Overview
Hi Welcome to my guide. I’ve played this game since it’s conception and I would consider myself a seasoned veteran. I’ve noticed a lot of players throwing their units to death in space battles so I’ve decided to make this guide to help players with their conquests.
Imperial Overview
The Empire is what you’d expect from the empire. Big bad and scary. Their ships are well suited for extreme engagements in groups, but alone they are weak. Most imperial ships have an enhanced fire ability that lets them drain their shields to increase damage to enemy ships, but i wouldn’t recommend using it unless you outnumber the enemy. Against rebels this ability is useless because a good rebel player will micro their ships’ abilities (enhanced shields) to counter your ability. That reminds me, never engage a rebel player unless you have the fighter advantage. Rebel capital ships are like sponges. Big turd lookin’ sponges. The real strength of the rebels are in their fighter support. They have every absolute advantage over you until you manage to build a real fleet. A good imperial commander will always have ships that can use their enhanced fire abilities in the BACK of the fleet to pepper the enemy with cannons.
Imperial Fighters are like cannon fodder. Tie defenders and interceptors are what you want. Build up a fleet of fighters before you try to build up any real ships in the early game, you can’t beat X-wings in a race for resources in speed (S-Foils) so you might as well sack up and give it to them.
The imperial Hero units are great. The bounty hunter Boba Fett has a ship known as Slave I, a powerful fighter with corvette-type weaponry, as well as a potent seismic charge dropper which heavily damages enemy fighters, bombers, ships and stations. Darth Vader’s TIE Fighter squadron is quite weak against Red Squadron and enemy X-wings/corvettes, which can shoot down Vader’s TIE fighter if his wingmen are eliminated in battle, but they can be summoned again after some time. Admiral Piett commands a super version of the Imperial Star Destroyer, which contains many TIE Bombers squads, as well as dozens of TIE Fighter Squadrons. He can fire a powerful proton beam that does massive damage to enemy capital ships and space stations.
Game Shifts
Early Game 1-10 minutes.
DEFEND YOUR RESOURCES. Getting mines set up is a must. And defending them is even more important. If you don’t have any econ, you wont have any ships, simple as that. I recommend going for your nearest mines for safety but if you’re feeling cheesy you can always sneak one of the enemies if they’re not paying attention. A good way to do this is by purchasing a TIE scout and using the sensor node ability to show an area of the map launching in fighters. Always go for the best defensive turret setup, Laser+Missile. Upgrade your base and make sure to get a few fighter upgrades, most players always skip them but they are highly important in warding off any invaders from your mines. You just need a couple thousand to buy your first few acclamators and tartan cruisers.
MID GAME 10-20 minutes.
Don’t rush. You need more ships and at least 1 hero unit (if heroes enabled) to start an advance on the enemy resources. Most people think that stations matter and that you should rush them, they’re wrong. Economy is everything. Destroy their mines and they won’t be able to build ships. No ships = no defensive line for their base. Try to set up a repair node next to your base to repair damaged ships to use for later. It’s at this time that you and your allies should be upgrading your base to 2-4. If you haven’t gotten at least 10k resources and a few suitable ships then you’re falling behind.
LATE GAME 20-50 minutes.
Holy hell its a war zone. Your fleet is meeting the enemy rebs or cons. This is where you need to have all your upgrades to shine, you’re commanding the empire, and a fleet of destruction awaits your enemies. This is a basic format in which i have my fleets set up for greatest damage. Your frontline needs ISDs and Peitt. Behind them, victory cruisers and Broadside Cruisers. The cruisers are no joke and need protection. Their missiles will wipe out any bomber/fighter threat. Victory cruisers are there for their heavy laser and rapid fire ability. Next to the cruisers you need tartan patrol cruisers, a couple will do. This is to ward off any flanking bombers. If you haven’t grouped your fleet by now, you need to. Select all of them and press CTRL+1. That will mark all of them as “1” and you can use that to quickly select all of them.
Imperial Stratagem [WIP]
There are many ways to achieve victory as the Empire. I will go over a few and discuss the pros and cons of these tatics.
Station Flanking.
Station Flanking has been around as long as i can remember. It’s a tactic used by those who would rather see the battle ended quickly. It envolves little resources to carry out and in doing so achieves you victory.
The requirements are:
1 mine.
1 tie scout.
8-10 tie bombers.
patience.
Here’s a quick how to:
The enemy base is always direclty opposite of where your base is, for balance reasons. It’s not hard to find. Anyway to flank the base you need at least 10k resources and a good sense of where the enemy forces are in conjunction with your own. As soon as you get the option to build a mine, build it. Then wait. Do not focus on any tier 3 base upgrades, just buy a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of tie bombers and wait a good while. Use the Tie scout ability to ping their base and reveal the map around it. Send your first group of tie bombers in then group all of them and send them for the shield generator. If done correctly the base won’t be able to defend against your bombers. It’s all a matter of sending in more bombers to destroy the base.
Pros:
Wins you the game rather quickly.
Little effort.
Cons:
Risky.
If by some chance you did something wrong and your units die, you lose. There’s no coming back from that. You’ve spent too many resources and can’t pull out of the dive you took.
Helpful Hints
Shift+Y will allow you to transfer funds to your team.
You can use a beacon to ping points of interest, it is located next to the unit bar.
You talk by hitting enter. Note that you won’t be talking to your team right off the bat so make sure to check “Send to team only”.
Conclusion
WIP
I will have more detailed sections for Empire vs Rebels and Empire vs Consortium later.