Ship building

[Chummy 8]

For some reason, my eyes just glaze over when I see the ship upgrade screen. I've just been hitting the auto-update button and rolling with whatever it spits out. I know that it's not going to be as good as a custom build ships.

Am I shooting myself in the foot here? And if so, is there a catch all build - all kinetics, lasers..etc ?

[MrGrumpsman]

Assuming the meta is generally the same since around June, lasers are the best overall weapon in pretty much every scenario for causing damage. The only worthwhile kinetic weapon would be for flak in case of missiles, which is why missiles are pretty awful in general. If fighting AI, most any build will work since the AI will usually stick to whatever does the most DPS i.e. lots of missiles, some energy, and a little flak.
A no brainer build for an attack ship would be all offensive slots with lasers, perhaps a kinetic gun or two though usually on small ships, balanced shields and plating, at least one movement support module (I recommend hyperium engines at start for all ships) and any other support module slots should be used for increasing energy damage output.
A support ship should include a decent number of flak outnumbering other offensive modules, if your enemy uses missiles. Defense should be balanced, but realize on larger ships the health bonus from plating increases while shields stay about the same. Once again, use at least one movement support module, and use various fleet support modules such as for movement, shield health, etc. These support effects can stack, which allows for things like super high movement points if a seeker hero with movement skills is placed in the flotilla.
I hope all this helps and I would recommend looking up some of the combat guides on the community guides for ES2, as they helped me out a lot.

[Bozobub]

Originally posted by MrGrumpsman:

{snip}

You completely forgot the Titanium A2S support module, which is absolutely essential for assaulting planets ^^'.

[MrGrumpsman]

Originally posted by Bozobub:

Originally posted by MrGrumpsman:

{snip}

You completely forgot the Titanium A2S support module, which is absolutely essential for assaulting planets ^^'.

since you bring this up, I'll talk about that real quick. If you really want to do a proper ground assault, you need to make a completely seperate ship setup. In the majority of cases you will use a support ship as the base and fill the support modules with one engine of any type, a ton of manpower modules to have around 500 men give or take, and the Titanium A2S module as said by Bozobub, which will help to decrease manpower of the defender each turn through siege. The weapons and defense modules can be anything, but I highly recommend using basic modules so you can save your strategic resources for your actual space fleets.

[Bozobub]

Or you can do none of that and simply use them in some/all of your line ships. I don't generally do this but have done so in the past, and it works reasonably well, obviating the need for a "ground assault" ship design entirely, if you wish.

Optimal? Nope. Good enough for most purposes? Yup =). You can still bring far more troops to bear than any planet can hold and the Titanium A2S modules completely negate the enemy defenses anyway, given just a few turns (since you'll have so many equipped).

You're definitely not wrong, per se, but you also don't need to minmax planetary assaults much, at least vs. the AI (at any difficulty). Human opponents may be an entirely different kettle of fish but I cannot stand online play for most games, so I cannot address that case.