I thought that the advice thread is very good, but it mostly deals with Tribe and different strategies and was made before the release of the Campaign mode (?). Maybe there is a need for a thread that collects different variants of starships, ordered by Race, ship class and name, and intended use? If you think that a ship you designed is a success maybe it could be an inspiration for someone else, both the design itself and how you use it (in the campaign - aka, no hard counter designs/strategies).
I’ll start with my current Campaign race Alliance. The use of the Python is fairly obvious given the 9 hard points; MWM spam. I think this is the ship with the most hard points in the game.
Alliance: Cruiser Python - Missile platform formation
The foremost hard point; Guidance Scrambler Beam
The rest of the hard points: Multiple Warhead Missile (8)
2 Ultra-heavy armor
1 Multiphasic shield
1 Fast recharge shield
1 Reflective shield
1 Power III
1 Supercharged engine
1 Reinforced Crew Bay
1 empty slot
Cost: 3060
Crew Supplied/Required: 250/233
Power Produced/Consumed: 83,94/79.90
Average Armor: 17.19
Shield Strength/Resistance: 596.97/27
Hit Points: 1714
Max Speed: 0,06
I usually make 3 or 6 of these for each MWM fleet, together with 3 or 6 anti-fighter/assault cruisers. I used Shark for that purpose:
The two front hard points: 2 Cruiser Pulse Laser
The two rear hard points: 2 Cruiser Defense Laser
The central hard point: 1 Tractor Beam
5 Ultraheavy armor (each extremity + the centre)
1 Target Booster
1 Reflective Shield
1 Power III
1 Supercharged Engine
1 Crew Module
1 Empty
Cost: 2905
Power produced/consumed: 77/72.8
Crew Supplied/Required: 160/152
Speed: 0.07
Shield Strength/Resistance: 200/27
Armor: 44.13
Hit Points: 1177.71
I place the Pythons in a tight vertical row with the Sharks closely behind each one of them and set them all to Formation with one of the central Pythons as target. I also set them to Co-operative, and autorange on the Pythons. The Sharks I increase focus in fighters to 80% and to the range of the defence lasers, both frigates and cruisers are set to the max range of the pulse lasers and 50-60% focus. The reason I don’t set the “tank” Sharks as formation target is that this requires me to set its firing ranges to 1160 or something like that, which is bad if it is a tight fight. I could have given each of these two one more armor, but I doubt it would make much of a difference. Together these two ships form a fleet with a wide array of usefulness, and I rarely have to maximize each function more than this. If more anti-fighter capacity is needed I simply send in my own fighters instead, and if a more extreme MWM fleet beats this I send in the assault ships instead.
There’s this particular cruiser design I have that makes use of mainly cruiser laser. I used it first on the Swarm, before I went back to create a similar version for the Order. I have the stats currently, but I’ll need to check the exact modules I used later. Offhand I can recall that I’ve filled almost every slot with a cruiser laser, and included one beam laser. I believe my Imperial version packs on some armor, and my Alliance variant is completely shieldless and quite a bit slower, but I can’t confirm right now.
Admittedly this might not be a workhorse for the campaign mode, but in challenges and battle modes they do pretty well. They are weakest during their initial charge towards the enemy, so they need to be well protected. A laser fighter escort group tends to work well with them, especially since they can engage fighters and help destroy ships once the shields and armor goes down.
Yes that reminds me of a design of my own, one of my favourites. They get in close, destroy their shields quickly and then take down their armor and hull in short order. Needs another variant vs 32+ armor, but other than that it’s a very versatile fleet.
Nomads: Cruiser Baggara - assault (rush?)
1 Guidance Scrambler Beam (front hard point)
3 Cruiser Pulse Laser
2 Cruiser Laser
2 Lightweight Armor (two front general point)
2 Multiphasic shields
1 Reflective shield
1 Fast recharge shield
1 Power III
1 Reinforced Powerplant
1 Zero-G Crew Bay
3 Supercharged Engine
Cost: 3455
Power p/c: 128/124.4
Crew s/r: 270/260
Speed: 0.21
Armor: 11.95
Shield: 804.15/27
Hit points: 1880
Instructions: Tight vertical row roughly the width of the enemy, wider than that and it is better to put them in a second row behind it. Remove Attack Fighters. Set Frigate and Cruiser range to 490 (or optimum for shortest range weapon if you bother). Co-operative, Vulture, Keep Moving, Last stand.
The huge shield and scrambler are meant to let the fleet get close enough to the enemy to take down their shields and then they go down in short order unless they have very heavy armor. If you encounter that kind of ships with shield-breaking capacity, you need to replace at least one of the Pulse Lasers with a Beam Laser so that you break that armor - this could be a general improvement of the design in any case. It is very important that the fleet does not enter the firing range of the enemy one by one; that’s a disaster! The fleet can kill off fighters, but not an equal number of laser fighter units. The heavy shields render enemy beam lasers useless. It takes a lot of concentrated MWM fire to overcome a sufficiently large fleet, but for the most part the MWM fleets I encounter in the campaign are inefficient. The biggest threat is a balanced combined fleet with MWM, plasma, fighters and laser tanks. Those enemy fleets appear as any other fleet, but have good short-range AND long-range firepower. Luckily, these cruisers can be evacuated unlike the ones in #1.
I like to have a for federation frigate hull with an emp launcher of some sort and a few lasers and one missile of some sort. I dont remember the exact modules I will look later.
Ion Cannon is the one with 2.00 tracking? If so that’s a good on anti-fighter frigates in my opinion. It is effective against the slower type of fighters. Although I think the 2.80 tracking of Frigate Pulse Laser would make those frigates even better since they are more effective against a wider range of fighters. In my experience, If you could somehow fit a shield in there as well, the longevity of the frigates against fighters will be extended greatly, since shields on small frigates are what absorbs the vast majority of laser cannon shots (it reduces the amount of lucky shots). I don’t know if the Asgard is the best frigate for such a build. When I played as Rebels I used the Odin for that:
1 Tractor beam
1 Frigate Pulse Laser
2 Anti-fighter Missile
3 Frigate Armour III
1 Engine 1
1 Shield generator
1 Power III
1 Crew Module II
I think it was something like this. I will double-check tonight.
Edit: it will do with Shield Generator II and Power II. This gives the frigate 17.86 armor, 0.11 speed and it costs around 860 credits + 69 crew. Speed isn’t important since the ships these guys protect are usually rather slow. The Ion Cannon is a lot better against shields, but if the enemy gets that close vs a MWM spam fleet for instance, you would ideally want a lot more close-range firepower than one frigate weapon on a few frigates in any case.