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[InvictusImperator]

What character build is best in your opinion? I feel like that playing a carrier-as-flagship combined with leaderships skills is a fairly good way to go. That is my opinion because I am fairly trash at combat and would rather the fleet as a whole do the work for me. Is an officer build combined with combat skills more effective? Thanks.

[Florian]

IMHO

IF playing a fleet (and not a couple of ships).

Skills with a fleetwide effects have a stronger impact than skills just affecting you.
The loadout design skill is OP.

Also, the officier management is very good too if you put your offcier in a "high value" ship. An offcier will work as a ship strengh multiplier (if skills chosen wisely).

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Fighter fleets are also OP ^ ^. (Try Diable Avionics Mod if you like swarms of angry bees)

[Thaago]

In my opinion, once you've gotten the hang of combat and have figured out ships/builds that work for you, nothing is more 'powerful' than personal combat skills.

Really though, any build that is fun is the right build. I've had a wonderful time exploring options I thought were bad but actually turned out pretty neat.

[Snowscoran]

https://fpdk.github.io/?s=0303102333405362738392x13001123314350607080x23031321334053x30001020304050

[kenwth81]

In my opinion, once you've gotten the hang of combat and have figured out ships/builds that work for you, nothing is more 'powerful' than personal combat skills.

Really though, any build that is fun is the right build. I've had a wonderful time exploring options I thought were bad but actually turned out pretty neat.

Not really. Drover fleet doesn't really require any personal combat skills. One of my characters running drover fleet has skills like this. You can take skills like carrier command, wing commander and strike commander but it is probably better to trade that for better loot and other skills.

[Vind]

After trying full combat/tech build fleet boosting strategy seems to be flawed. No matter how powerful your allied ships they never actually win - only stall the enemy ships. With combat build player ship just wont die and survive almost anything while quickly destroying the opposition. Battles is easy ( too easy ) and penalties from lack of useful economy skills is not big enough.

[Thaago]

: shrug : Drover fleet works eventually, but takes time to ramp up. I would say they are probably more powerful when fully developed, but whats the point of that? I'd rather be able to win early game and mid game while still being able to stomp everything endgame. Whats most important is having fun, every build can 'win'.

[SCC]

I have played for quite some time without using any skills at all. I didn't felt any substantial difference, though even on normal runs I don't spend any skill points, until I have a pile of 30 of them or so.
This is my general purpose set and this is a no industry version. It's fairly unfocused, since I buy more than I salvage, I am good enough at campaign layer that I rarely ever get into fights I don't want and I don't use carriers personally. It also helps no matter what I am doing, so I can do whatever with this set.
There's also this build, which is ultimately more powerful due to my actual combat skills (not in-game), but at the same time, it's harder to have a fleet with this set... And owning a fleet is why I play the game in the first place.

[kenwth81]

After trying full combat/tech build fleet boosting strategy seems to be flawed. No matter how powerful your allied ships they never actually win - only stall the enemy ships. With combat build player ship just wont die and survive almost anything while quickly destroying the opposition. Battles is easy ( too easy ) and penalties from lack of useful economy skills is not big enough.

They can easily handle same size fleet. When fighting larger fleet, it is a question on how strong your fleet is. Builds that focus on their fleet wouldn't go combat and tech, that is basically similar to any combat build. Fleet base builds should focus on leadership and tech. Leadership, tech and industry builds would probably be the most fleet focus build.

: shrug : Drover fleet works eventually, but takes time to ramp up. I would say they are probably more powerful when fully developed, but whats the point of that? I'd rather be able to win early game and mid game while still being able to stomp everything endgame. Whats most important is having fun, every build can 'win'.

Carrier fleet are the same as any fleet. You start out weak in the beginning. You build up your forces in the mid game. You stomp everything endgame.

[DrPhat]

If we are talking general game play the best skills to choose span all 4 skill categories. If you are talking flying a themed fleet like Onslaughts with Legions and dominators then you will need every point you can get for combat abilities. Same goes for Carrier, fighter spam/Conquest, Eagle, Falcon speed builds/or super tough fleets like Paragon, Apogee high tech.

You could even optimize your skills for the infamous slumlord salvage build where you get most of your profits from selling salvaged ships and flying everything with dmods.

There are lots of "best" builds. It just depends on what you aim to do in the playthrough. This is intended to give you plenty of replayability. Ultimately the game will be more roguelike giving you a chance to make many different choices.

[Plantissue]

You aren't ever going to make any money from selling salvaged ships.

You don't need to ever take any combat skills or piloted ship skills either. You can play with mostly combat skills, or you can play without any. It doesn't make too much of a difference except how survivable and powerful you want your AI controlled fleet to be, but if you do take mostly combat skills you can almost practically solo fleets by yourself in the end anyways. The must haves I find are quality of life skills like the Navigation 3 and Safety Procedures 3. Skills that improve everything in the fleet including your own ship are useful if you don't know where to go like Loadout Design 3.

[Dread Lord Murubarda]

I started off with industry/science. but I made more money with combat skills early and going for core system pirate bounties. also a lot more fights won because, as the player, you can turn a lot of fights with a proper ship. a 3 phase lance sunder with the range mods, for example, will do so much and having the 15% dmg/15% dmg to shields/15% more CR which translates to 5% more dmg/more dmg to armor translates into a much deadlier sniper.


I would love to be able to play a salvager, but I see no reason to.

[AgentFransis]

Playing a salvage only (no ship buying) run is very fun. Usually coupled with a pirate run.

[Dread Lord Murubarda]

Playing a salvage only (no ship buying) run is very fun. Usually coupled with a pirate run.

I don't have the heart to use my people as "meat ammo" on a junker fleet which is like a horde of zombies which makes up it's casualties from the corpses of enemies.

[Thaago]

Playing a salvage only (no ship buying) run is very fun. Usually coupled with a pirate run.

I don't have the heart to use my people as "meat ammo" on a junker fleet which is like a horde of zombies which makes up it's casualties from the corpses of enemies.

Yes, the crew losses (even though lowered with a skill) are sad. Those brave pirates! I can second the playstyle being really fun though.

If you go all industry, the D mods aren't all that bad (half impact). Lots of medium performance, free ships is pretty neat: most recovered ships have between 2 and 0 D mods (if they didn't have any before), which with the skill lowering the effects really isn't that bad. Increased Maintenance is actually a net benefit if you fight often enough (roughly once per month). Fleet growth with the skills is both staggeringly fast and also cheap (fleet growth outpaces bounty progression by a very large margin). Its also a rather nice feeling when you recover one of your own exploded ships, only to find that it has no damage and gets ~20-40% CR and hull back.

Unfortunately, without some settings tweaks the style falls apart late game because of the 30 ship limit: Not because you actually want to use more than 30 ships, but because the maximum number of ships available for salvage is capped at (30 - your fleet number), and the selection is random. So if you have 20 ships and fight a full 30 ship enemy, your chance of recovering the wonderful capitals/cruisers is reduced by 2/3! Booo. Its an easy enough fix, but still, annoying.