Attack in Astro Empires the Right Way

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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.