If you missed it, first check out Scott's updated guide:
https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=10151&t=380441
His guide covers more of the basics for new players and his preferences, while this guide aims to maximize. It would be a shame not to benefit from all his work!

NOTICE: 4/19/25
As of the Tactics update, this needs updated. I'll leave it up for now; the later sections (starting with "Prelude to Advanced Tips" is particularly where the meat of this guide is. The tooltips in game may make the first part of this guide unneeded.

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If you use a Fleet Template, use it for its features, namely in reinforcement and automatic retrofitting. If you don't use any automation, there's hardly a point in using them. However, I recommend becoming comfortable with them. Once you do so, conducting your ship forces during the cacophony of war will be all the easier.

As other guides and the game cover creating a template and setting ship numbers, let's get through this part quickly with a few images.

Design a new fleet here, or edit a fleet.

The "(Latest Active Design for Role)" selection isn't optimal if you use multiple designs per role, though using the particular hulls if using one design per hull works rather well. Regardless, with intent, design ships for the fleet - not fleets incidentally using designs - pay attention to upgrade selections on the ship design. I recommend matching the design upgrade path with the fleets- a redundant action, but it helps ensure you get what you want. Pay attention to what your obsolete designs are set to retrofit into.

Be mindful when updating your ships to set the upgrade path of your older designs. These will carry through into your fleets. For example, when you get Heavy Frigates, but you want to keep using Frigates for a certain fleet, you'll need to be sure that Frigate design upgrades into the latest Frigate hull, and not the latest frigate role.

Another thing... if you have Trim Excess Ships: Enabled, if you have any ships of a mismatched design and you click on Top Up Fleet, those mismatched ships will be removed from the fleet and have new ones built in their place- that includes ships that need to be retrofitted. So, RETROFIT BEFORE TOPPING UP, or disable Trim Excess Ships.

The 5 Fleet Roles have a little more to them than what is said in the Galactopedia. These only determine the default behavior of the fleet template when the fleet is created. Once you've assigned the designs and numbers, pick the most desired Fleet Role. While it does force you to have at least 1 of each of the four automated roles, by no means must you use all of them. Please look at the following in determining what Role your Fleet Template should use by default.

*May Will chase a target out of range sometimes.

Attack Points are a priority target- and the AI often assigns only one or a few different Attack Points to every fleet of the same Fleet Role at any given time. However, like Threats, it will not excessively assign fleets to the Attack Point, leaving other fleets to operate within their Engagement Range like a Defense Fleet. This is not to say that your fleets won't assign an overpowering force, but instead that they won't commit too much of your forces to the Attack Point. In another way of looking at it, a Defense Fleet is merely a fleet that does not get Attack Points but unlike a Manual Fleet, will engage outside the system if set to do so.

The Engagement Range is a more important pick than the Fleet Role, but this is merely the default setting for a new fleet using the template. Generally, a defensive fleet should be set to 50-200M, assuming you have enough of them, while offensive fleets should remain at 50%.

The retreat setting is straightforward. The Fleet Position Reassignment should be left to default unless you're concerned about what ship an admiral leads from. Lastly, leave Tactics set to Use Ship Tactics- you should only use Fleet Tactics in rare situations in which you want to adjust the entire fleet's tactics.

The policies are straightforward and sufficiently covered by Ulluses' guide, but these two are especially important.

Military Attacks
On Automated, this enables fleets using a Fleet Role aside from Manual to engage Threats or their Attack Point (or targets) outside their system. When set to Manual, your fleets will not leave the system they are in to attack targets. They may still go to repair, refuel, or retrofit in other systems if empire policy allows them to do so. For the most part, you will want this on Automated or Suggest and Execute.

Fleet Postures
Mostly straightforward, the "attack targets for fleets" refer to Attack Points (Shift-F12). Automatic fleets will engage Attack Points (targets) themselves without an assigned one. While the automation does an excellent job assigning Home Bases, except for Raid fleets, it doesn't quite have a 'feel' for Engagement Ranges, scattering them amidst your colonies and bases without varied ranges. Its bulk assignment of Attack Points is sub-optimal as well. While leaving this on Automated will get the job done, you can do better concerning Home Bases and assigned Attack Points.

Fleet Engagement Range now accurately affects ship behavior, overriding the ship's Engagement Range. The following occurs when the fleet is set to Do Not Engage, Engage When Attacked, and Nearby. This also applies to Manual Role fleets.

Fleet Tactics Override Ship setting to 'Use Fleet tactics instead of Ship' makes every ship in the fleet use the same ship tactics as specified by the fleet's Tactical Overrides. Otherwise, ships use their own set tactics.

The orders that the fleet has will override individual ship behavior. So if a raid fleet goes to destroy a station, but the ships are set to Do Not Engage, they will still fire on and destroy the station, but won't attack anything else unless the fleet gets ordered to do so (and it may make its own orders with the appropriate Engagement Range.

If the fleet's Engagement Range is set to Do Not Engage but the ships are set to Same System, the ships will fire on anything they can (but won't break formation to do so), but won't attack anything as a fleet unless ordered to engage by higher authority.

Attack Stance
This determines where a ship tries to position itself after coming within range. Based on this selection, the ship's firepower to range ratio of its target determines its ideal range. Generally, vessels should be Neutral to minimize losses, as it intelligently selects optimal firepower against to firepower took ratio. By default, only when you specifically design a frontal direct-fire ship should Aggressive be used, as it disregards the enemy's firepower. Cautious is for when using missiles/fighters, as it ignores your own firepower. Dynamically, it would be best if you used Aggressive when mopping up or Cautious when equipped with long-range with broadsides while facing an aggressive enemy.

Imagine ships hostile to each other, one equipped with Shockwave Torpedoes and the other with Hive Missiles of equal tier. If both are set to Neutral, the Shockwave ship will try to close to knife range, while the Hive ship will approach to about 2800 before doing a 180 and try to keep at range. This is raw DPS- a poor measure of how weapons perform- but it is what Attack Stance works with.

Home Base (and more about Engagement Range)
The automation sets the Home Base based on the role of the fleet. It will spread them, prioritizing remote and more valuable colonies for Defense Roles and generally pushing to the front when at war. Aside from how it clusters raid fleets together, imitating the AI manually isn't a bad idea.

• To set a Home Base, set your view on the colony or base you wish to set as the Home Base. Then select the desired fleet using any Fleet Role aside from Manual. Hold the right mouse button on the location and "Set home base for..." Any of your colonies or ports can be a Home Base.

You, the player, have a strong advantage in being able to tell what locations are in need of defense, how strongly they should be defended, and the best places to base offensive fleets. This is because you can have a sense of using Fleet Engagement Ranges, unlike the AI. You can set more nuanced control of where a fleet will make orders. Fleet orders will be one of the following:

• escort the flagship (or form up on it)
• refueling, retrofitting, and repairing (does not have to be in engagement range)
• moving to a location, often to investigate a threat
• attacking a specific ship, monster or base
• attacking a fleet or colony

There are a few things to note otherwise about the Home Base and Engagement Range.

• Fleets are not predictive- only reactive. A fleet will move to intercept a detected attack, but they may end up on the wrong side of a moon
• They do not prioritize threats but may ignore a threat for other fleet(s) to handle.
  
• During inactivity, fleets typically idle at their Home Base.
  
• They might chase a target, potentially ending up outside their Engagement Range. They should return, potentially after refueling and repairing.

Attack Point
Attack Points are tentative fleet orders to engage the target once threats in the Engagement Range are dealt with or are being dealt with and the target is considered hostile. A specifically assigned Attack Point will remain until the target is defeated or a new one is set.

• All fleets with a role aside from Manual or Defense will generally prioritize threats within their Engagement Range over their Attack Point. Setting a small range will prompt a fleet to attack the Attack Point.
  
• Without an assigned Attack Point, an offensive automatic fleet will pick one they can handle within their Engagement Range by themselves.
  
• During war, a direct Attack or Prepare and Attack order will generally be a superior choice.
  
• Invasion fleets perform well with manually assigned Attack Points, as they will prepare themselves before engaging the target, and will coordinate with other invasion fleets with the same Attack Point.
  
• In the case of a colony target or fleet, be it as a Threat or Attack Point, the fleet will merely jump to the target if the wrong Fleet Engagement Range is set and can be sniped to death without firing a shot, as stated above.

The last point is of critical importance: to maximize your fleet's cohesiveness in a significant size battle, you must manually command your fleet(s) when they engage in getting the most out of them or rely on absolutely overwhelming the target.

Guard and Patrol
These command the fleet to move to the location and execute at least one attack against hostiles. This will change the fleet role to Manual. Guard is for a single target, such as a station or colony, Patrol is for going from planet to planet in a system.

Blockade
The fleet will move to the colony and engage all hostiles. It will also engage all freighters and mining ships going to the colony, including neutrals and allies, which will reduce your standing with them and hurt your reputation. This aims to starve the colony of luxury resources to reduce its happiness and income. As this takes time, the fleet will need at least one fuel tanker to keep watch.

Formation
While straightforward, smaller, slower, or shorter-ranged fleets should be tight, while larger, faster, or longer-ranged fleets should be more loose. The only fleets that should be Very Tight are Capital beam fleets and concentrated small torpedo fleets. The only fleets that should be Very Loose are fast, large missile/fighter fleets.

From here on is mostly opinion based on experience. The advice in the following sections for designing fleets has proven quite effective, which may trivialize the war game for you.

Like the AI in Dreadnought, the enemy is predictable, its ships inefficient. With the Strategy update, the AI is much more proficient at war- and defenses are tough! You might have to try to win.

Still, it is worth emphasizing this: the AI isn't a competitive human. With just an understanding of the basics already covered, you will probably outplay the AI. Boskarans may crave destruction. You may need to stop them. Yet, they don't know which end of the spear (ship) is the right one to stab with. Once in a while, they will put large direct-fire weapons facing backward while not bringing them to bear, and sometimes, they will not make those mistakes. Most of the time, they will bring bombardment into the space melee when they don't need to. To defeat them in war, you need only know that the pointy bit goes toward the enemy, and you don't bring bombardment to a ship slugfest. Focus on shields and torpedoes; you will often win wars.

With the basics done, that's all a leader needs to know. Pay no mind to things like diminishing accuracy or weapon countermeasures. That is enough to bring hegemony to the galaxy if you wish.

Despite all that, the AI is very good for such a complicated system, and it keeps getting better. Kudos to the devs!

The game is much more challenging now, as of the Strategy update with the release of the Shakturi. If you have a mind for strategy already, it still won't push you much on default settings. That said...



...let's begin my method of making and using fleets that will dominate even with an economic and technological disadvantage. This is my mentality, the Space Orc approach. With this, the plunder of the wealthiest empires in the galaxy will be within your reach.

While all fleets rely on delivering firepower, there's more to it than that.

The AI has only four kinds of fleets, and they're all generic- barely achieving a sense of purpose merely by controlling the number and size of ships in their fleet. With the ability to design specialized ships, the fleets we can make can be made to execute a specific task with high efficiency. A raid fleet isn't just small, it's fast. A defense fleet might be made to distract enemies or affordably bolster a vital planet's stationary defense. Consider something other than firepower- what components, tactics, and weapons are suitable for the intended fleet's goal? You'll only need to think about critical parts. Here are a bunch of examples of fleet objectives and desired ship features.

• 'Arrow': Seek and destroy targets quickly. Raid Role, small (E)ngagement (R)ange.
  Fast, inexpensive ships with blasters.
  
• 'Sword': Engage enemy fleets and survive. Defense Role, moderate ER.
  Good shields, your 'best' designs primarily armed with your favored weapon.
  
• 'Axe': Assault fortified colonies and concentrations of enemy fleets. Attack Role, large ER.
  Legion of aggressive, disposable damage dealers.
  
• 'Shield': Protect colonies and assets from invasion and raid fleets. Defense Role, small ER.
  Long-range weapons, fast, cautious.
  
• 'Hammer': Deal maximum damage to threats. Defense Role, large ER.
  Swift, fighter-focused fleets armed to the teeth with blasters.
  
• 'Armor': Sustain space superiority as long as possible. Manual Role.
  Heavy emphasis on fighters, Point Shield PD, and Quantum Capacitors.
  
• 'Dagger': Raid unprotected assets. Raid Role, large ER.
  The fastest ships you can make with blasters, stealth, and lots of fuel.
  
• 'Banner': Invade colonies with secured space control. Invade when clear. When Attacked ER.
  Inexpensive, nearly naked transports as afraid of space combat as your colony ships.
  
• 'Deathball': Destroy absolutely anything it is thrown at with impunity. Attack Role, large ER.
  The overpowering fleet represents your superiority, using almost any mix of weapons.

By no means do these cover the possibilities, including one of my favorite designs- a small ship boarding fleet. The point is, there are so many more objectives than the default fleets suggest.

"Hah, my Deathball fleets are all I need to win wars. Otherwise, I only need invasion fleets- not weaker ones with other purposes!"

Such is gloating about slaughtering weak cattle. You only need deathballs for a typical game where you aren't challenged. It is an unironically strong strategy as long as they are stronger than the enemy can concentrate. If you're playing against an enemy AI with more advanced technology and a much more robust economy, other purpose-driven fleets will make victory a more likely outcome.

Most fleets should only be 2 to 5 designs with a focus on 1 or 2 weapons. One primary design is the defining ship of the fleet. The other designs work for that ship, supporting and supplementing it.

1. Primary design: A single-minded build, it focuses on the main objective and exemplifies the fleet's concept.
   
   
   • Focuses on the use of the fleet's primary weapons.
     
   • Forms the bulk of the fleet.
     
   • Typically the fastest ship in the fleet.
     
   • Any component that isn't optimal in mass use for the main objective should not be on this design- cut any cost that doesn't impact its capability noticeably.
     
   • If it has PD at all, its 1 or 2, and not substituting a primary weapon.
     
   • Should avoid using large amounts of rare resources unless its a capital fleet.
   
   
2. Support design: The ship(s) that enhances the rest of the fleet or perform secondary objectives.
   
   
   • Uses any components that the fleet only benefits from 1 or 2 of, such as Hyperdeny, Long Range Sensors, Fleet Targeting and Countermeasures.
     
   • One ship can be the support ship, most fleets do well to have it.
     
   • Should have good durability and/or countermeasures.
     
   • Firepower should be limited.
     
   • Fuel Tankers are practically a support design, but fuel is the only thing they're good for and will otherwise be disregarded.
   
   
3. Supplementary designs: A good primary design should have a weakness. These cover the weakness(es) of the primary design that isn't sufficiently handled by the support designs.
   
   
   • More focus on supplementary weapons.
     
   • Fighters shouldn't always be in a fleet, but they have a big impact and should be considered every time.
     
   • If the primary design is expensive, include an no-retreat, cost efficient design with similar weapons to take some of the damage.
     
   • If the primary weapon doesn't have good anti-fighter capability, bring PD-heavy ships.
     
   • If the primary weapon struggles to penetrate armor, a few non-penetrating, hard-hitting weapons will handle it.
     
   • If the primary design is not so survivable, capital ships draw a lot of firepower.

Most weapons are viable primary choices and outperform others in the right application. I've played with every weapon as a primary weapon listed below at least once in actual gameplay. They all work well when well employed. It's just a question of how to use them as a fleet's primary weapon.

For non-shield penetrating weapons, I'll include a DPS against shields to range graph that shows how the weapon performs at various representative tiers compared to the gold standard of Generally Good: area/torpedo. Overall, this is the best representation of these weapons, but other factors must be considered. The efficacy of shields has varied through the patches, but are currently the strongest defense by far. Some AI uses a heavy ratio of armor to shields, but this makes them weaker overall, even against railguns and phasers. Note that the source considers Tier 0 tech as Tier 1- there is no T4 Epsilon Torpedo, it's Tier 3.

• Blasters
  Strengths: Excellent at destroying stations and highly effective in smaller engagements.
  Relatively cheap in terms of credit cost.
  Overwhelming DPS.
  An effective general-purpose weapon with sufficient ship speed.
  The Boskaran blaster is strong and cheap, though Boskaran ships are laden with weapon slots with small firing arcs.
  Weaknesses: Large scale, extended engagements.
  Relatively short-ranged.
  Titan Blasters use a lot of Osalia and Kaasian, two of the rarest resources.
  Impact Blasters [L] are disproportionately more pricey than their smaller versions and use a lot of Osalia.
  
  
  
• Phase Cannons
  Strengths: Powerful late-end game weapon, directly comparable to Titan blasters.
  More effective against targets with strong shields- the toughest targets.
  Slightly more accurate and longer-ranged.
  Pairs well with Phase Lances.
  High DPS second only to Titans.
  Weaknesses: Heavily armored targets and the Ikkuro.
  While they don't have trouble breaking armor, Titans burn through weakly shielded targets better.
  Still relatively short-ranged.
  Also uses a lot of Osalia and Kaasian.
  
  
• Conventional Beams
  Strengths: Highly effective for very large fleets- an excellent Deathball weapon.
  Nearly instantaneous damage.
  Relatively long-range, accurate weapons.
  The Zenox beam boasts relatively high DPS.
  Doesn't use rare resources.
  Weaknesses: Under-perform in small to middle-sized fleets.
  [L] beams have no PD capability but should be nearly exclusively used.
  [S] and [M] have average range and PD capability but should only be used as filler.
  Average damage, somewhat high credit cost.
  It can be limited by firing arcs as a long-range direct-fire weapon.
  
  
  
• Graviton
  Strengths: Strong brawling weapons for mid-large fleet combat, an excellent Attack fleet hunter.
  Can rout or cripple ships quickly. Each has a comparable range and rate of damaging components.
  Paired with Hyperdeny, Graviton can destroy ships before shields are taken down.
  Graviton Beams have excellent alpha damage and a slightly longer range than other non-beam direct-fire weapons.
  The Haakonish Beam [L] has a superior range and performs similarly to conventional beams.
  Weaknesses: Poor for large, long-duration engagements.
  Inconsistent performance in small fleets and somewhat short-ranged.
  They are expensive until the late game, where their performance drops somewhat.
  Graviton Beams suffer from poor accuracy and require Osalia and Kaasian at earlier tech tiers, which may be difficult to get a supply of.
  
  
• Railguns
  Strengths: Powerful early-mid game weapon, outperforming blasters when focusing on them.
  Deadly against fighters (particularly early, unarmored ones) for non-PD weapons.
  Carefully paired with Heavy Railguns, will tear anything apart.
  The Human Medium Hail Cannon performs without the assistance of Heavy Railguns.
  Weaknesses: Weak in the late game, unless you're Human.
  They have the same weaknesses as blasters.
  Without Heavy Railguns, more advanced defenses nullify standard Railguns.
  Poor accuracy, especially at range, becoming increasingly vulnerable to better countermeasures.
  Does not have synergy with most weapons, excluding Ion and Heavy Missiles.
  
  
• Torpedoes and Area
  (Intimidator, Derasian and Nova Pulse Wave)
  Strengths: Jack-of-all-trades, excellent all-round reliable weapons.
  Good accuracy, long range.
  Has a long linear damage dropoff from high to low, which is good with a Neutral Attack Stance.
  Adaptability is worth reiterating as a strength- it can take advantage of any range weaknesses.
  Comparatively high bombardment damage.
  Boskaran torpedoes are the perfect low-cost, high-performance weapon. Not the [L] version.
  Area weapons can destroy groups of fighters.
  Area weapons can be viewed as the large equivalent of torpedoes.
  Weaknesses: The flip-side of its strength, is its king of none.
  Poor damage dropoff and vulnerable to PD, requiring a lot of focused fire to be effective at long range.
  Weakness against shields punctuated against Bastions, Starports, and capital ships.
  Velocity and Plasma torpedoes don't fit the torpedo profile. They're more like hybrid torpedo/missiles with the worst weakness of both and only long range as a strength.
  Area weapons kill more of your fighters than theirs and can be hesitant to fire at knife-point range.
  The Nova Pulse Wave and Quantum Shard use a lot of Osalia and Kaasian.
  Since I have assessed area weapons, they may have been nerfed (from being OP). At a glance, it seems they have been.
  
  
• Missiles
  Strengths: Excellent for harassing forces and large, extended battles.
  Zero damage dropoff and great accuracy.
  Perfectly pairs with fighters.
  They no longer have detrimental shield bypass, making them roughly 30% more potent than before. This could make them a more effective general-purpose weapon, a proper reassessment pending.
  Weaknesses: Bad at everything else.
  Lowest DPS weapon at short range, especially the Lance and Hunter.
  Comparatively takes up a lot of space.
  Vulnerable to PD, though not as much as torpedoes and area are at long range.
  The Reinforcing Swarm uses a lot of Osalia and Kaasian, as do the Hive to a lesser extent.
  

Starfighters
Strengths: Space Superiority, especially in defense. In a straight brawl, fighter carrying fleets absolutely dominate those without a comparable number.
Range: Massive
Firepower: Nothing compares to blaster-equipped fighters. Ion is also very effective; torpedoes work against armor in earlier tiers.
Utility: Highly effective PD, draws fire.
Cost: Almost free, aside from the space it takes
Weaknesses: In actual application, a lot of complications prevent fighters from total domination.
Starfighter bays take about 1.5-2.5 years to fill, and jumping slows that down.
They're only a little faster than ships, suffering the same as blaster ships in large-scale battles.
They can take considerable processing power. When there are over a thousand on screen in mid to late game, they will not behave optimally and sometimes erratically. Kill a fighter, idle for a moment, kill another fighter... I must sternly advise limiting the number of fighters in a fleet, based on your CPU.
A fleet's egress can be severely hampered by fighters, waiting for them to return to their ships.
They're more automated and difficult to control. If they decide to return to the ship, regardless of how far, they will only change orders to attack once they've relaunched.
Similarly, they might not engage the best targets in large battles. While great at defending in sieges, they can be very ineffective on the attacking side in a siege, though interceptors remain valuable.
They appear to have issues when being simulated off screen...

NOTE: Fighter bays have reduced capacity in the Stellar update (2/13/2024), but increased build and repair speed. Their performance is effectively the same, and this helps to rely on fighters more while putting less strain on the CPU.

(This section was created due to size-per-section limitations only.)

• Ion weapons
  These do double damage to components, and more notably, can disable them with a single hit. Even when disabling has a short duration with good ion defense, this is a potent ability. It makes ships with strong shields easier to take down without focused firepower. It enables weapons that perform poorly against armor to stop shield regeneration, making it much easier to punch through armor. And of course, it makes it much easier to stop ships from fleeing. Any small or medium sized fleet would benefit from some supplemental ion weapons. Its questionable to use Ion Cannons as a primary weapon- they struggle to destroy ships. They're good for disabling components. It only takes a few to do that. More advanced ion weapons easily overcome ion defenses and can do appreciable damage.
  
  
• PD and Starfighters
  Think of fighters as little direct fire warships. 25 space is worth 2 or 4 nearly free, fast, knife-range warships. They tie up enemy interceptors in chasing your fighters, keeping your bigger ships alive longer. Sometimes ships ignore fighters, but interceptors won't, making them the best PD. Even with lots of fighters, additional PD is a good idea, since they can't be everywhere. You want to win the fighter battle, or at least slow the enemy's down, because fighters can tear your ships apart otherwise. Generally a fleet should have Starfighter Bays, but don't if the fleet cannot afford to wait for fighters to board for egress, and in that case, bring extra PD.
  
  
• Blasters
  Blasters deal a lot of damage and take up little space. If the primary design uses torpedoes, conventional beams or missiles, the fleet will do well to have some blasters to give it much more punch at close range. While torpedoes and beams hit hardest at short range, comparing by size, a blaster is roughly 3.5 times stronger than torpedoes, 2.5 more than beams, and 6 times stronger than missiles. Rear facing direct fire works for slower ships with a Neutral or Cautious Attack Stance. A slow, resilient Impact design will tip the scales in your favor when more aggressive AI ships close the distance. And they're excellent filler weapons otherwise. Be aware that blasters on the primary design will encourage them to move closer to the target.
  
  
• Tractor Beams
  Did you know that these can also push targets away? Very handy for area primary fleets to help prevent blue-on-blue, and handy for any fleet that isn't fast. A support design with multiple tractor beams is a solid inclusion for a short range fleet as well, though it is best used manually. With enough of these on a single ship, it can effectively stop the target. That means nearly free hits- it can't dodge if it can't move!
  
  
• Mines
  The real area-of-effect weapons. The blast range on these begins at 580, plenty large enough to hit multiple ship targets or entire compliments of fighters. It takes about 5 of these to put down or cripple fighters in a single volley. In large fleets, these can easily find a place.
  
  Added:
  
• Super Weapons
  Super tier technologies can only be acquired through certain conditions in exploration. While one of these weapons can destroy a planet, they cost more than the hull of a heavy destroyer. Due to their cost, they're practical only in small quantities, as supplemental weapons.
  (Disclaimer: I do not have experience with Super Weapons- these techs feel like cheats to me, since the AI can acquire but not research them, and therefore can't use them at all. A warrior does not condone such unfair advantages against inferior enemies. However, finding these techs aren't easy, so perhaps you will feel differently.)

Each race has a doctrine in its ship construction. Ackdarians and Mortalen get more engines, the Haakonish and Zenox get more sensors, the Zenox gets more defense, Mortalen and Boskara get more weapons, and the Ackdarians and Teekan get more/earlier Starfighter Bays. Then, the bulk of the weapon's facing, size, and firing arcs are relatively consistent for each race. This means some races' construction ethos pushes them to be better suited to some weapons than others.
All Ackdarian ships have heavy frontal and small omnidirectional weapons. And there's hardly a [M] size slot in the entire Ackdarian fleet! Their preference for a mix of blasters and beams shows in their construction.

However, the ratio between [L] weapons, other weapons, and defense varies between the ships within each race. Some have a notably different arrangement of weapon facing and arcs from the standard. Because of this, each Ship Role has different strengths- not just a choice between speed and size. Humans have a superior breadth of strengths in their Ship Roles (this is a strong advantage if leveraged). For each design, there is probably one Ship Role for your race that best fits its purpose.

Boskaran battleships, for example, have comparatively high defense slots, second only to the Zenox. This makes them excellent tanks, whereas their smaller ships have comparatively less defense. This is not without a downside- they have fewer engine slots than any other battleship. It struggles to reach 80 sprint. Most other races' battleships do not excel as tanks as well but have different strengths.

The things to look for are:
• # of defense, engine slots, and sensor slots
  
• # of weapons: small (19), medium (39), large (120)
  
• Where the [M] and [L] weapons are facing
  
• You don't need to fill in all weapons, but you can. I often select the hull for any particular design based on the [L] weapon slots.

I leave it to you to find your preferred Ship Roles for your designs, but I will note one more thing about them. There is a remarkable jump in price between the Light Cruiser and the Cruiser, without a significant leap in performance. This is due to the Cruiser requiring the rare resource, Hexodorium. Because of this, most Primary Designs should be a Light Cruiser or smaller until your empire has secured a significant supply of Hexodorium. Trade-savvy empires can acquire it more quickly, but the credit cost hike remains.

We'll just skip the ship designing montage. There's no trick to it!

Remember the Hammer fleet idea?
'Hammer': Deal maximum damage to threats. Defense Role, large ER.
Swift, fighter-focused fleets armed to the teeth with blasters.
Here's an real example of a similar idea with the same name from an old Mortalen save.

• The primary design, the Warhammer, boasts 115 speed, a medium Starfighter bay and 4 forward Impact Assault Blaster [M], Buckler PD, and the Mortalen Multilock. It exemplifies Mortalen ethos with an Aggressive attack stance and refusal to retreat. With 3 Deucalios shields at 16k credit cost, the Warhammer is the perfect destroyer design for the Hammer fleet.
  
• The Raven is a support frigate design, armed with a single EM Lance on a 270 degree turret and a HyperDeny, set to Cautious and a very timid 50%/any armor damage retreat. It ensured many kills.
  
• The Golem carrier also supports the fleet, loaded to full capacity with Multi-Beam PD, Starfighter bays, Fleet Targeting/Countermeasures and a Long Range Sensor Array. Crawling behind the fleet, it brings the total fleet's fighter count to 240. Plenty of firepower for any singular threat.
  
  It has a Defense Role with a 50% Engagement Range, making it exclusive to hunting threats when not manually controlled. Retreat set to 100%- it is made to destroy larger threats. Ships use their own tactics - the ships are designed specifically for this fleet.

• Selecting "Any construction yards in empire" will build a fleet from every corner of your empire, which will possibly take years to assemble into a cohesive fleet.
  
  
• Selecting a specific colony or spaceport will build the entire fleet at that location. Capital ships will take a long time to build- do not select this when building large fleets.

Alternatively, you can manually construct the ships via the Ship Construction - Build Order tab. Its preferable if you don't have time to wait for the ships to rally with a large empire. This tool is quite handy and intuitive. It accounts for available resources, shows an estimated time to completion, and ques all the ships at once when you're ready to purchase.
Then once purchased, go to the Miltary-Military Ships tab, filter by the largest Ship Role and sort by Strength-lowest. Your ship(s) of that role will be at the top. Select those ships (click one then shift click the last on the list), then create the new fleet. Filter by the next Ship Role, select those ships, then add them to the fleet (which will be the last fleet on the list). Repeat for each Ship Role.
This tool is also good for creating reinforcements near fleets.

While we don't know how the AI prioritizes targets or simulates off-screen battles, these things are known. You can use this to your advantage if you like.
• They always use 50% range fleets - excluding Invasion.
  
• They track your forces as threats in the same way that your empire does.
  
• Their ships are always Aggressive/Neutral and retreat at 20% component damage.
  
• Their cruisers and larger will always need better-used space in the form of redundant Long Range Scanners, planetary bombardment, HyperDeny, and more, and they like to build a lot of large ships. Sometimes they use these on destroyers.
  
• Most fleets of the same type will have the same Attack Point in your empire, and for Attack and Invasion fleets, it will almost certainly be your capital. That is, assuming they're more powerful than you. Otherwise, they'll act defensively and encroach on nearby colonies and bases.
  
• Each race has preferred weapons that match their mentality. Ackarians like standard beams and blasters, Humans like railguns and missiles, Mortalen like railguns, and everyone likes their racial weapons.
  
• They are always reactive.

Long-Range Scanners
If you get good scanner coverage of your empire and into theirs, your automatic fleets will be enabled to intercept their attacks with the information as soon as they are on the way. Coverage of their empire will also give you near complete knowledge of their total force, giving a better idea of how offensive you should be.

These components are cheap but large. In addition to starports (which should be at every colony eventually), I suggest putting them on all resort and research stations you can and forgoing weapons on those. Instead, try to rely on your patrol ships or defense fleets to protect them. This level of redundancy for this component on stations is a good thing- you don't want to be blind to enemy movement in your empire. Bringing one with every large offensive fleet is a good idea, too, but redundancy within a fleet is not an affordable space convenience.

Stealth
Nearly every enemy ship has scanners, and every capital has long-range ones, making stealth operations difficult. The objective of stealth against the AI is to make the purpose of your ships unknown, allowing them to get closer to their goal before the AI can react to them. They also help your monitoring ships go undisturbed longer (never use a monitoring station) if you park them far enough to remain unidentified. They will eventually be spotted, so making them skittish and periodically sending them back will keep you well informed.

A fairly simple strategy is to prevent their fleets from concentrating on your dedicated damage-dealing forces. It is very effective with concentrated fleets that aren't up to the "I Win" task alone.

The easiest way is by tying up enemy fleets trying to defend their assets.
• A handful of Raid fleets hit targets fast and hard at the front lines, drawing their attack fleets and retreating before sustaining significant damage.
  
• A suicide Ram fleet rushes and captures a fortified colony at the opposite edge of their empire, luring their nearby Defense fleets to their deaths against their former Bastions.
  
• Marine assault forces capturing stations are strong lures.

Long-range units can weaken the enemy's advance in battle.
• Harassing fast ships make the enemy suffer more losses in a losing battle and can strategically tie them down longer, giving more time for a stronger fleet to arrive.
  
• Powerful, defensive capital ships 'taunt' enemies on a tactical level, allowing more aggressive forces to focus fire while the target spreads their firepower on approach to the capital ship
  
• 'Tanks' - ships meant to survive more firepower than others - are the least effective but still beneficial if they are between the enemy and the ships they protect.

The example Hammer fleet template was highly effective in application due to the distraction strategy with raid fleets, a suicide invasion fleet, and a tougher, long-range battle fleet. In the first war for the Mortalen, the suicide fleet beelined to a fortified colony in the enemy home system at the onset. A Hammer fleet came right after its capture with the tougher fleet. With the fighters, they held ground alongside its bastions, able to repair damage locally. At the same time, a few small raid fleets harass the front line following their own player-assigned Attack Points. They would attack the assigned station and withdraw to their Engagement Range, enough to keep a significant portion of their potential attack fleets busy. A Hammer fleet remained near the capital colony in case of an attack. In contrast, the remaining two offensive fleets, another Hammer with the tougher fleet, were set to engage the enemy capital colony and be joined by the defending Hammer fleet with a diminished fighter count after some fighting.

A recreation of the attack on the capital colony.

The tougher fleet would follow the aforementioned strategy of getting the defenders' attention, and initiating the attack. With the attention of the Haakonish using Reinforcing Missile Swarms, the technologically inferior Hammer fleets sped into knife range. They decimated their ships with powerful blaster firepower from ship cannons and fighters. They were then unstoppable in washing over the remaining bastions and spaceport, with little reinforcements able to arrive in time. The capital was left vulnerable to a conventional assault preceded by limited bombardment. Though the Haakonish still had significant forces remaining and would continue warring, these few battles at the onset were decisive. The Hammer fleets dealt the bulk of the damage, but they couldn't have done it if the other fleets were the same - taking the punishment that the Hammers could not, while the raid fleets kept more than their weight's worth busy while eliminating stations.

• What your attention is on - what is on your screen, showing at a micro level - gets more processing power from your computer. Your fleets- and theirs- will function differently from those off-screen. The details of how the simulation works is unknown by the community, but it is certain that your forces will operate more efficiently when the Eye of Sauron Player is on them.
  
  
• Individual ships are like soldiers separate from an army. During the war, bring them all into a single fleet (or add them to others) and set the Military Ships not assigned to a Fleet policy to 0%.
  
  
• If you start at low-tech tiers, the salvageable ships can have a major impact- many have Titan blasters. They can ruin your Tier 3 ships, potentially with ease. If you find an enemy constructing them, consider destroying the ships instead of stopping the construction.
  
  
• Repair and regeneration are far stronger than the tooltips suggest. Stacking Repair Bots and/or Quantum Capacitors may be a good idea...
  
  
• Use assault pods in at least one Cruiser ship design- they can be a raid fleet by itself. Gradually steal rare resources and remote research stations from anyone with whom you don't have a NAP. Especially if you're at war, steal everything they have because they invited you to do it- or rather, you said you would.
  
  
• Don't bother with invasions unless you want their structures or population. The reputation penalty for annihilating a colony is big but quickly disappears. Just blast them from orbit with conventional weapons if you can take the reputation hit- the bugs especially deserve it. WARNING- Depending on your difficulty level, the hit to reputation can be massive.
  
  
• When you invade a colony, immediately set the tax to 100% to make the colony rebel, then return it to normal. This will make the citizens more compliant. ---Update: Assimilation is faster now, the cost of this is the lives of citizens. Its still faster to make compliant citizens to force rebellion.
  
  
• In addition to taking losses, attacking non-military targets will raise your war weariness. In a protracted war against a wealthier empire, focus on military targets.

--Shakturi update: The game is MUCH harder with this expansion! Go easy on these!

In addition to raising the difficulty level, the following will make it more of a challenge.

Turn off tech trading. It is far too easy to become a tech giant through trading tech. If you keep it on, only use credits to buy tech. I promise the game will be too easy if you abuse this feature.

Don't make pirates distant. Keep both Colony Prevalence and Independent Colonies at least at Normal - the AI doesn't handle less very well. Some suggest limiting pirates and creatures, but I haven't seen the AI struggle with them to a crippling degree (witnessed an AI empire be entirely debilitated once since making this guide). Note that certain pirate factions spawn by race-related events.

Generally, give the AI Excellent starting systems while you get Normal or less. Increase their tech by 1-3 tiers. Give them all Path/Way of the Ancients/Darkness- the other governments have been re-balanced.

Starting expansion is a wild card. Those extra colonies will take some time to start having positive value; sometimes they're good, and sometimes bad. Better for larger galaxies, especially with higher colony prevalence.

If you're feeling frisky, raise colony prevalence and independents higher, and crank down the colonization range limit to 100. Using the range limit diminishes your ability to exploit an explosive reputation that allows you to claim independants en masse beyond the AI's skills and has the added benefit of allowing more empires to have time to grow to rival you. The AI will perform comparatively better, being allowed to claim a slice of the pie without the threat of a distant power (namely you) taking it out from under their noses. I say again: Range Limit restricts you more than it does them.

If you're starting at pre-warp, having Research Speed: Very Slow will make a much more difficult game with the AI starting with Warp Bubble or better- your empire will be completely dwarfed by the time you emerge from your system. Step down the AI's advantage by 1 or 2 steps in tech and starting systems, and don't give them the funding boost or boost Research Speed. Even then, starting at pre-warp while they don't is a big handicap.

At the start of the game, use the editor to add a 0 to their starting state and private bank.

Manually setting up empires, you can control how hostile the galaxy will be to a much better degree than the Galaxy Aggression setting. Playing Humans against a galaxy of 12 Boskara empires is as hard as starting pre-warp with everyone else at tier 2- you'll be hard-pressed to get any trade, which is a big deal. And once they're done claiming independants, your blood will be the hottest commodity on the market. Being Human with a balance of races for other empires is easy mode. Reduce the number of auto-generated empires by 1/2 and add race/government combinations that don't regard yours well. For example, a Teekan Democracy won't care for your Ackdarian Military Dictatorship.

When you find yourself the big dog in the galaxy, and victory is assured, set your empire to full automatic and use the editor to take control of one of the underdogs. Then you will face the toughest enemy. Player empires are the strongest of all.

With some combination of these, you should find the AI will have some empires that will push you to cheese the game. Despite that, try to avoid extensive tech stealing and making everyone a friendly trade partner. After all, you're a Space Orc, not a Space Corp.