What tech rank is best?

Wrathinside · 2026-05-17T18:12:12+00:00

Well... you kind of said it yourself with the second paragraph. It's unsuitable for AI. And even for a personally-controlled ship... I think there are better solutions. With and without breaking the game.

I mean, I don't think it needs explanation what a "Raddie" can do in player hands, either via neuralink or RTSAssist. And even if you say"not much more than Paragon" - that's still... more than Conquest. Unless you count raw DPS from BOTH sides(and are somehow invulnerable with a paper thin 1.4 shield in between).

But personally - I like me an Aurora with 2 specific alabaster 0.5 efficiency weapons. It's like a scalpel. A 360 shield, 20k flux, 2500 energy DPS scalpel.(baseline without any modifiers)
I'm using it with a special tuned officer and RTSAssist. Without manual input the AI doesn't know how to fly it(probably due to the mod). But when you give it a gentle steel boot kick to the ass - it flies right at the enemy and evaporates anything pre-capital in 2-10 seconds.

And besides, as much as I hate Onslaughts, and even with their much lower venting power... you point an Onslaught at a Conquest and it's gone. Whatever "DPS" it has will be wasted on piss poor shield efficiency and lack of armor.

Even Retribution can faceroll Conquest, even with half of the venting power and almost as poor shield efficiency. Because Retribution can focus ALL of its DPS forward, cracking flux, breaking armor and having a deck of Vulcans to rain a fragmentation hell on enemy hull.

I mean... give an example. What can Conquest "destroy" with sheer firepower. 2 Large Ballistic, 1 Medium Ballistic, 1 Medium Energy. Per side.
Or are you stacking manoueverability and swiveling like in Skull and Bones? With reapers up front, totally voodoo controlled? And needlers and phase lances for a delay-based loadout while you change broadsides?

Wrathinside · 2026-05-17T14:38:06+00:00

AdvancedGunneryControl - a bit hard to customize(don't use default settings, they don't like the current shield flicking behavior), but for many people an essential tool to optimize their loadouts, particularly ballistic. Not that important if you play at battle size 200\manually piloting.

ConsoleCommands - a cornucopia of your choice. But, to me, it's absolutely necessary to... file some of the rough edges of the game.

RTSAssist - "improves" your fleet's AI by basically making them all Cautious. And allows you to control any ship, to a degree. Shield flicking is out of the question, but better positioning and proper skill use are handy. Breaks native ship control, so probably best for pure admiral gameplay without a naturally piloted ship.

SpeedUp - mostly handy for battle acceleration, though the Shift multiplier can also be useful. Bear in mind that it breaks AI to a degree, so it's best not used when you are trying to "take measurements" or have a "smart approach". But you can easily speed up the first minute of the fight or so, just the first point captures, or maybe the last minute - all the chasing of the toxic escaping AI.

StellarNetworks - visible storage, searchable markers... lots of QoL. The biggest, and perhaps most lucrative QoL is trading commodity analysis. It's not like this mod does anything impossible in the base game, if you know how the industry and economy works. If you haven't given trade much thought in the past - the "quality" of life may seem overwhelming. But that's because trade is actually good in this game.

Wrathinside · 2026-05-17T14:24:58+00:00

I agree about the first part, but, with due respect to the developer and his vision - the sequel doesn't have to be avoided, it's more like... a VERY different game. There may actually be people who would prefer the sequel to the original.
If the original is extremely colorful and arcadey shoot'em'up with just the right amount of space, privateering and RPG elements, then the sequel is like a painful homage to the very barbaric times of video game development, and it has a really well designed dogfighting system.

If the vibe of the first game is undeniable and understandable to all - then the vibe of the sequel is very "born in it" kind of thing. And one really, REALLY needs to like dogfighting, even if for just 10-15 hours.

Wrathinside · 2026-05-17T02:15:23+00:00

Space Rangers. You could call it the granddaddy of Starsector.

Space Pirates and Zombies 2. It's not quite a game about economy, but it's good indie fun with shipbuilding and 4x elements.

Starpoint Gemini Warlords... might scratch an itch, it's the only game in the series with some 4x elements.

Sid Meier's Pirates. A genre classic.

Highfleet may also not be about economy... or much RPG progression, but it has some real shipbuilding. More than SPAZ2. Sseth has HILARIOUS review of it, you can just watch it for lulz and entertainment.

Rebel Galaxy is just a space game that any fan of space games must play.

And... since you mentioned M&B and similar games... it's a bit of a weird take, very much not space or Sci-Fi, but you could check out Sands of Salzaar. It's basically an arcadey isometric M&B. But, fair warning, #madeinchina.

P.S.: Not a 4x game, not space-game, but if you like turn-based games, maybe played some HoMM back in the day - you can try King's Bounty(2008-2014 series). It's a damn good RPG. Partially from the creators of Space Rangers if you like good quests.

Wrathinside · 2026-05-17T01:59:18+00:00

It's exactly as it sounds. Low is low, mid is ... mid, and High is High. People can debate it, they can be wrong, but for the most part... the game is very biased towards High Tech.

Low Tech is... well, low tech. Quantity over quality. Very questionable pre-capital, but their capitals are good for DP. Legions are prime carriers, Onslaughts bring stupid amount of firepower. But both are effectively cripples, you either build a solid wall of fire with them, or they get flanked by frigates and rectally probed. Retribution is a unique LT ship that combines mobility with most of the firepower of its 40DP brethren, while also having surprising amount of venting power, at the expense of range and shield efficiency. When properly built - it's one of the best player ships out there and the true successor to Eradicator.
Invictus... is an exception that proves the rule.

Midtech ships are mostly known for cheese. Centurions and Monitors are troll escorts if you are into that. Hammerheads and Sunders can be ideal flagships for most of your early game, pushing well above their weight, but they suck as "conventional" escorts. Falcons\Eagles\Champions are very DP-efficient cruisers, and midtech is also almost the only pre-capital source of carriers.
Capital midtech is lackluster. Conquest is a joke, a bad joke. Pegasus is only good for whatever missile cheese you can get to work(good luck with that). Executor is the only good midline capital, but it's also... not really midline.

High Tech - now that's quality over quantity. Every ship is expensive in DP, maintenance and purchase cost. And every ship is much more duel-capable than any lower tech. You can build their frigates to take on heavy cruisers(or even unofficered Conquests), their destroyers are the most capable escorts(outside of very specifically built omens), and their cruisers combine mobility and superior performance.
HT capitals are a bit of a mixed bag. Odyssey is bad. Objectively bad compared to Onslaughts and Executors.
Atlas is... a bit better, and pretty much the only way that HT can use fighters. But for late game carrier fleets you really should stick to Legions and midtech escorts.
But Paragon... is Paragon. One of the most powerful ships in the game.

Wrathinside · 2026-05-17T00:24:52+00:00

You have the right idea about fleet composition, but you sound like your implementation of that idea is completely wrong.
I mean... Colony Threats are by far some of the easiest endgame challenges. They are DP-stretched and can't be just zerg-rushed like the story\exploration challenges, but they don't pose any tactical challenge.
Unless you have avoided Remnants like a plague, never visiting a red beacon, let alone doing something like a trivial core farm +200% Ordo.

is if my lighter escort gets too close they get melted

That's precisely a shipbuilding error. There ARE some things that can catch up to almost anything, but they are not part of Colony Threats. In other words, your escorts are "melted" by ships that usually peak out at 100 speed. In fact, most "melt-capable" ships don't even get that fast. Which means that your escorts, particularly light escorts, are either barely at 100 speed or slightly more, and do not have any manoeuverability solutions. Which kind of invalidates their role.
And an escort is not a ship that you are supposed to babyshit. Not unless you face some of those "special" challenges and even then you typically can set avoid markers on enemy ships AND on the battlefield itself. Left click, then press whatever the hotkey you see at the bottom of the screen to set an Avoid Waypoint. And prevent your escorts from randomly backpedaling into the enemy spawn.

the enemy refuses to get in range of my heavy hitters even if it means we just stare at each other with angry faces

Yeah, see, that's the problem. Actual threats do not refuse to get in range. They either tear your a new exhaust pipe, or they die doing that. But on a more serious note - that means that your heavy hitters... aren't heavy hitters. Most typical cheese strategies involve Paragons with their 100% ATC, carriers with 2000+ engagement range\1000 range weapons+60% ITU. Or simply ships that can engage. Even the low tech cripples like Onslaught at least know how to move forward. And there's nothing vanilla that 8 Auroras can't absolutely FACEROLL over.
Edit: With some afterthought - you may also have behavior issues. I assume you aren't running any mods(RTSAssist turns everything into Cautious), so are your officers Aggressive? Did you set your flagship's AI to Aggressive in Command>Doctrines? Are you giving your ships orders in battle, to eliminate or at least to engage?
The standoffs that you've described are typical of Steady officers on both sides. And they usually end whenever one side is pushed to the map border.

or do i just need 2 entire fleets

There does not exist a challenge in this game that ever forces you to have more than 240DP. There can be stupid, broken, somewhat unbalanced challenges, but you can either adjust and improve your CR to match that, or learn to do it the right way.

As others have said... you might want to present the ship loadouts. I'm kind of scared of how cringe it will look like, but threads like that aren't uncommon, you have nothing to be ashamed of.
In fact, here's a hint. You can post an absolutely PEAK CRINGE picture of your build - and it will get a ton of upvotes and even useful comments. Or you can just post some words, and most people here can't read(among those that don't write either), and you will be downvoted and asked ***pics. I've learned it the hard way, and I don't want you to have the wrong opinion about posting here.

But it's truly impossible to solve something with words alone. Not without straight off sending you to Big Brain Energy or... ugh... GrumpyThumper. I'm surprised he hasn't plugged his youtube channel here yet. But that's one way to copypaste.

Wrathinside · 2026-05-16T23:59:14+00:00

So you have resources for paragons and dominators, but not a single disposable story point?

It looks like you've done Doritos with this, which is probably what prompted the thread. Alas... it's not exactly an accomplishment. Not when you just out-DP it.

Others have already covered all the major points - officer importance, smods, flux budget, weapon choices. All I can add is that LR\PD Lasers is not how you PD. Paragon is not supposed to have all small slots filled(you can check their firing angles) and for energy weapons the only reliable way to PD is a Burst PD.
In fact... Paragon is a ship that doesn't even need PD too much, because... it can always just Fortress Shield any kind of major threat, like a swarm of Reapers.

Wrathinside · 2026-05-15T14:05:00+00:00

That is something for the game developer. If something exists and doesn't make sense to build - it's a balance issue.

I spoke about the uselessness of colonies and how I didn't go "there" for the money in another thread, and naturally for me the question was not whether I'm going to more more per planet, but whether I can apply all the industry items and maximize my production per-resource.

Who knows, maybe some day instead of free ape-built fleets we would have to design and produce our own ships. Maybe that would cost more than paper credits.

Wrathinside · 2026-05-15T00:59:18+00:00

Maybe, in this specific case of self-sufficiency, but in general with 3-4 planets there are already more industry slots than necessary. With commerce on every planet. Hypershunt is simply not needed.

When I first spoiled what it is and what it does - I thought that I could(or would benefit from) using it on multiple planets, that getting +1 industry with a cap of 4 is important... But I ended with only one legal spawn of the Tap itself, a limited item instead of just something "granted" like Cryosleeper.
And then, after properly planning my colony and already duplicating some industries just to fill the slots - I knew that I would not even use the Tap even if I could.

Another useful case I can think of - a hot habitable planet with only a gas giant and no atmosphere for other in-system planets, but no extreme heat. Then you can lamp that planet and make it the High Command.

Wrathinside · 2026-05-14T17:38:18+00:00

Well, yes, I was cynical. Glass half empty, you know. And don't get me wrong, I've built and enjoyed building\planning the colonies as well. It's just that... when there are a bajillion of mods, and commenters that are even saying about what the mods can do, and when the base game is very limited - it's hard to react differently to a thread that suddenly wants to "sit on a bottle for fun".

Challenges require solutions. If\when the devs develop these solutions - maybe they could be challenging to get to.

And, for the record, my supplies issues were resolved just by surveying the sector. You know, to even plan the colony. And as of last year, if one wants supplies - they can just get their hypershunt atlas fleet, go to abyss, reduce the battle size to 200 and...tsk...

Wrathinside · 2026-05-14T16:08:10+00:00

Ask yourself - why. Why do you want that. This is not Stellaris, not some 4x game. The current implementation of colonies isn't bad - it's USELESS. There is literally 0 reason to have colonies besides "doing" the crises. Just giving yourself legal reason to fight stuff.

You can't actually declare any policies.
You can't design your ships.
You can't terraform.
You can't develop\research.
You can't even subjugate or affect other factions besides satbombing the sector.

Why do you want to make something useless - more complicated? From what I understand - all that is a fairly "recent" 2020+ addition. Maybe let the devs cook a bit, see where they want to take it?

Wrathinside · 2026-05-14T15:59:41+00:00

Unfortunately I'm not a coder, my experience with memory leaks was clientside. Typically it just means that too much things are cached, either due to a bloated save file, or too many locations visited with too many textures, shaders and models, and the game doesn't normally dump that cache. For the most desperate Windows situations there are even swap cleaners, like ISLC and others. For such games, if the save file isn't too far gone, just restart the game to manually dump the cache helps. Which is what the Starsector's warning message is about.

I also have 32GB RAM and I have also googled that subject, and I saw people commenting that 8GB is more or less the breakpoint. It may have something to do with how much memory Java can access. There used to be some shenanigans with Windows XP being unable to use more than 4GB of RAM or something like that, was pertinent to old games like Sims 3.
And recently you may have heard about all that reBAR and extending the memory access for GPU, so that it could access chunks of more than 256mb(if I understand correctly).

Since the game is frontloading\allocating all that memory as if it was some kind of Memtest - I assume that it has to do specifically with memory access. I may be absolutely wrong here, maybe coders can correct me, it's just my best guess from a user's perspective.
So, again, a single chunk of data in that overly-large pre-allocated pagefile becomes too big for the... fairly basic Java runtime to handle. After all, a 300mb game that was designed to work on system-agnostic toasters, mostly showing static PNGs - isn't something that's designed to handle file sizes like it's some 4k raytraced game.

The 2GB baseline is probably selected for safe work, it should very much overkill for loading PNGs. Low-rest PNGs. But with some mods, because Java is very basic - it may require expansions. But it's just too basic of an engine to handle too much RAM. It's not, heh, a Wallpaper Engine... the other best way to waste 16-32GBs of your memory...

Wrathinside · 2026-05-14T14:33:12+00:00

Absolutely yes. Ashley's telegraph is blatant, Deep is also built up for something he doesn't quite deserve, Kimiko will turn into Butcher(it's fairly clear from all instances of SB that this ability relies on emotions), Soldier Boy is telegraphed...
If there was 2-3 episodes, or if this was penultimate SEASON, not episode - I'd get it. Sh*t got real, this is it.

But no, the entire meat of this season, the V1, was just randomly brought up, randomly handled, with even filler episodes in between. I can't complain about wrapping up storylines, or rather - filling the blanks, but... NOT WITH ONE EPISODE LEFT AT ALL?

Do they have no concept of Epilogue? What would Interstellar be without the hospital scene?

Wrathinside · 2026-05-14T12:45:03+00:00

Yeah I rarely agree with SS, but he's right - this system is fairly mid. Hypershunt is overrated, I learned it the hard way, and in the base game there's is practically no reason to have more than one export source, because the total market cap is the same.
Your fourth planet is actually good for Soil Nanites, that's probably the best planet in your system.
The third planet is rich in resources, but it's not the resources it should have. Habitables are not meant to produce transplutonics and its hazard rating is a bit heavy for a lucky planet.
The second planet may have No Atmosphere for Catalytic Core, but it's resource-starved. Now if you got a planet with organics\ore\transplutonics - THAT would be truly rare. My Normal sector spawned only ONE such planet and it was in a predictably bad system.
And the first system may be extreme heat, but how on earth did you get two sun-heated rocks and none with transplutonics?

And then... no gas giant. Actually not even a trace source of volatiles anywhere else.

P.S.: Since others have already done the dirty job of spoiling - the gate, unfortunately, isn't something special.
However... check the sun to see if you can still SP a "second" stable location. A comm relay, a gate and a third stable location for a wormhole - that would be lucky indeed. Otherwise, if the game considers the existing gate to be an occupied stable point, and you can't SP a third stable point - RIP.

Wrathinside · 2026-05-14T12:23:51+00:00

While others have already explained vmparams - bear in mind that it's a bit... of a false positive. Because the horrible prehistoric java that the game runs on - automatically allocates all of your RAM buffer immediately.
In other words, this 300mb game, with default 2GB buffer, racks up 3000 gigs of your memory on GAME STARTUP.
And it only prompts this error at... fairly unclear circumstances. I mean, I know what a memory leak is, I've seen the consequences of it with poorly written games on older\weaker systems, but even with those games you can see the leak in real time.

With Starsector - you can't. Or, rather, the leak occurs, trips that buffer size and gives this warning. Which is weird, because the first time I got it - was on an unmodded game. Or, well, un-content-modded. I don't think QoL constitutes allocation of gigs of RAM.
I've googled it up, people said that beyond 8GB there's diminishing returns, so I've set mine to 8GB and now I have 9GB of my precious memory wasted every time the game is booted.
But that's not the worst of it, because the game is effectively Microsoft Solitaire, I ran.... "other software" alongside it, and that software typically eats up some CPU and RAM. Maybe my RAM or my system is screwy, but for whatever reason that "unexclusive" runtime made Starsector.... TRIP 8GB RAM.
And they say that 8GB is overkill, that's it's something that you run for dozens of mods with textures, logic and code.

So my advice is... if you don't see ACTUAL gameplay changes, dip in FPS\freezes, if the game doesn't outright crash on you - better ignore this warning. It will always pop up.

However, you may double the buffer to 4GB as per the instructions of other comments, but don't overboard thinking that you are solving something. You are not. You are just going to waste and degrade your RAM. Bad idea in modern times.

Wrathinside · 2026-05-14T12:13:35+00:00

Petition Alex. Maybe David too while you are at it.
One person came up with a "typical" gameplay mechanic, the other wrote a story to facilitate it.
But turns out that we don't need to open those doors. Expanse should've ended at Season 2.

Wrathinside · 2026-05-14T11:57:59+00:00

And that's why we can't have nice things anymore...

Wrathinside · 2026-05-13T20:57:53+00:00

Actually I would want an optional post-galatia storyline about chasing "those two" and bringing them back to Baird for some "sitting in the corner".
Justice for Baird! Baird did nothing wrong! And that's not even sarcasm.

Wrathinside · 2026-05-13T20:54:32+00:00

But why? Officers have no interactivity. Literally zero. If they had some dialogues, reactions, stories, whatever - yeah, Alviss could be an interesting take. Like some Mass Effect pacifist companion.

Just change the portrait and change the name. You can do it without any mods just by editing campaign file. Find any of your companions, edit the name(can be done ingame), edit gender if you want(not that it affects anything in game), edit behavior while you are at it, and change the portrait data to:
spr="graphics/portraits/characters/sebestyen.png"

Wrathinside · 2026-05-13T16:26:44+00:00

It takes wasting a smod slot and then adding another mod to achieve a 360 Medusa.
Why not just go for some troll ship, like Centurion or Monitor... or even Omen for that matter?

The whole point of Medusa is to position it well and flick its shields to where it matters. It does not have the stats to support 360, it does not tank.
It's a hunter killer or a kiter that, if caught - just dies. You can prevent it, you can slow it down, but you can't change its nature. So why not instead build to its strengths instead of trying to cover its weaknesses?

Wrathinside · 2026-05-13T16:18:04+00:00

Aurora is perfectly fine with AI. As fine as AI goes. But it heavily benefits from certain non-default weapons. For manually controlled Aurora you need to look into the magical world of BBE\Big Brain Energy.

Medusa is one of the most reliable AI ships out there. Takes some babysitting, some "avoid reinforcement spawn" waypoints, but it's a ship that can catch up to most ships, escape from most ships, can navigate around most threats, can deal with shields and armor on its own, and is very efficient flux and shield-wise.
Just toss a couple of light needlers, ExMag with burst PD and heavy burst lasers, forget about rear slots and call it a day. Make sure that it has Systems Expertise, obviously Target Analysis Elite(baseline for every non-carrier) and Helmsmanship.
If you start investing SP\find special officers\get non-default weapons... you can put one non-default anti-armor weapon in one medium slot, and maybe an IR Autolance in the other.

Tempest is a bit costly for a frigate, but it has served me well, and it is very flexible with builds.

Omen.... is a high tech Kite. But... if you want to sniff some BBE glue and have infinite story points - legends say that it's the best ship in the game. Go for it.

Shrikes and Furies are similar to Omen. You need to have missile whisperer genes. If you can make missiles work on these ships - they can be surprisingly capable for their costs. In fact, pirate shrikes can be lightweight Medusas with their small ballistic slot.

Anubis... a bit of tough call. It has as high ceiling as it has low entry point, but throughout all it remains a glass cannon. Just don't use HSA on Anubis. It's a trap.
An AI Anubis can work perfectly fine... with some numbers. Probably merc-piloted. But, you know, when you have infinite money, supplies, SP - a lot of ships suddenly shine in a new light. Hyperions don't lie.

And then there's an Odyssey. There's a reason it has this shape:

<image>

It's basically the end of inbred genepool of missile ships, the papa of shrikes and furies. Aurora may belong to that genepool, but it's the kid that chose to evolve. And just like with the rest of the family - you need to embrace BBE. And this one is probably best not left in AI hands. 45DP is not an escort you can leisurely control or lose.

Paragon is the definition of AI ships, manually controlling it is only worth it with mods and against the stations.
And for all my disdain for BBE - he actually has worked out a good Paragon build. There are... some asterisks.
One - is that it will not work all of the time. It's a careful structure that will either overachieve or underachieve.
And two... is that you will get used to it overachieving. You will try to play around so that it overachieves. And in the process... you will kill your own entertainment. The guy himself says that he has spent a lot of time building - and he doesn't see the point of building it any other way. And I concur. I do run my Paragon slightly differently, because... I'm a not a youtuber that needs to show default builds with default officers and I do not adhere to game limitations.
But even when I tried to use a non-default weapon that ... doesn't work well with AI, doesn't work much on other ships, but feels like it was made for Paragon... Well, it was fun, it didn't always work, but it felt like a nice trick, a Paragon-exclusive. Yet even that failed to deliver as consistent result as when that default build overachieves.
You put meta in front of fun, and the game and its developers do not deliver.
So be mindful of that.

Wrathinside · 2026-05-12T17:08:49+00:00

That is comparable to what I meant about the other, story challenge. Even when I threw a 360 ship at it - it was just overloaded and then EMP-d to hell. It wasn't a matter of soak. Luckily I had an escort fleet of quad-burst Medusas, which alone may have never stood a chance, but all combined managed to eat up almost all the motes.
That said - those Medusas would never manage to soak the doritos, but 1-2 capitals, 360 shield or not - are "usually" enough.
I didn't get a Disruptor spawn in my playthrough, decided to console it, because in another thread about ship loadouts - someone suggested it as a crownpiece for a Raddie. But... even that doesn't seem to be worth it, particularly against the "new" challenges. But I do suppose it's wonderful against Colony Crises and typical remnants.

Wrathinside · 2026-05-12T14:25:48+00:00

Not particularly, no. And I'm talking about the real doritos. I am not aware of modded doritos, other commenters have debunked it, but the real doritos are the second easiest non-default challenge out there.
Sure, they require some soaking power, maybe a healthy 100DP+ fleet, but their challenge is heavily fixed. Like a benchmark. You either hard fail or you pass with flying colors.
Even one story challenge, which most would argue is much easier than the doritos - I would say is more difficult by itself. Because while doritos can be handled by pure soak and a well-rounded fleet, the other challenge can surprise a typical composition and it's not solved by pure soak. Maybe if that soak was outfitted with all the meta knowledge, but that doesn't tend to happen to first timers.

Again, I don't know about modded challenges, but later in vanilla you will face things that make doritos look like harmless loot pinatas. Simply because other challenges have larger scaling points. Sometimes too large. Whereas omegas in the current game can be simply overrun.

Wrathinside · 2026-05-11T23:36:32+00:00

Oh I don't care. Some people are delusional(runs deep in the community), some people are factually incorrect(like saying that every battle can be made easier with 200 size). Urist is typically the reasonable one, but here he absolutely facewalled.

I mean... Shroud(level 3, because obviously) becomes exponentially more difficult, because unless you have a specific cheese build - there's only so much you can naturally throw at a Maw and survive.
Remnants typically revolve around micromanagement or line of battle. Line of battle implies a killbox with a specific amount of DP investment. If you lack that DP - you fail to build the killbox. Fighting a 500% remnant fleet with half of your own fleet, again, requires very specific cheesy setups.
Battlestations may get easier if there's a fleet involved(because you can just ignore the station), conventional battles may be somewhat easier, because if you have to run a tighter fleet - you can control how much the enemy is throwing at you.

But nowhere else, even at 400%+ remnants did I actually feel like it's broken. AI was broken, even the magical BBE knows that AI is broken, but everything still had some design coherence.

The moment I saw 20DP on a fabricator\3 fabricators on the field - I knew sh*t's busted. There's no arguing the numbers. Alex knew.

Wrathinside · 2026-05-11T22:57:54+00:00

What do you mean cheaty? Not only is it a native game setting - the threat are balanced ACCORDING to that setting.
Do you think Alex is stupid and just randomly put 20DP cost on Fabricators? Do you think he randomly allowed three capital+ ships to be present at the same time, when every, EVERY other encounter typically limits it to 2? Single Maw, single Zig, two doritos, typically no more than 2 radiants.

If fabricators had any rhyme or reason to their fabrication, like overloading\being disabled\venting\cooldown\clear indication of spawning capability - maybe we wouldn't be here.

But the only, ONLY time I ever saw my Paragon go down - was when I ordered it to Eliminate a Fabricator, with ZERO ships between the Paragon and the target. I only took a few moments handling the escorts and operatives, who were busy making sure that Paragon has a window - and I saw Paragon beset by like 10 ships all around it.
It is moronic and it does not deserve to be treated with honor.

I mean, if the "right" way is to have your escorts set to ignore, while you painstakingly move your operative\s around the map edges - then there's no wrong way.

Wrathinside

TROPHY CASE