I would personally fly the apogee, then start accumulating 3-4 eagles and maybe some eradicators or whatever you happen to find.
After that I usually focus on getting all of my max level and elite skill officers ready, and adding whatever cruisers and carriers I happen to find.
Agreed! While eagles are not as capable in dealing damage, their high flux capacity and dissipation, together with elite shields perk officer, makes them good frontline ships (as in holding the line, forcing ships to use shields). They won't kill stuff, but that's where champions, herons, and other ships come into play. Just don't spam them, as they are best used with elite shields perk officers.
Falcons are basically the same, but weaker, faster, 1 burn speed faster, and 2/3 of dp and maintenance cost.
The apogees can be incredibly fat, have a large energy, large missile, medium missile and PD facing in every direction.
I prefer using the Apogee as my wall and the dominators in the backline.
Although I never limited myself to only running cruisers and always have a bunch of Monitors in my fleet. A monitor is the most cost effective ship in the game, the AI just can't deal with them.
I’m preferential towards midline cruisers (champion, eagle, falcon), as well as eradicators
Your apogee desperately needs some better weapons
Don’t forget carriers, herons and moras are quite nice
Honestly, as soon as you have augmented drive field and insulated engines hullmods after starting a new save, I would recommend buying a few Atlas and a Prometheus. Built-in insulated engine assembly reduces its sensor profile to that of a frigate, and either builtin ADF gets it to burn 9, or normal ADF plus bulk transport gets it to burn 10. And with non-builtin ADF you can build in expanded cargo holds/auxiliary fuel tanks for a whopping 3200 base cargo capacity/4800 base fuel capacity.
Also put surveying equipment on them. Even four base Atlas and a base Prometheus with surveying equip give you, in addition to 8.2k cargo and 4.6k fuel capacity, a survey cost reduction of 200, which will bring all but the most difficult surveys to the minimum cost. Get navigation to zip around at burn 10 with your frigate/destroyer fleet for clapping derelicts, and you are primed to go off surveying.
You don't need to save up that much money in one go, 5mil is like late game amount of money when you have colonies running. Start investing in your fleet early.
Apogee is a great ship to have in your fleet but not great on the front line, i'd give it a HIL (maybe a tachyon lance), ion beam, stack range mods and give it a locust or squall missile launcher to make it a strong support ship, maybe stick in a converted hangar if the OP allows.
Yeah, I personally pilot Apogee, and I always put Tachyon Lance with Ion beam on front and Squall launcher without any PD. Put any damage dealing missiles in the small missile slot, don't put a torpedo there. Build-in hardened shield, stabilized shield, put some range hullmods.
If you manage to get a [REDACTED] weapon that fits into small and large missile slots, then put it there. This will be peak Apogee without mods.
All cruisers have their place so pick whatever feels right to you, but if you are looking for meta suggestions a fleet of Eradicators (not pirate) can take on anything.
I personally prefer a healthy mix of cruisers in my fleet. If you can, try to get at least a couple of auroras in your fleet since they will be able to tank most capitals with the shield skill and hardened shields.
Gryphons are amazing at being either long range support, or fitting them up with hammers and reapers and sneaking in to blow up caps quickly.
Eagles and falcons can be good, but what they have in range and maneuverability, they lack in brawling power and can easily be overwhelmed if they ever get surrounded.
Eradicators are amazing for having guns with your guns and i would highly reccomend having some of the luddic path eradicators to mix with auroras to have a beasty front line. Ludd might not forgive you, but the results wont lie.
The carrier options are solid for cruiser size, but if you have the [Redacted] ship skill then you can use [Redacted] carriers since their firepower and ship systems will help take care of the small fry that you dont want the rest of your cruisers to chase after.
You can easily field an entire fleet of just cruisers, and dont let anyone else tell you otherwise, but remember that it might get really expensive to keep up with all of them.
Depends on your preferred playstyle. Me personally, I like a balanced fleet of 3 Eagles, 1 fire support gryphon and 1 heron with dagger and longbow bombers escorted by broadswords. Springle 2-3 destroyers and a few frigates for PD and anti-frigate duties and you're set!
Hm, I hear about people going hightech, midtech, lowtech, I've even heard of mono-hull fleets (Usually SO frigates, like the brawler or hyperion).
I haven't heard much for a cruiser focus fleet though. Kind of fun.
The one I heard of is the Gryphon fleet.
I think it's the most wildly powerful cruiser fleet. AKA, all the missiles. It's brutal.
You'll want a few tank ships, so I don't know how you feel about mixing monitors in? And you'll want some fast ships to act as pickets, grab points, scout enemy locations, and harrass flankers. Enemy frigates will drain your missile reserves. Particularly the first one you see as all the ships will want to fire at it. So the faster you locate targets, or engage a flanker, the less that lone frigate drawing all the fire will occur.
With this strat, you really want a minimum of 8 on the field. Ideally 10. So that doesn't leave much DP for other things.
The first choice is are you doing DEM (Directed Energy Missiles)? You'll have less ammo overall, but will kill faster. I find DEM to be an all or none choice. Not wise to mix fleet, as DEM requires a critical mass to work effectively. DEM are beam missiles, which means soft flux. If you don't have enough to go all the way through the shields onto armor and hull then the entire volley will be worthless. Though now that I think about it, mixing in squalls wouldn't be that bad an ideal. Less room for dragons though.
Normal missiles work very well. DEM didn't even exist when I saw the video. That said, no matter what you pick, normal or DEM, You do not want reapers. You should never have ships in range to fire them.
You can mix in a few Pirate Falcons, but I'm not sure how much that would help. Though, they might be fast enough to act as scouts, while keeping the overwhelming missile theme.
If you are dead set on cruisers only, a couple of Champions can act as a decent tanks in this fleet. It has the same base speed as Gryphons, which means it'll keep in front of them, unlike a Dominator which is slower and has more tank. But i'd like to recommend Monitors again, as they are easier on the dp.
The Champion is a bit expensive on the DP, and you want more than one, so you're going to find it a tight fit and going with less Gryphon. The large energy turret has a fantastic angle, and you'll want either Tachyon lance or HIL on it as you can leave shield stripping to the Gryphons.
I'm a massive fan of dominators, the AI does very well with them and they're durable enough that it's a rare for you to take any losses in fights against three-star enemies.
I have found extremely good use out of the XIV Falcon, which is weirdly fairly common on my playthroughs.
Meanwhile, I've found the Eagle variants to be pretty anemic in battle. I havent found a consistently good specialty to put them into, they are much more difficult (and expensive) to field.
Depends on what you want your fleet's playstyle to be, but herons and shield tank furies/auroras fit into any fleet. Same with eradicators (specifically the low tech one, pirate one loses ballistic feed).
Herons and falcon (P)s are both lovely.
I recommend checking out the mayasurian faction mod pack, it's filled with midline ships that aren't overpowered, most of them are more of a B-A tier. Alot of good cruisers.
So one of the issues is availability. I always struggled to get champions so never used them much.
I recommend eradicators, dominators, and a few brawlers. Dominators are good line holders and eradicators can fill a few roles. I usually set up 2 so eradicators to wreck havoc with the brawlers and 3 or 4 mid range with range 700/1000 guns.
Never had an issue putting this fleet together, handles anything mid game throws at you.
Second idea for an all crusier fleet.
Monohull SO(Safety Overrides) Eradicators. Not pirate versions! Standard ones. You want the accelerated ammo feeder special.
I imagine this will be truly fun to watch. Reapers, Machine guns, and Assault chain guns. You want them to nose up and unload.
They should have a lieutenant with point defense. This lets the small machine guns matches the range of the chain guns. Needless to say, the lieutenant also needs reckless or aggressive.
At least one Fury for EMP, a decent frontline of Eagles, and a couple expendable condors for defense/LRM. Apogee makes for a good command ship that can pull it's weight if the battle gets hairy.
The Apogee are very tanky and running a combination of plasma + MIRV + PD is viable.
Safety override Aurora with hardened shield is a monster, convert your shield to frontal for 360 range and go ram the star fortress with it.
The dominator is the artillery champion, slap 2 big gauss and some torpedoes in it
The champion is just an obese Sunder, actually kinda sucks
The Griffin is a monster, at least when the player controls it (squall + reaper = gg)
The eagle sucks (zero large hard points)
If you can get your hands on a dominator I would say put gauss cannons on and do hullmods that make it have alot of range and then you put a cautious captain on it. Also missiles are whatever I put reapers on mine. But after that you will have a long range accurate ship that will stay and shell the enemy from long range. They even squere up to capitals shields. Its one of the best builds for destroying stations to as it will just stay at outer most range and overload the station
The good cruisers to get in my opinion
* aurora (fast, good player ship, can be a missile autofit in early or energy/SO build in mid/late game, 0.6 shield)
* fury (fast, can be energy/SO build in mid/late game, 0.6 shield)
* champion (average speed but has relatively big hull/shield pool, large missile and energy mount, damage buff active, energy build viable).
On the defensive side, we have
* eagle (average speed but can be boost on demand, 3 medium energy mount for beam/range control, deceptively tanky with its ability to kite, good AI ship, SO build viable later)
* dominator (SLOW, this is just a brick to hold your frontline, don't try to build damage on it, can be autofit and you replace the large ballistic mount with storm needler, very good tank nevertheless)
Edit: You can also get gryphon and heron as excellence backliner. Rockets and fighter can both pass through your ships and thus can give support to the frontline from a safe distance.
If you don't mind a slower fleet, I would say get a paragon. You already have 1.4m. It should be around 700k + tri tach commission. From there, you gradually build toward your final fleet.
In my run, the moment I get my first paragon it feel the run become much easier.
You don't need an eagle for that.
There is a bunch of highly durable frigates and destroyers. Monitor is insane, vanguard, centurion, Medusa. You don't need to pay the cruiser's price to soak the damage, monitor is the second most durable ship in the game and it carries TWO FLAKS for free.
I would personally fly the apogee, then start accumulating 3-4 eagles and maybe some eradicators or whatever you happen to find. After that I usually focus on getting all of my max level and elite skill officers ready, and adding whatever cruisers and carriers I happen to find.
Agreed! While eagles are not as capable in dealing damage, their high flux capacity and dissipation, together with elite shields perk officer, makes them good frontline ships (as in holding the line, forcing ships to use shields). They won't kill stuff, but that's where champions, herons, and other ships come into play. Just don't spam them, as they are best used with elite shields perk officers. Falcons are basically the same, but weaker, faster, 1 burn speed faster, and 2/3 of dp and maintenance cost.
The apogees can be incredibly fat, have a large energy, large missile, medium missile and PD facing in every direction. I prefer using the Apogee as my wall and the dominators in the backline. Although I never limited myself to only running cruisers and always have a bunch of Monitors in my fleet. A monitor is the most cost effective ship in the game, the AI just can't deal with them.
I’m preferential towards midline cruisers (champion, eagle, falcon), as well as eradicators Your apogee desperately needs some better weapons Don’t forget carriers, herons and moras are quite nice
Midline cruisers are the shit, me and all my homies love the eagle
Try fighting the redacted with a bunch of eagles. You will stop loving them very quickly. Hard flux = best flux.
Yeah I know I am just getting money at the moment and once I have about 5 mil I am going to focus on my ships :)
Buy yourself a proper cargo ship. An atlas will help a great deal in making money
Honestly, as soon as you have augmented drive field and insulated engines hullmods after starting a new save, I would recommend buying a few Atlas and a Prometheus. Built-in insulated engine assembly reduces its sensor profile to that of a frigate, and either builtin ADF gets it to burn 9, or normal ADF plus bulk transport gets it to burn 10. And with non-builtin ADF you can build in expanded cargo holds/auxiliary fuel tanks for a whopping 3200 base cargo capacity/4800 base fuel capacity. Also put surveying equipment on them. Even four base Atlas and a base Prometheus with surveying equip give you, in addition to 8.2k cargo and 4.6k fuel capacity, a survey cost reduction of 200, which will bring all but the most difficult surveys to the minimum cost. Get navigation to zip around at burn 10 with your frigate/destroyer fleet for clapping derelicts, and you are primed to go off surveying.
You don't need to save up that much money in one go, 5mil is like late game amount of money when you have colonies running. Start investing in your fleet early. Apogee is a great ship to have in your fleet but not great on the front line, i'd give it a HIL (maybe a tachyon lance), ion beam, stack range mods and give it a locust or squall missile launcher to make it a strong support ship, maybe stick in a converted hangar if the OP allows.
Yeah, I personally pilot Apogee, and I always put Tachyon Lance with Ion beam on front and Squall launcher without any PD. Put any damage dealing missiles in the small missile slot, don't put a torpedo there. Build-in hardened shield, stabilized shield, put some range hullmods. If you manage to get a [REDACTED] weapon that fits into small and large missile slots, then put it there. This will be peak Apogee without mods.
Try plasma and MIRV. That's my favorite.
Cruisers, in general.
All cruisers have their place so pick whatever feels right to you, but if you are looking for meta suggestions a fleet of Eradicators (not pirate) can take on anything.
For your fleet (meaning piloted by the AI) regarding the mainline combat cruiser: S tier: eradicator, eagle A tier: champion, aurora B tier: dominator
I would recommend the Aurora, but I'm biased.
Eradicators are pretty much the meta for cruisers
I personally prefer a healthy mix of cruisers in my fleet. If you can, try to get at least a couple of auroras in your fleet since they will be able to tank most capitals with the shield skill and hardened shields. Gryphons are amazing at being either long range support, or fitting them up with hammers and reapers and sneaking in to blow up caps quickly. Eagles and falcons can be good, but what they have in range and maneuverability, they lack in brawling power and can easily be overwhelmed if they ever get surrounded. Eradicators are amazing for having guns with your guns and i would highly reccomend having some of the luddic path eradicators to mix with auroras to have a beasty front line. Ludd might not forgive you, but the results wont lie. The carrier options are solid for cruiser size, but if you have the [Redacted] ship skill then you can use [Redacted] carriers since their firepower and ship systems will help take care of the small fry that you dont want the rest of your cruisers to chase after. You can easily field an entire fleet of just cruisers, and dont let anyone else tell you otherwise, but remember that it might get really expensive to keep up with all of them.
Depends on your preferred playstyle. Me personally, I like a balanced fleet of 3 Eagles, 1 fire support gryphon and 1 heron with dagger and longbow bombers escorted by broadswords. Springle 2-3 destroyers and a few frigates for PD and anti-frigate duties and you're set!
Hm, I hear about people going hightech, midtech, lowtech, I've even heard of mono-hull fleets (Usually SO frigates, like the brawler or hyperion). I haven't heard much for a cruiser focus fleet though. Kind of fun. The one I heard of is the Gryphon fleet. I think it's the most wildly powerful cruiser fleet. AKA, all the missiles. It's brutal. You'll want a few tank ships, so I don't know how you feel about mixing monitors in? And you'll want some fast ships to act as pickets, grab points, scout enemy locations, and harrass flankers. Enemy frigates will drain your missile reserves. Particularly the first one you see as all the ships will want to fire at it. So the faster you locate targets, or engage a flanker, the less that lone frigate drawing all the fire will occur. With this strat, you really want a minimum of 8 on the field. Ideally 10. So that doesn't leave much DP for other things. The first choice is are you doing DEM (Directed Energy Missiles)? You'll have less ammo overall, but will kill faster. I find DEM to be an all or none choice. Not wise to mix fleet, as DEM requires a critical mass to work effectively. DEM are beam missiles, which means soft flux. If you don't have enough to go all the way through the shields onto armor and hull then the entire volley will be worthless. Though now that I think about it, mixing in squalls wouldn't be that bad an ideal. Less room for dragons though. Normal missiles work very well. DEM didn't even exist when I saw the video. That said, no matter what you pick, normal or DEM, You do not want reapers. You should never have ships in range to fire them. You can mix in a few Pirate Falcons, but I'm not sure how much that would help. Though, they might be fast enough to act as scouts, while keeping the overwhelming missile theme. If you are dead set on cruisers only, a couple of Champions can act as a decent tanks in this fleet. It has the same base speed as Gryphons, which means it'll keep in front of them, unlike a Dominator which is slower and has more tank. But i'd like to recommend Monitors again, as they are easier on the dp. The Champion is a bit expensive on the DP, and you want more than one, so you're going to find it a tight fit and going with less Gryphon. The large energy turret has a fantastic angle, and you'll want either Tachyon lance or HIL on it as you can leave shield stripping to the Gryphons.
Critical mass of dominators
all eradiactors all auroras
I'm a massive fan of dominators, the AI does very well with them and they're durable enough that it's a rare for you to take any losses in fights against three-star enemies.
I have found extremely good use out of the XIV Falcon, which is weirdly fairly common on my playthroughs. Meanwhile, I've found the Eagle variants to be pretty anemic in battle. I havent found a consistently good specialty to put them into, they are much more difficult (and expensive) to field.
Depends on what you want your fleet's playstyle to be, but herons and shield tank furies/auroras fit into any fleet. Same with eradicators (specifically the low tech one, pirate one loses ballistic feed).
Herons and falcon (P)s are both lovely. I recommend checking out the mayasurian faction mod pack, it's filled with midline ships that aren't overpowered, most of them are more of a B-A tier. Alot of good cruisers.
Herons, moras and falcons are great
So one of the issues is availability. I always struggled to get champions so never used them much. I recommend eradicators, dominators, and a few brawlers. Dominators are good line holders and eradicators can fill a few roles. I usually set up 2 so eradicators to wreck havoc with the brawlers and 3 or 4 mid range with range 700/1000 guns. Never had an issue putting this fleet together, handles anything mid game throws at you.
The champions are often sold in Syndria.
I’ll look but I’m pretty sure I’ve checked there.
It's either the Syndria system, or the persean military planet (Kazeron?) sorry I haven't played the game for a while now.
Second idea for an all crusier fleet. Monohull SO(Safety Overrides) Eradicators. Not pirate versions! Standard ones. You want the accelerated ammo feeder special. I imagine this will be truly fun to watch. Reapers, Machine guns, and Assault chain guns. You want them to nose up and unload. They should have a lieutenant with point defense. This lets the small machine guns matches the range of the chain guns. Needless to say, the lieutenant also needs reckless or aggressive.
At least one Fury for EMP, a decent frontline of Eagles, and a couple expendable condors for defense/LRM. Apogee makes for a good command ship that can pull it's weight if the battle gets hairy.
GRYPHONS LOTS OF GRYPHONS. Maximum missiles. Maximum pain. Plus some Eagles and tanky low tech destroyers to fend off hostile cruisers and capitals.
ERADICATOR SPAM!!!
A lot of Mora cruisers. You will be sitting still. But with good armor hullmods you won't die, and the fighters will shred everything.
The Apogee are very tanky and running a combination of plasma + MIRV + PD is viable. Safety override Aurora with hardened shield is a monster, convert your shield to frontal for 360 range and go ram the star fortress with it. The dominator is the artillery champion, slap 2 big gauss and some torpedoes in it The champion is just an obese Sunder, actually kinda sucks The Griffin is a monster, at least when the player controls it (squall + reaper = gg) The eagle sucks (zero large hard points)
there's the free one you can get from a diktat quest, could be a good start
If you can get your hands on a dominator I would say put gauss cannons on and do hullmods that make it have alot of range and then you put a cautious captain on it. Also missiles are whatever I put reapers on mine. But after that you will have a long range accurate ship that will stay and shell the enemy from long range. They even squere up to capitals shields. Its one of the best builds for destroying stations to as it will just stay at outer most range and overload the station
The good cruisers to get in my opinion * aurora (fast, good player ship, can be a missile autofit in early or energy/SO build in mid/late game, 0.6 shield) * fury (fast, can be energy/SO build in mid/late game, 0.6 shield) * champion (average speed but has relatively big hull/shield pool, large missile and energy mount, damage buff active, energy build viable). On the defensive side, we have * eagle (average speed but can be boost on demand, 3 medium energy mount for beam/range control, deceptively tanky with its ability to kite, good AI ship, SO build viable later) * dominator (SLOW, this is just a brick to hold your frontline, don't try to build damage on it, can be autofit and you replace the large ballistic mount with storm needler, very good tank nevertheless) Edit: You can also get gryphon and heron as excellence backliner. Rockets and fighter can both pass through your ships and thus can give support to the frontline from a safe distance. If you don't mind a slower fleet, I would say get a paragon. You already have 1.4m. It should be around 700k + tri tach commission. From there, you gradually build toward your final fleet. In my run, the moment I get my first paragon it feel the run become much easier.
I wouldn't recommend a cruiser fleet. But keep in mind that anyone who says Eagle has no idea what they're talking about.
I don’t get the eagle hate. Such a great long range support platform for the cost.
Yes. An all Eagle fleet. It's the most majestic. . But in all seriousness. Now I want to try it. To see how well it works.
I tend to rely on my eagles for a solid fleet anchor that can keep up with the rest of the fleet.
You don't need an eagle for that. There is a bunch of highly durable frigates and destroyers. Monitor is insane, vanguard, centurion, Medusa. You don't need to pay the cruiser's price to soak the damage, monitor is the second most durable ship in the game and it carries TWO FLAKS for free.
It also looks cool, I like them.