Which is it?
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Does anyone think Swarm are overpowered with their super-cheap ships, or do I just suck? I expect I just suck, but I’m getting really frustrated. I’m not looking for specifics about what I’m doing wrong, since that’s what playing the game is about. A simple “No, you suck” will suffice. 
Almo, you’re being too critical of yourself in ways that DON’T help you improve. Kinda silly, that. Let’s back up a few steps and look at the problem in other terms.
The Swarm’s disruptor weapon for its cruisers is a powerful device. When facing large quantities of that gun coming against your fleet, you are going to get burned if you’re unprepared. There are counters to help mitigate that, but in general it’s strong stuff.
Swarm rush tactics are frequently painful. That’s just a fact of life if you’re less than ready for them. Likewise for the sheer numeric abundance of their ships, on account of the cost discount they enjoy.
I don’t think they’re overpowered, but i wouldn’t classify Swarm as a weak race either. Against them, there’s usually a bit less room for making mistakes than against other races.
if you’re not looking for specific recommendations, and you’re willing to slander yourself publicly, then there’s nothing else to say. I’m not voting either way in your poll. Whether you want to listen to those who can help you learn is entirely up to you. The game is about having fun, not just victory without end as the cosmos basks in the light of your genius. If you’re losing nonstop, it’s not fun. If you want advice on how to beat the Swarm, ask for it. There are various people who might be willing to help. Your decision, dude.
Nope. Tribe is the only OP race, Swarm is barely above average. The 215 size on their cruiser more than makes up for the reduced cost.
That said, their frigates can be tough for beginners.
How does size affect the ships?
Oh, and I did finally win that fight, but I still don’t understand something. Megaton Missiles have 51 shield penetration. It looked like they were getting “no effect” against my enemy’s shields. Given my admittedly incomplete knowledge of the game, that seems impossible.
First of they have a small shield bubble which makes it harder for fighters to get under the bubble and hit the hull directly
In addition the ship also gets hit less. According to Cliff the formula is for hit rate is
(1-(ship speed / tracking speed))*(0.5 + (ship size / 256)*0.5)
From here: viewtopic.php?f=21&t=3141&p=16336
It worth to note that a Megaton Missile has decoys
Something i remember stumbling across when modding - if you have a missile that has decoys and it does not split before it strikes the target it will not deal any damage . .
Therefore - if a megaton missile strikes the shield before it splits, it will not damage the shield.
(well thats my theory anyways - also running on the assumption that your fighting vanilla ships
There’s a few things at play there, but basically if any shield on that ship has a resistance of greater than 51 then it will deflect 98% of hits from your nukes (regardless of the resistance of the other shields).
The best defense from the disruptor beam is just trying to get your armour over 33. Thats very hard, cuz with vanilla races its too much difficult to get high armour numbers without decimmate the other slots. But u can get it trying to make a tactical cruiser, just with 3 or 4 weapon slots and a lot of armour. Sometimes thats much better (if not always) that trying to put a relative strong shield in the ship. The problem of the disruptor is that it has very high ap and sp, but since the armour is far more important than shields (i usually “forgot” to use shield most of the times -.-), u need to focus on armour abuse. That if u want not to be hurt by the disruptor beam, i think combined with guidance scrambler beams (to stop missiles coming at u) is one of the ways to not be afraid of the swarm. But i am a bit disconected from the vanilla races (i almost never played a vanilla race since looong time ago) so maybe u should wait to another more experienced advise -.-
As for the megaton missile, yup, thats weird, cuz i havent seen a ship with a resistance shield bigger than 51 (in fact if a remember right, the higher res is 27 of the reflective shield), but thinking about it, shield resistance doesnt not accumulate right??? and we are talking about a missile type weapon that is not affected by the optimum range (it always does max damage). Of course, the megaton needs to split out and hit with the real warhead.
33 Armor is pointless. Which disruptor spam doesn’t come with beam lasers anyway? Just build the regular 1 - 2 shield fleet against them.
And Megaton probably just feels like no damage because it’s DPS sucks. If you want a mid range missile use Fast.
im just sitting here wondering y is this in the modding thread… 
U think so? the swarm disruptor beam doesnt do any dmg if u have 40 armour (only the stacked 0.3 percent). So yes, having more than 33 armour is a good defense strategy but of course as i said, on vanilla races that is very difficult. Shields? yea, if u put 4 multiphasic shields (reflective shields are useless, u will need more shield ammount instead of shield resistance that is useless in gsb), u have a very high defense against anything. But eventually u will lose those shield in just seconds. The swarm disruptor is just like other disruptor/beam on the game, the only difference is that 33 armour penetration and 62 shield penetration makes the disruptor pass through any vanilla ship armour or shield. The armour is the only thing that will keep u alive, so if u think having for example 40 armour is pointless… …im lost.
It all depends on your playstyle, really (unless you’re talking Empire or Tribe; one sucks, pretty much always in my experience, the other is devistating). I can handle some swarm fleets, but others murder me.
Almo, the Swarm is not overpowered, but you’re just experiencing the learning curve. I would be interested to know exactly what type of fleet you were deploying that was having such trouble, though.
Each race is interesting to play, and each class of ship has its own strengths and weaknesses. One of the things I enjoy most is that there are multiple solutions to each problem. I regularly rotate through races, and place emphasis on different ship types and weapons systems, just to experiment. Even if there is one ideal race/fleet/weapon combo, I don’t feel like I have to use it exclusively.
Also, just in case you haven’t noticed it yet, the challenge system allows you to do “what if” scenarios by challenging yourself. Which will let you test what works and what doesn’t much more easily than fighting the existing scenarios over and over, or the regular challenges (which tend to fall into certain repetitive patterns).