   
hits since Sep 25, 1999 |
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| Fleet Review | Strategy Guide | Cylon Links |
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Last edited : June 16, 2000  |
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Instrumentality Baseship | Automa Baseship | Golem Baseship |
| Cats Paw Class Destroyer | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Tech Level Beams Aux Weapon Engines |
2 4 2 tubes 2 |
Mass Cargo Bay Fuel Tank Crew |
120 KT 300 KT 300 KT 258 |
Cost Duranium Tritanium Molybdenum |
120 MC 32 KT 61 KT 5 KT |
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Ship Analysis : The Cylon's only torpedo ship, quite a decent ship but won't stand up well in a fight. At least it's better than the Empire's Frigate because it can carry a lot of torpedoes and coupled with the Cylons 4x minelaying bonus can create huge minefields. Can also be used to tow the bigger baseships. You must have these because you can't sweep mines very well, the baseships are poorly equipped with beams. The only way to get rid of them is lay a bigger field of your own and knock out the enemy's minefield this way. But make an effort to trade/steal a better torp ship. Ideally, a cloaking minelayer is what you want as the Bots, best choice is the Resolute if at all possible. However any reasonably experienced Romulan commander will be reluctant to let you as Bots have one of these unless you are in a really close alliance. Additional Tactics : Keep these with the main (baseship) fleet. Familiarise yourself with the mdh, mdq, md1 etc. Fcodes because you'll need them often to lay precise fields. A standard method is to split a couple of Cats Paws from the fleet, lay two minefields making sure that their centres do not overlap, then rejoin the baseships. Against a cloaking race, try not to carry too many torpedoes because they'll be lost when he cloak-intercepts the destroyer. Rather, carry sufficient credits aboard the largest baseship you have and either rely on confiscating mineral dumps or carrying small amounts of minerals to make more torps during the invasion. Battle Tactics : Normally these ships should not enter the battle but sometimes you might be able to surprise an opponent by leading in with one, they aren't all that expensive, apart from the 2 engines. You will be using a similar tactic to the Empire/Rebel/Colonial "throw a spanner into the works" - and don't sue me if you lose the Cats Paw, because you probably will. Its a poor substitute for the SS Frigate/Cygnus in this role, but your opponent may not be expecting it and it will give you a favourable exchange (remember its entire job is to inflict one torpedo hit. More would be great, but one is all that's needed to discharge the enemy battleships beams and torp tubes in the coming combat against a baseship, which means x less torpedoes being fired at the baseship, x being the number of torp tubes the enemy has. Note : do NOT try this against the Feds! Your cats paw only has 2 tubes, and it is likely, taking into account the chance of torpedoes missing, that you won't be able to get him below 75% shields, therefore he will recharge and the cats paw will have been lost for nothing! Roles : Fleet support mining ship, light interceptor, armed freighter Iron Slave Class Baseship |
 Tech Level |
Beams Aux Weapon Engines 2 |
1 2 bays 1 Mass |
Cargo Bay Fuel Tank Crew 60 KT |
70 KT 320 KT 258 Cost |
Duranium Tritanium Molybdenum 80 MC |
22 KT 23 KT 10 KT Ship Analysis : The Armada now has little use for this outdated design and probably never had much use for it in the past either. Stay away from this ship, use the more powerful baseships available. If you must have a ship queue soaking ship (and I do recommend saturating the ship queue, it can only benefit you, as a fighter race, by stopping others from building ships) then use the QTanker, it is cheap and can build fighters almost twice as fast. I once built a couple in a game as the Robots since I couldn't afford anything else, and used them as cheap one-engine money runners, but after I invaded the Rebels and captured a few Falcons, I found them totally useless and a waste of resources so I would advise you not to build any in the first place. Roles : Light Interceptor, fighter factory Q Tanker |
 Tech Level |
Beams Aux Weapon Engines 3 |
0 1 bay 2 Mass |
Cargo Bay Fuel Tank Crew 80 KT |
120 KT 600 KT 2 Cost |
Duranium Tritanium Molybdenum 50 MC |
10 KT 2 KT 20 KT Ship Analysis : This is the Armada's fighter builder and fuel tanker combined into a single ship. It's actually not that useful as a tanker, its more of a fighter building support ship. You don't really need to have a refueling tanker since your baseships have a ton of fuel anyway. This ship is your el cheapo ship, the one that you use to saturate the ship queue by building them on your lower tech bases. You can use them to tow your baseships since they only require 2 engines but hey you can do that with the cats paw too. Additional Tactics : Haul a couple along during invasions, you'll need their assistance to replenish fighters since the cargo capacity of the Instru's is nothing to be proud of and the Golems will be busy doing the fighting. Sit them in gravity wells when they're not needed, and then when you advance, bring out new reinforcements to tow them along once more. Roles : Fighter factory, fuel transporter, non-combat fleet support ship Pawn Class Baseship |
 Tech Level |
Beams Aux Weapon Engines 3 |
2 2 bays 2 Mass |
Cargo Bay Fuel Tank Crew 260 KT |
40 KT 720 KT 358 Cost |
Duranium Tritanium Molybdenum 130 MC |
342 KT 23 KT 10 KT Ship Analysis : Many players are still making a big deal out of this ship... I just don't get it. The bioscanner is very much over-rated, you should be colonising all the planets in range anyway regardless of what natives they have - no experienced player overlooks a planet just because it has amorphs. Even if the planet has crap minerals, a planet is still a planet, ie. It is worth 10 points on the scorechart, and it has a 200 ly scanner or whatever the config setting is. Don't even think about building one of these, it makes fighters really slowly and it eats up duranium that would be better used on a more aggressive ship. Unless it has been given some sort of special ability by an addon program, then they have no place in your armada. Roles : Exploration, Bioscanning Cybernaut Class Baseship |
 Tech Level |
Beams Aux Weapon Engines 4 |
3 5 bays 4 Mass |
Cargo Bay Fuel Tank Crew 340 KT |
50 KT 980 KT 558 Cost |
Duranium Tritanium Molybdenum 150 MC |
292 KT 163 KT 5 KT Ship Analysis : The Cybernaut is a pretty dangerous opponent for most torp ships but you have other more effective ships available, the Instrumentality has more firepower and uses 50 less duranium. If Raceplus is being used consider building these, I am not sure about their effectiveness because I haven't played that many games under Raceplus, but repairing after combat should be very useful provided the ships survive. Forget about BMR (build more robots!) as Robotic baseships have loads of crew anyway and it would take quite a few skirmishes to diminish that. Roles : Medium combat vessel, heavy interceptor Instrumentality Class Baseship |
 Tech Level |
Beams Aux Weapon Engines 6 |
4 7 bays 4 Mass |
Cargo Bay Fuel Tank Crew 350 KT |
80 KT 980 KT 958 Cost |
Duranium Tritanium Molybdenum 390 MC |
242 KT 71 KT 12 KT Ship Analysis : The mainstay of the Cylon armada. Heavy and strong, it can tackle almost any torp ship your enemies can throw at you. It should be loaded with 80 fighters, equipped with X-Rays and escorted by a Cat's Paw for maximum performance. Use these for patrolling important areas of your empire but don't move them around too much, they are heavier than most ships and tend to gobble up a lot of fuel. Its probably best to build them with HeavyNovas and tow them around with QTankers or Cat's Paws, as the cost of building 4 transwarps for each Instrumentality will soon catch up with you. However I prefer to use a transwarp Instrumentality to tow a nova or heavy nova Instrumentality (the so-called classical sacrificial lamb tactic). Do NOT use stardrive 1s, if an intercept picks off your tow ship, the sacrificial lamb becomes stranded and cannot get anywhere due to its garbage engines! Additional Tactics : Not much here. This ship and indeed the whole Cylon race is known for its lack of subtlety or sophistication. Just load on the fighters and bash your way through the enemy forces. I guess I could mention the sacrificial lamb tactic for those that don't know it yet - build a transwarp baseship and then tow another baseship with crap engines, set this one to fight first since you can afford to lose it. Oh, and make sure there's a Q Tanker or four along with an Instru invasion group otherwise you'll be waiting forever to replenish your fighters, Instru's just aren't much good at extended campaigns. Better still, have the Instru's escort a Golem, now that is a fleet that can really wreak havoc. Roles : Medium combat vessel, heavy interceptor Automa Class Baseship |
 Tech Level |
Beams Aux Weapon Engines 9 |
4 8 bays 6 Mass |
Cargo Bay Fuel Tank Crew 560 KT |
200 KT 1480 KT 1258 Cost |
Duranium Tritanium Molybdenum 690 MC |
242 KT 131 KT 45 KT Ship Analysis : A lot of players I have met say that they don't see any reason for building this ship since it "has only one more bay than the Instru". You are kidding yourself if you scoff at this ship. The fact that it has virtually the same armament as the Instru is misleading. If you can afford the tech upgrade and extra engines this ship offers so much more flexibility and performance than the Instru while costing virtually the same amount of minerals. It can take on more torpedo based ships due to its higher mass and fighter payload and it is much better suited to extended campaigns than the Instru, which needs a significant convoy of Q Tankers in order to function effectively. And if you're questioning its ability against carriers cp. the Instru, just try simming 2 Instru's vs a Gorbie or Biocide with at least 140 fighters, then try an Automa + Instru. In the first case, odds are good for the Empire/Borg - they win about 60% of the time (if Gorbie/Bio is on the left, several times they don't even lose their shields after killing the 2 Instru's) but in the second case, the Empire/Borg should consider themselves fortunate if they win (less than 10% chance). The Automa even has a 2.5% chance of killing the Gorbie/Bio by itself! So set the order as Automa-Instru if you're ever in this situation - not once in 200 sims did the Instru beat a Gorbie/Bio by itself, it just runs out of fighters too quickly! Additional Tactics : It is true, however, that the Automa fares pretty much the same as the Instru against another carrier race, since both are above 320 KT so both take 1% damage from fighter shots. But again, the Automa has the edge because of its greater fighter capacity. Think of it as a sort of "mini-Virgo". Yes it has way fewer beams, but if you read Sirius' excellent article on the mechanics of combat (I do not have it online at my site because I haven't asked for permission, but I think you can find it somewhere at the Federal HQ) you'll find that 6-7 beams are only "equivalent" to one bay in combat, so its not much. The Automa is extraordinarily cheap when you think of it like this, so don't hesitate to build them whenever possible and use the sacrificial lamb tactic if you must. Because you should be thinking of it as a mini-Virgo, load it accordingly. Don't put only 80 fighters on it, that's defeating the whole purpose of using it, if you're going to do that, just go ahead and use your Instru's instead. Put about as many as you would on a Virgo if you were playing the Colonies, say 110-125, that should be enough for most big battles. You could probably get away with 80-100 against a torpedo race - but there is an exception. Although the Feds are technically a torpedo race, they can and they will use their Kittyhawk against you especially if E/S bonus is on, so think twice before you under-equip your Automas against them (see the Golem section below). Battle Tactics : The typical roll-your-enemy-off-the-map campaign involves large numbers of cheap engined Automas to soak up the torpedoes and dish out a lot of damage before the faster Instru's and Golems come in to finish the job. Their cheap mineral cost combined with their mass and cargo capacity gives them a very good performance profile against both torpedo and other carrier races. It is best to do it this way because as I detailed in the Colonial/Rebel sections, your opponent can come up with very efficient ways to do away with an Instru/Golem thanks to his cheap support ships. But there is no way around a low-engine Automa. It is cheap for you, it easily shrugs off torpedo hits, and where the Instru has an Achilles' heel because of its limited cargo, the Automa has no such restrictions. In short - if you ignore this ship, you are doing yourself a great disservice. Sure, after the ship limit when you can "prep" a base ahead of the queue, you can and should build Golems, but before then, in the race to claim slots, the Automa should figure prominently. Roles : Fleet combat vessel, heavy defence ship Golem Class Baseship |
 Tech Level |
Beams Aux Weapon Engines 10 |
6 10 bays 8 Mass |
Cargo Bay Fuel Tank Crew 850 KT |
300 KT 2000 KT 1958 Cost |
Duranium Tritanium Molybdenum 990 MC |
442 KT 171 KT 32 KT Ship Analysis : This is your swat-anything-that-moves ship. It's not actually that costly, when you think about it. You're getting an 850 KT monster for just 645 KT of minerals. But it does cost a lot especially when you figure in the 8 engines, and it is simply inconvenient to have to tow them all around, so you must try to have some of them with transwarps. Don't hesitate to use the sacrificial lamb tactic, you don't have to prize these like the Empire does with its Gorbies because you can build them a lot more easily than he can put out Gorbies. The Golem can crush 2 or 3 battleships (sometimes 4 if Engine-Shield Bonus is on) before biting the dust. Battle Tactics : Again, not too much subtlety about this ship, just load it up and smash everything to rubble. But I should again mention what I said in the other fleet reviews - don't skimp on the fighters, as the only thing worse than having 100 fighters blasted in the hangar is losing a fight you would have won, if you hadn't ran out of fighters. I just had a big battle in my NAVGAP game as the Cylons last week, so I can give you the perfect example. I loaded my Golem with 155 fighters (yes, that is a lot more than the 120-130 some players advise you to load) and sent it out alone on a raid. Normally the raid of the lone heavy ship isn't a good idea because the enemy can gang up on it and devise a plan to eliminate it, but I didn't care, I had about 25 other Golems anyway. Surprise, I find a reception waiting at the planet. A Thor, a Missouri, a Kittyhawk, 2 Diplomacies, a Loki and a Nova. Of course, the Fed has set his Nova to fight last, as a Fed would. So the Golem sets about smashing his fleet to rubble. The Thor enters battle with 32 mark 8 torps, and dies with 32 mark 8 torps (ouch!), thanks to my foresight to claim the right side of the VCR (NAVGAP games never have engine/shield bonus). The Loki, plus the 2 Diplomacies go the same way, but they wipe out a couple dozen fighters and start working on my shields. The Missouri fights next, it does some more damage to my shields, takes out about 25 fighters, but after a minute it turns into pixels too. Now here is where it all fell apart. The Kittyhawk enters the battle but since I was trying so hard to get the right side, he has the advantage in the inter-fighter combat. He has less than full complement, 58 fighters if my memory serves me correctly, but he takes out about 70 of mine (again, I must emphasise the importance of getting the left side of the VCR in carrier combat). Now I come to the Nova. He's fresh, 10 beams, 50-odd mark 8 torpedoes ready. I have taken 20% hull damage, and I only have 38 of the original 155 fighters left. 10 fighters disappear straight off - but the fight is looking good. Several torpedoes miss, and the ones that hit are only doing 2% hull damage (a lesson for Feds - use your Kittys to work down the hull, and for crying out loud make an effort to get the right side of the VCR if there's no E/S bonus). His beams cannot hold off my fighter swarms forever, and eventually they start tearing away the Nova's shields, and do heavy damage to the hull. His hull damage catches up and eventually passes mine (I love seeing the enemy's hull damage % incrementing so quickly when you play the VCR on fast :-) All would have been well, but his beams have been charging and they take out the last few fighters. He is now at 78% hull damage, I am at 54%. He continues to fire his mark 8 torpedoes, since obviously he was wiser than me and put enough ordnance to last a decent battle on his ship. The Golem fires its 6 Disruptors into the Nova one last time, getting him down to 84% hull damage. Then I lose to his mark 8s. Yes it was still a favourable exchange for me, taking out six high quality enemy ships (they all had a full array of mark 8 launchers plus several dozen torpedoes each), and if I had brought along an Instru escort I probably would have won, but the whole moral of this story is, I could have wiped out the whole fleet and still kept my Golem if I had more fighters (I would still have had to fight the planet but that should have been a pushover, I knew it wasn't his homeworld since I destroyed that about 10 turns previously). Particularly if the ship limit has been reached, as it had been in this case, you should use the spare minerals on more fighters. So the bottom line is, if you're not willing to read through all the drivel above, in certain cases even 150 fighters is not enough, and the 100-120 that some guides suggest is certainly way too few. Rather, you should aim to have 175-200 fighters on your Golems. I know that sounds like overkill, but we're talking after the ship limit here, and the most important thing is not minerals anymore. It is shipslots. So if the extra fighters save you a ship, give yourself a pat on the back. If not - just shrug and say 'oh well'. It's not like the minerals are scarce or anything, there's plenty more where they came from. However, as with most things in this game, there are no hard and fast rules. You must manage your empire as the situation demands. If you're up against another carrier race, especially the Empire in E/S bonus games (they will rely a lot on their support carriers now that those will be put above 320 KT) you'd better come in stuffed to the gills with fighters. But against an exclusively torpedo race (note : Feds are not exclusively torpedo, as good Fed players will use their Kitty, and will be able to pay for the fighters. Similarly, neither are the Gorns, since they certainly will have the cash to pay for the fighters on the Madonzila. If you think the Madonzila is a joke of a carrier, then try simming T-Rex/T-Rex/Madonzila or T-Rex/Madonzila/T-Rex vs the Golem, the Lizards will win every time. The Crystals are a different case; unless they are played real well, they will not be able to afford to buy the fighters needed for arming a decent number of Crystal Thunders. Of course, you'd have to work out how to counter their web fields, but that's another topic altogether, this section was just written to discuss fleet combat tactics) then the 100-120 fighters that the aforementioned guides suggest is, indeed, good advice. Say Romulans, who have nothing but Dark Wings to throw at your carriers, then 120 is a good amount, enough to wipe out 3 of them. Another thing to consider is the relative scarcity of minerals and resources. Before the ship limit, then yes, 120 is probably enough and if you load 150, you'll likely hamper your ship construction program. But most of the game takes place after the ship limit, which typically is reached at about turn 25 in games with veteran players and a reasonably rich universe. If it's one of those rare games where minerals are poor, then think twice before you load more than 120 fighters. Roles : Cylon flagship. Heavy fleet combat vessel | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||