Archeotech, hot garbage or useful?

[Mathias]

The missiles and the defence modules are useful early/mid game, but once you hit late game and start grinding repeatables they just become obsolete. Do the devs intend to scale some of them or no? Also wtf is cloaking? I don't even know how to use it and haven't seen any AI use it either.

[Elitewrecker PT]

It's the ability to hide your ships from vision.
Allows you to protect your scientists from random leviathan encounters, get over that aggressive neighbour that locked you in early so you can keep exploring, camp a fleet above the enemy's home system for a sneak attack the moment you declare war,
etc. etc.

[Teksura]

I'm giving Archeotech a try now. It may be a lot easier to use with the Rubricator, I dunno if I'll even consider using it that much otherwise.


Cloaking is a useful way to send ships through borders undetected. Say, if an enemy empire has closed their borders and blocked a chokepoint, you can potentially slop by via cloaking. Higher tiers of cloaking are harder to detect. I've been also using it to cloak science ships while sending them to scan debris in the middle of an active warzone. You activate it by selecting the ship on the map, and in the fleet menu, press the cloak button. It'll be one of the buttons in the same area where you select fleet stance, orbital bombardment, automatic exploration, ect. And you most likely have seen the AI use it. When you detect a cloaked ship, the icon looks a little different but if you're not aware of what the cloaked icon looks like and not paying attention, you might miss it. You'll see when you cloak one of your fleets.

[Midas]

The Archotec refinary is booooom. High boni, one building for all 3 rare resources for a good price. So yes some stuff is VERY usefull. If you are locked out from artifacts, than the buildings are key, but that i sjust a different way of the game to establish multiple ways for you to define the empire

[Tragopan]

I like the Archeotech weapons/components/buildings because, while they require relics to build, they have no special resource upkeep. This is on top of being generally better than their vanilla cousins. Not sure why you say grinding repeats makes them obsolete. They're kinetic or energy just like any other weapon.

[Angeluse]

So real talk, The techs you get are Pretty darn good, But so far every run i've done with them cripples me because outside of the rubricator, I can't get a large enough monthly minor artifacts. (I also never touch ship designer but i really should more often)

I could aim for relic worlds, but thats not something i like to rely on.

The only way to get it is getting real lucky with some possible spawns around me (Which so far i've barely gotten a notable amount) Or the One building which gives a Tiny amount of minor artifacts.

Not to crap all over it, I'm glad they've made this Extremely rare resource super useful, But 1 i'd like them to do the same for nanites/living metal. And 2. Just give me a few more ways to up the income.

[Mathias]

Real talk tho, the early explorers civic in tandem with relic world origin is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ busted. Not only for the short range jump drives, but the empire bonuses as well. Sourcing an Archeo build around it is awesome. Sure you start with ten less population, but the early bonuses can really give the upper hand on your neighbors.

[Terijian]

there is no minor artifact cost for crisis ships y'all should know

[SomeAirplane]

is there a way to increase storage capacity for minor artifacts?

[CrUsHeR]

If you have trouble with artifact supply, try Remnants origin.

This already was the best "non-cheese" origin, now you also start with the archaeo-tech researched, and the archaeo facility built in your capital instead of a regular research lab.
Also the blockers now give something like 30-50 rather than 3-5 artifacts.

Perhaps also grab the First League precursor, get lucky with the Rubricator, yummie yummie minor artifacts

And it's not really good for the weapons specifically, but the buildings and starbase upgrades. Like the Cybrex mining hub adds +150% resources from all types of orbital stations (mining, energy, research etc). First League gives a special admin bonus building which also grants +100 edict fund. The ancient refinery gives 3 jobs and +40% planetary rare resource output. And so on.

[WaterMalone]

The archaeo nano missiles are especially nice though against the contingency with its 100% shield and armor pen coupled with their range to take up some small slots with alot better range than a small disruptor

[Malkuth]

I agree on the refinery. That thing is a beast. So much so I think it might get the Hammer in a patch.

[Angeluse]

Originally posted by CrUsHeR:

If you have trouble with artifact supply, try Remnants origin.

This already was the best "non-cheese" origin, now you also start with the archaeo-tech researched, and the archaeo facility built in your capital instead of a regular research lab.
Also the blockers now give something like 30-50 rather than 3-5 artifacts.

Perhaps also grab the First League precursor, get lucky with the Rubricator, yummie yummie minor artifacts

And it's not really good for the weapons specifically, but the buildings and starbase upgrades. Like the Cybrex mining hub adds +150% resources from all types of orbital stations (mining, energy, research etc). First League gives a special admin bonus building which also grants +100 edict fund. The ancient refinery gives 3 jobs and +40% planetary rare resource output. And so on.

Already did, i capped out on about 7 or so minor artifacts per month at end end game. It's not the bulk reward artifacts i need it's the per month ones, Though i play militaristic and rebuilding fleets can be upwards of 2/3k minor artifacts per fleet.

[tsath1972]

The ship techs are hot garbage. Auto-design puts them in your basic designs, so suddenly you need three years to build a Corvette instead of 30 days. I wish I could give this tech to my enemies, so their fleets would stay laughably small. Yeah, yeah, I know, manually design ships using cheaper tech. Then why is there even an auto-design option? And don't ever accidentally order some auto-designed corvettes, or the stash of artifacts you've been saving up to buy your ancestor tech goes away and won't come back.

[gn_fighter]

Originally posted by tsath1972:

The ship techs are hot garbage. Auto-design puts them in your basic designs, so suddenly you need three years to build a Corvette instead of 30 days. I wish I could give this tech to my enemies, so their fleets would stay laughably small. Yeah, yeah, I know, manually design ships using cheaper tech. Then why is there even an auto-design option? And don't ever accidentally order some auto-designed corvettes, or the stash of artifacts you've been saving up to buy your ancestor tech goes away and won't come back.

the auto-designer is there for new players who still have to grasp the basic game mechanics.... and lets be real here.. the auto-designer has always been ♥♥♥♥.

If you want to be lazy and save on micro.. both the ship-designer and the fleet-manager are the last thing you should do it to.

So that's a you-problem and not a problem that the modules are garbage.. on the contrary they can be really strong... if used right.

Archo-tech is also more for highvalue-ships rather then spam-ships you are loosing en masse like corvettes and frigates.

[Scratchicus]

Originally posted by Trike:

The missiles and the defence modules are useful early/mid game, but once you hit late game and start grinding repeatables they just become obsolete. Do the devs intend to scale some of them or no? Also wtf is cloaking? I don't even know how to use it and haven't seen any AI use it either.

Its ok the problem is the fact that we cant set the weapons on star bases means the game will literally ignore all the better weapons for inferior archotech weapons no matter what you do.