ES2 combat comprehensive guide

This guide is intended for both inexperienced and semi-experienced players who have grasp of basic game mechanics, have finished a game or two and would like to min max their combat experience for competitive play.
Where min is the effort, max is the outcome, cause we are lazy people.
I gave it little polish for latest patch. Make sure to point out and disrepencies in the comments.

Introduction

Hi, it's me again, after some positive feedback on the Lumeris guide I shall go down the rabbit hole of giving away my combat tips.
Those are my combat tips which does not neccesarily make them best, probably not even good, but they win me games, so you might want to try them out.
You can visit my blog which I do not really update and it's about EVE and stuff eveors.blogspot.com.

Do not hesitate to ask questions in the comments section, the guide can be edited, tips can be added, constructive feedback appreciated.

Patch 1.5.8

What's new in 1.5.8 you ask?
Nothing much honestly.

Nakalim got more OP, some fiddling here and there, but no real overal combat changes.

Just keep the Academy gamebreaking fleet in mind, as it has 15+ speeds since the preview, and will probably decide games.

TL:DR

Reading the meta

• Is there a G2G balance mod up? Have you read the changelog for it?
  
• What is getting buffed (avoid using, but take note for future meta) and what is getting nerfed hard (current meta).
  
• Example - if beam dmg is getting reduced by 50%, it's probably good to use beams right now. If AoE dmg is getting reduced from 650 to 250 AND it's damage is lowered to 50% (that's 125) to Medium and Large hulls. It is currently 400% stronger than a *balance* team would like it to be.
  
• GZ, you can read the meta. It's that simple.

Ship design:

• Ship class (depending on relevant strategic resource supply either improve for extra mods, or wait for T2 size)
  
• Early T2 beams, later T3 lasers. Avoid kinetics, or specifically to counter missile fleets, but you can ignore them lategame.
  
• Strategic weapons mostly irrelevant, unless you got them early in scanning and can afford them. Endgame antimatter lasers are great. But that's AoE weapon tech tier, so that comes first.
  
• Word on street is shields are useless, but so is plating. Yolo. Shield absorption is not great.

Space combat:

• Use best range cards with beams, short range with lasers, use crit card with lasers. Replace power to shields with Barrage ASAP, power to shields essentially useless.
  
• Use and keep full reserve card in deck to clear stacked systems of bs fleets.

Ground combat:

• Unless you have strong racial bonuses,get tanks early, probably stay tanks till lategame cause you have most upgrades. If you have T3 strat deposits move on to aircraft.
  
• Use bombing when under max capacity and to remove improvements
  
• Use blitz with extra MP
  
• Use guerilla when you just want to annoy people with low MP and without reinforcements.

Diplomacy:

• Pull new shenanigans with spare influence to annoy ppl.

Heroes:

• Vodyani and Sophon racials for +40% energy dmg. Bonbus hp/shields, bonus speed, etc...
  
• Seeker for crazy off-lane mobility, Guardian for more dmg and HP.

Government:

• Try to hug militaristic party from the start for easy early game approval and endgame law with +30% dmg on ships and troops

Race choice for MP difficulty levels:

• Prime tier: UC, Vaulters, Vodyani, Hissho (probe bug), Nakalim and Riftborn - strong under most circumstances, tough to compete with at even skill levels
  
• Reasonably strong: UE, Sophons, Cravers - provide a sense of balanced gameplay
  
• Niche: Unfallen, Horatio, Lumeris - rely heavily on RNG not screwing them over and can shine occasionaly
  
• Recommendation - play Lumeris! They suck, and that's good for your learning experience. Horatio is just pain and hard RNG.

"Don't tryhard and play to win, simply play to enjoy and play again"

For victory and profit

Don't do war unless it's worth it, for militarist governments this is usually a no brainer, but there are other things that come in mind when making fighting worth your while. Also be wary that rushing a single opponent might create an advantage for other opponents, since you are investing resources into something else than pure personal growth, it can still pay off considerably.
Remember to be efficient, uberfleets are nice, but 10 not-so-uberfleets can do more
On CP kill profit:

• The Scavenging law enables you to get up to 50 dust and science per CP kill, it does not scale incredibly well, but still provides decent value for repairs and retrofits. 20 CP killed is 1K dust but more importantly 1K science.
  
• There are mods which can be literally stacked in your favour, when fighting easy opponents such as respawning pirates, equip your support ships with bonuses on CP kill, if you have fleet of 10 support ships each providing you 45 science on kill, kill 1 CP, you get 450 science surplus for the turn. Bear in mind your surplus can only reach double your science production. No need use going beyond that. But science on kill usually just seems to come too late in the game, probably use fleet movement mod instead.

Other pointers

• it is actually easier and potentially cheaper to assimilate through combat means, simply drain manpower with siege mods and attack, easy, cheap, clean, the race will hate you for a while but you have the trait and system, especially endgame, and moreover if they are befriended with another race.
  
• as vodyani, you can use a heavy-drain fleet to invade systems to make new Arks on the go and reduce enemy system pop through negative food so they can not conscript. (you can't drain riftborn though), this gets a lot more efficient with T2 drain and higher
  
  
• Pew pew helps you expand onto opponent planets, yey, just make sure not to overdo it, cause there are things like overcolonization, and jingoist paradise only takes you so far.

Knowing is half the battoru

Did you know about ITER?
If you seek aditional interesting statistics such as individual ship model stats etc., I suggest you refer to ITER on G2G forums[www.games2gether.com], which has some (ir)relevant data of all sorts.
Ship leveling table might be something of an interest to you![www.games2gether.com] Note that shield HP is not scaling with level, only ship HP, so high level ships benefit more from bonus hp mods, like plating, while lvls can be entirely ignored for shields.

Optimizing your ship setup:

• Optimum is countering your opponent, but that can easily be countered by opponent's change of fit with this "retrofit" button. As mentioned in TL:DR cookie cutter can still be considered lasers with flak. Wham! All ranges decent dps, it is not always perfect, but gets the job done pretty well.
  
  
• Strategic mods are very niche right now, till endgame, when you can easily afford them, 99% of the case goes for "Advanced Game Theory" tech - soon to be renamed (or not), for antimatter lasers which have +100% dmg shield making them essentially uncounterable. Hyperium engine mods now have better movement speed, so if you get them, get them on entire fleet. Although the adamantium choice has the EMP mod in it (which is a still easily countered missile). Your choice.
  
• Having better mods wins you (un)evenly matched fights, having ships with more mods unlocked does the same.
  
• You want the extra manpower from food anyway, so go for those extra mods on small ships, you can easily carry till endgame using just the small ships, since they take minimum damage from fighters you can skip that part of strategy altogether. But careful about AoE mods.
  
• Try upgrading only half your fleet to new concepts, this will make it more versatile and crazy to deal with, you can even play mindgames and show that your latets model has short beams as a bait, but then bear in mind it affects you aswell.
  
• Support ships are actually OP, do not dismiss them, but you need hyperium to make them work with all the shiny mods hyperium mods.

Support ships are not great anymore because fleet accelerators are in the past, but still:

• on kill CP bonuses stack , get science while you fight, win win
  
• titanium siege mods are a big help for reasonable siege times, if you get to siegeing, but then if you have the manpower, you can go with manpower mods instead.
  
• Support ships draw fire from your dps ships, giving you more overall dps, cause your dps ships live longer - place flaks in fleet on them. Try having a tank ship in your fleet.
  
• Support ships are not great as of the latest patch, they lack DPS and occupy DPS slots, and their only original use was stacking fleet movement speed, which is no longer possible.
  They still remain a good meatshield for focused fire and should not be overlooked for purposes of farming science or whatever, but you are no longer going to find yourself using them as much.
  
  Good early game fleet:
  
  • as many as possible attacker ships, preferably with at least one kinetic for antimissiles, rest T2 long range beams, you can split tank them, or just go kinetic tank if you have the shields on your support ships, but that relies entirely on what your opponent is bringing.
    
  • 2 support ships, bringing whatever mods you need +speed/+shield/+science per CP destroyed/+siege/MP capacity
    
  • I personally prefer to stick to small ships until I have extra mods unlocked (which need T2 stratetics, so it's pretty late or never), but watch out for barrage card and the AoE mod.
    
  • AoE mod can be fit on carriers and T2 slots on T2 ships (if they have one). AoE mod intensifies with each ship in fleet, so watch out not to get rekt. Instead get some yourselves.
    
  • You can eventually drop movement mods (individual ship engines) for extra dmg mods but then you are completely reliant on your support ships surviving to move around, and evasion bonus is probably better 99% of the time..
  General No-No's
  
  • Actually almost everything can work, thanks to swarm missiles, missile fleets are doable.
    
  • If you see lasers which have somewhat almost double your beam dmg, you go for them instead.
  Don't forget to:
  
  • Check all ships in the enemy fleet carefully, you might be catfished into thinking it's a stupid short fleet, but only the first ship is, rekt.
    
  • Grab minor faction bonuses like from Mavros (-10% ship cost) and Hissho (+20% weapon dmg) those are gamebreaking, try to get your hands on those, tikatan are no longer that gamebreaking.
  

Heroes

Ok, let's assume you have a fleet and want to engage, do you have a hero that would help it? Right heroes are OP, bad heroes are sadly irrelevant (as of patch 1.0.70, they are still mostly irrelevant, but you want every little tiny bonus you can get)
TL:DR: guardian, seeker, vodyani, sophon OP.

• Heroes with fleet dmg bonuses are great help, look for racial bonuses to specific weapon damage to win you fights - cravers kinetics, sophons/vodyani - energy weapons etc.
  
• Perfect hero is the vodyani starter, you get guardian bonuses and vodyani bonuses resulting in about 120%+ bonus to energy damage in the endgame, being just flat ♥♥♥♥♥♥ proof, unless ♥♥♥♥♥♥ uses kinetics instead, even then, like 80% dmg bonus only, lol
  Got nerfed, still pretty OP hero presence and their bonuses matter more than ever, get em, what do you know, they even level in space.
  
• Hero ship dmg bonuses are mostly irrelevant, but there are no real competitive choices at times and then you can also slot in some retarded expensive super weapons on them, then it counts a lot.
  
• Try to only have heroes attached for fighting and otherwise have them on systems, fighting gives ridiculously little xp
  What do you know, amplitude multiplying XP gain from battles by 10 has sorted the problem out.
  
• Seeker heroes make fleets extremely mobile with their T1 off-lane movement bonus, use those to rush enemy home systems while they are stuck in front. Or avoid Unffallen slow crap.
  
• Upgrade hero ships to increase their SWAG, and tank them well, they get a lot of aggro (and can have lots of slots to stack avoidance with engines), sneak in a probe or two so you don't have to drag a scout around. Remember ALL heroes have +80% dmg skill on SHIP (that's not fleet) so if you get any really cool mods (there used to be ones for invasion for instance) put them on those first.
  
• Buy heroes if your starters suck, you can and should do that you know... don't forget to check market WHEN you get the ultimate quest team seleciton notification, next turn you can no longer go shopping for them
  
• level up heroes quickly through building/buying out big stuff/fighting/scanning - this is particularily important when you have a +100% hero xp buff/event (riftborn aswell), since space xp is fixed, it can be occasionaly faster.
  
• Know your enemy's heroes and their potential bonuses, so you understand why are you going to get rekt and how much more you need to tank, not through academy, but just by looking at them
  
• Some heroes have - ship cost bonus on system, look out for those, OP, it's also one of the T3 minor faction specific skills
  
• I know it's tough, but don't always go for the looks!

Actual space fighting

Oh goodie, we are engaging now, all ready?
Oh wait, it's stuck, have to reload the save... ah it only took 2 minutes to resolve, nevermind...patience is a virtue.
If you are in an MP game of more than 2 people, do not watch battles

• You risk it will crash your game and you will have to restart and miss out the whole turn or two and slow everyone down
  
• You will slow the turn down

For starters:

• if you don't know how space combat works, view couple fights in singleplayer to get a general idea
  
• Cards are important, but you can adjust your fleet placement in advanced settings, the range groups are fixed, you need to move ships inbetween them for optimal results on demand, if there is a combat timer, you have to move them fast.

Range

• Every card represents three rows of ships at a set range, those ships will engage enemy ships on opposite rows and whatever else they can reach afterwards
  
• Ships approach each other through combat phases
  
• Medium range is potentially in short range in 2nd and 3rd phase depending on the opponents choice = you get wrecked by short beams in phase 2 if their fleet survives phase 1
  
• Long range is in medium range in 2nd phase, and short in 3rd phase.
  
• Range is defining to your combat strategy, having missiles means you will get countered by short ranged kinetics, having short beams means you will get countered by simply the fleet being set at long range and killing you before that.
  
• having versatile ships makes you uncounterable, which is why short beams and missiles suck, or only work once, or only work on ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥
  
• Ships can shoot ships from other lanes (if they reach) this means that although you are at melee range on one front, you are getting shot at medium from other front (explained further later)

Crit

• Crits are nice, mostly become relevant once you have big ships you can stack crit increasing mods on, crits ignore defenses
  
• There is a combat card for increased crit damage (but features short range positions)
  
• There is a combat card to negate any crits in the fight for both fleets (oh you build crit huh? would be shame if someone...)

Card bonuses

• Are relevant but mostly secondary to the range provided on demand, read, select, make the best of what you have, some can be game breaking at the right moment.
  
• Since there are races that can basically faceroll any engagement with their heroes, you might have to simply outnumber and wreck them card bonuses being an important bonus too. Good luck with that

My go to card
Is always the full reserves card, cause I have stupidly strong fleet, and I only need to clear up 50 crappy fleets on opponents system. (ES1 fleet stacking strategy counter). With this silly card, I can do it in one turn. You bet I like it.

Advanced (results) view

• Advanced view enables you to pull advanced shenanigans, you can for instance move all your ships to one lane - for instance you are facing short beam ships, you want to put all the ships into the long lane, so you get 2 phases of free kity fire
  
• Advanced results enable you to better understand what did you do wrong, or what did opponent do wrong, learn from your and their mistakes, cause they might aswell.

cards,flotillas and the nosebreaker move

Utilize card bonuses depending on your fleet, but do focus on range!
My favourite card is full reserves, it's really up high in the tech, BUT, enables you to fight multiple times a turn, so cleans all those pros camping their systems with multiple fleets that do not stack up when engaged, like behemoths.

Speaking of behemoths and card tricks. How do you practically always win vs a sole behemoth?
Use any lane but the middle lane and long range weapons. Yeah behemoth does not seem to shoot much far out, it's kinda weird, cause you do.

This card trick, I would dub it a "nosebreaker" in honor of ES1 tactic basically focuses fire on 1/3 of the enemy fleet "hoping" your enemy will be foolish enough to use a default flotilla placement, (single units do not have a choice and are forced to the middle lane) .
You place 1 cp ship into the middle lane (cause you have to) and rest 24 CP into top or bottom lane.
This results in your fleet fighting a 1/3 of the opponent fleet. Turning a 25 vs 25 into 25 vs 7 - 10 CP.
It's pretty mean trick, but it also means you won't clean the entire fleet in one go, but remember, with "full reserves" you don't really have to.
Also provided your opponents are not stupid, they will probably catch on and use it too, so it does not work all the time, except of course against AI.

simple tactics intro (pictures - range, cards, results)

Here we shall have some typical David vs Goliath scenario
Our happily participating volunteers are sophons laser fleet vs not so happily participating vodyani missile ark (made by endless AI). The scenario is outdated cause missiles now can hit stuff at short range, but more or less still applies.
We shall observe on this following example how

• Missiles are bad
  
• AI is silly
  
• Range matters
  
• Lanes matter
  
• Cards matter
  
• Stats can be scary and impressive, but only on paper

Oh lookie here, that circle looks grim, I mean green, 75% of military power on enemy fleet? Wicked!
First picture shows (in advanced view) how we have potentially weaker fleet of ships fighting against an uber ark (stats are overrated) you can see the ARK is missile based, I am using basic cards, making sure to select short range formation, my fleet is automatically split out into two lanes (which will later prove to be a mistake)

What the second picture shows is what happened after the battle, of course I won, cause (endless) AI uses short range engage on a missile boat (and while she was up all night, she actually did not get lucky), but that's not all we can observe from this picture.

• Notice how I have lost part of the ships in the first lane, even though they were "at short range", this is because the ARK was in a different lane and thus was in a medium/long range to the first lane fleet.
  
• The report states the ark was dealing damage in spite of being at short range with missiles, what it does not indicate is which ships the damage was dealt to, but you can see that from all the not-short ships being destroyed.
  
• Honorable mention goes to card bonus which succesfully ate away a large portion (over half) of incoming damage, saving the other ships on the lane

But yey we still won, whatever right? Anyway let's see the same scenario, only done a little smarter with a slight change....


This is basically the same situation as in the first picture, precombat arrangements are identical, but this time, the first lane of fleets was moved to the second lane, because if there is only one ship, it can only be on one lane, that lane being the middle lane. Let's see how that will make a difference.


Yey, AI did not dissapoint, short range engage with missiles, cause crit4life. What about sophons? Oh, no losses, as you can see, all ships were at short range all the time, ARK simply could not deal damage cause missiles don't work at short range and there were no ships on other lanes it could shoot to. Well rekt.

Of course should the AI have used "power to shields" or some other long range option, it might have ended differently, but since I was always using the short range setup I was guaranteed that - should I survive till 3rd phase, I would probably destroy it in it, while it could not shoot back.

On the ground

In sieging we have two general approaches (dating even back to ES1!
One is actual sieging, as in sitting in orbit, dropping MP down.
Other one is basically invading and attempting a takeover/MP reduction through combat.
I myself fancy the latter option, cause it's faster, offers less reactive measures.

• Utilize manpower modules on ships for higher manpower delpoyment limits, this enables you to have those 4k vs 300 manpower fights, which should win in victory for you. However, more often than not, somehow draft can actually defend this.
  
• Tanks are rather early tech and you should go with 100% tank profile ASAP., infantry is countered by tanks and thus should be shied away from in the early game.
  Airplanes are actually really great nowadays, especially since you can upgrade them fully once you do, there is also one special dlc quest that makes them even stronger.
  
• You can drop off your manpower and go somewhere else, for instance go grab a refill or go mess up another system, no more sitting around like in ES1, you can make it annoying by having your opponent need to click through 10 combats a turn and if their defense infrastructure is not solid, you are hitting hard.
  Very nice variant is replacing the probes on scout ships with MP mod and just drop it off and run for refill or block with cheap ship - this consumes a lot of manpower but with Bombardement can be incredibly frustrating and punishing for the enemy systems.

Manpower diversification
ES2 bring in the ground combat system semi-reliant on rock, paper, scissors game, however the matchup is not definitive cause countless bonuses, upgrades and traits can encourage using a "wrong" profile for it being more efficient.

• You can notice each individual army profile has certain bonuses as in "chance to kill pop, chance to destroy improvements etc., but since you will be primarily focused on actually winning, these are unfortunately secondary values.
  
• In short tanks are great cause they counter troopers which are prevalent at pirates/minor factions and early game noob opponents.
  
• Infantry are great when you have bonuses to them and have the early resource flow to upgrade them early, but still are not good vs tanks, and everyone has tanks once they can.
  
• Full aircraft profile combined with unique planet DLC quests is your endgame goal, which reigns destruction everywhere and is virtually uncounterable (no, not even troopers)

Manpower

• Is generated from food income at a % which can be adjusted by random events, the alaways available law and system upgrades (Patriot pills, Exotic rations) and also faction specific technologies like horatio food upgrade (once you have food to industry conversion, you can scrap the extra conversion to increase your production yield), minor factions also generate manpower
  
• To quickly generate manpower one can use "not so infinite" upgrade Chain gang (N-way fusion tech) to instantly (next turn) turn one pop unit (or essence in case of vodyani) into 300 manpower, this essentialy means that with spare pop you can get 300 * number of systems manpower next turn whenever the need arises
  Upgrade however blocks construction queue and it's use it thus inefficient and should be avoided by having a decent manpower stock available at times of need. But if you get that invasion done, it's totally worth it, especially early game everyone is like "omg he is so stupid burning like 5 units his pop for MP, oh wait I am dead..."
  
• Empire manpower is an invsible stock where manpower goes to and comes from, capacity of this stock can be affected by faction traits, faction quest rewards and military technology tier
  
• Fleet/System manpower depletes said empire stock to fill available capacity - this means upgrading systems, producing fleets can deplete empire manpower rather quickly, fleets refill manpower at a % rate when orbiting systems within your or friendly influence area
  
• Manpower is then used to invade or defend systems in ground battles by converting available values into units as dictated through your empire troop diversification.
  
• You can adjust your % army values at any time prior to the actual pre-fight conversion. However if the battle has already began, only new units (from conscription for instance) will be converted.
  
• Remember that adjusting the troop layout costs manpower, adjust prior to producing fleets, so you actually can adjust, you might not have the MP after.
  
• Manpower upgrades matter (but don't upgrade troops, upgrade and get armor if possible), Techs matter a lot and of course the high military low is a huge ground combat factor.
  
• Systems under siege do not produce manpower, you can however bring manpower by ships and they will join the battle next turn from the orbit, systems under invasion do not produce pop or manpower, if you are sieging try to siege for as long as possible to block the enemy growth.

Influence overtaking

• easily countered through war (can't PEACEfully convert someone you are at war with)
  
• fairly infrequent in MP, but not impossible
  
• watch out for the trees, their influence is in the vines not in the sphere, also treets immune to cultural conversion
  
• vodyani get bonus essence from systems under influence through law, the amount is silly small
  
• As nakalim, if you want to gift systems to academy, simply take a bunch of trash systems, give them away in truce, instantly convert them 5 turns later.

Politics and laws

The state of your affairs may make or break you combat capabilities through laws, I suggest you check each government law carefully in game to get a better understanding.
Remember that republic can have 25 to 100% stronger laws at the same price.

The laws have tiers which limit how many election cycles does the party have to survive (political experience and also party support) in order to have access to said law (at least that's how I understand it, it's probably different but hey, manual does not really say much about it)

• Laws either superpower your fleet effectivity or make them easier to produce thus their efficiency.
  
• You can change laws every turn at no cost (probably a bug)
  
• Laws applied just before you press fight still apply even if engaged before.

Obvious subject of interest are the military laws

• T1 = -15% cheaper ships
  
• T2 = +25 dust and science per CP kill
  
• T4 = +50% dmg on ships and troops

T4 law is an obvious gamebreaker, but can be difficult to reach and maintain
T2 is very strong early game, with republic its +100

Also interesting are science laws

• T1 = + 2/3 movement on ships
  
• T4 = + 30% dmg on ships

And no less interesting are the industry laws

• T2 = +15% indy per strat deposit +1 strat deposit value
  
• T3 = + 30% ship hp
  
• T4 = + 4? indy/pop

Technically if you are in democracy, it should be possible to reach and maintain even both of these laws at once, unfortunately you can not affect the elections that way and it is probably more efficient to run one law with republic at increased effect. It usually follows your race, so as riftborn it's fairly easy to get +40% hp +50% dmg and scavenging on top.

Influence costs

• Are high. but actually pretty buggy, you can enable law, benefit entire turn from it, and if it's expensive enough, it will autocancel by the end of turn, so...IT'S FREE (example: have 200 inf, law is -180 inf) next turn law was disabled, I have 250 inf, I had the bonus entire last turn.
  
• Tough to compensate for with unhappy pop
  
• Get Interspecies HR unique upgrade early if you need it.

Race choice - let's get disillusioned

Are you a faction ♥♥♥♥? Well, you are to become one (ha, did ♥♥♥♥ that coming, or did you?!)
Let's see our individual races and what they are good for:

Lumeris

Pick Lumeris if you have something to prove, like wrecking people and leaving them with no excuse.
Lumeris are terrible. Absolutely terrible. But then still playable. Trade lanes suck, their racials and heroes are mostly useless, but planet buyout is great for early game, until it's not. Then it's not great at all. Their gamestyle just does not work on current patch, not that well anyway.
(I main Lumeris, I know best!) Take extra care when picking lumeris on games with high amount of players, the joint dust income (especially the boosted one from 11 endless AIs combined) produces a lot of inflation, althought I adressed this on the g2g forums more than half an year ago, this is still a real problem, where inflation is much as 4 (that's 400% buyout price) by turn 20.
As dust is your primary resource inflation counters your fixed production directly rendering the last of your relevant race bonuses meaningless. Faction hero skills are "subpar", or right out crap and a joke.
But you still gotta love them, cause at least they can be actually fun on occasion.

Cravers

Cravers are actually harder to play to full potential than they let on, however, if you want to be known as the "rushing ♥♥♥♥" they are a great faction of choice with getting a T2 support ship out of the religious line of quests.
Obtainable as early as turn 10 or less immidiately giving you a huge fleet advantage capable of wrecking that nab that got spawned right next to you with the little early game bonus you get. (read massive) Then you either snowball into victory, or get fukt by someone with a brain.
Saints and sinners law "redesign" no longer renders cravers gods of approval and expansion management, while still immune to gov change, you will have to manage rebelions a bit more on your way to conquest rush.

Vodyani

Need an idiot proof pick? Well Vodyani are again, difficult to understand, but once you read up on their playstyle they are OP and easily GG on pick, or at least they used to be... also their default hero is a rockstar that doubles your fleet efficiency damage, hp... you know kind of things a person in charge of balacing would say "WTF dude?" about. But then you would point out they also have that +FIDSI bonus and just straight up fire whoever did that. Especially prenerf, lol that was ridiculous stuff.

Vaulters

Would you say the latest DLC release faction is P2W? Well not anymore. Vaulters through series of nerfs and hidden buffs and nerfs again are now almost ok.
Given the removal of skynet superfast fleets from the game through removing them from support ships and forcing them on hero in latest patch results in portals being super relevant again.
Remember, you are thinking with portals. If there were rally points in this game (which there eventually will be) you will be able to 1 turn megafleets without much hassle, until then, prepare for hassle.

Imperium

Technology buyout and alternative resource in form of influence can make or break your play. No, it can't really break it, even without it, you have other neat bonuses and faction quest rewards for bonus weapon mod dmg in the... FIRST quest... wow... just wow... would take extra stupid person not to easily win any engagement right? Well, they are not that fantastic, but versatile and with a neat questline.

Riftborn

Don't like food management much? Well, these guys got you covered, with industry output matched only by vaulters and only in early game, they can steamroll everyone, but not everywhere, cause they move slowly, unless you follow guide info to make them move fast.
Thanks to singularities you can have super high level hero and guaranteed strategics with the FIDSI increase and highest industry in game should guarantee you win all wonder contest. Unless you were colonizing without limits instead, that's right, you can colonize all planets you can, cause you don't use food. Not op at all.
But wait, there is more! How about -30% ship cost free quest law? You guessed it.
Also note, you can still produce food and other pop. I do not forbid it in this guide. It's actually a good idea.
Following the anomaly stacking nonsense for 200% empire-wide science output, they are a bit more in line with other factions. You should also consider stacking pop from low pop systems to home, it's a lot of annoying micro but ridiculously efficient.

Horatio

Ever since his bug with free food to indy conversion was fixed, horatio fell majorly out of favour, highly dependent on usefull minor spawns and good asimilation luck can be extremely rewarding but also underwhelming to play, the ship cost increase sux, and also he is ugly.
Pick Horatio if you like conheads, he is not my personal favourite.
Has huge endgame potential, try to assimilate riftborn early if you can, but it still probably won't carry your game.

Unfallen

Like it slow and steady? Yup pick unfallen, you guessed it right.
If you generally don't care about the game's outcome and just want to chill with friends while being easily the highest early game food producer in the galaxy. Generally pick unfallen so you can ally up with other people, cause they have RIDICULOUS mid game bonuses per faction at peace, which like laws, best scale with number of players in game. Heroes generally base sitters, with some nice hp bonuses in t1.
Overally getting straight up stopped and cut off on low density cluster with a single connection point will lead to your entire vine network's downfall and you wondering, why the hell is it so stupid.

Sophons

I used to like sophon skin a lot in ES1. They are solid pick if you feel like rushing through science and utilizing the amazing bonuses their questline brings spoiler alert: ship discount, +100% indy output on hot, -50% cost on military techs.
Starting with scientific government for cheaper industry improvements feel very strong and competitive.
But then there are also sophon heroes. Featuring +40% laser dmg bonus just like vodyani, and some shield hp too... and some science. Yup, not as OP as vodo, but OP.

UC

Not bad if you like clicking and hacking a lot. It can get boring at times, but being invisible (and actually safe from being defeated) for most of the game is a pretty decent tradeoff for also having ridiculous single system output to be further stacked with behemoths.
Try to rush ambush mods and watch people die in dismay as the detection is always a tier above.

Hissho

Went from stupidly OP to only OP if not stupid, to not so OP anymore, basically I do not know what to make of that race anymore. Heroes are and ships and all that are top notch but the whole expansion interaction is a bit iffy now.

If I did not mention a race, I probably forgot it existed, sorry not sorry.
TL:DR - pick vaulters, if people yell at you for playing an easy win race, pick vodyani or riftborn...
If you spot LOW resource abundance, definitelly play riftborn.

Supremacy - Behemoths

Behemoths are the titanic feature of boredom.

Simply rush an eco behemoth combined with improved behemoth slots and stack economic behemoths for FIDSI and FIDSI% bonuses on your production system, most likely home, for best results.
Stacking a 100% fidsi bonus on your already highest indy production system will easily double your fleets, so one being taken out by some badass,super expensive, super high tier ion wave is a non-issue, since you have two fleets and a lot sooner.

Science behemoths can be interesting, but can be outpaced by simply stacking more science from system at home with stacked economic behemoths (+ all other fidsi).
The research cost reduction however is not to be completely overlooked and is the primary cause of making reserach victory a lot less attainable. Also depends on having a special node + the right special node.

Military behemoths including juggernaughts and citadels are an interesting spin on waste of space in space of endless space as they can and should be outmanuevered and rekt by fleets produced through superior output of economic behemoths at your indy system.

Obliterators
If you use economic behemoths correctly, your opponents will have real trouble actually producing and firing an obliterator, which nevertheless can not render them completely irrelevant, however, community distaste of obliterators and consistent nerfs can.
It's more of a toy you are not supposed to be left alone to produce, if you are, well then you probably could have won long ago by utilizing economic behemoths instead. ;)
There is a galaxy-wide warning regarding someone having built an obliterator which might encourage you to build a citadel and it might not.

Behemoth cap is increased through researching behemoth techs and building the empire tree behemoth upgrade.
Try not to bankrupt yourself through excessive behemoth production, but keep in mind you can also abuse the upkeep for sake of reducing your empire inflation, upon reaching minimal inflation, use stacked up goods to get a lot of dust, spend that dust on trading improvements and profit.

Also behemoths, for some reason, can not be scrapped.
Careful when producing close to immobile behemoth as UC at the other end of galaxy.

Penumbra - hacking and cloaking

I made a guide about cloaking.

And I made one for hacking.

Dirty tricks

All is fair in love and war... especially if you are of a questionable character (you know, like tryhard and an a-hole)

• Do not despair over other player's stupidity, turn it into your own advantage.
  
• In terms of racing who manages to click things first, host wins, host more games, but have a good PC and bandwith, or die,
  
• Defenders have it better, repair your ships after every combat and watch the enemy army wither one by one, of course, you gotta click quickly, you gotta be the host or lucky.
  
• Dusty races can easily change their fleet setup on a whim, play mindgames, show silly fleet makeup, then bring something else
  
• If you need it to win, be a berk tryhard, set up peace only to prep up invasion, why not, but be ready for consequences
  
• You can retreat after unsuccesful invasion and then invade again, same turn, really, just need to bring new manpower in, rinse and repeat to drain conscription pop fast, give them rekt delivery ASAP

[/strike] - fixed.

Play horatio, their 50 pop bonus is bugged, they get free food to indy conversion

In case you would lose an ark in space fight, simply retreat and repair it right away, yup, it works.

Bonus c*nt points for waiting till last moments of the turn after your opponents have played to do stuff unopposed. "Oh, he has that system blocked and if I fly in there I am gonna die. Oh I know, I will just wait till he ends turn and then end last, so he can't attack me, oh boi I am a genius", also a c*nt though - watch out for amassing too many c*nt points results in people not playing with you anymore. I know I wouldn't. That's just lame.

[/list]

No brainer game winning hint no. 1 (aka "Metagame")
If you want to win really badly, go to amplitude bug report forum[www.games2gether.com] and just find something to turn the game into a circus it is hiding under seemingly ok gameplay. Of course it's cheating, but then this is a dirty tricks chapter... or just play Vaulters

The lumeris guide and why you should read it

It has a video which puts my combat tips to test on the latest* dlc patch (*oh yeah latest till next patch, duh) and also some boring video about starting turns... and a meme.
Also explains why Lumeris suck and you shouldn't play them.
And it might give you cancer as an added bonus.
I really sold it to you didn't I? Here come and get some.

[Rasiel]

Awesome Guide.

[koxsos]

Yes indeed.
It just falls under the last priority of things to do for me. Cause it's just so time intense.

[Reianor]

"take it up with amplitude, you can."
I just went and re-checked... turns out you indeed can. My bad. I think I got the wrong impression from custom factions.

My definition of food management is spending the correct amount of effort on food production.
The rest of it is happiness management, colonization management and population management respectively. Which is why to me it sounded like you were promoting the “forget completely about food as riftborn” trend.

P.S. And it's a good idea to send those minors around anyway. Even if you don't want to bother with food buildings, most systems still produce food just because it grows on planets. With no meatbags on planets that food pretends to not exist. With 1 meatbag it suddenly comes out of hiding and starts working in your favor (minor pop growth, food to manpower, and at late game, if it ever comes to that, food to production conversion). It's annoying, but still worth doing IMHO.

[koxsos]

"If you meant splice, that's simply impossible. Not early, not late, not ever. You can't steal their genes (probably cause they don't have any)." - take it up with amplitude, you can.
There is a food management and a food production by itself.
Riftborn food management point falls more onto "yey look at me! I am expanding on 10 planets at once without -600 food and losing pop at home" point or "yey, I sent some pop over, and have all food buildings, but pop still dies off cause planets are that bad =(", ofc you can produce food and benefit greatly from it even as riftborn. Although you do have to send those minors around planets if you want them to grow elsewhere.

[Obsidian Shadow]

It is possible to gene splice riftborn as Horatio but they must have the minimum required population and that number increases with each splice. Big challenge with Horatio is their high ship cost and they start a bit slow.

[Reianor]

It's like Stellaris all over again, only this time with actual gameplay in it.

Let's say you have a growing system with a total of 20 population.

For a normal player all of them would consume food.

For riftborn-only empire all of them would add to production costs.

For a riftborn that mixes his main pop with meatbags you get food consumption of a system with 10 meatbags, production cost of system with 10 riftborn but FIDSI output of a system with 20 population.

Your pop-based bonuses are lower than that of riftborn purist with the same numbers, but your snowballing speed more than makes up for that.

[Reianor]

P.P.S. Food management is actually one of the strongest tools in riftborn arsenal.
Your riftborn pops can still work the farms and your meatb.. err your minor population can still work the factories.

Real life common sense doesn't detect any synergy here, but 4x experience says otherwise.

Your food growth gets slower with every meatbag. Your production costs get higher with each riftborn.

If you use both at the same time though...

[Reianor]

P.S. Their (his?) end-game potential isn't all that stellar. In theory you can get huge from-pop FIDSI numbers from all those genes with none of the counterweights such as essence, depletion or self-production (like those were ever enough to stop their owners from breaking charts and faces). In practice you get tons of food and approval over 9000, which isn't even nearly as useful as it looks on the paper. And this is 4x game we're talking about, there's no such thing as losing advantage over time. You may be getting huge FIDSI numbers by late game, but the guy that had them all the way from early game is already several dosend of turns ahead of you in research, system development and general blobbing.

[Reianor]

"Has huge endgame potential, try to assimilate riftborn early if you can! Easily a gamebreaker."
If you meant splice, that's simply impossible. Not early, not late, not ever. You can't steal their genes (probably cause they don't have any).

Beside that, one does not simply splice a playable race in early game. You generally want to eat those last as they usually have the population numbers needed for latest gene splices which the minors lack. Unless you're 100% sure there's only one [racename] player in the galaxy and he only had a population of 4-8 when you ate him (Are you sure you're a real Horatio and not secretly a craver?) And even then you'll probably want to wait a bit since splicing in early game means losing total population numbers while they matter most.

[koxsos]

lasers deal double damage at half effectiveness, essentially the same, until you get to the 100% medium range, where you get double damage.
T3 is gained on T3 level of military tech tree. (hyperium usually not worth)
You can, in the current meta, probably pull off staying on small ships with extra slots throughout the entire game, because the AoE gun went from the all to nothing and carriers with bombers do not threaten you as much. But then you are still open to an existing counter. Stacking shield mods can also be interesting when spamming small ships (for instance 25 junks with 400 fleet shield mod each)
But the bigger is better still somewhat applies.