I am very curious as for when do you guys starting to upgrade your fleets' hull, armor or shield. Do you upgrade right away when it was available, which help your ships to suvive longer right away. Or waite till later, so the upgrade will pack more bang for your bucks, b/c of more ships will be sharing the benefits from your upgrades.
I know different map or the size of the game may be asking for different route, so we can take this topic as deep as we want. I for one likes to upgrade my hulls and armor right away for TEC, since they only cost me credits and crystal than metal, which as TEC I can never get enough in the beginning. I blame cobalt for my addiction for metal, since I just don't feel like upgrade to Lrm right away. Although lately I have being messing around my strategies, and that's why I want to hear what do you think about the timing of your hull, armor, or shield upgrades.
In small map, I don't even bother upgrading them.
In bigger map, I wait until I have a solid economy.
You research the upgrades when the upgrade does more to enhance your fleet than adding more ships for the same cost.
Wrong. Early +1 upgrades make all the difference, since two extra lrf are less useful. even if 400-0-25, 500-0-25 for attack upgrades isn't much of an economic difference once you have to start pumping lrfs. This is especially true in small maps and even more so with Tec and Vasari, since Mazda shares upgrades, and missiles will skip shields.
I agreed with Reply #2, with the caviate that sometimes you should upgrade instead of increase fleet supply.
Pretty much as soon as I can.
Its not as clear cut as upgrading weapons. The cost of upgrading Wave Cannons to +30% damage for the Vasari, for example, is less than the cost of building up your fleet to include 30% more ships.
I usually wait until I max out my supply points and I upgrade my shields, armor, or hull before researching the next tier. I upgrade weapons whenever I want, usually as soon as I can.
Hi,
just this day I played advent on a decent 2v2 map. The opponent at my side controlled the choke point first and got two more planets running. So I decided to build 10 Fighter carriers and 15 Illuminators along with my cap ship. As soon as I had my factories working on the ships I upgraded military techs. Once they were in fight, the laser beams of the illums were upgraded as well as shield and hull (first two tiers). That was enough to take out the enemie's protectors and a few minutes later also his agressors. He didn't even have a chance because he did zilch to upgrade his own military abilities. Our fleets though were aprox. balanced. So don't waste your time in planet building while some strange flashlights might turn up any second
Wow, I have to say, I haven't really thought about the balance btw fleet supply and fleet up grades, lol. Since in the early games you only have to deal with only one front maybe it is a good idea to up grade your ships than inceasing your ship supply.
But then again, you will have a hard time to make up a balanced fleet, till later. With the new carriers, you can't afford to spam Lrfs anymore. So...no, you should always up grade your ship supplies asap, whenever it was needed.
Ok, this is what I am thinking right now: in the early phase of the game, all the decisions are equally important, even one extra scout ship you make could mean life or death. After the initial purchases with your starting resource, your economy could only allow you to make one decision every 20+ seconds, which cost averagly around 300 to 600 credits, So if you upgrade your weapons or armors instead of making more ships at the beginning, you are pretty much taking a sucker's bet...even when armor upgrades benefits absolutely EVERYTHING of your empire.
Here is why, according to me at least: the upgrade could take a while to be completed, during this time, you could not make any ships, that in turn decrease your small fleet's survival rate and fire power. You will have to wait a while to up grade your first asteroid, which in turn cost you more resource and production rate. In medium or large maps, early up grades also means, that you will have to wait longer to be able to split your force into multiple fleets, and that could lead to slower expansion rate for your empire. Finally, since the upgrades would need some time to kick in, so during such periods, you won't enjoy any benefits with all the risks you are taking, yet the resource were spent, anyway. All in all, I personally think only newbies should try up grades their fleet's armor or weapons whenever they could afford them, since beginners wouldn't know how to spent their resources, anyway. That's the truth.
As soon as I get a solid economy, which should be easy for TEC, around 20 minutes into the game. 30 to 45 minuts for Vasari and Advent.
The Vasari have a solid economy 5 min into the game. What are you talking about? TEC have to WORK for their economy. The Vasari just have to build scouts (and you do that anyway).
honestly upgrading armor shields and hull are all early mid game decisions that can make or break but its all situational.
somtimes when you can't expand anymore and don't want to break ur bank for more supply upgrading CAN offer a decent push however the overall effectivness is kinda lacking IMO.
but thats just me.
TEC is best money econ
Vasari best material econ
Advent what econ???
once again my opinion
It really depends on how the game is going. If I happen to have a large fleet then a few cheap upgrades can be much more cost effective than more ships + it is permanent, normally faster too depending on how much factories you have.
For TEC.......
Assuming you filled up your initial fleet capacity with a Kol Battleship and 10 Cobalts, just for the sake of example. Researching 2 levels of Advanced Metallurgy gets you +1.5 Armor for everything and costs 900 Creds/75 Metal; according to the Combat Mechanics topic, 1 Armor roughly equals +5% base hull strength, so you're getting roughly +225 hull points to your Kol and +45 hull points to your 10 Cobalts, for a total of +675 hull points across your whole fleet.
With the same amount of money, you can upgrade your fleet capacity and buy one new Cobalt. A Cobalt has 600 hull (660 including its base armor) and 350 shields, so you add considerably more total health to your fleet by purchasing the new Cobalt. That Cobalt also brings additional firepower to the table, which the armor upgrades do not. The armor upgrades do have the advantage of affecting structures in addition to ships, but with static defense being poor in this game, that's not much of an advantage. It's the strength of your fleet that matters, not your structures; once your fleet is dead, the enemy can take all the time he needs to tear down structures.
The Hull Reinforcement upgrades are better, since they increase base hull by 13% in addition to increasing repair rate by 6%. In the example above, these upgrades increase your total fleet health by 1170 hull points, more than purchasing a new Cobalt.
Before you've filled up your initial fleet capacity, there's not much point in researching upgrades over buying new ships. If you have a Kol and 5 Cobalts, one level of Hull Reinforcement adds 360 total hull points to your ships; for about the same amount of money you could just buy a new Cobalt, which has nearly twice as many effective hull points in addition to shields and laser cannons.
The more ships you have, the more worthwhile upgrades become. If you fill up 250 fleet capacity, we'll say with that same Kol and 10 Cobalts plus 37 new LRMs, then researching 2 points of Advanced Metallurgy brings you slightly over 2000 extra hull points across your whole fleet, while buying a new LRM only brings 525 effective hull points and 280 shields, and you still have to upgrade fleet capacity before you can buy a new LRM.
Ah ha, finally a real reply to the topic in hand. I came to realize the same math, that's why I have made the thread in the first place.
Since the recent touch up on all the carriers, plus Kol's primary weapon is it's powerful auto cannons, I really want to reach the auto cannon weapons for the TEC asap, that's why I wanted to know the best time to reach the Advanced Metallurgy. Do you think I should skip LRM and go straight to carriers in such research route, in consideration of the economy? And how many planets should I take control before I rush into the carriers?
I don't have the 1.1 patch, so I'm not sure about all that. I will say that I see little point in upgrading Autocannons until you have something besides just your capship using them.
Fighters use auto cannon.
WJC, what about the income penalty caused by the increased fleet size? Seems like that would be more of a factor than the one time research cost of the increased fleet size?
Well, you're going to do both (basic hull and fleet capacity upgrades) pretty much ASAP, and fleet capacity can be researched at the same time as one of the other two. So if you choose to spend money on hull first in the interest of postponing that income penalty, you only set it back about 30 seconds, after which point you'll have the money to do fleet capacity anyway while your hull upgrade is cooking. Assuming your income rate is about 12 creds per second, then in those 30 seconds, you save a grand total of 32.4 credits that would otherwise have been lost to the income penalty; if your crystal and metal income rates are hovering around 1 per second, you save a whopping 2.7 crystal/metal during that time. I guess that's something, but *shrug*, I know I don't care. Like I said earlier, seems like you should be doing basic hull research before your first fleet cap upgrade anyway.
It all depends on your situation, and your economy. It doesnt matter which faction it is. Do you do better with quantity over quality? I guess that is the real question.
hmm difficult question... i'd say.... 80% of the time i'd upgrade after i got a "fair" amount of ships (10-15-20)? then where i am able to que up at least 1 ship in the dock and afford the upgrade... so say... 1 ship being produced, upgrading.. then being able to build a new ship right after the first one's done (or start queing)
the other 20%.. well it's really a matter of wich position youre in... recources... winnig/ losing side.. planets..... allies??strategy...
late game, im pretty much able to que up my 50% of my economic or 50% combat tree (or 30% both.... not a calculation error.... lower tier research is cheaper) so theres no problem there
Your statement makes sense only if you expect the game to end immediately thereafter and you do not build more units.
When you research, you are sacrificing a bit of effectiveness in the short term for a bit more effectiveness in the long term. It's kind of like building metal and crystal extractors. You are losing money now, but you hope to gain it later.
If you wait until a research gives more bang for buck than another unit, you've already waited far too long.
Yup, upgrades are permanent, that 1 extra ship you just got only helps you until it explodes. Basically a 10% increase in hull will make your ships last longer which will ultimately mean less resources spent replacing them and the further you go into the game the less difference a couple of ships will make. It all depends on your playstle, your opponents playstyle and the way the game is going.
I am not suggesting dumping everything into upgrading 5 cobolts or anything but taking the 30 seconds to upgrade early can really pay off later.
Except that metal extractors provide more and more benefit the longer they exist. This is not the case with research, or combat research atleast. 1 level of Hull Reinforcement always gives +6% max hull points and +3% repair rate, no matter when you research it. You do not receive additional benefit for researching it earlier. If you're 45 minutes into the game, and you only researched Hull Reinforcement 5 minutes ago, you receive the same benefits from it as a player who researched it 20 minutes ago; however, someone who built an extractor 20 minutes ago will have gotten more metal out of it than someone who built it 5 minutes ago.
Depends on how much fighting they have been doing. Obviously if their ships never got shot in the 20 minutes then it would have been useless. But more health = less losses = more resources. Using your same example the player who researched it 20 minutes ago would have lost less ships in battle than the player who only researched it 5 minutes ago. The sooner you research it and the longer the game goes on the more you will benefit. The more health each individual ship has the less fragmentation in battle.
I think hull and shields should be done later in the game, when you have the extra money to do it. Its not like the phase missles for the vasari which are must as soon as you can.
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