels of rings, starting with one at 5/5 planetary rings.

Titans

This is the first unit with high enough shields to shield-rape Cruisers. That makes them very handy. On the downside, these things are slower than zombies playing Monopoly. Seriously, slooooooooooooow. HCs will kill them efficiently if you hit them with enough. BBs will kill them less efficiently, but require less bulk. Something like 130 HCs will kill a Titan, tech dependent, but it only takes about 20 BBs. The HCs should get about a 2:1 ratio, while the BBs will get less than 1.5:1. Titans are great to send out solo to smash bases with less than rings.