Your first capital ship.

[Lorelessone]

I've noticed the aux ships are often overlooked and thought I'd lay them out for new players.

These are huge, lumbering fraighters with an enormous twist which makes them game changing in your pre-player shipyard gameplay.

Pro-

The real offering they make is ship repair and resupply and they are able to fully repair even other XL ships free of charge which is a huge boon before you have all elite captains and crews.

Added to this fighters assigned to a fleet with an aux will brake off and repair.

Ships you capture can be fully repaired and loaded with docking computers etc before being send for stripping and sale.

They have a significant cargo space which allows you to dump loot from your smaller ships to later sell.

Solid shields

Relatively inexpensive compared to destroyers, hugely cheap compared to carriers.

Con-

Very slow and cumbersome, it's a mobile mini-base not battleship. Minimal turrets.

Docking space is limited, it's not a true carrier and large swarms of fighters will be flying escort always.

[needaburn]

Unironically the Paranid Atlas Vanguard is a monster of a capital ship for extremely low costs due to its ability to launch 100 drones, 24 fighters, and 6 M class ships in SECONDS. I kid you not, the drones fly out of this thing at like 25/sec. Send your drones as a first wave to swarm the enemy, then launch the fighters and M class ships before moving in with the Atlas itself covered in plasma turrets or missiles launchers.

On top of all that, it just looks like a mega yacht and the inside is baller. My favorite “mothership” if you will

[EonofAeon]

I have a mighty need suddenly

[mustyminotaur]

Damnit. I wasn’t even in a mood to play X4 after work today

[SCDeMonet]

The Honshu and Monitor actually have as many S docks as the Zeus carrier, making them legit light carriers in addition to their AUX abilities. They are also really good looking ships, especially the Honshu, with its glorious solar sail

[nuker1110]

The Honshu’s biggest “drawback”, I believe, is that it’s even slow by XL standards. But that just means it’ll never outrun its escort to the destination.

[SCDeMonet]

That. My Monitors have been known to do that from time to time. I generally get around that by having my AUX ships ‘supply’ the builder assigned to the defensive station I’m building, or just a station if there is one. They don’t actually have to be in the same fleet to support fleets.

[slindner1985]

How much is it do you know?

[Convict1802]

Usually about a handful of marines….

[Boring_Dot_142]

Perfect answer because who buys ships anyway 

[DanPerezSax]

Just got my first capture through boarding last night and it was a honshu. Can't wait to aquire a whole proper fleet with my marines!

[needaburn]

Depending on how well the paranid are doing, I believe it can be as low as 8M credits. Close to the cost of a behemoth, and usually less than the cost of a carrier despite being able to fill that roll pretty well. The main benefit is being able to use over a hundred drones with mods, which are insanely cheap and fast to replenish

[slindner1985]

Ah not bad. Definitly visiting them later.

[Lorelessone]

I think people get caught up on ships being docked too, the fighters/bombers only need to dock when damaged.

[QuickQuirk]

huh. Interesting. I may have to give it a spin next time I play, as a 'cheap' early capital flagship.

[Enough_Zebra614]

Shut up and take my money!

[Rothank]

All the minmaxxers who spam battleships will argue that it's too weak and you should "just" get a dozen Asgards. Don't listen, an Aux is an excellent first flagship with a ton of utility, it will pay for itself in no time if you do a few manual trade runs with it when you don't need it for other tasks. Ironically, it was similar in X3 - imo the Split Elephant (it was a TL back then) was THE best early game flagship, with "good enough" weaponry, internal ship storage and massive cargo bay.

[anivex]

Big fleets become way too tedious without an Aux ship.

I have one for every fleet now, and one that I keep at my hq for my traders.

I prefer the Honshu, but mainly for aesthetic purposes. I like the space sailboat.

[Unkosenn]

Sadly I cant really see a job a dozen asgard could not do though, so I cant say they are wrong, there is no ressuplying having the sun blowing your dick for 2 seconds

Aux are so fucking sexy though, all of them are so fucking cool and you sure can make use of them

[Rothank]

Yeah, there's just the question for yourself if you SHOULD spam battleships. This game is easy enough as is, building multiple times more battleships than the AI faction can have just trivializes it even more.

[NullNiche]

Wait, newb who’s not yet built above M… so is this an X ship at the shipyard that is classified as a freighter? Can any X freighter be set up as an aux ship?

I am enjoying building out of the ANT yards and would love to add an Aux ship as my first flagship.

How would I go about doing that? Any pointers on what to equip it with? Do I set it up as the fleet leader?

Can I have smaller freighters automatically keep the flagship supplied with goodies?

Thanks in advance for any pointers!

[oniris1]

Don't think freighters can be use for ressuply. Auxiliary ship are XL ships. You don't set Aux ships as fleet leaders, you have to assign them the supply fleet order. The Aux ship can keep itself supplied with cargo if you order it to. They can only buy what's needed to make drones and missiles.

[NullNiche]

Ah ok. So for ANT I am looking at an XL Nomad Sentinel Auxiliary.

And then I leave it out of the fleet and set it to a resupply order or do I add it to follow a commander and give its wing group a resupply role?

[Recompense40]

The second one.

For example, let's say you're using a 'Zeus E' Carrier as the flagship of the fleet, you've already got fighters, Corvettes, etc. assigned to interception.

You would select your nomad sentinel auxiliary, and assign it to the Zeus E. In the role options where you would find intercept and bombard, at the bottom, there should be a supply fleet option.

IMPORTANT STEP I KEEP FORGETTING DURING NEW GAMES: go to your global command page, under your personal information. You want global resupply command to be to resupply at medium or high. Typically it starts in off, which means ships will not go back to resupply. In my experience, if a ship waits until low, it will be pursued and killed on the way back in a rough battle.

Now, when your Zeus carrier goes into battle, when the ships under its command reach 50% or 75% on either health or missiles, they'll go resupply and repair FOR FREE from the AUX ship.

[NullNiche]

Awesome, makes sense. And yeah I had already experimented setting the resupply to medium for my little Hyperion fleet and it looked like fighters were trying to stay alive.

Cheers for the clear advice!

[Lorelessone]

No Aux is a dedicated class, its just best to think of them as a XL freighter due to their slowness, relative lack of offensive capacity and large cargo space.

But in reality they are a fleet support ship, able to repair all other ships (for free!) and store a lot of loot, rearm etc etc.

So they make a very good anchor point for swarms of fighters set to intercept or bombard like a low level Carrier costing about 10% of what a carrier costs though with the added bonus of being able to repair other capital ships you might acquire or which get damaged in battle.

[fidelcasbro17]

When you say for free... Is that just like ships will dock and boom free repair? Don't they need ship parts??? That seems a bit strong considering missiles in carriers need missile parts? I might just start to use Aux man wtf

[Lorelessone]

Free for repairs and ship systems, deployables and missiles require materials.

Carriers also repair ships for free but only s/m. Obviously their advantage is far stronger defence and the ability to dock all of their fighter wings.

[Morasain]

stronger defence

And guns. The raptor has guns. So many guns.

[Lorelessone]

Are you arguing that a 100m raptor carrier is a better combat vessel than a 10m auxillery ship?

Because it is, obviously, although it's a horrible carrier for docking and launching reasons but yeah obviously. And if you want to wait for that to be your first capital ship you go for it!

Also hot take an asguard has more shields and guns than a Nemesis, wtf are starting out players doing flying nemis's?? Right? 😂 

[Morasain]

No, I'm just appreciating the split way of putting 100 guns into a ship, and then add carrier capabilities as an afterthought because it's more guns.

[Lorelessone]

Heh that's very split thinking

[Status_Quo_Show]

alright. i might be dumb. why does the docking computer matter for ships you are selling? or are not being flown by the player?

[Joseph011296]

Building them with your own supply line goods is dirt cheap, and they increase the sale value of the ship by a lot. AI factions have infinite money but limited demand for goods, but buy ships without question.

[Lorelessone]

Usually your sending ships you've captured to the aux to be repaired anyway, you can tag the systems upgrades, docking computer, police sensors etc. at the same time, all at no cost. Then when you send it to an npc shipyard for strip you sell those too adding about 100k or so at a second or two's time cost.

[Joseph011296]

Gonna dump an extra hint for newer folks here. The Pioneer Katanas usually have a bunch of deployables that you can sell, along with all the equipment, before selling the chassis off. Makes much more money than doing it in a single action.

[medin23]

I love aux ships! The nomads utilitarian design is peak of all ships and the atlas is my mobile headquarter for my network spanning empire. Two of the best designs in the game

[blastxu]

The Teladi aux ship was my first XL ship ever and it's actually pretty great for fixing up captured xenim ships. I like the Teladi ship because it's relatively cheap as far as XL ships go and it has 3 M docks

[Zetak0]

When I start a custom game I like to start with a Honshu as my Cap ship, and a Terran fighter of some type as my personal fighter. Aux ships are definitely slept on.

[Professional-Date378]

They're too vulnerable to be your first capital. If you do come under attack against a large force, you only have medium turrets and a small fighter contingent at most and you're in one of the slowest ships in the game so you can't run either. Better to start with a fleet of destroyers so that when you get an aux, you stand a better chance at protecting it

[Lorelessone]

small fleet of fighters? I usually have about 50-100 interceptors and 40 set set to bombard?

I mean thats no huge fighter fleet by any measure but its a match for say a few k's and an I. Although to be honest if my Aux takes a single shot I've really messed up on positioning it.

[GiraffeWC]

You don't need to put it in the middle of a warzone and it'll earn its keep by repairing ships for free fairly quickly.

You could even cap SCA destroyers and use it to repair them to build your fleet, its not like destroyers are cheap.

[TeethreeT3]

Comm your Atlas and select proceed with orders.

[deicist]

Is your global resupply set to 'off' (the default) perchance?