******************************************************
******************************************************
*Homeworld indepth FAQ by Fallon V3.2 ****************
**no really!****22/01/2003****************************
******************************************************
******************************************************

This document belongs to fallonken@hotmail.com any reproduction on the web
in games magazines or in any cover mounted or otherwise CDROMs is strictly
forbbiden.If in doubt ask me first.I also take no responsibility in what 
this guide
does to your system hardware or relationships with friends if you use evil 
tactics
use at your own discretion and risk!.


***********************
*******Contents********
***********************

1-Why this FAQ exists (introduction)
1B Version history
1C game version history
1D Test system
1E Relic system specs
2ATerminology
2B Ship orders
3-ship options
3B Strike craft Or capital ships Part I
3C Strike craft Or capital ships part II
3D kamikazi observations
3E Best weapons Vs
4-Research times
5-Walk through
6-Challenges!
7AFinal fleet
7B Fleet limits
8-Music
9-Fleet engagements
9B advanced Fleet engagements
10-Multiplay
11-Evil tactics
12-loose ends
13-Contact details
14-Credits
15-Sites with permission to post this text
16-Final thoughts

*********************
*********************
1-Why this FAQ exists
*********************
*********************
Simply pressing buttons in a correct sequence on an input device called
a keyboard causes this to exist , no just kidding (dry computer proggie
joke not as bad as the recursion one though).I had meant to write this
years ago but got caught up in things that made me some what busy and the
fact that I spent plenty of time being lazy.But hey I also wrote the EECH
guide about a year ago which is pretty large so that is my excuse , 
anecdotes
aside I write this to keep the hard experimented (is that correct?) 
strategies
of the HW relic forums (the old ones not any new ones they may have put up)
alive and to make new players (since HW is only £5 these days some places
sell it at £2.99 even which is well worth it) better ones and perhaps to
join up and fight some worth battles.And is suppose to keep a record if I 
ever
lose my memories which is partially why the EECH guide exists.And finally
to show something for the hundreds of hours I threw away at this game 
defeating
it in each and every possible way , with my dark humor as an added bonus.
If you are interested I used to be Garnvic on the old HW forums and I got to
assault frigate captain (due to the fact I prefered to help people via email
personally rather than a forum post since the forum was a bit buggy and
never logged me out)so hello if you remember me and a light smile if you do 
not.
And finally (no really) hi to Fleet command (the forum member) its been a 
while.

I have also included various strategies I have found to work in single 
player
mode which is quite interesting with a twisting plot.Though I do recommend 
that
you play it yourself first to be surprised and to come back and read the 
guide
if you are stuck or if you want to find many of its secrets.Multiplay is 
where
HW shines though however not that I did that too often (I used to use a 
University
network but recently finished university so cannot anymore)

I would also note that if you do not find a certain tactic or certain datum 
in certain
parts then it may well be in the loose ends section.

1B Version history

V1 - basic starting FAQ first written in 2001 December

V1.5 Added fleet engagements

V1.6 Added walk through

V2 - Added everything else you see in the guide FINAL

V2.1 I accidentaly missed a few things out relating to
tactics and some explianations of things I've added
them seamlessly into this FAQ which unless you are
reading this you would not even spot them , heh what
more can I write about?

V2.2 I also added the Ladder Lyrics sheet (and credits)
and more details on game version history

V2.3 Corrected mistakes I spotted

V2.4 Corrected more mistakes found after proof reading

V2.5 Commented on kami damage

V2.6 Added service times for fighters

V2.7 Added different armour mass and firepower factors for each
version or mistaken firepower factors

V2.8 various others asked me if they could publish the guide is
edited to allow them permission to post it

V2.81 wow 160kb size passed! this is getting silly
-corrected some of the SP which after I played again turned out
differently

V2.9 Added best weapons  182Kb exceeded

V2.91 Significantly increased the loose ends section 189kb exeeded


V3.1 thats it its all over I sent in the wrong version
or at least that is my explaination anyway , my brain is emptied
of things to comment on this game so expect no more unless
somebody asks me a question that is not answered in this
and I think it would be in the interest of fellow HW fans to
garner the answer to this though I won't answer silly questions
or test things that take years to test or are based on random
chance (say scouts vs scouts both on evasive how many are left
you can test that sort of thing yourself) .Also various other sites
asked to host this other than CheatCC so I included them on the
permissions area.

V3.2 22/01/2003 Removed FINAL from this FAQ as it keeps growing
at a horrible rate.

V3.2 no seriously this is getting out of hand but I found out that
I had actually missed some things because I had pasted it all wrong
after spell check in word mainly fuel pod data and last night I
finally captured a fuel pod hurrah!. 197kb exceeded where do I get
all this information? , why do I not just enjoy games instead of
picking them to bits and writing about them?


===V1C Game version history

Taken from the update readme files and some are ones I noticed myself

Homeworld V1.05 - March 27, 2000
The only significant patch was VB1.5
Which removed super / dancing scouts
Reduced support frigate repair rate
Reduced repair corvette repair rate
Decreased defender firepower
Hyperspace ram altered

Homeworld V1.04 - October 21, 1999

Defender gun stats adjusted
Heavy Corvette build time reduced, build cost reduced
MultiGun Corvette build time reduced
Minelayer Corvette build time reduced, build cost reduced
Cloaked Fighter gun stats adjusted
Carrier build time decreased
Carrier hyperspace cost increased
Attack Bomber armor increased
Missile armor decreased
Missile tracking decreased
Missile Destroyer mass increased
Bounty rating capped at 250. (multiplay)
Homeworld now checks all available CD-ROM drives for the Homeworld CD -
the Homeworld CD can be placed in any CD-ROM drive on the system*
Cheat detection for multiplayer games.
Screensavers will no longer activate when Homeworld is running
Various Save Game Bugs fixed
Various features added to lobby for multiplay
Game works on NT4 and windows 2000**


* this doesn't seem to work on this one it always seems to check
D and doesn't like E
**personal test as V1 didn't like either of my systems until
I patched it up to V1.04 at least.

Homeworld V1.03 - Sept16, 1999
V1.3 changed

Homeworld V1.03 - Sept16, 1999
Changes to version 1.02

A problem with auto-detecting firewalls was fixed.  Previously it would 
always detect
that you were behind a firewall.

Previously, OpenGL was not available for any of the Nvidia TNT cards under 
Windows9x.
This was disabled due to driver problems under Win95.  OpenGL is now 
available for
Win98 but not Win95.

The Intel i740 is now more reliable under Direct 3D.


===1D Test system

The primary test system was:

AMD900 CPU
512mb ram
32 mb TNT2 video card
17 inch monitor
40gb HDD
win ME

It worked flawlessly on this system with a odd crash when in skirmish games 
there were
too many enemy ships (the walk through was written on this)

The next test system

AMD 1400XP
1GB ram
64mb ATi Radeon
17 inch monitor
80gb hDD
Win 2000

This was alright there were problems with the unpatched version of the game 
when starting
up in it dumping me out before the start screen.But there were minor 
problems on the
15th mission sometimes ships were forgotten by the program or altered into 
other ships
which was somewhat strange and annoying (imagine my 20 destroyers being 
exchanged
for frigates I say).Also there were various occassions when I was given an 
unable to
save game warning due to disk access settings I had put into win2K that I 
had forgotten
to remove. (multiplay was written mostly on this)I loved this system as you 
could suspend
HW without crashes easily and type up parts of this guide.

===1E Relic system specs

This is from the read me recommended systems

- Windows 95/98/NT 4.0 (w/service pack 4.0) CD-ROM

Minimums:
- Pentium® II 233, 32 MB RAM
- 100 MB HD Space (Plus 50 MB Permanent Swap File)
- 4x CD-ROM Drive
- 4 MB PCI Video Card (16-bit color, DirectX compatible)
- 16-bit DirectX compatible Soundcard*
- Win-compatible Mouse

*onboard sound actually works with this

Notes - I found an old system just about capable of running it and I would 
say no way
its horribly slow when a few fighters get on screen and crashes in big 
capital ship
slug outs

Preferred:
- Pentium® II 350+, 64 MB RAM
- 400 MB HD Space (For Full Installation)
- 12 MB+ 3D Accelerated Video Card
- Win-compatible Mouse with Mousewheel

I also say no for reasons outlined above

Internet/Multiplayer:
- 32-bit Internet Service Provider with 28.8+ kbps Modem or LAN

I am not sure about the modem speed but faster is better esp against mine 
lovers
or drone frigate lovers as I only played on LAN in er certain computer 
science labs
and only play on a small LAN when friends are free which is infrequent.I 
also cannot
advise on LAN configuration or setup or the machines in the LAN as I no 
longer have
access to the big LAN than I used before.


****************
2-Terminology
****************
I often use short hand in my explanations you will have seen a similar thing
in the EECH guide and heck it saves wear on my keyboard as well as my 
fingers.
Also I an in the UK so I spell things slightly differently for example:

Meter - metre
tire - tyre

and so on

guns    - massdrivers in most ships

bombers   - plasma bombs used by assault frigates and attack bombers

ion cannon - the blue (taiidan and kadeshi) or red (kushan)

Super ion cannon - beams of death used by bentusi does more
damage and is on a gimbal turret and is rapid fire

MS - Mother ship (can refer to carrier in multiplay also)
Forum terminology

CV - carrier

HCV - heavy cruiser

Big bruiser - heavy cruiser

Int - interceptor

sct - scout

SS - super scout

DS - dancing scout

MM - micro management

single / singles = single player campaign

probe golf - using probes as golf balls and scuttling them on impact

Wing - flight of strike craft (for you salvagers wings can also apply

to those X formations of 60+ capital ships you salvage)

Ru/sec - when building how many Rus does it use in one second during its

building period you eg 1 scout + 1 attack bomber

formula:

Ru cost / time to produce = Ru/s

Scout = 35 / 12 = 2.91Ru/s
defender = 65 / 9 = 7.2(bar)Ru/s

so if we were to build a scout and a defender drain on Rus would in total be
10-11 Rus per second , this figure is important for preplanning multiplay
fleets in advance Vs resource collector rates.

HW : homeworld

HWC : homeworld cataclysm

Banana : Kushan MS

Ugly MS : Taiidan MS

ITM : In the manual

SP  :single player

MP  :Multiplayer

Heavies : heavy corvettes

EECH - enemy engaged Commanche Vs Hokum (another guide I wrote)

MD - missile destroyer

Capture - salvage

Salvage - capture

micro management - where a tactic involves watching a group under a micro
scope more or less issuing orders regularly retargetting regulary as the
group fights , at the cost of missing other things in battle as a scout
wing can win with no losses against a much larger scout wing but in that
time enemy can sneak capital ships or fighters on your MS.
Capital ship - large high crew ships that self repair can't dock and leave
no trails.
< less than
>more than
|< less than or equal to
>| more than or equal to
= equals
+ as well or including
- excluding
* - foot note
** foot note 2 etc... and so on
Support:

other fighting ships to act as back up
OR
Support as in to use a repair beam or dock with a support craft

Wheel of death : for full details see my EECH guide its where the front of 
the
ship points towards an eney ship while going in a circular orbit around its
target.

Lt corvette - light corvette

multi vett - multi gun corvette

Mini missiles - corvette based missiles

normal missiles - MD missiles

furball - ship to ship messy fight

defeat in detail : use of massive and overwhelming force

****************
2B Ship orders
****************

Basic orders

1# evasive , like the name sake evasive ships under this order will
not move or fire to defend themselves and strike craft will spilt
into pairs and engage the whole enemy group*

2# neutral same as evasive but they will fire to defend themselves
but not move to attack , enaging squads they will attack the entire group

3#Aggressive Ships will not evade enemy fire they will attack and move
into attack positions and follow enemy ships that come near them , also
they will attack one ship of a group if asked to engage a group.

Orders are not forever the can be changed mid combat.So you can use
aggressive inbound and then change to evasive after the first pass
to turn fighters quickly then change back to agressive and so on.

*Evasive will only increase fuel consumption and speed for strike craft
capital ships are unaffected in the speed manner

Formations

Broad - useless

Delta - best for attack bombers

X - Only good for fighter engagements

Claw - useful only against single ships

Wall - best for corvettes as anti fighter walls and for support
frigates to support an entire group , very vulnerable to burst
weapons if using for fighters

Sphere - useful for escort of evil hyperspace jump in MP this modifies
the rate of fire of all fighters.

Custom - locks ships into whatever formation they are currently in can
only be set not called.

However capital ships should never be formatted since they act better and
the whole group can fire at the same time thus they work better not in
any formation.This also serves another purpose support craft can effectively
support the entire fleet since they are in a tight wad and they only need
to move slightly to use the beam on otherships instead of fly this and
than end which can mean the difference between life and death.

Watch how long it takes to turn a wall of capital ships compared to
no orders and you'll be surprised.

Also fighters work better in no formation try it it might look nice and
neat but its not try this put interceptors aggressive and attack an enemy
wing they will move as if they are in evasive (since formations limit
their movement) and they turn faster since they do not need to keep
in neat little lines of shoot me!.Careful of heavies though runway if
you have fighters and face a wall of them , as they are toast if you
go near them.Though if you must:

Claw - best vs capital ships

Delta - best for bombers Vs capital ships

broad - useless

Wall - defenders only

Sphere - best for defenders and defence

X - apparently good for fighters Vs fighters though I disagree without 
evidence

The only exceptions to these rules are heavies , plonk them in walls and
nothing gets through , support craft can easily support them since they take
up a small space compared to capital ships that take yarns.Then again mixed
up heavies do work quite well its just that support frigates might not
get support to them easily.

Additional - fighters if you do have to put them in formations then don't
make the groups too big I once mixed 75 bombers into a X and it was gigantic
took ages to turn for one was highly vulnerable and the edges of the 
formation
often don't get a chance to fire.Though turning is worst as they turn 
collectively
not individually except in small groups.This rule applies even more to 
capital
ships putting 100+ frigates in X claw broad or delta makes the formation too
big and horrendous to turn as well as limiting fire of the edge ships and 
making
like difficult for support crews.

Additional 2 - I once put 75 bombers in a single gigantic claw which by pure
chance was quite effective though vulnerable , it moves extremely slowly
and takes ages to turn around for another run . But this does allow bombers
to float above the victim ship for a very long time (not allowing the tips 
of
the claw to fire at all) and kill capital ships extremely quickly.

Additional 3 fighters in larger groups unformated have a high possibility of 
shooting
each other though it is rare to lose fighters this way only to get them 
yellow damaged
I have seen it happen on 25+ fighter groups on smaller groups it does not 
happen
often.

****************
3-ship options
****************

Section A

Fighters - Fast potatoes of every fleet of which can perform extreme 
manoeuvres
and thus avoiding enemy fire easily , weak alone powerful in 15-20 wings
obscene in wings on 60+ , need fuel , fuel consumption varies between combat
and normal cruising.Also they cannot hyperspace without aid of either hyper-
space gateways or other ships to fire at something most of them need to be
pointed in the direction of the target.They are capable of so called extreme
manoeuvrers , which are:

180 degree pitch
Strafe in any direction
Continually fly at directions opposite to its engine block*
pull off the wheel of death (though this is more associated with corvettes)
rapidly change direction
the defender 2 rake**

*Capital ships can do this but not continually fighters in sphere guarding
another can move in one direction and fire in another indefinately
capital ships do this then turn to the horizontal axis before moving off.

**this was off a game touted as defender 2 on the amiga CD32  where
you could do a 180 firing at the same time or even a full Su27 cobra
while firing

Corvettes - Bigger brother of the strike craft but er bigger obviously ie
more fire power more armour at the expense of more RUs and less speed , 
still
need fuel but they last that much longer since their tanks are a bit bigger.
As with fighters they cannot hyperspace without aid of either hyper-
space gateways or other ships.

Corvettes cannot do 180 pitch , they will bank instead though they can flip
upside down following enemy ships but they have omi directional turrets
to make up for this lack or ability.

Capital ships - Frigates go into this class they are general all purpose
war ships you may need as a fleet back bone when the enemy fields his/her
anti fighter / strike formations limited self repair ability.Can hyperspace
alone.

Super capital ships -encompasses destroyers cruisers and carriers big slow
mighty fire power slow to build , need lots of RUs (comparatively) have lots
of crew and have better self repair ability (though not much).Can be used
as ramming tools .Can also hyperspace alone.

Motherships - biggest of the current age (see karos grave yard for a huge 
ship
component in the back ground and cut scenes for even bigger ships that did 
not
make it into the final game) carrier , fleet foundry , petrol station , 
colony
freezer and minor combat vessel rolled into one - vulnerable.Lose this and
you nearly always lose the game.Scuttling her can kill nearly all fighters
and frigates and damage super capitalships heavily.(those that are in attack
range)

Section B

Explanation of terms:
Mass: uh...
armour: hit points
Firepower: how much damage it can do***
Coverage: % of a sphere it can cover when not moving to intercept
Type : what it fires
Manoeuvrability: self explanatory
Max Velocity: max speed / normal / combat **
Special Action: self explanatory
Fuel : (when they very near to the bottom of the fuel bar)
Evasive   : combat : normal*
Neutral   : combat : normal*
Aggressive : combat : normal*
Service time : how long it takes to dock fully repair and launch from 
support craft****
RU Cost: self explanatory
Available from: self explanatory
Time to build : how many minutes and seconds it takes to build
RU per sec : explained in the glossary

*only a few ships are fully tested its not exactly the most exciting things
to do

**Some ships have higher combat speeds than others , scouts are the only
ones that come to mind however

***firepower can vary in different formations most noticably is in sphere
where guns fire at about 50-70% what they do in a attack run.Also the 
guestimated
test values were done before I actually looked at the inscreen data screens
which sometimes are wrong (I did a test against one of my salvage corvettes
on many ships X2 due to the 50% damage reduction on shooting your
own ships to garner a conclusion).Misses are also not considered since
ships do miss especially against smaller targets but some times even
against bigger capital ships like carriers.

****strike craft only! also it can take 10-15 seconds to actually dock also
the amount of damage and fuel already in their tanks can change the time
it takes to complete a dock and it takes a few seconds to fly off the
pads , this is considered against a support frigate only since MS and
carrier docking can take much longer.

Additional you can guestimate fuel tank size by the time it takes to fill
up at the support frigate or repair corvette (or even resource controllers
and collectors) kadeshi swarmers fill quickly while corvettes slowly etc.

***************************************************
***************Fighter class ships*****************
***************************************************

*side note

Fighters are not quite as we think of fighters they are huge in HW if you 
have
completed the game you can see that fighters are the size of 777s in HW 
think
of it this way you have to cram a fusion drive in that and weapon 
systems.But
then again the last time I saw a F-16 it was bigger than I thought it would 
be
there was a mod sometime ago that made everything to scale that I forget the
name of but it made the MS gigantic (as it should be) and everything else
tiny in comparison , fighters were impossible to command effectively.


Scout

Mass: 40 tons
armour: 110
Firepower: 12
Coverage: 8%
Type : guns
Manoeuvrability: very high
Max Velocity: 1500 m/s(using after burners briefly btw) 1000m/s normally
Special Action: afterburners
Fuel :
Evasive   : 6 minutes combat* , 10 minutes normal
Neutral   : 8-9 minutes* 13 minutes normal
Aggressive : 8-9 minutes* 13 minutes normal
Service time : 13-16 seconds
RU Cost: 35
Available from: mission 1
Time to build : 12 seconds
RU per sec : 2.9

Cheap very cheap fast very useful very useful when engaging interceptors
these will chew them out if set to evasive mode and they are a favourite
of mulitplay since they overwhelm everything.They are hindered only by fuel
and fleet size constants.

*note* Dancing scouts there was a cheat in V1 of HW where you order an
attack wing to attack another attack wing then press F2 (evasive) then Z
then F2 repeat lather and rinse and the scouts are IMPOSSIBLE to hit this 
was
removed in subsequent HW versions.

*afterburners use even more fuel during combat and this can seriously reduce
the stated combat time (I have heard people say it makes no difference in
non combat situations but it does try this move two scouts towards a distant
destination select one of them and press Z the one with after burners will
arrive somewhat sooner)

Interceptor

Mass: 60 tons V1.05 10tons
armour: 160
Firepower: 18 (though I have seen bugs reporting it as 26)
Coverage: 8%
Type : guns
Manoeuvrability: very high
Max Velocity: 875m/s
Special Action: none
Fuel :
Evasive   : 6 minutes combat* , 10 minutes normal
Neutral   : 8-9 minutes* 13 minutes normal
Aggressive : 8-9 minutes* 13 minutes normal
Service time : 14-19 seconds
RU Cost: 55
Available from: mission 2
Time to build : 18
RU per sec : 3.15

Interceptors are useless and in multiplay are chewed up by scouts actually 
they
get chewed up by scouts in single play as well due to speed and evasiveness
of the scout , not too bad though as their grace is more hit points but the
reduction of speed kills this ship.And makes it less useful as the scout as
retreat is NOT an option as they can never run away fast enough like scouts
can.

Defender


Mass: 60 tons 10 tons (v1.05)
armour: 160 V1 325 V1.05
Firepower: 30 (v1) & 5 (V1.05)
Coverage: 90% V1 11% V1.05
Type : guns
Manoeuvrability: medium
Max Velocity: 385 m/s
Special Action: none
Fuel :
Always 25+ minutes no matter what setting
RU Cost: 65
Service time : 8-14 seconds
Available from: mission 4
Time to build : 9
RU per sec : 7.5

Worthless in V1.05 where their fire power went down from 30 to 5 but they do
have a saving grace their bullets travel faster than any other bullets in
the game so hits are near assured, stupidly over powerful in the first 
version
of the game and thus perfect.Mildly effective for escorts but other ships 
are
better value for such a purpose as you always seem to lose a few whenever an
enemy X comes for some fun.I wouldalso add that taiidan defender guns are 
always
ready to use while kushan defender guns take about half a second to move 
into
firing position as they are drawn into the chassis when not in use.

data is somewhat strange about this one

Attack bomber

Mass: 90 tons ITM 10tons (V1.05)
armour: 110 300ITM
Firepower: 42
Coverage: 5%
Type : twin plasma bomb
Manoeuvrability: medium
Max Velocity: 750m/s
Special Action: none
Fuel :
Evasive   : 6 minutes 13 normal
Neutral   : not tested
Aggressive : 7 minutes 15 minutes normal
RU Cost: 85
Service time : 9-16 seconds
Available from: Mission 5
Time to build : 20 seconds
RU per sec : 4.5

Nice powerful craft is killed by fighters easily though wings of 60+ are 
lethal
even more lethal from behind capital ships , it is actually possible to kill
fighters using them but only in emergencies , in a 20+ wing of fighters the 
bombs
cover mostly every evasive direction a fighter can evade to.You will lose 
more
bombers this way through your bombers colliding with each other and
friendly fire than losses from enemy ships.

*special foot note the they are so powerful that it can take 2 minutes 32 
seconds
to destroy an MS with a wing of 18 if you can keep them alive that long , 
keep
fighters off their backs and somehow nullify MS deck guns (distraction or 
fields)

Additional - bombers are also good against corvettes (small numbers of them 
though
as large walls will fry bombers in seconds) and other ships that are still 
or very
slow moving since they have a small homing capacity.

Cloaked fighter (Kushan only)

Mass: 40 tons ITM 10tons (V1.05)
armour: 160 ITM 150 (V1.05)
Firepower: 8 39 (V1.05)*
Coverage: 10%
Type : guns
fuel : Combat - 4 minutes normal - 10 minutes
others untested
Manoeuvrability: high
Max Velocity: 775 m/s
Special Action: cloaking
Service time : 14-17 seconds
RU Cost: 85
Build time : 45 seconds
Ru per sec 2
Available from: mission 12

*listed as 39 in the in game screens but it has similar firepower as a scout
hence its low tested firepower of 8

Good as a scout but useless at anything else they die extremely quickly in 
combat
it seems on paper they look good but never survive long , missiles will not 
lock
on to them when cloaked however and it can be good to take out missile 
frigates
but the resources are best used elsewhere as there are often more effective 
methods
of taking out missile destroyers.They have incredible weaknesses the huge 
amount
of time to build one , the number of Rus needed and their tiny motorbike 
like
gas tanks which make kadeshi swarmer tanks seem big

Defence fighter (taiidan only)

Mass: 75 tons
armour: 300
Firepower: none
Coverage: 80%
Type: defence laser*
Fuel : not tested
Manoeuvrability: high
Max Velocity: 875 m/s
RU Cost: 85
Time to build : 20
Ru per sec : 4.5
Service time :untested
Available from: mission 12

Not very useful though in HW forums when mixed wither interceptors in 4-6s 
they
seemed to increase survivability alot. 85 RUs best used elsewhere 
however.Alone
they are useless and 100% ineffective against non gun attacking ships (ion 
cannons
plasma bombs)Also they seem huge nearly as big as a heavy corvette which 
makes
them easier to hit if you overwhelm their defence laser.

*Ion cannons , super ion cannons , plasma bombs  ,ramming , kamikazi
and mines are not stopped/afected by the defence laser beam

Additional - Kamikazi attacks no longer use the defence laser on the 
targeted
ship in V1.05 which was apparently extremely damaging

Additional -2 They are best used in sphere on evasive since they they form 
an
orbit around the craft they defend maximising their area of effect.with 
evasive

***************************************************
*************corvette class ships******************
***************************************************

*the scale is similar also to the fighters though they actually seem 
somewhat
small for what they are in the ending there is a heavy corvette in the fore
ground so its still big.

Light corvette

Mass: 400 tons 150tons (V1.05)
armour: 900
Firepower: 100 ITM 10-15 in tests
Coverage: 40 %
Type : turreted gun(s)
Manoeuvrability: medium
Max Velocity: 575m/s
Special Action: none
Fuel :
Evasive   : 9.7minutes combat ,16 minutes normal
Neutral   : minutes  minutes normal
Aggressive : minutes  minutes normal
Service time : 20-35 seconds
RU Cost: 135
Available from: mission 2
Time to build : 22 seconds
RU per sec : 6.1

They may seem worthless but they are useful to some extent in multiplay to 
keep
scout wings harassing your harvesters only useful in large numbers and in 
tight
aggressive formations else they are easily overwhelmed and flanked by strike 
craft.
Nothing can take them out early if they are grouped except of course 
kamikazi
attacks.

Heavy corvette (my equal 1st favourite with bombers)

Mass: 750 tons
armour: 1700
Firepower: 200
Coverage: 50 % *
Type :two twin turreted guns
Manoeuvrability: medium
Max Velocity: 500m/s
Special Action: Burst shot**
Fuel :
Evasive   : 10minutes combat ,17 minutes normal
Neutral   : untested
Aggressive : untested
Service time :30-40 seconds
RU Cost: 240
Available from: mission 3
Time to build : 22 seconds
RU per sec : 6.1

This is the best strikecraft in the game , purely for stopping fighters in 
walls
on aggressive in large numbers 160+*** fighter wings don't even bother them 
esp
when teamed up with a support frigate behind them backing them up.If you 
have 2
support frigates you can take on near anything with them , very useful for
breaking up defender walls and other corvette walls.Best for defensive 
purposes
only as capital ships do take them out easily.They are somewhat weak alone
though many things in the game alone are weak alone and are perfectly
synergistic more than the sum of their parts.

*I suspect the taiidan corvette has better coverage since its guns can move 
left
right up and down , while the kushan corvette has guns under its belly just
behind its nose with the effect that the chassis blocks it from icing 
fighters
where other fighters can reach.The effect is the need to turn to engage 
though
I have no conclusive tests , there were rumours on boards years ago that 
kushan
corvettes were better on the horizontal plane while taiidan were better on
the vertical plane.

**Burst has an effect on 2400 metres so multiple blasts in the same area can
put over 100% damage on any strike group the power wears off there is also
a delay where the burst goes if you select burst target at something far 
away
and it moved in the meantime then the blast will be at that spot.So wait 
until
they get into close range before using burst.

WARNING burst will damage and or kill your own ships nearby as well 
including
the corvettes that fired the burst.and the burst also looks like a plasma 
bomb
as well if you are interested.i found this out when my scout wing came into 
finish
off what was left of the enemy bomber wing that just ate 10 bursts 4 of my 
corvettes
had not fired yet and they fired just as my scout wing passed the corvette 
wall
the result was the loss of my entire scout wing.

***Team multiplayer game I played on a LAN where 3 players allied to each 
other
and sent a huge wave at me from 6 directions I had 3 groups of 12 heavies it
was won without losses to my side and when it seemed I was overwhelmed burst
came in handy entire Xs would explode if 3-4 heavies in each group were used
on burst.Though eventually I was defeated when they all sent destroyers and
a cherry blossom (suicide pilots in WWII japan) scouts backed up by gravity
wells to freeze my corvettes.

Multi gun corvette

Mass: 750 tons
armour: 1400
Firepower: 180
Coverage: 78%
Manoeuvrability: medium ITM high in tests
Max Velocity: 695
Special Action: none
Fuel :
Evasive   : 10minutes combat ,17 minutes normal
Neutral   : not tested
Aggressive : not tested
RU Cost: 220
Service time : 32-40 seconds
Available from: mission 3
Time to build : 22 seconds
RU per sec : 6.1

Cheaper than the heavies but never use them to attack try this mix an attack 
wing
of heavies and mulitguns and they always die first .Their speed does help 
them
when attacking unsupported capitalships however.And thats about it they also 
go
against C&C theory where a dead ship can't attack you so concentrate your 
fire power
on one then another so with each passing second your ships take less damage 
since
there are less enemy ships dealing damage out.Unless you use them on 
aggressive but
the heavy corvette does a better job in this mode anyway.But due to their 
increased
speed its almost possible to class them as if they were fighters.

Minelayer Corvette

Mass: 750 tons
armour: 1800
Firepower: 600-800 damage *
Coverage: 0 though the mines can travel up to 350-500m/s in any direction
Type : Space mines
Manoeuvrability: medium
Max Velocity: 425m/s
Special Action: force drop mine field (6 pack)
Fuel :
Evasive   : 13minutes combat ,21 minutes normal
Neutral   : not tested
Aggressive : not tested
RU Cost: 275
Service time : untested
Available from: mission 10
Time to build : 40 seconds
RU per sec : 7/8

Worthless , totally mine fields disappear quickly and need to be relaid and 
the
mines don't do much damage anyway.Since they can be avoided by strike craft
and the wall of mines can be taken (with gritted teeth) by any capital ship
though if the enemy uses them then you can use them against him/her , only
really worth while if you can micro manage and support them with masses of
fighters it can make them deadly but not often.

*depends upon impact location variation between forced drops and normal
drops not tested

Repair Corvette

Mass: 750 tons
armour: 800
Firepower: 65 ITM near 0 in tests
Coverage: 10%
Type : guns*
Special Action: Repair beam 45/s 25 in V1.05**
Manoeuvrability: medium
Max Velocity: 350m/s
Fuel :
Unlimited***
RU Cost: 150
Available from: mission 1
Time to build : 20 seconds
RU per sec : 7.5

Some what out classed early by support frigates but they are useful non the 
less
for following salvage corvettes, they are also reallyhard to dock via double 
clicks
on the MS or on carriers so use the menus of the keys to dock them into your 
required
vessel , keeping support frigates farther away than the desired dock ship.

*The kushan ship has a turreted gun the taiidan ship appears not to have a 
gun.
though it does the gun in comparable to the light corvette gun but with much 
shorter
range and higher repeat.

**Repair beams only repair what the ship is ordered to repair ships in the
green beam won't get healed.

**during HW development the folks at relic wondered if it should use fuel or 
not
and they chose for it not to use fuel since it would be strange for a 
re-fuel ship
to use and run out of fuel.

Salvage Corvette

Mass: 1200 tons
armour: 1400
Firepower: 0
Coverage: 0
Type : Virii
Special Action: capture ships
Manoeuvrability: medium
Max Velocity: 425m/s
Fuel : always 22 minutes
RU Cost: 220
Service time : untested
Available from: mission 1
Time to build : 31 seconds
RU per sec : 8

The key to winning the entire game is (drum roll) the salvage corvette , the 
manual
states:

"can capture heavily damaged ships"

This isn't true you can capture anything you want (well nearly) at 100% 
health
here is the stats:

Strike craft   : 1
Frigates       : 2
Destroyers     : 3
Heavy cruisers : 5
Carriers       : 5
Motherships    : ha no way you can capture these though you may try
(this ships too big we need another salvage team fleet esp when you try
to get the turanic carrier or the kadeshi worldship)
resource controller : 3
resource collector  : 2
Gravity wells / cloak generators : 2

tactics for capture will be discussed later on.

Additional - sometimes victim ships will be completely passive and they will
ignore your salvage craft until just before it is too late , sometimes they
will immediately react.I have no explaination for this since it does not
depend on distraction damage sustained or fleet size it happens sometimes
but not always.

Additional 2 capturing strike craft will result in the salvage corvette
docking with the MS or carrier so be aware and relaunch them if you have
keep docked checked.

***************************************************
***************Frigate class ships*****************
***************************************************

Assault frigate

Mass: 45000 tons
armour: 16000
Firepower: 2400 ITM - 90-100 in tests* 82(V1.05)
Coverage: 75%
Type : guns and plasma bombs
Fuel : unlimited
Special Action: pushing**
Manoeuvrability: low
Max Velocity: 325 m/s
RU Cost: 575
Time to build : 61 seconds
Ru per sec : 9-10 ru
Available from: mission 3

The first capital ship you get (heh well steal from return to Kharak) very
poor against strike craft (the fleet commanders arguing in the manual states
that assault frigates can protect against fighters well no not really unless
you ram them)though it has better armour than the ion cannon frigate and
better speed.

*based on % damage of enemy vs my heavy corvettes

**special pushing is an unknown quantity during the forum life it was 
discussed
that their bullets were heavier than others which explains why you can use 
4-5
of them on one ship and that ship keeps getting pushed backwards more than 
the
victim ship's engines can keep it fwd.Not that this is too useful except for
breaking capital ship formations which then spoils the support frigate 
backup
method.You can try ram ships into each other as well though it isn't easy 
and
enemy ships will try to move out the way.

Ion cannon frigate

Mass: 57000 tons
armour: 15000
Firepower: 4000 ITM 130-150 in tests 138(V1.05)
Coverage: 3%
Type : ion cannon
Fuel : unlimited
Manoeuvrability: low
Max Velocity: 300 m/s
Special Action: none
RU Cost: 650
time to build : 60
Ru per sec : 11
Available from: mission 4


Now things start to get nice one single ion cannon though , less armour less
speed more fire power , it has 3% coverage which is pretty bad though strike
craft will lose a few attacking them if they come from the frontal area to
attack which is silly.

*based on % damage of enemy vs my heavy corvettes

Support frigate

Mass: 45000 tons
armour: 12000
Firepower: 760 ITM 20-25 in tests 28(V1.05)
Coverage: 21% *
Type : repair beam and gun(s)
Fuel : unlimited
Manoeuvrability: very low
Max Velocity: 450 m/s
Special Action: repair beam 200pt 100 in V1.05**
RU Cost: 425
Time to build :65 seconds
Ru per sec : 6.5
Available from: mission 3

*one gun on Kushan support frigates two on Taidan

**Repair beams only repair what the ship is ordered to repair ships in the
green beam won't get healed.

There are subtle variations between these two opposing side frigates they 
may
look the same but the are slightly different the extra gun on the taidan 
frigate
is an easy one to spot.But there are also others, Kushan support frigates 
can
heal themselves (hold Z and click on support frigate) taidan frigates 
cannot.
But Strike craft have to perform aerobatics to land on the kushan frigate 
which
takes just a second or two longer.It matters sometimes esp with large 
fighter
wings.Using guard on a group of ships will make it repair those ships when 
they
are damaged .Also you can take strike craft into hyperspace with this 
frigate
select the corvettes and fighters you want to transport and as they are 
docking
select hyperspace location.The strikers will stay docked and the frigate 
will
take them with it.In MP it costs no Rus than normal .There was a ghost
support frigate rumour somewhere it is true though that the frigate vanishes
and the fighters do not I can't really remember how to do it though and it
was only possible with the taiidan support frigate , not that it seriously
enhanced gameplay any..

V3.1 update the guns on her are actually quite useful in what they lack
in firepower they gain in accuracy and repeat , they fire almost constantly
when attacking anything with them though they do have a shorter range
than guns on other corvettes.

Defence field frigate (taiidan only)

Mass: 40000 tons
armour: 17,600
Firepower: none
Coverage: 100% sphere defence field
Type : defence field*
Fuel : unlimited
Manoeuvrability: low
Max Velocity: 325 m/s
Special action : defence field (always on) 2km radii
RU Cost: 800
Time to build : 75 seconds
Ru per sec : 11
Available from: mission 6


this is extremely useful on the folks who enjoy using fighters especially
the 60+ wing scout players also useful in pairs and when trying to capture
cruisers and carriers also since only the ion cannons can get through 
only,though
in SP you'll be maxed out on frigates so you can't really build them.But it 
is
a luxury in mp and in sp you'll probably be maxed out on other ships to be
able to build any.But they are excellent in team work with 2 defence 
fighters
as the 2 defence fighters close the 5-10% vulnerability window.

*Ion cannons , super ion cannons , plasma bombs  ,ramming , kamikazi
and mines are not stopped by the defence field.

Additional - these are excellent to escort fighters against motherships with 
its
repair rate and blocking 90% of mothership guns you can keep fighters safe
doing attack runs all over the enemy MS.

Additional2 to "attack" an enemy ship the field frigate goes toe to toe with 
enemy
capitalships which means it also blocks ion cannons targeted at other enemy
ships by virtue of it being an obstruction but this incurs damage on the
field frigate so don't forget about that.

Additional 3 Gravity wells do still work in the field frigate so you can 
combine
them to make a horribly lethal system or to trap fighters escorting or being
escorted by the field frigate.

Firepower reduction data raw

raw as in the 5-10% of guns that do get through are not counted which can
lead to all sorts of firepower counts:

% is how much of its 100% firepower is has remaining NOT how much is
blocked the other figure if there is multiple weapon system type on the ship
reflects how much the ship in terms of raw firepower it can bring down to
bear on the field frigate or ships in its area of effect.

swarmer - 0%
Adv swarmer 0%
Fuel pod 0%
fighter - 0%
Std corvette 0%
repair corvette 0%
missile corvette 100%
Scout - 0 firepower 0%
Interceptor - 0 firepower 0%
Attack bomber - 100%
Defender - 0 firepower 0%
Cloaked fighter 0%
Lt corvette -0 firepower 0%
Heavy corvette -0 firepower 0% though burst still works
Multigun corvette 0 firepower 0%
Mine layer corvette - 100%
assault frigate 41 firepower - 50%
Support frigate 0 firepower 0%
drone frigate 0%
Ion frigate - 100%
mutlibeam - 100%
Destroyer 276 firepower 75%
m destroyer 100%
Carrier 0 firepower 0%
Cruiser 552 firepower 60%
MS 0%
Kamikazi of all strike craft is reduced also as they cannot connect their 
gunfire
as they go into impact.except for bombers which you don't wan to kami anyway
unless you are losing badly or have masses of Ru.


Drone frigate (kushan only)

Mass: 60,000 tons
armour: 16,000
Firepower: 192 *
Coverage: 100% **
Type : miniature auto gun***
Fuel : unlimited
Manoeuvrability: low
Max Velocity: 325 m/s
Special Action: launch/retract drones
RU Cost: 800
Time to build : 75 seconds
Ru per sec :11
Available from: mission 6

Useless unless you try the hyperspace drone ball (extend drones hyperspace) 
then
recall drones , you can force attack the frigate inside the sphere 
easily.Best
avoided but if you have to use only in aggressive mode.The drones rebuild 
faster
when retraced btw.Also they utterly kill slower machines if you have alot of 
them.
a Frigate can take out a drone frigate easily with little damage.

*each gun has about the same power as a scout since there are 24
8 x 24 = 192 the drone frigate has no guns of its own and there fore
it cannot attack without deployed drones.

**though coverage is 100% not all guns can fire at all directions since 
there
is a range difference and also the frigate gets in the way

***drones take 50 seconds to regenerate when deployed they take 20-25
seconds to replace when retracted into the hull.

Additional scuttle self destructs the drones as well

Additional 2 drones cannot hyperspace unless stored

Additional 3 Drones are not repaired when retracted , when some of my drones
were damaged I retracted them and some of them were still bubbling with
damage.

*******************************************
********super capital ship class***********
*******************************************

Destroyer

Mass: 185000 tons
armour: 44000
Firepower: 10500 ITM 300-400 in tests * 341 (V1.05)
Coverage: 88% 2 forward gimballed ion cannons two turrets with two guns each
Type : ion cannon , guns
Fuel : unlimited
Manoeuvrability: very low
Max Velocity: 315 m/s
Special Action: none
RU Cost: 1350
Time to build : 150 seconds
Ru per sec : 9
Available from: mission 6

Fast deadly , though somewhat easy to capture the ion cannons can gimbal 
slightly
left and right but there is a dead zone from directly below which is where 
to
hit it.

*x2 ion cannon = 138x2 = 276 + 4 big guns guestimated at 20-30 each

Missile destroyer

Mass: 200000 tons
armour: 42000
Firepower: 8500 ITM 375+/- 25 per missile in tests * 450(V1.05)
Coverage: 100% **
Type : missiles***
Fuel : unlimited (missiles 3-5 seconds)
Manoeuvrability: very low
Max Velocity: 295 m/s
Missile velocity 1000m/s
Special Action: 32 missile burst ****
RU Cost: 1500
Time to build : 175 seconds
Ru per sec : 9
Available from: mission 9

You get these after capturing them after the sea of lost souls which makes
life hard for the strikers.32 missiles are its Achilles heel however as
scouts can out run them on afterburners and those missiles are wasted.
Missiles will also lose locks to cloaking devices.

*kills bombers sometimes in one hit sometimes in two unknown reasons

**missiles have shorter range attacking things coming from behind

*** missiles when destroyer is at different orders have different chances
of hitting their targets (while missiles against capital ships are a near
sure thing) vs fighters :

evasive 50%
neutral 70%
aggressive 90%

Also missiles are fired in 4s normally

**** 10 second penalty on missile production and firing ability normally
missiles are produced at 0.5 seconds per missile


Carrier

Mass: 600000 tons
armour: 70000
Firepower: 19000 ITM 100-200 in tests* 109(V1.05)
Coverage: 100%
Type : guns**
Fuel : unlimited
Manoeuvrability: very low
Max Velocity: 315 m/s
Special Action: build and dock strike craft build frigates
RU Cost: 2000
Time to build :280 seconds
Ru per sec 7.1
Available from: mission 9

Small motherships that build anything up to frigate class ,vital sometimes.
they need to be supported by other ships or they can be captured easily.Can
be used effectively to ram frigates.

*based on % damage done to salvage corvettes stuck to its hull
can dock :

50 fighters
25 corvettes

** Carrier guns are somewhat shorter range than the guns on fighters

Additional - any ship docked or being built below 100% complete ness will 
also
die alongwith the carrier if it is killed before they exit the carrier.Also
fleet command in multiplay will transfer here if the MS goes up in smoke.But
as to the previous point if you expect help and want to keep your strike 
craft
safe then keep them docked until help arrives , if you expect no help to 
arrive
or the strike craft inside are your help then undock them.This does have
vulnerabilities as strike craft come out in pairs and try to get into 
military
parade and have no control for a few seconds.This makes them easy victims of
any corvette walls or other anti strike craft situated outside the mouth of
the carrier , this also applies to the MS so keep an eye on sensors to 
undock
them early.

Additional -2 i you check keep docked on the launch menu and already have 
say
50 fighters inside and decide to build another from the same carrier the 
fighter
will launch as there are no more dock sleeves left for it to stay in.This 
also
applies to corvettes.


Additional 3 -Carriers are vulnerable and consequently easily killed when
unescorted but should you find yourself in such a situation and your carrier
is about to die scuttle her , she has a massive blast radii and you'll take
near everything below frigate class.


Somewhat strange as its a bit small to fit that many inside

Heavy cruiser

Mass: 800000 tons
armour: 90000
Firepower: 19000 ITM * 966 in tests 921(V1.05)
Coverage: 100%
Type : twin ions x2 6 heavy guns
Fuel : unlimited
Manoeuvrability: very low
Max Velocity: 250 m/s
Special Action: none
RU Cost: 3700
Time to build :420 seconds
Ru per sec : 9
Available from: mission 13

Big bruiser of the fleet if it could get anywhere on time .There is a slight
difference between the kushan and taiidan versions , the Kushan version has
slightly split ion cannon beams so they are less useful against single
static targets say auto guns.But this makes them more useful against fighter
groups in that more space is occupied by the beam so fighters have less 
chance
to escape minimal difference though I rarely use them.

*138x4 = 552 + 414 (guns) = 966 (once attacked by a cruiser on a heavy 
cruiser
the guns did 50% the damage roughly of the ion cannons)

**************************************
***********non combat class***********
**************************************

Resource collector

Mass: 40000 tons*
armour: 10800
Firepower: none
Coverage: none
Manoeuvrability: medium
Max Velocity: 300 m/s
Special Action: Support strike craft**
Required Tech: none
RU Cost: 650
Time to build : 60
Ru per sec : 11
Available from: mission 1

The ships you need to collect resources. Unarmed slow, but has
good armour .You can kamikaze them against fighter groups up to 10
and the collector will be the last ship standing at the end.Beware
its strike craft support action does not repair strike craft only
refuelling them.on evasive they will attempt to dock to get repairs
on neutral similar but they will take more damage before peeling
off to dock. On aggressive they will harvest even when under attack

*I am somewhat sure this is a mistake

**support here means refuel no repairs are carried out , also only a single
strike craft can be refueled at a time , which means big queues for large
wings . Useful only in emergencies

Additional - try as you might but you cannot dock resource collectors
indefinately they just won't do it

Additional 2 a full load is 600 Rus

Resource controller

Mass: 79000 tons
armour: 13600
Firepower: none
Coverage: none
Manoeuvrability: low
Max Velocity: 300 m/s
Special Action: support Strike Craft*
Required Tech: Capital Ship Drive
RU Cost: 680
Time to build : 65
Ru per sec : 11
Available from: mission 3

Blackhole generator that teleports resources to the MS .As said there
are differences between taidan and kushan though not just cosmetic
taidan ships are faster , resource collectors on kushan fleets have to
do a 180 degree turn to off load materials this takes a second or two
longer.Useful for emergency strike craft support though.

*Support means refuel in this case as repairs will not be carried out on
anything that docks with the resource controller pads

Additional - up to 4 fighters and 2 corvettes can be refuelled at a time

Additional 2 resource controllers will not repair resource collectors that
dock with them only carriers and motherships can do this.

Probe

Mass: 40 tons
armour: 800
Firepower: none
Coverage: 100%
Type : cameras
Fuel : unlimited range for one trip
Manoeuvrability: medium
Max Velocity: 4000 m/s one use *
Special Action: none
Required Tech: none
RU Cost: 30
Time to build : 6 seconds
Ru per sec : 5
Available from: mission 1

Golf balls as we used to call them in the HW forums fire them off at an
incoming scout wing scuttle just before they pass you got dead scouts.
They can't be moved after sending them out (cheating online players aside)
and scouts work out a better deal since they can run away, while probes
sit there and get blasted.It does give an interesting view when used with
pilot view which can make you dizzy.

*if you ever see a probe move more than once then the player / computer
is cheating

additional - if you fire them off and they are still moving and you scuttle 
them
you get a shot gun type effect from the debris inertia though I am uncertain
about distance vs damage diminishing values.

Gravity well generator

Mass: 65000 tons
armour: 8000
Firepower: none
Coverage: 100% zone
Type : gravity well *
Manoeuvrability: low
Max Velocity: 325 m/s
Special Action: gravity well distortion 5.5km
RU Cost: 800
Time to build : 60 seconds
Ru per sec : 14
Available from: mission 9
Time field lasts : 200-210 seconds
Recharge time is : Does not recharge

Gravity field traps all strike craft except salvage corvettes they also 
capture
ships preparing or coming out of hyperspace however.It is limited in use and
should be retired rather than used to destruction (think of the crew!).But 
they
also have their other uses you may read in the manual that hyperdrive has to 
be
cut off long before they get into the gravitational curve of a system.This 
baby
too counts as a gravity curve and can trap capital ships that are going into 
and
coming out of hyperspace in hyperspace jump posture (ie they won't shoot at 
you
or even resist salvage corvettes.).Finally Kushan grav wells open up when 
they
are active which is easy for you to see , taiidan grave wells do no such 
thing
so it is harder to spot if they are active or not aside from the tiny orange
ring around the gravity well generator itself.Which although is a warning 
isn't
that easy to spot.I would also note that it is a gravity pulse that works in 
a sine
wave , on and off in 6 second frequency.This has the effect that some strike
craft in its field of effect can ocassionally fire or flounder a bit.

Cloak field generator

Mass: 22000 tons
armour: 6000
Firepower: none
Coverage: 100% small radii (though the field seems weaker at the fringes)
Type : cloaking field
Fuel : unlimited
Manoeuvrability: low
Max Velocity: 325 m/s
Special Action: Cloak 2.5km radii
RU Cost: 500
Time to build : 60
Ru per sec : 9
Available from: mission 13
Time field lasts : 290-300 seconds
Recharge time is : 590-600 seconds*

Causes a tiny cloak field that cloaks ships near it very weak however and 
can be
detected with proximity detectors , if you want a permanent cloak use 3 of 
them
in a team one cloaks when it is nearly out of juice use another letting the 
first
recharge , then repeat as its recharge time is slightly longer than the 
usage of
all the juice in one.Ships will decloak briefly when firing however , also 
the
computer can fit any ships into the field , you cannot cloak carriers or MS
though you can cram up to 25 ships into the field ,through abuse of certain
fomations (capital ships)

*The ship must have recharged more than 50% (ie 301 seconds) before the 
cloak field
can be restarted

Proximity sensor

Mass: 40 tons
armour: 800
Firepower: none
Coverage: 100%
Type : proximity sensor array
Manoeuvrability: very low
Max Velocity: 1000 m/s
Special Action: none
RU Cost: 50
Available from: mission 10

Fast bait for sp , useful for one mission in sp a necessity in multiplay 
since
people cloak all sorts of things in that game , they replace scouts due to 
their
lack of need for fuel.You can capture lots of them at the karos graveyard.

Sensors array

Mass: 2900 tons
armour: 6000
Firepower: none
Coverage: 100% map
Type : enhanced sensors
Fuel : unlimited
Manoeuvrability: low
Max Velocity: 280 m/s
Special Action: none
Time to build :80
RU Cost: 800
Ru per sec : 10
Available from: mission 14

See everything sort of and their visual range in blue circles , can't see 
cloaked
ships however and comes rather late in sp which makes it useful but not 
very.Also
it doesn't allow you visual inspection so those slow moving dots could be 
capital
ships or they could be a smart player playing mind games on you with 
subtefuge.

Research Ship

Mass: 11000 tons
armour: 4500
Firepower: none
Coverage: none
Manoeuvrability: low
Max Velocity: 280 m/s
Special Action: none
Required Tech: none
RU Cost: 700
Time to build : 60
Ru per sec :12
Available from: mission 1

Six of these maxed out , they join to increase aggregate armour .If you want 
to an
item researched by more than one lab hold ctrl and select the 
required/available
labs and then click on the research project and then the research button.The 
taidan
one seems to have bugs in docking however.Also although they have the option 
on
their menu they cannot be retired due to a bug I think , though they make 
excellent
suicide scuttle ships after all research is complete.Note that scuttle does 
not work
properly in singles or at least the kushan ones don't when you scuttle one 
of the ring
scuttles and they fly apart , the rest of them then redock.If you really 
want to scuttle
it all you can select the research ship again and again manually scuttling 
all of them.

MotherShip

Mass: 5000000 tons
armour: 160000
Firepower: 7500 ITM , in tests it kills a scout in 3 bursts 40-50 tested
Coverage: 60% ITM 100% I think
Manoeuvrability: very low
Max Velocity: 50 m/s
Special Action: none
Required Tech: none
Available from: mission 1

Banana or the Ugly one the differences are not just cosmetic as with some 
other
ships that Taiidan and Kushan both have.So what are the differences? Taiidan 
MS
is faster capture a ship , build a capital ship it just comes out the bottom
the kushan version has to open the door let the ship align itself then close
the door , slightly slower just a bit but enough to lose in MP games.Also 
the
taiidan ship is wider so you can hide more ships behind it.BUT the Kushan MS
captures and launches frigates from the small bay door which heats up the 
debate
on if it is better or worse even more , since I guarentee you that in the SP
game you (have the opertunity to at least) capture more frigates that super
capital ships.

The MS has these capacities:

150 fighters *
50 corvettes **

*In a built fleet your maximum is 80 fighters which is bizarre considering 
that
you still have 20 more spaces , of course you could always steal them but 
fighters
are not that easy to steal.

Additional - The Kushan door sometimes gets stuck sometimes during ship
capture and super capital ship production .About 5 times over the years I
have owned HW the door has stuck on carriers and destroyers only (but take
note I don't build many cruisers or MD) It'll cost you the RU pressing E 
will
put it on the ship list but its stuck.

Additional -2 The MS guns aren't that strong (so its firepower rating is 
some
what misleading though in 3-4 vollies it can kill a turanic fighter of 225
armour points) but they nearly always hit.Also they have major mass 
(bullets)
since it you use the MS to attack (without raming the opposing side ships)
you'll see that the MS pushes enemy ships back much like the assault frigate
the significance or insignificance of this I am not sure of.

Additional -3 Military parade is different for kushan and Taiidan , though
still ion array multibeam frigates line up ina different line , I am unsure
if this has an effect on absolute fleet size since they do line up closer
but the space to the right of the MS might not be as much as that on the 
right.

Additional -4 Any ships docked or currently being built no matterwhat % 
under 100%
will be destroyed along with the MS if the MS dies (but in SP its game over
anyways if this happens not so in Multiplay as if you have a carrier fleet
command transfers to the carrier bridge)

Additional -5 Ship formations are different with kushan and taiidan (in 
military
parade which hyperspace posture is the same) which means you can capture 
more
ships as kushan than as taiidan.

Additional -6 When using the Kushan fleet the mothership seemed to have much
more trouble accepting salvage with salvage corvettes grabbing enemy ships
but not being accepted by MS traffic control.

Non player ships *

* you can capture most of them but you can't build any of them contrary
to the manual which says after capturing them you can build them (which
refers only to common ships shared between both fleets)

***********************
*******Kadeshi******
***********************

Spoiler
***********************
***********************
***********************
***********************


-Kadeshi are actually Khrarid brothers ie normal humans who fled
to the nebula (the nebula is not seen in the cut scene it is implied)
instead of continuing the exodus to Kharak shame you have to kill them
though


***********************
***********************
***********************
***********************

Kadeshi Swarmer

Mass: 8 tons
armour: 400
Firepower: 43
Coverage: 4%
Manoeuvrability: very high
Max Velocity: 1500 m/s
cost 25 Ru*
Service time : 12-14 seconds

Fast deadly , shame about the small gas tanks however they can eat your 
fighters
alive .They are hard to capture even when out of fuel , be patient they come 
in
handy later on.They do scuttle to prevent capture sometimes as I have often
left large swarms floundering after I captured their fuel pods and none of 
my
ships were near them to do any shooting.Alsodon't expect your heavies to 
work
wonders on them with 400 armour points it can take x4 times as many hits to 
kill
them add the slippery pilots in them you might only get a couple with each 
pass
though they are still some what effective.

*according to the launch menu

Advanced swarmer

Mass: 10 tons
armour: 550
Firepower: 24
Coverage: 8%
Manoeuvrability: high
Max Velocity: 1000ms
cost 40ru*
Service time :13-15 seconds

Bigger and better though slower.They are more frequently seen in the second
kadeshi meeting guarding the kar toba final line.Also the second Kadeshi
ambassador uses one (maybe you can capture him) the come in two paint jobs
one is orange stripe with white body and one is completely white , purely
cosmetic I think.They also seem much more difficult to catch though this
could be through numbers since there are relatively few of them compared
to normal swarmers , since swarmers are cheaper.

*according to the launch menu


Fuel Pod

Mass: 30000 tons
Firepower: 65
Coverage: 10 %
Manoeuvrability: low
Max Velocity: <300 m/s (relative to destroyers they can't keep up)

Target practice or trophies however you want to define them , they can 
barely
hurt your ships though killing (or capturing them) stops swarmers though 
there
are better ways about it .Capturing them is good in that they are worth 400 
odd
RUs when retired.The class of this ship is somewhat in doubt , it could be a
frigate but it leaves strike craft trails.However it does not need fuel but
doesn't have the firepower to match even support frigates.Also on the Kushan
MS it (after capture) docks for refit via the fighter bay.It can also hyper
space jump on its own.Which sparks debate between is it strike craft
or a capital ship ...which has raged slightly once or more in the past
capital ship:

can hyperspace
does not need refueling
slow speed

Strike craft

Leaves trails
poor weapons

decide for yourself

Multi beam frigate

Mass: Unknown
armour: <10000 *
Firepower: 600
Coverage: 20%
Manoeuvrability: medium
Max Velocity: 350 m/s

Kadeshi capital ships 4 ion cannons that "rake" the enemy which makes
it useful against fighters and capital ships alike .Low armour though there
are 19 in total (capture them all!)

*it takes half the damage than an assault frigate so this is an estimate
of its hit points

Kadeshi world ship

Mass: Unknown *
armour: Unknown *
Firepower: 200
Coverage: 100%
Manoeuvrability: medium
Max Velocity: 400 m/s
Special Action: hyperspace inhibitor

These are dangerous in that they ram your capital ships they have an ion
cannon on the front however.Alsothe gun system to protect the rear as on
carriers but more powerful.The ion cannon maybe a super ion cannon as it
fires seemingly on a turret and does a more damage than other ion cannon
beams.Also any Kadeshi ships docked die along with the MS

*at a guess they have 5-6 times more armour than destroyers maybe more since
it can ram 2 of your destroyers and be in flames and in forums years ago it 
was
discovered that the damage caused by the ramming (usually 100%) caused 400%
damage inflicted to the ramming ship (44000 x 4) x2  = 480000 possible 
armour
points which seems right since they can sustain attack from wings of 60 
bombers
for 2-3 minutes (where a wing of 15-20 can take out a mothership in less 
than
180 seconds) if it seems alot consider that it too is a mother ship.

************************
**Turanic raider ships**
************************

Spoiler
***********************
***********************
***********************
***********************

Turanic raiders are the slaves of the empire (depends on which side you
actually play so I don't say a specific fleet)they are not normal humans
and live in gel packs which I read somewhere or other.They appear one
last time at hiigara or rather a single ship appears there

***********************
***********************
***********************
***********************


Fighter

Mass: 70 tons
armour: 225
Firepower: 20
Coverage: 5%
Manoeuvrability: high
Max Velocity: 780 m/s
cost 50Ru*

This is a hard to capture trophy from the turanic fleet against scouts it is
outclassed heavily , but it has heavy armour however.There is one on the 
final
level in the sp game other wise don't bother as they fill up your fighter 
slots
(in that you can have as many fighters as docking sleeves but you can't 
rebuild
fighters that are lost if you are maxed out and reserving building spaces 
does
not work)

Additional - This is speculative but I think fighters have afterburners as 
the Z
key makes it flash just like scouts though I haven't really noticed much 
combat
speed increases , but I haven't micro managed them very often.

*launchmenu data

Theif corvette (in game as Standard corvette)

Mass: 150tons
armour: 1100
Firepower: 14
Coverage: 1%
Type : turreted guns
Manoeuvrability: medium
Max Velocity: 500m/s

My my I actually caught one of these slippery suckers like the buses they 
come
in multiples when you least expect them to come I got 12 of the sods and 
they
turned out to be pretty useless with poor coverage and lumbering hulks your
own heavies are much much better than these ships.Their turreted guns are
not really turreted ok they are but the turrets take so long to turn and are 
so
inaccurate and so weak they are pretty worthless , hand your head in shame
if you lose ships to this weaking. I think you can capture 20 of them in the 
entire
game as an interesting contrast a heavy corvette is worth 4 of these in my 
opinion.
I would also note that their clipping is in doubt since you can't kami 
corvettes
into them though bullets , plasma bombs burst all seem to work fine.

Missile corvette

Mass: 775 tons
armour: 1400
Firepower: 12 (according to in game screens)*
Coverage: 100%
Type : mini missiles**
Manoeuvrability: low
Max Velocity: 500 m/s
special : 60 missile burst fire
cost : 225 Ru***

This is extremely good its bad points are that it dies easily (even when 
supported
with 2 support frigates) its slow handles like a brick and is darned near 
impossible
to catch.But here is the good news it has 60 missiles which can cause 50% 
damage
to a destroyer nice , its missiles chase enemy fighters for miles and miles. 
It
recharges its 60 missiles quickly .

**When docked on the launch menu it says 12 but it seems more as the 
missiles
are guided = better hit ratio and missile bursts seem to do more as well.
Missiles are also fired in pairs in normal fire mode.

** - missiles have up to 23 seconds of pursuit also they can turn faster 
than
those of missile destroyers .I am unsure if there is a > distance = < damage
but in theory there ought to be since it vents plasma as fuel and has less
fuel to add to damage inflicted by the explosive.Also on evasive using 
missile
burst the corvette can stay perfectly still and let the missiles travel 
quite
a distance.Missiles also recharge extremely quickly leave her for a minute
and you can use a full burst again or fire as normal for a minute and fire
near a full burst.

I have heard that you can capture up to 10 of them though I only really
go after a few of them on mission 2 since I prefer the ion array frigates
on mission 4.I'm not saying ah yes its super easy it might just test your
patience a little since they can be slippery sometimes.

Ion array frigate

Mass: Unknown
armour: Unknown
Firepower: Unknown
Coverage: 3%
Type : Ion cannon
Manoeuvrability: low
Max Velocity: 245 m/s
Special Action: none

Ion cannon frigates BUT with some minor differences , these have no ability 
to
self repair none whats so ever.But they do have a more powerful ion cannon 
beam
(apparently the wings as I call them amplify the beam power).Also the beam 
duration
is shorter but with similar damage as a std ion cannon frigate but it fires 
more
often (so in 60 seconds it could do more damage)They have terrible armour 
too
and die extremely easily even to fighter attack which leads to another point 
they
have poor turn speed too.Two of them are avalible floundering around the 
ghost
ship later on in the game.

attack carrier

Mass: Unknown
armour: Unknown
Firepower: guestimate 476 (x2 ion cannon + same weapon as carriers)
Coverage: 100% (deck guns)
Type : ion cannon and guns
Manoeuvrability :low
Max Velocity: 235 m/s

Some nice hardware that can't be captured (without using a mod how tempting
it seems this ships too big we need another salvage team fleet) this will
appear once to launch fighters at you then appear later to directly attack 
your
MS.It has a very slow docking rate it seems and I have only ever seen strike
craft enter and leave it.Its deck guns fire faster than your carriers as you
can fly a scout past a Taiidan carrier and survive albeit with minor damage
you can fly a scout past this carrier but take major damage if it targets
you though that is.

Additional - this heavily reminds me of the destroyers in Babylon 5 the 
earth
ones that are fully fitted out (rather than the early designs that are just
sections joined together with scaffold) but the other way round with the 
star
fury launch bay at the front and with the same beam weapons .Although the B5
destroyers were much longer had a rotating section in the middle and in 
addition
to the beams had two large guns on the front which fired who knows what.

************
Bentusi
************

Spoiler
***********************
***********************
***********************
***********************

Bentusi are unbound travellers who travel the galaxy to trade and to sell
technology , they are peaceful and have council links

***********************
***********************
***********************
***********************


Bentusi Trader

Mass: Unknown
armour: Unknown
Firepower: 900+/- 100*
Type : triple super ion cannons
Coverage: Unknown
Manoeuvrability: Unknown
Max Velocity: Unknown

I must admit this scare the hell out me first time I played HW I thought wow
I only have scouts! how am I to fight that?! , They have 3 super ion cannons
also you can force attack them if you want to see them kill you rather 
quickly
but its game over if you do as they do a favour for you later on.

*estimated from how fast they can kill you if you attack them and do not 
stop
your attack

Bentusi Cargo Barge

Mass: Unknown
armour: Unknown
Firepower: Unknown
Coverage: Unknown
Manoeuvrability: Unknown
Max Velocity: Unknown

You see this briefly in the ending and at tenhauser gate it also doubles as
a resource collector for the kadeshi in the Kadeshi mod.A huge collector 
though
as it takes ages to fill up and pumps 2-3000 Ru in at a time.

Junk yard DAWG (from mission 13)

Mass: unknown
armour:  135000*
Firepower: none
Coverage: none
Manoeuvrability: medium

This is a beefy corvette , how do I know this? because it gets trapped in 
gravity
wells , bait it with something fast then grav well it and lay in your entire 
fleet
to it.You can recover the stolen ships if you do lose them and they survive 
the
auto guns it is a pain however.It travels via hyper space gates and is 
alerted
by proximity sensors.It only seems to go after capital ships , and you lose
control the instant Karan says ship stolen so you can't scuttle your ship 
even
if you wanted to.Auto guns will continue to fire at stolen capital ships as 
well.

*since with the massive fleet a heavy cruiser can withstand 8 seconds of 
punishment
before exploding this can withstand about 12 seconds = 90000 *1.5  135000 
armour

Auto guns Large and Small

Mass: unknown
armour: 1500 +/- 500 *
Firepower: 45 **
Coverage: 2%
Manoeuvrability: low
Max Velocity: immobile

Evil little guns that guard the karos graveyard they are linked to proximity
detectors however and cloaking does not work to avoid them.There are large
and small guns small guns obviously being easier to kill large guns harder
to kill you can tell them apart by the mounting they are on.A spherical
gimbal is a large gun and square gimbal is a small gun.

* a destroyer with twin ion cannons and 3-4 gun blasts kills them this kills
a heavy corvette and so I guestimated it

** does as much damage as a plasma bomb on a frigate

Big collsition asteroid
Mass : unknown
Armour : lots*
Firepower : kami = to armour
coverage : NA
Max velocity : slow

*I have no complete figures but after some late night testing (in which lots 
of my ships
when missing after the jump from the last mission) but the rock could take:

x10 resource collector Kami (100000)

x69 attack bomber  (3105)
x34 heavies (986)
x20 destroyers (9000)
x72 Ion cannons (9936)
x19 multibeam frigates (10488)
x32 assault frigates (3200)
x9 ion array frigates (1350
x4 cruisers (4000)

100000 collector kami
+
40715 - from my fleet +/- 1000 (due to non constant firing)

2221450 at least

(all figures are somewhat rough)

for more than 30 seconds (I figured that from the time to impact count 
downs) also
I managed to get all my capital ships into position to attack the asteroid 
from
below avoiding any impacts.Though questionably as I caused it 100000 damage
via collector kami it did not even burst into flames or emit any damage 
signs ,
since we get flames and damage signs (bubbles out the engines) at yellow
level damage (about 65%) it could also be argued that 100000 damage is not
even 35% of its damage level.

taking that into account its hit points could easily be 300000 points of 
armour
though that is just an educated guess.


3B Strike craft Or capital ships?

In single play you mix and match ships and usually capital ships will get
you through most situations but there are advantages and disadvantages for
each type:

Strike craft:
+In large numbers powerful
+Cheap
+Fast
+Hard to kill with most capital ships
+Can suffer attrition easily
+Eggs put into more than one basket
+small targets
+Kamikazi when things go wrong
+large build limits

-very very weak alone
-need fuel
-need support craft and vulnerable under repair
-each ship can be killed easily
-Hyperspace incapable alone
-gravity well vulnerability

Capital ships
+Powerful alone and even more so in groups
+easy to use in lossless combat
+Hyperspace ability
+Do not need fuel
+limited self repair ability

-Expensive
-vulnerable against fighters when unsupported
-take a long time to build
-limited numbers to build
-slow

So the choice is yours you need to weigh and balance each side to see
what you want your fleet to consist mostly of

3C Strike craft Or capital ships part II

Note all figures for the fighters do leave some change as none of the
RU figures totally match up , also not included are the costs of any
support craft needed to support the fighter groups.This is because I assume
you use several support frigates for your capital ship groups anyway.

x1 Assault frigate 575 RU - 120 firepower

Can buy you:
x14 scouts (168 firepower combined)
OR
x10 interceptors (260 firepower combined)
OR
x6 Attack bombers (270 firepower combined)
OR
x8 defenders (40 firepower combined)

x1 Ion cannon frigate 650RU

Can buy you
x18 scouts (216 firepower combined)
OR
11 interceptors (286 firepower combined)
OR
x7 attack bombers (315 firepower combined)
or
10 defenders (50 firepower combined

x1 destroyer 1350 RU 500 firepower

Can buy you
x38 scouts (456 firepower combined)
OR
x24 interceptors (624 firepower combined)
OR
x15 attack bombers (675 firepower combined)
OR
x20 defenders (100 firepower combined)

x1 missile destroyer 375 per missile X32=12000
1500 RU

Can buy you
x42 Scouts (504 firepower combined)
OR
x27 interceptors (702 firepower combined)
OR
x17 attack bombers (765 firepower combined)
OR
x23 Defenders (115 firepower combined)


take note the missile destroyer has different firepower when using missile
volley attack , since this empties all its missiles in one go , while using
normal attack pumps 4 missiles out and the missiles are constantly produced.
Which means in a normal attack it can fire up to 48 missiles before being
empty for a second then fire again.

x1 Heavy cruiser 3700 RU 1000 firepower

Can buy you
x105 scouts (1260 firepower combined)
OR
x65 Interceptors (1690 firepower combined)
OR
x43 Attack bombers(1935 firepower combined)
OR
56 defenders (280 firepower combined)

So according to this list you can buy more fighters for the same price for
more firepower , but you must remember often during attack runs you will
lose a few fighters (they collide accidentally with each other shoot each
other or collide with the target ships).But you don't always lose capital
ships if they are supported properly.

3D kamikazi observations

it takes 3 scouts 2 attack runs and one kami (3 kami scouts after 2 compete
attack runs on full speed) to kill a mine layer corvette that implies 1550 / 
3 =
512 damage for a kami scout.

Though this isn't substanciated when it is used against your own ships
(to kami your ships on your own ships press K then force target the victim
ship) as this does a tiny line of damage equal to 2-3 plasma bombs on ALL
your capitalships from carriers to cruisers which doen't really add up!
though speed does apparently have a factor on damage caused.

Kami does at least 200 damage for scouts at least as you can kill any 
fighter
with a kami with a scout kami. But the factor of the attack run can vary 
this
as sometimes scouts actually do a close fly past shooting then get to
attack run range then fire again then crash.Bizzare?

I also kami'd 10 resource collectors into my MS and it did about 30-40%
40% of MS 160000 armour is about 50K-60K armour factor
damage which could imply that the 50% damage factor does apply to
kami even (strange) though I kami'd a fighter (turanic) into a bomber
it survived taking 80% damage.Even more confusion ....

3E best weapons

In desending order of best to worst:

Vs fighters

MD Missiles
corvette missiles
corvette + fighter guns
Ion cannons*
plasma bombs**
capital ship guns
mines

*I'l explain this as fighters dodge up down left or right bullets they do
more or less the same thing with ion cannon beams however with a bullet
the bullet passes behind the victim ship ,whearas the Ion cannon beam
is still there and the fighters dodge back into it taking damage.

**plasma bombs are rated higher than capitalship guns as they have
a limited homing capability

vs corvettes

MD missiles
Corvette missiles
Capital ship guns
Ion cannons
Corvette guns
plasma bombs
Fighter guns
mines

Vs frigates

ion cannons
plasma bombs
capitalship guns
mines
Missiles
fighter guns (unless stacked)

VS super capital ships

Anything they are so big and slow nearly everything will hit them though
plasma bombs and ion cannons have good effect


Note all this section is what I find best the do not necessarily reflect the
max damage or the hit ratio , but then you may want to use anything you
have to hand
**************
4-Research times
**************

Times are in seconds

Research times (for a single research ship)

Fighter Drive		               75
Corvette Drive		               75
Capital Ship Drive	                            100
Proximity Sensor		              100
Fighter Chassis			125
Defender Subsystems		300
Corvette Chassis			200
Capital Ship Chassis		320
Sensors Array			400
Gravity Gen.			520
Cloak Generator			520
Plasma Bomber Launcher		300
Cloaked Fighter			400
Defence fighter			400
Heavy Corvette Upgrade		250
Fast Tracking Turrets		300
Minelayer			300
Ion Cannons			450
Drone Technology			400
Field Techno			400
Super Capital Ship Drive	              450
Super Heavy Chassis 		250
Guided Missiles			300
Heavy Guns			650


Research times (for a two research ships)

Fighter Drive		              47
Corvette Drive		              47
Capital Ship Drive		              64
Proximity Sensor		              64
Fighter Chassis			78
Defender Subsystems		189
Corvette Chassis			126
Capital Ship Chassis		200
Sensors Array		              252
Gravity Gen.			320
Cloak Generator			320
Plasma Bomber Launcher		189
Cloaked Fighter			252
Defence fighter			252
Heavy Corvette Upgrade		158
Fast Tracking Turrets		189
Minelayer			189
Ion Cannons			283
Drone Technology			252
Field Techno			252
Super Capital Ship Drive	              283
Super Heavy Chassis 		158
Guided Missiles			189
Heavy Guns			409


After testing with various combinations and getting tired of them I
came up with these rough figures
	1			100%*
	2			64%*
	3			44%*
	4			37%*
	5			30%*
	6			28%*

*All of the subsequent timings may be 1-2 seconds off also I only tested
it with gravity well tech to guestimate the final 4 % times (3-4-5-6
research ships)



*************
5-WALKTHROUGH
*************

Header - I only recommend this if you are seriously stuck as the surprises
and challenges all add to the enjoyment of this game or if you are replaying
the game to see what you may or may not have missed , or even what is
possible and what is not possible.Also when I quote from fleet command
or fleet intel I usually say words to that effect rather tha quote directly 
since
that would take a while to get what fleet command and intel say exactly
and you will hear them yourself come time.

Note Space bar cancels out cut scenes (in the 3d engine) and as time
continues while cut scenes go on you may or may not want to skip them.

You can replay some things fleet intel says by clicking on the objectives
still in light blue on the objectives menu.

Additional - if you lose your MS you lose instantly even if you have a 
massive
fleet and carriers unlike multiplay fleet command is not transfered to 
carriers
anyway your colonists are aboard.So even if you got to hiigara (in theory if 
it let
you) you would have nobody to colonise the homeworld).

MISSION 1: Kharak

You begin in Orbit above Kharak this is training disguised as testing the 
mother
ship systems.

No need for a walk through no enemies (at least none that fire back at you).
But build as many scouts as Rus allow and research everything you can before
you leave and have at least 3 salvage corvettes. You will need them for the 
next
mission.A short boring mission.

additional - you don't actually have to destroy the target drones at all on 
this
mission you can salvage them if you want it does nothing different gives no
extra Rus and doesn't give you anything in the launch menu .But then again 
if
it did allow you to launch them and reuse them what use would they be?.


MISSION 2: Outskirts of the Kharak system
Mission Objectives:
+ Send a Probe to Investigate
+ Protect the MotherShip
+ Salvage the Khar-Selim
+ Defend the Salvage Team
+ Defend MotherShip
+ Destroy Attacking Forces

Hyperspace jump successful

The main thing on this mission is to send a salvage corvette to get the 
black
box off the kar silem , but before that turanic raiders attack

Fleet command "the're attacking"
Fleet intel "defend the mother ship"

But to save Rus don't use a probe use a scout and have it come back and dock
in the MS.Defeat the turanics however if you want some trophies you can 
capture
some of the enemy ships

****************************************
****************************************
****************************************

           spoiler Alert!!!!!!
****************************************
****************************************
****************************************
If you want to capture all of the enemy strike craft send a scout group up 
to
the enemy carrier and kamikaze into it , this causes a bug which freezes all
enemy strike craft (sometimes it works sometimes it does not)

you can also run them out of fuel
****************************************
****************************************
****************************************
              Spoiler over
****************************************
****************************************
****************************************
now if you want to destroy the strike craft (revenge?) you can use
the calabans battle ball tech ie sphere of fighters guarding one
fighter and they can't keep up with your ships while your ships pour
gun fire and destroy everything.

Or normal engagements or research corvettes fully and use a heavy corvette
wall to defeat them.Don't worry they can't even scratch your MS hull well
they can but it takes years and years they will retreat when they run low
on fuel.

You could try to capture them as fighters don't even have the numbers
to form a credible threat to your MS though they can get your harvesters
and your research ship.

Once the fighters are out of the way (captured or destroyed) you should send
a salvage corvette to dock with the kar selim to look at the data recorder.
The carrier will launch more fighters and more corvettes to attack the 
salvage
corvette which will re-dock if you manage to get them back to the MS (the
salvage crew) .Soon after the carrier will dock all fighters (except those
that have run out of fuel) and jump out (I am unsure if the strike craft are
carried over as your personal fleet is).

After which research everything harvest everything and build so you have at
least 8 salvage corvettes and depending on your confidence 2 repair 
corvettes
(they become useful till the end of the game btw).Hyperspace jump home , 
fleet
intel wants to tell kharak missile defences to power up but.....


note you can capture up to :

24 fighters
12-14 standard corvettes
2 missile corvettes

The thing is you need to be pig headed enough to sit and run them out of 
fuel
and draw them into a stupidly long drawn out battle resist the temptation to
shoot them and to wait , btw I did this a few days ago and to run them out
of fuel can take up to an hour ,even still they have maneovering jets and 
can
therefore dodge your corvettes trying to capture them.And you cannot trap
corvettes against the edges of the maps either , and with them being strike
craft they can move in one direction fire in another so keep some repair
corvettes handy.When I talk about time I mean up to 2 hours just on that 
mission
though you can judge for yourself if it is actually worth it I did it just 
for a test
and for utter completeness of the FAQ.

MISSION 3: Return to kharak
Mission Objectives:
- Defend the Cryotrays
- Capture an Enemy Ship with 2 Salvage Corvettes
- Salvage the Cryotrays

Get out your tissues if you are so inclined  (for weepies not something 
else)

A classic scene

Karan "Karak is burning!, everything is gone"
Cue music
Fleet intel " all orbital facilities destroyed There is significant debris 
ring
in low orbit There is nothing left no signals from anywhere in the system
not even beacons"
Karan "Wait one of the cryo trays is suffering a major malfunction"

Another easy one , depending on the size of your fleet the enemy fleet will
be a different size also so if you come into kharak with 0 strike craft 
there
will be two assault frigates attacking the cryo trays , if you come in with 
a
larger fleet there will be an increase up to 5 assault frigates.

I would note that I was recently asked what consituted a large fleet 
suffient
for 5 assault frigates to appear in the next mission my answer was:

-27 fighters
of which:
  7 were scouts I had left
  20 were turanic fighters (captured)

-21 corvettes
of which
  2 missile corvettes (stolen from turanic)
  12 standard corvettes (stolen from turanic)
  4 h corvettes
  2 light corvettes

2 harvesters
1 research ship
1 MS (duh)

Launch your scouts immediately put them on evasive and attack all of the 
assault
frigates you have their fuel time limit to get down to business , now send 
your
salvage corvettes to capture all of them , you need to be careful here as 
they
are mutually supporting group and will shoot salvage corvettes off each 
other.
After you capture at least one salvage the cryo trays at least one* (else 
its
game over) its possible to get all 600000 colonists aboard btw. Research 
fully
and get at least 12 heavy corvettes the more the better but no more than 25
if you got the Rus from somewhere * cough cough.

Karan "X00,000 colonists secured"
Fleet intel "theres nothing left for us to do here"

Once all that is done take one last tearful look at Kharak , and then buckle
up fleet command wants revenge.

Minor Bug - Sometimes with the kushan MS you can save all 6 cryo trays and 
only
be credited by Karan of saving 5 of them since it isn't flagged in the 
program
it being destroyed either you get stuck at this point even though you have
technically completed all objectives.

*Those trays contain the last remenants of our people without them we would 
be
exstinct<-Somehow I think this is true you may think what about the crew on
the MS or on capital ships , well consider that for a moment other than 
karan's
voice (fleet command) have you ever heard another female voice in HW ? I 
don't
think I have so it seems true.

Additional - you will recieve one less than the number of assault frigates 
you
captured , as one of the ships is broken down to reverse engineer.Hence 
capture
all 5 get 4 etc.

Also it might be a good time to reserve ships in the build menu before the 
slots
fill up too much even if you don't have the RU.

Additional 2

The cryo trays CAN be repaired but you can't do it with band boxing or guard
commands you need to hold Z and double click the tray that you want , but
considering that there can be up to 450dmg per second on a tray(with large
fleet entry).You can't repair at a rate faster than damage , though you can
support your salvagers so they don't die attempting to capture enemy ships.

MISSION 4:
Mission Objectives:
- Harvest
- Protect Fleet
- Destroy the Enemy Carrier before It Leaves
Secondary Objectives:
- Build and Position a Resource Controller

My Big Fleet - 5 assault frigates 25 Heavy corvettes 3 repair corvettes
20 salvage corvettes 15 scouts 5 interceptors.

My small fleet 2 assault frigates 10 heavy corvettes 1 repair corvette
10 scouts

Harvest resources harvest them for a while and meet them bentusi donot
buy their goods till you have harvested most of the resources as this buys
you more time to build a powerful fleet :

Method A : 20 salvage corvettes 25 heavy corvettes for point defence

lure the ion array frigates towards your MS with scouts and harass them
lightly with scouts and send in the salvage corvettes to steal them you can
get 10 of them.Use these captured ion array frigates to attack the carrier
that eventually comes down don't try to capture it as you can't

Method B : 50 scouts support frigate 2 assault frigates

Concentrate firepower on one ship at a time forget the strike craft for now
its the ion array frigates you want to destroy try to attack from behind
rather than the front.Once most of them are dead the carrier comes for you
send anything with a repair beam to repair your MS and keep pounding the
carrier and you will just about make out.If you are too slow the carrier
will attempt to retreat once it is engulfed in its own flames so go for 
those
rear shots.

Additional - you mayalso notice whatever fleet you play relic made a mistake
now its time to correct that mistake (heh robocop):

"The carrier is retreating we must destroy it before it canwarn the Kushan
fleet,"

Hmm so even if you play as Kushan fleet then it ough to say Taiidan but it
only ever says kushan.


MISSION 5: The great wastelands
Mission Objectives:
- Investigate at the Asteroid Belt
- Destroy all Enemy Vessels
Secondary Objectives:
- Destroy Enemy Resource Collectors

This is the first fleet engagement test (the mission before from the 
turanics
was just a warm up) you jump into a sector all seems quiet but your sensors
can't see so far into the dust clouds .As said before the bigger your fleet
the bigger the fleet you will have to face the maximum fleet I have ever 
faced
here is :
40 scouts / interceptors
18 assault frigates
mixed with 9 ion cannon frigates
backed up by a defender fleet of about 15 defenders
1 carrier
2 destroyers
random number of light corvettes
2 resource collectors

Now launch your corvette wing immediately and send them to two o'clock with 
your
ms pointing forward as the 12 o'clock reference point , you want to aim to 
get
to the two dust clouds some where near the MS. Put down four salvage 
corvettes
here have them wait .Now put your heavy corvette group into wall formation 
and
aggressive .Steel yourself we are going to prod the hornets nest.Send in a 
probe
to the middle of the belt.

Fleet intel will say " Ship profile and markings match those seen at
kharak this is the fleet who destroyed kharak destroy them"

cue music change

You will lose your scout / probe and its best to lose it as if you take it 
home
they'll follow you and you are in a world of trouble , as your fleet 
strength
is so low you can't fight them effectively , keep building support frigates 
as
these are possibly the frigates you can steal least of in the game and they
become important later on.

Fleet Intel "the enemy is harvesting resources destroy their resource 
collectors
to cripple ship production"

Remember the 4 salvage corvettes I told you to position? , well they should 
be
right near where the resource collectors are going capture them and a wing 
of
fighters either interceptors or scouts will come to their aid .Move your 
heavy
corvette wall in position in front or to the sides within 5000metres of the
group and open fire with enough heavies you can annihilate fighter wings in 
seconds.

Now comes the chase 4 assault frigates will come chasing after the 
resourcers
and they can take out your corvettes with ease , either send in an attack 
wing
of fighters to keep them busy or destroy them.Once the resourcers are 
captured
bring up to 9 (one spare) Salvage corvettes towards the assault frigates and
you can capture them all at once , keep a support frigate supporting them 
while
they move into position , the fighters will keep them busy until it is too 
late.
Since you have captured an entire squad or have salvagers nullify them 
taking them
back to the MS , dock your corvettes and fighters with corvettes.

Now investigate  the red dots on the screen an assault platoon will come at
your MS which you can kill easily or capture , heal everything up if you 
decide
to fight afterwards there is alot more to do still.Keep the ion array 
frigates
out of the way as well as your research ship to the back of the map. Now 
with your
heavy corvettes up to about at least 20 investigate the dot below the mother 
ship
at the front , this ought to be a combat fleet of ion cannons and assault 
frigates
surrounded by spheres of defenders (cue defender research flag). Send in 
your heavy
corvettes supported by as many support frigates as possible and wipe out all 
the
fighter cover (its mixed defenders scouts and interceptors go for the 
interceptors
first).With the heavies its possible to wipe out all the fighter cover in 
less
than 20 seconds .Now send the corvettes home the support frigates will 
follow ,
launch a scout wing set to evasive on claw formation attack the frigates 
.While
they are occupied they will either #1 be following the corvettes #2 be busy 
with
the scouts , follow up the scout wing with 9 salvage corvettes (one spare in 
case
it gets destroyed) and capture them.

The enemy will keep producing more and more fighters till his resources are 
gone.
strip away the fighters either by luring them with scouts back to your 
corvette
wall or keeping a solid wall of corvettes in front of your MS as they will 
engage
sooner or later.With no fighters left the two destroyers and carrier will 
engage
send in a few scouts to distract them and you can capture them all , support 
the
salvage corvettes with support frigates though and you don't even need to 
use
distraction .Go after the support frigate last as it can barely hurt your 
forces
After this mop up and harvest all the resources , killing or capturing
stragglers.You should have 2 destroyers and a carrier and various other 
ships go to
the launch screen and click keep docked on both the carrier and the mother 
ship
and build 20-40 attack bombers split into two groups one in the carrier one 
in the
mother ship.Put everything into military parade and make sure you can select 
them
and give them orders to move quickly.You'll need to in the next mission . 
Split
your 4resourcers two each to the carrier and the MS.


MISSION 6: Diamond shoals
Mission Objectives:
- Protect the Mothership

Fleet intel"we have mis jumped protect the mothership"

A mistimed hyperspace jump lands you in the middle of an asteroid belt not 
the
kind you can harvest either not yet anyway , launch both wings of attack 
bombers
have them attack (some say force attack but its not necessary) asteroids 
directly
infront of the MS keep an eye on the health of the MS btw .Now select the 
support
craft and have them guard the MS , except one support frigate which should 
be put
near the front of the MS so bombers dock with it rather than the MS or 
carrier.
Select all your excess capital ships and move them either to the extreme 
right
or left of the MS , keeping an eye on their route as not to avoid losing 
anyships
set the destroyers to move ahead of the MS and have them pick off asteroids 
when
bombers are going for fuel , be careful and move them up and down to avoid 
being
hit themselves.At the same time have your resourcers collect the debris left
from destroyed large asteroids you can get up to 10 loads while in the 
belt.Get
to the end and you meet the bentusi again buy their good and makesure you 
have
25 heavy corvettes the 20+ wing of bombers is useful too , but keep 
everything
docked , jump.

Note , what the bentusi sells here you don't have to buy it (either field
frigate or drone frigate) since if you follow my ship capture method you
will be maxed out on frigates anyway they are pretty worthless.


MISSION 7: The garden of Kadesh
Mission Objectives:
- Harvest Natural Resources
- Defend Fleet
Secondary Objectives:
- Protect Resource Collectors

Instantly launch corvettes put them in wall on aggressive and put 3 of your 
4
resourcers (you may have more dependant on what you built) now arrange your
capital ships below the MS and near the corvette wall.Research everything 
and
if you have the RU max out your destroyers .Send out a lone ship
resourcer , be prepared to lose it btw after a load or two you get a hude
sensor reading on the scopes .This is possibly my favourite part of the
game I won't spoil it for you but the way the kadeshi ambassador speaks
is kind of interesting.You disagree with them , waves of fighters will come
for you , but they will be quickly killed by corvette walls put a support
frigate on the rear of your corvette wall , they are baited by the 
resourcers
behind your wall somemay get through your wall but are easily picked off esp
if you have two of the corvettes use burst targeting from above and below
at the same time.Spare the fuel pods steal them as they are worth lots of
RU little else if you want to capture a few kadeshi swarmers kill their
fuel pod and they just sit there.The world ship circles your Ms

this is optional btw:

get some fire power , launch the bombers , and send them with capital ships
and to nuke the world ship you can kill it easily but if you do it jumps 
away
only to reappear after you try to hyper away (use quick docking to save 
fleet
damage btw) The jump fails turns out the worldship has a hyperspace 
inhibitor
in it so you have to kill it keep the bombers docked as they will be 
slaughtered
in a fighter match.Keep the wall of corvettes up and engage them as the 
world ship
comes from behind move your capitalships to engage the worldship making sure 
to
keep good separation on all axes , as the worldship can ram your ships.Kill 
it
with all your capital ship fire power quickly else it will ram your MS ,it 
only
has a single super ion cannon its biggest power is the ramming.Clean up 
capture
rouge kadeshi ship for a trophy if you want and the remaining fuel pods can 
be
retired for extra RU.

Do not be tempted by the lure of multigun corvettes in the long run they 
will
serve you better ,after this and the next mission multigun corvettes lose
their worth and you have seen how many fighters they can destroy a second
so you still have a powerful anti fighter wing , trust me on this.

Additional - the world ship cannot be killed, you can shoot and shoot all 
day
it will burst into flames but will hyperspace out and another fresh one will
hyperspace back in.

Additional 2 - You cannot complete the mission without trying to hyperspace
out else the worldship keeps hyperspacing in and out.

MISSION 8: The cathederal of kadesh
- Protect the MotherShip
- Destroy all Attackers

This mission is a bit of a pain though its exciting and tense at the start
it takes a while to complete especially if you want to capture lots of 
ships.

Same thing but with 3world shipsand some enemy frigates, the cut scene with
the kadeshi and the MS ambassador (btw his ship is just a heavy corvette 
without
guns) is a good one.Same thing as before keep the fighters off the backs of
you capital ships as they engage the worldships keep a few support craft to
guard the MS as its easy to get the MS killed when your eye isn't on it.
Multibeam frigates start to appear around your ship these can do insane 
damage
to your MS so capture them (max is 17 btw) keep up the pressure and dock the
corvettes when you can.When you kill the second ship the 3rd ship retreats
back to the distance , you can chase it with capitalships and bombers 
without
much objection from the ship .When your ships meet a multibeam frigate wall
in the distance retreat there is a large fighter picket hiddenback there of
advanced swarmers push your carrier half way between that point and the 
frigates
and send out your salvage corvettes to steal them.Send in corvettes to deal 
with
the fighters that try to save them.You can now in peace harvest the dust and 
steal
the fuel pods (its a pain since fuel pods can only be refitted at the MS 
even
though it is technically a frigate class ship due to its jump location
and hyperspace ability).Assemble any force to finish off the final worldship
and you have won , just be aware that it will try to ram your assault fleet
but has no fighter screen so is easy meat. Remember what the Khar toba looks
like btw you may see it later.

additional - the 3rd Kadeshi world ship is unkillable when it begins to
retreat I think this is to lure you to see the Kar Toba since I sent out
a 35 wing of bombers , 24 heavies , 7 destroyers and 4 multi beam frigates
and it would not explode until I got to the kar toba.

MISSION 9: The Sea of lost souls
Mission Objectives:
- Investigate the Anomaly
- Destroy the Alien Ship (not really possible)
- Salvage the Alien Ship

This mission can take minutes and there are many methods of finishing it, 
but
for now harvest resources as there are lots of small rocks it doesn't look
like it but if you are patient you can get many Ru.

Ok you discover you can't use capital ships against the alien ship its
A test really to use strike craft rather than capital ships but we can
bend the rules.

The missile destroyer makes life a little more difficult for a fighter 
attack
but not that difficult.

Method :1 send in a scout attack wing on speed burst on evasive (they will
out run the missiles) and when they get damage dock them with a support 
frigate
near the alien ship (you should place them in a giant + formation around the 
ship
far enough away to stay out of the field but close to help the scouts.Attack
from the opposite direction that the ships are in , in and out eventually
you will win takes a long time.

Method :2 Use ion cannon frigates just outside the range of the field to 
kill
all of the ships inside the field supporting it from any return fire , its 
bad
since you don't capture all the ships inside.

Method :3 Same as method 1 but using attack bomber wings with a scout wing
attacking first to keep the missiles away.

Method :4 Express way , move a scout in look at the positions of the ships
move your scout to be directly opposite the ships on the other side of the
alien ship , the controlled ships will fire directly at your scout and hit 
the
alien ship disabling it in seconds.

Method :5 use repair corvettes to escort salvage corvettes to capture each 
ship
after using a scout wing to distract the ships until it is too late.

Method :6 You need a missile corvette for this , you just keep a missile
corvette or how many you happen to have , click Z and band box select the
alien ship the missiles take 15 seconds to get to the alien ship but they
will hit the alien ship.The major problem with this is that is takes a
very very very long time 4missileson a support frigate doesn't do much (
-50% penalty for attacking your own ships).


Additional - if the ships around the alien ship can start to flounder and 
roll
wildly (though slowly) especially if you take a very very long time on this 
mission
when you disable the ship you can give orders to the captured ships but they
do not obey they keep floundering.You can initiate a hyperspace jump but you 
will
get stuck since the ships won't get into jump posture and you have to exit 
the
game.

Trade with the bentusi and jump

MISSION 10: Super Nova research station
Mission Objectives:
- Destroy Research Outpost
- Destroy the Carrier before it hyperspaces
- Destroyer All Enemies

Instantly you should select the outer edges of your fleet and put them just
outside the mothership with every ship so far captured if you move fast 
enough
you won't lose anyship to the radiation.Watch the cut scene and prepare your
moves.Research everything , you need a carrier for this mission the one you
could have captured earlier will do nicely.Put 2-3 repair corvettes inside
your carrier and have two resource collectors dockwith it and head out for
the resource patch , when they are in the yellow [the resourcers] stop the
carrier and dock them to repair them and continue on to the dust clouds.
Harvest , launch the repair corvettes and repair the carrier in the safe 
dust
zone while harvesting , dock them when done and repeat the process to go
back to the MS , repeat for the other dust clouds.While this is going on
repair anything damaged in the radiation and setup an assault squad one
carrier filled with 25 heavy corvettes build another carrier and put 22
salvage corvettes maybe a missile vette , and repair corvette with 5-10
scouts deploy the corvettes and head  toward the nearest red dot , a 
mutligun
corvette wing will attack they will be no match for the heavy corvette wing.
Repair up (put all but one support frigate to follow the carrier) move 
forward
slowly making sure you stay in the cloud have destroyers go to the location
of where the first red dot was and leave behind a ship to mark it for easy 
ID.
you will now come up against walls of mines launch scouts set all support
craft to repair the carrier and use the scouts to take out the minelayers
the carrier can take being hit by all the mines.

BUT

You may want to try this send in a lone bomber to lure the mines to it and 
have
the bomber attack the minelayer as its path veers very close to the target
the mines will follow and take out the mine layer.

OR

You may also want to use your missile destroyer to force attack the mines
but they are a bit small to target and its a waste of time.

You may also want to capture the minelayers though I prefer not to go over 
my
corvette limit incase I lose any of them.

Send the scouts forward and turn on tactical overlay when you ought to meet
3 mine layers afterward you will see a capital ship shape on your tactical
overlay.Turn approach them slowly and they will move towards you , behind
them is a heavy cruiser , if you inch forward the destroyers will chase the
scout.Turn the scout back (if you want you can bait the cruiser as well but
its easier this way especially if you have limited salvagers) send in your
salvagers to capture them since they are locked on to your scout they will
usually ignore them till its too late and not mutually support each other.
Do the same for the heavy cruiser when you have enough salvage corvettes
freed up move your carriers to where the heavy cruiser was.If you are 
patient
and want to save resources bring the salvagers back to the carrier and dock
them, if you are not and have RUs to burn retire them at the MS and rebuild
them at the carriers.

Optional section B

Leave a fighter to mark the position of the heavy cruisers
to help your memory of safe places.Now with your two carriers go through the
radiation fields to the two dots lower down the map ,(make sure the carriers
have 25 heavy corvettes and all your salvage corvettes in them with some 
repair
corvettes) you should encounter 5 assault frigates .They will attack your
carriers , launch repair corvettes and support the carrier under fire at the
same time launch salvage corvettes to steal them.After they are captured
leave them where they are , you can get them later , repeat with the other
red dot of assault frigates repair your carriers dock this battle group
and sail back to where you left the fighter repairing after you arrive.

End of section B

You want to do this because if you attack the station the assault frigates
will come join in the fray once it starts and you don't want that to happen
do you? (you can destroy them if you like) , now get some support frigates
lined up behind the carriers and a bunch of destroyers to that point where
you left the fighter (you can move the destroyers before the assault frigate
capture or you can leave them out entirely if you want for the final assault
but best keep some in reserve incase the er mud hits the fan.This may go 
right
or wrong and there are several methods of taking it out:

*note that this mission is ALOT harder in V1 than the balanced V1.05 as
in V1 the 40 defenders have firepower of 30 instead of 5 and this can ruin
your day and take out your carriers in a minute even under full support.


Bait them , send in some scouts on afterburners to attack the carrier and it
will prepare to jump , send in supported salvagers and capture it (blow it
up if you want) supporting the salvagers and keeping a need heavy corvette
escort around it (it may be trapped but it probably has lots of strike craft
docked inside.So be prepared to deal with that , though if the salvage craft
as supported then your picket fleet around your MS will deal with them 
easily
this method ensures minimum losses.

Method #1

Medium difficulty
Large fleet gain
Time : 6 minutes max

Now regroup after capture is complete with salvagers inside the carriers.
Send in your carriers supported by support frigates
(preferably  kushan ones that self repair beam themselves) loaded with 
salvage
corvettes go in and launch your salvage corvettes after the brief radiation
space and capture all the capital ships turning support away from the 
carrier
to the salvage corvettes as they are mutually supported and aided by the 
defenders
launch your heavy corvettes and watch those defenders go boom one by one.
You can now send in destroyers or allow the captured capitalships to attack
the station.If you didn't capture the 10 or so assault frigates they will 
join
the fray and make it harder for you.Once its gone quick dock to avoid damage
and jump.

Method #2

Easy difficulty
Minimal fleet gain
Time : 4 minutes max

Without Optional section B send in destroyers and wipe out everything there
simplest as it requires least tactical commands support the destroyers with
heavies to take out the defender screen and take out all the frigates first
turning on the assault frigates when they arrive. Quick battle with little
gains but to cure your blood thirst for a moment sort of.

Method #3

Hard difficulty
Large fleet gain (if you can prevent them from being destroyed in capture
and the salvagers don't die)
Time : 8 minutes max

Without Optional section B send in destroyers as bait and support them send
in a carrier to act as refit base , and capture the ion cannons and assault
frigates as they come for you.Mop up the defenders with heavies and then 
turn
on the station.You will need to rotate support from the heavies to the 
salvagers
to the destroyers ensuring they don't die.

Method #4

Medium difficulty
Maximum fleet gain
Time : 40 minutes max due to large queue at carrier mouth

Follow the carrier back with salvagers at a safe distance (salvagers in
addition to the ones stuck to the carrier hull stealing it) keep supporting
all the salvager corvettes until there is a enemy launch from the carrier
fight keep some bait say a salvage corvette or two supported fully and run
them out of fuel and capture them.Now after everything is captured move back
to the carriers (all the salvage corvettes) dock them and move in , capture
all the capitalships via method #1 , now support your carrier with as many
support craft you can makng sure that it is repaired faster than it takes
defender damage.Stay there for 30 minutes by then they will have run out of
fuel and they have nobody to refuel them, remember to keep the carrier in
evasive mode and between the defenders and the support craft.Also move the
captured frigates away to prevent them from being hit and attacking to the
staging area from before. send out salvage craft and yu can steal all 50
defenders , you'll need allthe slots of a carrier to take them home though
, keep them docked ,quick dock and jump out of this system.You may also want
to use a gravity well to trap them instead of waiting the 30 minutes for
them to run dry on fuel.Though you may need more than one as they are quite
well spread out in a giant wall formation , though this means you must have
gravity wells first , though you don't really use them anywhere else in the
game.

let your corvettes go in and launch your salvage corvettes after the brief
radiation space and capture all the capital ships turning support away from 
the
carrier  to the salvage corvettes as they are mutually supported and aided 
by the
defenders launch your heavy corvettes and watch those defenders go boom one 
by
one. You can now send in destroyers or allow the captured capitalships to 
attack
the station.If you didn't capture the 10 or so assault frigates they will 
join
the fray and make it harder for you.Once its gone quick dock to avoid damage
and jump.

Method #5

Go via the bottom route capturing or destroying the assault frigates if you 
do
this you will face the two destroyers , heavy cruiser and mulitgun corvette
wings you did not face on the top route as they vector in to provide 
support.
Also you are in the worst position to capture or destroy the carrier and all
of the capital ships there unless you bring along a carrier (though the 
super
capitalships will be hauled on a route through the radiation field)

Method #6

You can safely use the missile corvette on evasive to fire bursts at then 
enemy
ships , just engage the carrier as it comes towards you

Additional - the carrier takes a while to jump it travels quite near to your
MS before jumping so take your time if you need it.


Additional - You may notice fleet intel saying words to the effect of:

"we are detecting a quantum wave form the carrier is docking fighters and
preparing to jump we must not allow it to escape and warn the enemy fleets"

If you destroy the carrier before if has completed its docking then you will
have to face the multigun corvettes in addition to the ion cannon frigates
assault frigates and defender wall.If you destroy the carrier then the 
docked
corvettes go up with it , if you decide to capture it they will undock and
attack your salvage craft before they are captured.

MISSION 11: Tenhauser Gate
Mission Objectives:
- Destroy the Taiidan Fleet

This is just a sweep mission essentially but we can maximise out gains
and fleet with this mission but as always there are various methods
to complete this mission:

Method #1

Difficulty Easy
Fleet gain none
Time : fast

Send in your fleet and launch attack bombers support your destroyers
as they make a frontal attack go for the cruiser first then the
destroyers (the destroyers have the best armour to firepower ratio)
mop up attacking capital ships from behind .You will eventually
win out , if you want use other capitalships to take them out faster
in support of your destroyer group.Try to flank them as to cause more
damage.

Method #2

Difficulty hard
Fleet gain Maximum
Time : slow

Launch all your salvage corvettes and put your support craft on them
move your destroyers and or cruiser to bait them away from the bentusi
ship.While they are engaged with your destroyers steal them , But it
isn't that easy they almost always mutually support each other also
cruisers (you will notice from now) are allergic to salvage corvettes
and will nearly always turn on them instead of what it was engaging
before , hence they need support, With enough salvage corvettes and
a carrier moved forward to reduce the queues for capture you can capture
the entire group in less than two moves , keep an eye on the health of
your capital ships as they can't take punishment forever , also go
for destroyers first the the cruiser then the small frigates .

Method #3

Difficulty medium
Fleet gain maximum
Time : slow

Send out a lone salvage corvette targetted on the cruiser , immediately
the cruiser will turn to attack it but run to the far reaches of them map
, as they turn to engage send in supported salvagers to steal them from
behind trying for a same time capture as they will start shooting the
salvagers off each other in an attempt to save each other , you may lose
a few salvage corvettes (why I said its best to not go over the max
corvette wing size)

Oh note if the bentusi die its game over , if you lose most of your fleet
its good enough game over as the next mission requires a large fleet
to be easy , its possible with a fighter wing fleet but you need at least
3 capital ships .If you have been following my steal them all method then
it should be no problem.Also at the end of this mission has as many salvage
corvettes as possible keeping them evenly distributed amongst your carriers
click keep docked on all your strike craft in each of your carriers and the
MS.20-25 salvage corvettes is good depending on how many slots you have left
to build them.

MISSION 12: The Galactic Core
Mission Objectives:
- Protect the Fleet
- Destroy the Source of the Gravity Field
- Protect the Defector

Hyperspace is disrupted and you drop out of hyperspace.

You start off with a wedge of gravity wells around you ship in an attempt
to stop your strike craft and make them easy meat for the missile destroyer
and the assault frigates.Right away launch your salvage corvettes 
(technically
they should be caught up in the gravity well but they don't for some reason.
Take your pick of what to steal , I recommend you take the missile destroyer
first then the assault frigates , then the support frigates.Leaving the 
gravity
wells and or cloak generators for last . If you destroy the gravity wells
then the support frigates retreat .Support frigates are somewhat important
forthe final mission for certain tactics.Finally if they are still alive
and not out of power capture the gravity wells you want to have at least
one for the next mission.Once gravity wells are out of action launch
your heavy corvettes and put 3-9 support frigates on them.Prepare yourself
for a major strike force in an X of bombers and interceptors and sometimes
corvettes .Keep the missile destroyers to the left and right of your MS
and keep your support frigates in a mutually supporting ring those that
are not assigned that is.After a couple of waves , you will see a dot
comming to you below but ahead of your MS send a scout to investigate.It
ought to be a cruiser battle group , set your support frigates to watch the
salvage corvettes prferably for every 2 salvage corvettes one support 
frigate
and send in the heavy corvettes after sending in your carrier also supported
with at least 2 support frigates.The cruiser will be occupied with the
carrier and you can use the carrier to ram his defenders , whileusing the
heavy corvettes to take out the other defenders , micromanage them with 
manual
targeting for maximum effect .While at the same time send in a squad of 
salvage
corvettes to grab whatever you can frigate class and up try get the cruiser 
first
but be careful due to the mutual support orders they have.During time 
research
proximity detectors and keep 3 in orbit around the MS as small skirmish 
fleets
of frigates will come to attack your fleet.When they see a proximity 
detector
they will go hell for leather to attack them so use this to capture them 
all.

Sometime soon a destroyer will come at your 3 o'clock its black chased by 
some
black ion cannons and some fighters with a support frigate.Send in the heavy
corvettes to take care ofthe fighter screen and send in salvage corvettes
to steal them as they are busy trying to kill captain Olson/Elson.

After you save him he takes position infront of your MS but isn't under
your control you can heal his ship though just in case.You can jump out
now.

But we don't want to do that do we? there are still two carriers out there
a large number of frigates up to 6 resource collectors , 4more support
frigates lots of corvettes and various fighter groups.If they have consumed
all resources fighter attacks will cease and the carrier battle group will
move back and forth between two points. If you want them you need to strip
off the fighter and corvette defence which is easy.Send in your heavy 
corvettes
supported by 8 support frigates if you have them and pick away at the 
fighter
screen the frigates will shoot at you but will hold formation , go for the
multigun corvettes (which 1:1 are outclassed by heavy corvettes but now are
out numbered well I out numbered them about 4:1) targeting one at a time or 
using
aggressive order mode.Once the fighter screen is out the way retreat the
heavy corvettes out the way and move a carrier close asyou can to the path 
of
the battle group without distracting their attension.Send in the salvage 
corvettes
supported by as many supportfrigates as you can which are supported by 2 
more
support frigates and steal them , the carrier has to be carried back to the
MS but the other frigates and resourcers will be taken to the carrier.
Repair everything after everything there is captured and start to mop up the
survivors which can also be captured in a similar method to above .You want
as many resourcers as possible to make a future mission easier.You may also
notice that your fleet is getting extremely big no really really really big
after you capture everything harvest all the resources and try to organise
your fleet so you can get them into positions quickly.


Addition - You should also lookout for enemy salvage corvettes as well
I have seen them on at least 2 occasions playing as Kushan (which obviously
had a fleet of captured taiidan ships) and they latched on to my heavy
cruiser and almost took it away (once I scuttled it the other time I managed
to get a bomber wing to rescue it).This is somewhat strange since carriers
can only capture up to frigate class ships , so if they did manage to haul
it back for a refit where exactly would they do it?.You may want to try to
salvage their salvage corvettes which is hard because you can't capture them
when they are glued to your cruiser hulls.

Additional 2#

With the grav wells you may have or have captured nearthe beginning you may
want to capture ALL the fighters and corvettes sent towards you its 
certainly
possible but somewhat tedious.

MISSION 13: The Karos Graveyard
Mission Objectives:
- Dock with a Strike Craft to the Comm Repeater

A short mission with various methods ,

Method #1

Fast
zero fleet additions
Depends on luck
You need scouts and swarmers for this method

if you have any kadeshi swarmers mix them with any scouts you
have followed by a repair corvette to the top of the karos grave yard
refuel them all then headright above the junk yard office.Then send in a
rush the office and maybe one will get lucky and dock probably a swarmer
as its 1500MS speed is a major advantage here.

Method #2

Slow
Less dependant on luck
Minor fleet additions
You need a gravity well for this method

Marshall the fleet all of it (it should be 150+ capital ships by now)
about 1500 metres infront of the MS make sure you do not use any formations
and set them to aggressive.

Send in a destroyer supported by a support frigate , head slowly into the
yard and destroy the first gun to the right of the MS , retreat immediately
fleet intel will comment that hyperspace gates have activated but no new 
ships
are on sensors.You'll see a small ship approach your fleet keep the 
destroyer
near a grav well. once it comes close turn on the gravity well and have 
every ship
in the fleet attack the Dawg as it is trapped (you can't capture it btw) but
tuen on the grav well before it clamps on to a ship (karan will say ship
stolen and it will be dragged away through a hyperspace gate which you can
get back but takes a while and the ship maybe destroyed before it enters a
gate).After battering it with your whole fleet it WILL explode nothing can
take that much punishment the dawg is tough but not invulnerable.

Set up 4 destroyers put 3 support frigates each on them and slowly go in
and mop up just the auto guns leave the proximity sensors alone you want
to salvage them for the next mission.You want to keep them in a giant
box shape to clear a giant corridor in between , which you might want
to put another destroyer convy through to get any that are missed (best
turn on tactical overlay)shaped like a giant X but not in a X formation

X           X


      X         <----at least 2000 metres separation


X           X

move in and steal all the proximity detectors harvest the resources and
research everything , then dock with the junk yard office , Olson will
jump out.At which you can explore the grave yard you'll see various things
one is the design for the cruiser that was rejected by relic and a carrier
also rejected by relic , these double up as kadeshi ships in their 
associated
mod.Jump out and prepare for the next mission


method #3

Guess go on.....The dawg only ever seems to go after capital ships so why 
not
use strike craft or specifically that turanic missile corvette you stole 
earlier
set it on evasive and turn on tactical overlay so you can see the auto guns 
for
the junk.Escort it with all your repair corvettes and make a straight run
for the office.If you see anauto gun stop and use a missile burst on it 56 
missiles
can kill a large gun.This method is somewhat tedious and can take a very 
long
time since you need to wait for missile recharge.

MISSION 14: Bridge of Sighs
Mission Objectives:
- Destroy Field Generator
Secondary Objectives:
- Destroy Hyperspace Portals

This is a long mission get some coffee , there are also two methods the
brute force method and the attrition method most seem to prefer the
attrition method.

First things first do not harvest anything move your carriers forward about
half way between the edge of the sphere and the MS, launch your salvage
corvettes and put them near the dust clouds outside the sphere , place
your wall or heavies near by on evasive ,supported by one support frigate
Now we wait you can steal up to 8 resourcers by guarding these few dust
clouds keep the fighter wings away with your corvettes if they come out to
meet you.As I said earlier the next mission is easier with them , now you'll
spot the hyperspace gates ,leave them alone for now.Research the sensors
array build one and move it right to the back of the map.Now we take on
the ion cannon sphere theres alot more than 100 of them as I have seen
elsewhere (as I have stolen just the front and some of the sides some
of the bottom and top and had only captured 80 of them).

Now we come to methods:

#1 Forced entry

No fleet gain
possible overwhelming effect ,
Need for many support frigates
Need solid anti fighter defence
Near impossible without some capitalships (so for fighter based people
its hard but possible)
Fast

Get your 3 cruisers put every support frigate but 2 on them , put those
2 on your destroyer battle group , put your multibeam frigates behind
the cruisers and the destroyers above or below the cruisers add a bunch
of proximity detectors behind them.Keep a carrier or two with heavies
in them to ward off fighter waves.Move in fight your way in until you see
a cut scene when the frigates will move away direction depends upon which
side is weakened most.Now you will come up against up to 6 destroyers
in separate groups with a cloak generator with each group , use the
proximity detectors to see them and attack the cloaker first , then turning
on the destroyers concentrating your firepower as much as possible ion
cannon frigates will be coming at you from all sides however so beware of
this.You will also be under fighter attack mostly multigun corvettes 
defenders
and attack bombers.Creep in destroying any opposition and get to the hyper
space inhibitors and destroy them being careful not to get yourships
rammed , there is a high possibilty you will be overwhelmed and lose ships
often the ion cannon frigates will go after one of your super capital ships
at the vanguard of your formation / bunch of ships.

.Jump out mission complete.Jump out

Method #2 Attrition

Massive fleet gain
Slow , steady pace you determine the terms of battle

Remember the proximity detectors I told you to steal? well use one at
a time to bait the ion cannons out you don't even need to get close
enough to see them jusy close enough so that they move .(sensors array
is useful to see the moves) Then retreat back to the carriers and
send out the salvagers you can get up to 12 following you at once so
try to keep the carriers far forward to reduce transit times.Keep
doing this over and over till there is very little of the ion cannon
sphere at the front and sides while stealing his resourcers.Also keep
the missile destroyers close to the carrier you are using as a refitting
base.Each time dock the salvage corvettes , the ion cannons will be
all 100% devoted to killing the proximity detectors so you can keep
moving it back to buy more time if you are short on salvage corvettes
and you can't build anymore (Karan "maximum number of ships in the fleet")
.Now we have a formidable fleet , but still work to do , go to the nearest
hyperspace gate with your destroyer group on evasive , support them with
support frigates , and have your corvette wing close by on hand put a 
carrier
nearby with salvage corvettes inside.Have your destroyer group attack the
gate* .At which a fighter battle group will jump in using the corvettes
attack the bombers first this is a priority as they will go after your
support frigates .A few bursts (which multiguns can't do which is why
I told you to keep them instead of multigun corvettes) will mop them up
in no time launch the salvage corvettes and steal the two support
frigates.

*if you attack a gate first fighters jump out with associated support
frigates then once you have mopped them up usually 2 destroyers and
1 missile destroyer jumps out , there is a nasty trick to take out
jumping in fighters.Since they jump in they cannot move and need time to
materialise set your corvettes (I had 45 of them at this time) to burst
fire the gate.Most if not all the fighters will explode and the corvette
escort will be heavily damaged.


Now approach the other gate the same way being careful not to enter
the sphere or where the sphere used to be.And repeat but you have a
destroyer and a missile destroyer in this one , supported salvagers
will do nicely with heavies taking out the fighters.

The other gate is identical to this one.

be wary of fighterwings comming at your frontal carrier group or what
ever stole his resourcers.Grav well them to steal them if you want .

Now the sphere , this is difficult to get right.Move a single cruiser
to the front of the sphere supported by every support ship bar 5 frigates
move it in see the cut scene and move a scout or a proxie detector to
the cruiser (you can see it on the map if you have the sensors array)
move it back and to your cruiser , have some salvagers ready supported
by the 5 support frigates.Keep some spare ones near the back (salvagers)
and use a proximity detector to see the cloaked ships (they will come
to you cloaked) then make your cruiser fire one salvo at the cruiser.
Cancel orders and set to evasive , move in your salvage corvettes (its
even better if they are cloaked as they appear just before they lock
onto the hull of the victim ship).Steal it and its escort destroyer
.Repeat for the ion cannon wing (similar to the galactic core skirmish
fleets, then repeat for the 2 destroyer fleets, being wary of the other
ion cannons comming out from the sphere.Do the same for the carrier,
the resourcers and the resource controlers , taking out the multigun
corvettes with anything to hand.Now destroy the inhibitors the best
way to do this avoiding collisions is to move a capitalship where the
resource controller used to be and attack it like that.

Research everything you haven't then marshall the fleet (select them all
and press tab to put them in military parade) you may have a problem here
in that your fleet is too big .Too big in the frigate department (as in
ion cannon frigates assault frigates fuel pods and support frigates ,
destroyers carriers , cruisers , strike craft , multibeam frigates ion
array cannons and non combat class do not matter).If your fleet is
too big ie 300 capital ships + you can't hyperspace well you can but
the game gets stuck as karan tries to marshall the fleet forever.
There will be a bunch of capital ships that are at the extreme left
of your fleet which are the number that exceed the upperlimit if fleet
size (which is map size) select what you want in a fleet (leaving at
least 20 support frigates) up to the upper limit and scuttle any ships
that won't line up in military parade (you could retire them but this
takes time and you can't spend the Rus anyway as the fleet is too
big already)

Group your resourcers into a group (you should have 10-12 of them by now)
similar with destroyers ion cannons and cruisers with fighter attack wings
in one group to save groupings,Same with support frigates in a number you
remember, familiarise yourself with which group is what.The next mission
finesse is vital.Jump out to the next mission once you have reduced your
fleet and groupings are good.


MISSION 15: Chapelous Perilous
Mission Objectives:
- Destroy the collision asteroid

This mission is tough and with the HW sliding difficulty scale dependant
on the size of your fleet prepare for a battle royale ,Once you are jumped
in select your support frigates bar two for the MS support , launch
heavy corvettes to form a aggressive wall to beat off the fighter wings
coming at you.At the same time marshal the fleet infront but 1500-2500
metres below the MS move them forward.Dock all strike craft (since they
get in the way) with the MS Now select your resourcers and press K
and ram them into the back to the asteroid on its way in concentrate every
ship on the asteroid eventually it will explode if it doesn't and it is
badly damaged the MS will be severely damaged but will survive , jump out
ASAP .On smaller fleets (yours) there will be a tiny guard for the asteroid
but for a maximum fleet which is obscenely large and difficult to fight
huge Xs of destroyers and assault frigates spoil every ones day(unless
they are yours)You can stay to capture somemore destroyers but for the final
mission all you need are 20 support frigates 9 destroyers and 25 ion cannon
frigates.And you may lose more ships than you capture also.

Additional - I came in with a massive fleet the other night and saw:

1 wing of bombers
1 wing of intereceptors
1 wing of defenders
4 destroyers
about 10-20 assault frigates sometimes in X
the big rock

Additional

Method 2

The front strike craft wings follow the lead of your fleet so if you put a 
scout 15km
in front of the MS and then lead it to the left or right the frontal wings 
will follow ,
though the assault frigates , defenders and destroyers will not. You can 
either
salvage everything from there on , or do the Kami collector on the asteroid
(love the intro though) and put all your fire power on to it.

MISSION 16: Hiigara
Mission Objectives:
- Destroy all Enemy Forces <- this is actually not true all you are after
is the emperor's flag ship

Shockingly easy mission depending in fleet size if you jump in with a max
fleet (captured 100s of them) then its easy , if you are on a challenge
from me then its rock hard this mission takes 30 minutes if done correctly
but as with some missions there are variations to completing this mission:


note with karan gone you miss:

Mothership is under attack
Group X to combat stations
Though group leaders tell you this individually.
Probe in position
Probe away
Surveillance data avalible
[ship type] complete
Mothership (when you select your own MS)
Proximity alert
Scuttle warning
Building from mother ship
Building from carrier
[research] complete (though research ought to be complete by now)
[ship type result from research] avalible for construction
enemy [ ship type] captured
Launch
All ships auto launching
Group [group number] reports victory
Group [group number] lost
order canceled
[ship] canceled

The mothership guns production and bridge all still work (bridge is fleet
intel and you at some control station giving orders to auxillary ships)

Header-


Method #1
Marshal the fleet around the MS the first wave will come from below
set all support frigates to guard the MS this buys you time the first
wave is a small fleet of ion cannon which should be taken out with
some reserves or left alone till you can spare some time.

with a large personal fleet it is usually 1 cruiser 4 destroyers 2 missile
destroyers and lots of ion cannons let your fleet meet them concentrating
firepower on one or two ships at a time.

While you are fighting this a carrier comes from above to destroy any
resourcers you have left with bombers and corvettes , use a squad of 10-15
assault frigates escorted by heavies to take it out or even capture it
with some salvage corvettes.

Repair what you can then move the fleet to the rear the second fleet will
warp in this on is lots of ion cannons 2 destroyers and a cruiser ,
also concentrate your fire power on them to take them out , the final
wave comes from below which is one cruiser lots of ion cannons defeat
them the same way .Finally Fleet intel will say (I haven't heard this
in a while) "another enemy fleet is jumping out right on top of use
we are being overwhelmed!" (maybe with a small fleet but underwhelmed
if you have a big fleet)

Cue music change

its captain olson who gives you group tor and jessar

"this is captain olson we have been battling reinforcement fleets to get
here and have already lots many ships , the emperor's flag ship is here
together we can defeat him"

, who will stay to mop up anything left.And go to the flagship he'll die
if you don't help him which you ought to.March everything to the flagship
going through the destroyer group and the cruiser group (with 200+ ships
cruisers last mere seconds)And let him have it Bingo you have won.


Method #2 My method

Select your 25 ion cannon squad (minimum is 25 the more the better as I
once sent 125) and move it right to the far end of them map infront of the
MS don't stop for the first wave , send your destroyers closely behind
with support frigates supporting the MS.send fighters you have left
to the red dot behind the MS miles away and launch heavies supported
by repair corvettes above your MS sending a small fleet of 5-10 assault
frigates behind.

Turn the destroyers around briefly to kill as many ships before the ion
cannons get too far away and turn them towards the ion cannon squad you
earlier sent out.Using whats left multibeam frigates ion arrays knock
everything left out , and send multibeam frigates to follow the skirmish
squad.Now you have about 15 minutes to breathe use this time to take out
the carrier above or capture it.

[optional]

now use the scouts to take out the turanic commander ship and put the
grav well behind and above where his ship used to be and wait watch the
battle unfold.The second Fleet intel says another fleet is comming out
of hyper space select the grav well and turn it on , they will be stuck
hurrah.You can also bait them with scouts so they follow the scouts
instead of attack your MS but the mission is over before they get anywhere
near your MS.

Near before or after this event your squad send out before will meet 2 
destroyers
and a missile destroyer they should ignore your group kill them or not its
your choice.Now comes the hairy bit , you keep advancing until you get 
through
an asteroid belt , now 3 heavy cruisers come for you supported by 3 support
frigates each . Use the destroyers to attack them from the front and flank 
them
with anything else you'll lose a few ships but you will win either passing 
right
by or supporting the destroyers , either way you can beat it.Move up to
the enemy MS and use all ships to attack it , the kami fighters comming out
are barely a problem 1 minute later the enemy MS is ashes you may also want
to mop up anyships around the MS (the 3rd fleet is still here incomplete)
then nuke the emperor ,But you have won , before captain olsen jumps in
and before the 2nd fleet arrives .Victory in 30 minutes and its all yours 
since
captain elson didn't have to help.And you don't owe captain olson any more
favours than you already do.

A carrier or two filled with bombers will speed up the destruction of the 
cruisers.

Note this tactic changed after testing that HW singles enemy ships that use
hyperspace are not affected by it and can jump in and out as normal with or
without a well in proximity.

Method #3

For fighter jocks

Additional - the emperors flag ship has missile destroyers and gravitywells
to prevent easrly fighter attacks from the front only!

If you have a small fleet mainly composed of fighters then you are in a 
world
of trouble as the first wave has missile destroyers than will eat your wings
up double quick.But do this , have repair corvettes and support frigates 
support
the MS and use bombers attacking the rears of enemy ships as much as 
possible
separate them into groups of no more than 10 and assign them group numbers.
You need to rotate wings of bombers round and round manually docking with 
double
click on support frigates , if you dock them with D they could dock with the 
MS
or queue to dock with a repair corvette.That wastes time and on this mission
can mean the difference between victory and defeat.When Captain olson jumps 
in
support his ship and leave behind your repair corvettes if you have them and 
mop
up the remaining ships orbiting your MS.Follow Olson scouting ahead until 
you get
to the carrier battle group , you need to let his destroyer take the heat 
while
you move your bombers behind his and take out the bombers and corvettes the 
carrier
deploys.Next you may come up to the twin destroyers and missile destroyer 
again
let olson take the pain while MDs are locked on to him send in bombers 
.Remember
to rotate your wings unless you need major firepower and your bombers are 
not
running on fumes .The next bit is the hardest , let captain olson die if you
want but retreat towards your MS docking bombers as often as needed , send 
them
back into the fight against the 3 cruisers going after the support frigates 
each
time 2-3 passes with 2 squads should take them out.Now we pick away at them
moving back and forth moving your support frigates 14000metres away from the
battle and you ought to have destroyed them all before they get half way 
back
to your MS.Prepare for the final assault , move any ships you have left or 
even
harvest the RUs remaining (you may want to take out the emperors resourcers)
and build a final fleet with some capital ships or at the very least scouts.
You need these to get the MDs away from the emperor, move just outside 
visual
range of the flagship.Then send in capital ships or scouts in a large loose
pattern attacking the gravity wells first.Using the scouts to lure away 
missiles
a cloak generators may do the trick also.Finally you have the final picket 
towards
the side of the flag ship you should take them out one by one again rotating
bomber wings in order of distance to the flagship further first.Once they 
are
gone you might as well take out the sensors arrays to the left and right of 
the
flagship (you can't move to their locations but you can band box select 
attack
it).Dock all fighters and corvettes to make the final run. Move the 
corvettes
if you have them in wall on agressive 3500 metres away from the flagship 
fighter
launch door. Send in the bombers , interceptors sometimes scouts will come 
out
to kami your ships but first they will line up in a neat line nearly all the 
time
.Which is the cue for your heavies to use burst on them boom a massive wing
vanishes in less than 2 seconds.2-3 minutes later the flag ship explodes 
under
fire from your bombers.

Method 4

Oh boy , now if in the last mission you did not use your harvesters well you 
can
use them here , if you play it out with a picket fleet tortoise method (ie 
kill
all waves before making your move on the enemy flagship) you may notice.
What you want to do is move your corvette force into a wall above your 
harvesters
to protect them at ALL costs (remember at max fleet size you cannot build
any more of anything) , moving them as quickly as possible to the enemy
flagship then kami 10 of them and you will win easily .I would note however 
that
their terrible speed means even destroyers can beat them to the enemy MS
so really its a tactic you might want to try if you have done the others.


Additional - this mission is easier and harder in some respects to V1 and 
V1.05
why is this? well when you are beinghit by the enemy fleets then your 
support
frigates can keep your MS alive longer due to the faster repair beam in V1 
.But
then again yo meet 3 cruisers with 3 support frigates whobreak off to fix 
the
enemy flag ship once the cruisers are out the way which makes it more 
difficult
to destroy the cruisers and the enemy flagship.

Additional 2

The first wave is (considers you have a max fleet)

x1 heavy cruiser
x3-4 destroyers
x1 missile destroyer
10-20ion cannon frigates (I am to busy killing them to count

The second wave is:

x1 heavy cruiser
x2 destroyers
x20ion cannon frigates and or assault frigates

The 3d wave is

x1 heavy cruiser
x20+ion cannon frigates and or assault frigates

The carrier above can have:

up to 20 attack bombers
up to 20 corvettes

The flag ship defence picket canbe:
x2 missile destroyers
x 2 gravity wells
up to 10 ion cannons (depending if wave 2 and 3 have jumped yet)

Additional 3 - there is only one coucil ship at the end of the game the rest 
are
bentusi according to sensors manager , this happened when a cut scene from
fleet intel happened right after the bentusi say "we have bought the coucil
this war is over"

******************************
6********Challenges!**********
******************************

A rash of people complained HW was far too easy , so way back in 2000
I set challenges which only a few people managed I made sure they were
possible by doing them before challenging anybody else to it.

Mission #1 none

Mission #2 capture the entire fighter wing of the turanics
including at least 4 std corvettes
and 1 missile corvette

Mission #3 Capture all 5 assault frigates and all cryo trays

Mission #4 capture all fighters and corvettes and all capitalships
minus the attack carrier.

Mission #5 Capture everything corvette up lose no ships .

Mission #6 no challenges suitable

Mission #7 capture at least 25 kadeshi fighters and all fuel pods

Mission #8 Capture at least 40 kadeshi fighters and all frigates
lose no ships in the process.

Mission #9 beat my record of 18 seconds to defeat the alien vessel

Mission #10 Capture everything stay in the radiation field do not use
the dust routes to get to the station

Mission #11 capture everything without any losses.

Mission #12 Capture everything including at least 20 fighters and 5
corvettes

Mission #13 no suitable challenges

Mission #14 capture as many frigates as you can but retire them
instead

Mission #15 capture everything without losing any ships of your own

Then for challenges of mission 16 either:
retire all your fleet and use the Rus to build any fleet you want

Mission #16

Using the fleet build maximums (80 fighters , 10 frigates 4 destroyers
3 cruisers 50 corvettes) defeat the emperor before captain Olson jumps
in.Kami is allowed however and you can rebuild as many as you want
during mission 16 but you are not allowed to steal anything.

*************
7-Final fleet
*************

In the Sp game my final fleet (ie the fleet I jumped in to Hiigara) was:
1 MS (duh)
12 scouts
6 swarmers
1 adv swarmer
4 interceptors
82 attack bombers
37 defenders
12 fighters (Turanic)
2 missile corvettes
4 mine layer corvettes
4 repair corvettes
44 heavies
4 multigun corvettes
18 Salvage corvettes
22 support frigates
19 multi beam frigates
9 ion array frigates
17 assault frigates
95 ion cannon frigates
17 destroyers
3 missile destroyers
4 cruisers
6 carriers
3 resource controllers
2 research ships
14 proximity detectors
5 cloak generators
6 gravity wells
1 sensors array


It should have been more but was not because of the hyperspace limits which 
are
based on map sizes.Also due to some retirements since someships were more
useful than others say std corvettes vs heavies it is not as it was if I 
kept EVERY
ship and lost nothing either.

Of which this fleet only:

10 scouts
60 attack bombers
4 repair corvettes
25 heavies
6 support frigates
2 destroyers
21 Salvage corvettes
1 carrier
2 research ships
1 sensors array

I had actually built myself everything else on the top list was stolen from
the enemy.I'd have taken auto guns if the programmers had let me as well.

7B - fleet limits

You can build at any one time (RU limiting of course)
1x MS (duh)
85x fighters
50x corvettes
15x frigates
6x destroyers
5x carriers
3x cruisers
10x resourcers
5x resource controllers
10x probes
10x proximity detectors
7x gravity wells
6x cloakers
6x research ships

this is build limits so say if you capture 5 assault frigates your build 
totals
are reduced by 5 if you have 8 then reduced by 8 you don't necessary have to 
build
them to achieve the limit to where Karan says "maximum number of [ship 
type]"
though you can capture many more than the build limits.For example
You have 49 heavies and capture a couple of mine layer corvettes totalling 
you
corvette count at 51 you can build no more but you an continue capturing up
to the number of docking sleeves you have left (in carriers and the MS for 
the
hyperspace jump as someships cannot jump alone and they must be docked for 
hyper
space.

***********
8-Music
***********
I don't actually know what the track is called with the arabic sounding
horn (or rather snake charmers horn sound) when there are major battles
going on.

But the other musical track with the voices is by Barber Adagio for strings
vocal , which I remember hearing on Platoon (I think)where charlie sheen
flies away with the rest of the platoon in their helicopters and the whole
area is being overrun with viet cong.Where the sgt runs out being chased
byhundreds of viet cong.Also the strings version was played in th 2001 last
night of the proms to honour the dead replacing the traditional British
anthems medoly.

The Other track is by YES and if you have a legit copy (come on its only
£5) there are details about it on the CD.

but the Lyrics are :
(taken from files on the CD)

*Homeworld (The Ladder) 9:33 *

Nothing can take us far enough
Emotion... far enough together
As the light shines so bright
Bright enough to let us in

Nothing can bridge our souls.
Devotion... fast enough together
As the power proves you right
Right enough to let you begin

So many displaced among the future dreamers
Realised their doubles
Took a new step
A question of origin

Only in the recent past
Seeking for to realise
Skyward shone
Like beacons
A question of origin

Ten thousand millions free
To the westward light
The dreamers represent
This arc of peace

As the poets entranced
The anchor redeemed
Secrets of science
The history of the future
Was surely made

Just what keeps us so alive
Just what makes us realise
Our home
Is our world, our life
Home is our world

Nothing can take us far enough
Emotion... far enough together
As the light shines so bright
Bright enough to let us in

Nothing can bridge our souls
Devotion... fast enough together
As the power proves you right
Right enough to let you begin

Speak so fast to the prophets
Of the living
Looking for the signs
Spanning out the centuries
Search for truth

Ancient ones... they watch
And listen
Carry our wishes...
Took upon themselves to guide us
Through the endless skies

Just what keeps us so alive
Just what makes us realise
Our home
Is our world, our life
Our hope is our world, our life

I have seen the passion
That's in the hope that everyone
Will find their way into
The secret of
The home of your heart

Living within the vision
Within the power, beyond belief
We see that hate destroys the soul
Of anyone who tries to teach it

I have seen the dream
That's in your heart
That's in your eyes
To bring you closer to the one

It. s what keeps us so alive
It's what makes us realise
Our home is our world, our life
Just what keeps us so alive
Just what makes us realise
Our home
Is our world, our life
Home is our world, our life

Send, ascending to the secrets
All is pure and clear to resolve
Nothing can change us now
Send, ascending to the future
Nothing can ever change us now
We follow the sun
We follow the sun
We follow the sun

Truth is a simple place
Here for us all to see
Reach as it comes to you
As it comes to me
As I will always need you inside my heart

Peace is a word we teach
A place for us all to reach
Sing as it sings to you
As it sings to me
As I will always need you inside my heart

Credits

Jon Anderson: Lead Vocals
Steve Howe: Lead and Acoustic Guitars, Steel, Mandolin and Vocals
Billy Sherwood: Guitars and Vocals
Chris Squire: Bass Guitars and Vocals
Alan White: Drums, Percussion and Vocals
Igor Khoroshev: Keyboards and Vocals

All songs written by Jon Anderson, Steve Howe, Billy Sherwood,
Chris Squire, Alan White and Igor Khoroshev
Lyrics by Jon Anderson
Published by Opio Publishing BMI/Carlin Music PRS/Boundmere LTD/Backyard 
Levitation Inc.
ASCAP/Warner/Tamerlane
Inc. BMI/IK Publishing, ASCAP

Produced by Bruce Fairbairn
Engineered and mixed by Mike Plotnikoff
Second Engineer: Paul Silveira
Recorded and mixed at Armoury Studios, Vancouver Canada,
February-May 1999
Mastered by George Marino at Sterling Sound Studios, NY June 1999


you can find more of their work here : http://yesworld.com/

*******************
9-Fleet engagements
*******************

Common fleet engagements and how to deal with them.These work against
CPU players mostly sometimes against human players but they can adapt
and break your tactics better than the CPU does canceling orders
and retargeting a needed.We assume in the Vs statement that the first
vessels belong to you


Fighters Vs Fighters

Method #1

Set your fighter wing to X formation and evasive , micro manage them
to target one of the ships at the edge of the enemy formation and you
repeat over and over going after the extreme fighter at the edge , and
you should only lose a few fighters.Against a larger number  of losses
if you just band box select targets set on evasive .As this has the
effect of a aggressive order (attack all on one) but with evasive
movement , Also complies with deadships don't fight back for example:

you have 10 scouts against 10 enemy scouts each scout takes 10 hits
call them A and B A is your wing B is his wing, A fires at B killing
one scout everyship in A is hit once.On the second pass A has 10 fighters
with superficial damage , B has 9 perfect fighters , group A receives
another 10% damage for nine of its fighters group B loses another
fighter repeat and eventually you lose 1-2 fighters dependant on your
luck.

Also use Aggressive on the attack run when wings have passed change to 
evasive
to turn faster then turn back to aggressive you will win easily.

Method #2

If you have faster fighters than the enemy try the sphere battle ball
formation leading guarding a single ship on evasive keep the ship
guarded moving and you should take them out with ease , mind heavies
though and defenders.

Fighters Vs defenders

Hard this one but you need to focus firepower and retreat when your
wing is showing signs of damage about yellow and rotate with another
wing to keep the pressure up . Also don't bother with evasive defender
bullets travel so fast they can't be evaded.You may also try scout kamikaze
on them , rouse a scout wing to keep them busy with another interceptor
wing to knock them out while they are occupied

Fighters Vs corvettes

Corvettes are easy meat alone or in small 2-3 groups but in bigger groups
it gets insane how fast they can tear down your fighters (I have seen a
120+ scout wing disappear from a 25 heavy corvette wing from an expert
player) Strictly speaking you meed to soften up the wall with probe golf
or fly a small bait wing.The bait wing should be at least 6500 metres
away from the corvette wall the intent being to turn the wall .Then you
send in your fighters to take them out while they turn as their fighter
screen is less effective to the sides top and bottom worst from the rear.
Bombers are also good focused on single corvettes while they are distracted
by scouts.

Fighters Vs Capital ships

Send in scout wings first to keep them busy then send in bombers or more
interceptors and try to attack from behind.Rotate fighters if there are
more than a couple of capital shipstry to keep bombers at the rear firing 
into
the capitalship engines for fast kills.

Fighters Vs fighter escorted capital ships

This is hard to crack ideally you'd have capital ships to knock them out
but it happens in skirmishes against the CPU frequently .Send in evasive
scouts to knock out fighters as if they were alone ignoring the capital
ship strip the screen away and rotate wings when they run low on fuel
or take major damage.Then kill the capital ship or capture it whatever.

Fighters Vs Corvette escorted capital ships

This is difficult very very difficult  you want to try to lure the
corvettes away and pick them off one by one.But if they won't leave
kamikazi a few scouts to break them up follow up with scout wings attacking
one at a time and you might get through.Then take out the capital ship

Fighters Vs massed capital ships

Distract the capital ships with scouts who run away after 2 passes , then
send in bombers with another scout wing infront try to attack from behind
and rotate at least 2 ideally 3 wings to keep up the pressure.

Fighters Vs Corvette/mixed fighters and massed capital ships

This is a tough nut to crack bet you wished you spent your Rus better eh?
go for the fighters first ignoring everything else as if it was just 
fighters
Vs fighters then corvettes and try to clean up more often than not unless
your wings are huge you will lose.

Fighters vs missile destroyers

You may think impossible! or no way the MD will get you right away , lets
challenge this assumption scouts move at 1000m/s normal 1500m/s on 'burners
move a 2-3 scout squad to attack one pass at a MD.Then set evasive and move
these in a large circle around the MD ,trying to keep to its rear as it
turns .As this goes on send in a bomber squad to mop up.The MD is powerful
but it quickly loses its talons, 32 missiles come out fast , faster than
the production rate which isthe weakness , scouts will waste their missiles
and after about 10 seconds the MD fires a wussy 2 missiles every 2 seconds.

Corvettes Vs fighters

Stick them in a major wall 12+ with a support frigate or a repair corvette
behind it .Stay in close view so you can select a single corvette or even
two to use burst attacks on them if you are using heavies.

Adv tactics - arrange them into groups of 4-7 (of equal group size) and
position them in a large X shape ie:

X       X

    O

X       X

Put something tempting in the middle at O or even the MS keep each group
3500-4500 metres away from each other .This creates a anti fighter screen
much bigger and semi mutally supporting , the closer you move the groups
the more mutual support they give each other (heavies have a 6000 metre
range 7500 when chasing).Any fighter closes in on O they get cut to pieces
anything flying between any two X points is also cut to pieces.Though if
your groups are smallish each group alone is somewhat vulnerable, but that
is why burst targetting exists.If a group is overwhelmed use burst with
an entire group as the fighters get close.If you cloak each X group with
shared cloakers then this becomes an incredible trap if they send along
proxie detectors blow them away first.To save cloak power keep an eye on
sensors to look for any incoming groups.

Corvettes Vs corvettes

Mass your firepower go after one at a time in this order , light corvettes
multigun corvettes and heavy corvettes , mine layers last.You ought to win
out (in 25 vs 50 concentrated fire power and burst targeting will defeat the
enemy with only 5-10 losses)

Corvettes Vs capital ships

If you have to do it else don't fighters are much better for this task.Use
multigun corvettes if you have them the extra speed helps them alot , you
can also push frigates about with burst targeting .Keep them mostly to
the rear where the weapons can't reach and it does extra damage.

Corvettes Vs mixed escort of capital ships

Keep as many support frigates on tap guarding the corvettes and wipe out
the screen first burst targetting will really mess up the defence screen
then turn on the capital ship.

Capital ships Vs fighters

Tough you should have escorted you capital ships with some anti fighter
defences , but if you ever get into this rut. Sit tight and get some 
fighters
on the way to help.If there are no fighters keep shooting they may run out
of fuel accidentally crash with your ship.But keep fighting till your ship
is nearly dead then scuttle, you'll take most of the fighters out with you.

Capital ships Vs corvettes

Easy go for any support craft then go after them one by one light corvettes
first the multiguns thenh heavies.

Capital ships Vs capital ships

Great battles are made of these, support your ships much as possible firstly
then let them choose somebody to shoot at say keep a frigate infront of your
fleet, they'll shoot at that.Now support that ship while you run the rest of
your ships beneath them to hit their ships from the sides top or bottom or
best from behind.If the ships are equal class one on one then its who shoots
first or who is most healthy I've seen a few both assault frigate dead 
battles
before though it is rare.Also if you ships are dying do not retreat ever 
unless
support is very near by as you expose your rear to the enemy and get fried
even faster than being hit from the front.

Probes Vs scouts

Not strictly a fleet engagement but a minor debate on if you ought to use
probes or scouts.

Probes:
Fast 4000m/s
Single use
Probe golf

Scouts
Fast 1500m/s with Z
can be retreieved
Can also scuttle
Can fight if needs be

You decide.....

Salvage corvettes VS strike craft

This is quite hard fighters are fast and slipery they will fight back
as salvage corvettes get close , you can either:

1 Grav well them
2 Run them out of fuel
3 trap them
4 Kami fake

1 and 2 are self explainitory
3 Is a little more difficult you just surround them in a super tight sphere
using evasive until they can't move you can also use capital ships to
fill in some of the gaps

4kami fake this needs high speed hands set K to kamikazi you salvage 
corvette
into a fighter / corvette 0.5 second before impact cancel orders and set
capture orders you might get lucky and capture the victim ship .But more
likely your salvager will just bounce off the hull of the victim ship.

Salvagers VS powerful capitalships

4 methods all of which can be mixed

1 swarms
2 support salvagers as they go in
3 distraction
4 cloak capture

1 it the ship needs 5 send in 8-9 some will die some will make it, if they
latch on to the hull they are quite safe , though you must manually move
extra salvage corvettes as only the required number in a group will grab
the ship.

2 Send in 1 more salvage corvette than needed supported by at least a repair
corvette , this does have disadvantages though as sometimes capitalships 
turn
on the support craft rather than the salvagers .Also for mutually supporting
ships need more support craft

3 Send in scouts first on evasive keep em busy while you sneak in salvagers
this won't work for cruisers and quite a few ships as the CPU has salvage
corvettes set to #1 priority.

4 Cloak salvage corvettes and move them slowly close to the enemy hull then
have all of them latch on at the last moment as it passes

Strike craft VS gravity well

Use heavy corvettes they have a gun range further than any other strike 
craft
and just outside the 5.5km area of effect.If they are not avalible send in
a capital ship if they are not avalible use salvage corvettes on them as
they are not affected.Nor are probes for probe golf.

killing drone frigates

If you use fighters or corvettes force attack the frigate itself with 
fighters
if you have corvettes target all the drone first (good with burst) and then
go for the frigate.You can kill the drones faster than they are replaced 
scouts
are good for distracting the guns. Capital ships should have no problems 
just
force attack the frigate itself and it ough to be gone rather quickly just 
keep
an eye out for its health as it isn't powerful but constant hammering can 
hurt
after a while.

Salvaging Kadeshi

This is difficult in waiting it can take a long time but if you are that 
kind
take out fuel pods everywhere (the world ship doesn't matter) and then send 
in
salvage corvettes ,Kadeshi will put up a token volley and then evade your 
salvagers
now you justhave to wait till they runb out of fuel.

9B advanced Fleet engagements

A few loose ends for fleet engagements , as in which way to attack ,sure 
fighters
can move like a jacked up street samurai (shadow run) but fighters are still
vulnerable when attacking from certain directions (go try a frontal assault
using bombers on a destroyer you'll lose quite a few from its ion cannon 
raking
and guns).You may want to note this refers to first pass only for fighters
and possibly frigates and it also considers turrets are in their standard
position when they jump into a system or when they are built.

Attacking support frigates

Kushan
Top 0 turrets
Bottom  1 turret
Sides  1 turret
front 1 turret

This isn't really needed since they pack so little firepower you can sit
a scout next to one and not be harmed (much) best to adopt best
practices for the bigger ships and this is good practice.

Taiidan

Top 2 turrets
Bottom  0 turret
Sides  1 turret
front 2 turret

Same again but on the front and top it has more coverage.

Attacking assault frigates
You ought to attack from behind if possible however if not the kushan
assault frigate you ought to attack from this order:

Top x1 turret
bottom x3 turret
sides x 2.5*
Front x 4 turrets + plasma bombs

This is because although it has 4 turrets only the top turret can fire
upwards and the side turrets are on the sloping sides and it leaves a
huge gap in its coverage in a V shape.
*depends on if you attack at a high elevation or depression in relation
to the sides

Taiidan Assault frigate

Top x2
Bottom x2
Sides x2
Front x4 + plasma bombs

This frigate it all the more equal you nearly always face two turrets
from all directions except for the rear.

Ion cannon frigate

Attack from anyside but the front as the ion cannon can rake your strike
craft easily

Destroyer

Top x2 turrets
Bottom x 0 turrets
sides x 2 turrets
Front x 2 turrets + 2 ion cannon

This is easy both taiidan and kushan destroyers have a huge coverage hole
under neath and need to turn to fire at this direction , the ion cannon
make the front a extremely dangerous place to attack from.

Heavies

Kushan

Top x5 turrets
Sides x 4 turrets (+possible 4 ion cannon)
bottom x3 turrets
front 4 ion cannon 6 turrets

Obviously you want to attack fromthe sides or the rear of course as you are
less exposed to fire , the ion cannons have be discounted from a side attack
or reduced to a possible since the ion cannons take a very long time to 
turn.

Taiidan

Top x 4 turrets
Sides x3 turrets (+possible 4 ion cannons)
Bottom x4 turrets
Front x4 ion cannon + 6 turrets

Obviously you want to attack from behind or from the sides if possible as
the least firepower can be bought to bear upon you.

Drone frigates

50% all directions
if you get close it goes to 100%

Avoiding scuttle damage as a fighter jock.

Guestimate before the enemy ship explodes most if not all players will wait
till the last second before scuttle , so make the capitalship burst into
flames then a few more runs then leave them alone (retreat) and kami some
scouts to finish it off or return some bombers after he thinks their capital
ship is safe.


**************
10-Multiplay
**************

This game is pretty old but I've seen a few online games the key is to spend
Rus effectively and if you need to research decide a path corvette paths are
good so are grav well methods.You need to adapt as humans are unlike CPU 
players
they change colours easily , if you know your opponent play a counter to him
a fighter dependant person is slaughtered by corvette walls and is weakened
badly when his forward support frigates die.A person who hyperspaces major
fleets into your MS zone use gravity well to trap and steal his fleet a 
person
who uses lots of probes or you suspect of using cloaked fighters to spy on 
you
cloak gravity wells to stop any attacks and even move out your MS around 
often.

The Achilles heel of all players is the resourcer no Rus no ships , and in 
games
that involve research the research ship also.Above all have fun and if you 
are
expert give some slack to the newbies.

Notes - drone frigates , mines and Missile destroyers can really affect game
speeds and conection reliability

The most fun games are games with infrequent resource injections medium 
starting
resources crates off bounties on small and research on.

Opening moves (if research is on)

Set resourcers to harvest then decide what path you want to take
capital ships or fighters research the path you want and build another
research ship or two.Build several groups of 5 scouts and have them
patrol 30Km away from your MS at the front and sides to intercept
any scouts orprobes to keep the enemy from seeing what you are up to.

keep a few scouts to find out where his resourcers are and harrass them
constantly with scouts.You may want to escort a few of your collectors
though scouts do a pretty bad job for it.

The rest is up to you though I suggest:

Even being a fighter jock that you research and invest in a few capital
ships as gravity wells can really spoil your day.

As capital ship master use plenty of corvettes to keep fighters at bay

Go after enemy resourcers and controllers when ever you can no Rus = no
ships (for a while)

In a research game go get his research ships they are somewhat expensive
slow to build and if they go boom they lose ability to get even if you
have superior technologies

Hide your own research ships somewhere safe.

thats it I leave you with that as it would not be fun if I told you how to 
utterly
crush your enemies each time experiment but above all have fun , and play in
moderation heh there was humor about this on the HW boards and I will
email it to anybody who asks as it doesn't make much interesting reading
on its own and really you had to be there.

Ships can be attacked AS the come out of hyperspace , though obviously
its better to trap them in grav wells and salvage them.

***************
11-Evil tactics
***************

These tactics are evil hence the section named evil tactics

#1 imagine you are in fighters Vs fighters situation after the first pass
press K then select a fighter then before your fighters crash cancel the
order and retarget for another pass , you'll smoke most of this fighters
before he realises what is going on as your fighters will 180 degree pitch
instantly and fire at his fighters all the way.Careful as smart players
will order his wing to stop and you'll both loose everything.If he has
bigger fighters than yours you will lose if he counters.It is somewhat
effective with bombers as well right after a pass.

#2 Missile destroyer supporting bombers , the MD makes a nice big target
which people will target first now have a bomber wing someplace behind
and use the bombers on capitalships you come across as they will nearly 
always
be shooting at the MD .If they use fighters to retaliate they'll be cut to
pieces by the MD missiles.

#3 Mine walls , you need 4 mine layer corvettes 2 scout wings of at least 10
and at least one support frigate , imagine he sends a large capital ship 
fleet
at you , keep them busy with a wing of scouts while force laying mines a 
good
distance away from the MS or their objective now rotate your scout wings on
the support frigate.And they will get caught in an awesome mine cross fire

#4 Mines using 2-3 attack bombers go right through a mine wall the lack
of speed of the bomber means the mines follow quite close by , when you see
a juicy capital ship of the enemy attack it, the bombers will fly right at
the capital ship mines in tow.It will pass once and veer off at the last 
second
but the mines won't veer off quickly bye bye capital ship.

#5 Sacrifice deception , send a cloaked fleet under the enemy to his MS
with a large scout wing from above circling harassing the ships above.Then 
atack
from below his ships will have turned up to attack the scouts exposing their
flanks to major damage.

#6 Bridge of sighs , assemble alarge fleet od ion cannon say 10-25 sphere 
them
around your MS then when you have the Rus hyperspace them to the enemy MS 
they
will point outwards jumping out butpoint inwards jumping in which = quick 
death
for enemy MS beware grav wells however!

#7 Using 4 cloakers assemble a fleet put it in wall then manually move the 
ships
tighter and tighter assemble 4 cloakers in sphere put a weak ship in the 
middle
where there is a gap in the field .Move turn on the cloak , move this fleet 
to
the enemy fleet who'll think its just a single ship decloak and show him he
thought wrong.

#8 Support your MS heavily and use it as a plough right through his 
expensive
capital ship fleet

#8.1 It is actually possible to ram one mother ship into another at massive
damage cost to both ships ,(usually the one with less health dies but
it is easily possible to die being the rammer rather than the rammie )
I have no real idea of how to do it properly and can only do it rather
inconsistantly, you sort of move mother ships together and have them
pass extremely close and suddenly repeatedly order a closer pass.They
will clip each other and somebody will die in this situation , though you
cannot ram exactly (middle of MS vs middle of MS) you can only clip
the edges of motherships as they are programmed to avoid each other
at all costs!.I have seen this on multiplay quite alot although I can't do 
it
others I have seen do it consistantly and its lethal although rather cheaty
.Also the taiidan mothership is considered a better battering ram than
the Kushan MS as it turns away later and you get more of the taiidan
ship impacting with the enemy MS.

#9 Play lots of probe golf - to hit something like fighters is hard , 
motherships
are easy set a trajectory to run through the enemy mothership at more than
a few screens distance so the probe can accerate to 4000m/s .If you set the
course directly on the enemy MS it will decelerate as it reaches its 
destination
but as it passes scuttle her and boom you got her , not much damage but
psycholgically harmful.

#9.1 Probe golf on fighters requires some finess if you see a group you 
suspect
of being a fighter group set a probe to travel through where you think they 
will be
so that they will pass each other and scuttle just before they pass you'll 
get scouts
and even kill scouts if they are close enough.

#10 Cloak your corvette walls (these are nigh impossible to remove if they
are moved around) 100% nullifying fighters (except for cloaked fighters)

#11 Mix expensive fighters with cheap scouts to reduce probe golf and 
kamikazi
attack damage (counter by keeping them docked danger as it keeps your fleet
slow as they need time to launch)

#12 Guestimate his resourcers , latch up 10 bombers and 4 heavies to a 
support
frigate hyperspace in take out the resourcer and hyper space back. You can 
waste
his grav walls hypering in things like resourcers.

#13 Use Ion cannon on his dust clouds it causes them to kill fighters who 
stray
near them and damages resource collectors

#14 Keep a small squad of salvage corvettes cloaked teamed up with a gravity
well use the grav well to nullfy the fighters and the salvagers to capture 
the
capital ships.

#15 If you see a power attack coming at you ie well escorted fleet of 
capital
ships and corvettes , go attack their MS to send them running home and the 
same
time attacking their ion cannon frigates in the fleet since these have the 
worst
armour and go boom quickly

#16 Sensors array can only allow you to see ship positions so be nasty fake 
some
fleets gather 9 scouts and put them in wall and manually spread them out 
some
and on sensors if you move themslowly they look like capital ships , which 
is
good to tie up their fleet assets.This is even better with defenders since 
they
move like destroyer speeds and have big gas tanks.They may not believe it 
but
its psychological warfare much like rommel Vs montgomery , rommel knew an 
attack
was coming but not where from monty faked tank formations and maybe rommel 
believed
him maybe not but it made him doubt it and have to split his forces to 
defend
from each possible side (same in space above and beyond operation round 
hammer
and in the italian campaign in the film the man who never was).Pragmantic 
players
will send scouts which can quickly be shot down , but will still somewhat 
waste
his resources in building them and tying them up for other duties.

#17 Better subtefuges - cloak a strike fleet capable of major damage dealing
add a few scouts , use other scouts in open formations moved slowly to 
emulate
sensor capital ship readings.Move at least 3 scout groups to the enemy MS
pragmatic players will send scouts in your strike fleet move your scouts out
of the cloak field and engage their scouts.This can make it appear as if it 
is
a completely fake fleet movement.You can move in your strike fleet with the
opponent unaware and possibly unprepared

#18 As in SP you can hide frigates < in resource clouds if they have no 
sensors
array

#19 raming set a course through and enemy ship (make sure yours is bigger) 
set
to aggressive then cancel their orders as they move to engage (the std for
aggressive orders) boom dead enemy ship.Best for this is carriers , and 
cruisers.

#20 hyperspace trap cloak your entire fleetleaving just your MS visible (if 
only
you could cloak it) put scouts in a open formation somewhere on your map 
this
is a subtefuge to lure them in either via hyperspace or normal drives.If 
they
hyper in you decloak and opn fire they have three choices hyper out fight or
be destroyed (as ships run they expose their rear to 160% damage so they 
can't
really run away via normal drives) if you have a bigger fleet they will lose
the fight (or if you use better tactics) if they hyperspace out they lose
Rus in hyperspace usage and or you can use a gravity well to trap and steal
them which is a double loss (hyperspace costs and ship costs).

#21 Cloaked fighters are worthless in combat but if he has a sensors array
build a few of them and put them into open wall formations to emulate 
capital
shipsmove these around the opposing MS quite a distance from it however.And
group them so you press 1 then decloak then move a little then cloak group
2 decloak move a little then cloak etc.I had this done to me once and it
really confused me where the enemy strike fleet was coming from.

#22 Build a carrier dock as many fighters as you can , build an assault 
frigate
an ion cannon frigate and anything else , pause justbefore completion and 
resume
when you arrive at the enemy MS it looks like a cheat but isn't frigates
coming out of the carrier.Launch fighters instantly as well a deadly strike
force , if you include a support frigate you have an instant strike team.

#23 Build a carrier
Send it directly towards the enemy MS building as many ion cannon frigates
or assault frigates you can in it , they won't be able to come out due to
the speed of the carrier.When the carrier arrives all the ion cannons will
come out and the victim wil think youare a cheat.But it is a perfectly legal
tactic and looks quite innocent since on sensors you see a carrier but it
is so much more....

#24 You can also do exactly as above but you pause production right before
a certain ship is complete.Then hyperspace , this is best with the taiidan
mothership or carriers as the kushan MS needs to open to door close the
door open the door.You can only build a single of each capital ship type
though , but a heavy cruiser coming out of a MS or a destroyer or 3 frigates
may spoil my day.


#25 With enough ion cannon frigates you can stop a frontal fighter assault
as the ion cannon beams form a cone which fighters HAVE to fly through
in formation you can use this to your advantage.

#26 Hyperspace times are somewhat long entry transit and exit but they
are consistant transit times , hyperspace your fleet away to only a short
distance away from your current position . Hyperspace away something
else small far away or even at the enemy MS so the enemy goes chasing
that..

#27 Hyperspace small objects behind the enemy MS they can't see what
it is without line of sight (or its massive like an MS , carrier or Cruiser)
you can have them run to intercept something small as all purple hyper
space blobs( inwards or outbound) are the same size on the sensors
managers.

#28 Even better hypersomething harmless to the rear of an enemy MS
let it die , then hyper in the rest of your fleet which may trick your 
opponent
into thinking its just a skirmish fleet.

#29 Same thing but hypersomething small behind the enemy MS so he
calls off his attack to defend his MS.

*************
12A-loose ends
*************

For multiplay you can change your name by editing the homeworld.cfg
file line 28 where it ougt to say unnamedplayer

formated ships and grouped shis move at the speed of the slowest ship in
the group

Cancel formations by putting them into formation then pressing cancel and
then movesetting to neutral

These are loose ends I couldn't really fit any place else or didn't seem to
fit anywhere else

At Tenhauser gate the cut scene the bentusi show you the ships that veer off
eventually become the Kadeshi.

From the final mission fleet command is uneeded

If you have more than 5 carriers to launch ships or build from them select
them in normal view then press L for the launch menu or B for the build menu

Pilot view
1. Go to Start->Programs->Sierra->Homeworld or wherever your Homeworld 
shortcut is
and right-click on the Homeworld shortcut.   In the Target field, add a 
space
after homeworld.exe  and type in /pilotview. You have just added a 
command-line
parameter to HW,

	C:\Sierra\Homeworld\homeworld.exe /pilotview
You can use other switches as well , press W to activate in game when you 
are
focused on one single ship , its not perfect but works , you can also pilot
view enemy ships as well while they are being fried.

Screen shot with scroll lock images are saved in the HW DIR

Mines can also be targeted by MDs you need to force attack them however

Scuttle causes the blast radii to increase from the ship 5 times its size
damaging everything heavily in this radii , being blown up does negligible
damage to ships around that deadship.

Hyperram (hyperspace into enemy MS) does 400% damage to self and only 40%
of ship hit points this was to prevent people hypering MS into your MS
to force a draw.

Your smaller ships can easily by hyper rammed when fleets jump in keep
your salvagers a sensible distance away or you will lose them.

When you have zero Rus in multiplay with no resourcers and few ships
your Ru count will increase slowly up to a maximum of 500 Ru.I suppose
this is to give you some sortof chance but 500Ru doesn't buy much and
the fleet you can buy with it (14 scouts or 9 interceptors , one
assault frigate , one support frigate or 5 bombers)

maximum Rus is 65000 you won't ever mine that many in a SP game (well
maybe if you had max resourcers and consumed everything in diamond shoals
which is unlikely as its wide and each rock needs to be shot at to let
them be harvested) You can get this number of Rus via ship retirement
lets say 300 Rus for a frigate of any kind you can capture well over 250
of them in game which gives over 75000 Ru which you can't have and
most likely can't spend due to built fleet restrictions.

Armour multipliers for capitalships

Sometime in mission 5 fleet intel tells you about capital ship armour
being thinner on top bottom and sides.What he doesn't tell you is how
much by and about the rear into the engines here are multipliers I
recall from somewhere or other:

front   90%  damage from all weapons*
Side    130% damage from all weapons*
Bottom  130% damage from all weapons*
Top     130% damage from all weapons*
Rear    160% damage from all weapons*

*not 100% of its armour as that would be some what silly a scout kills a
cruiser in a single pass would not happen (unless those HW2 idea labs
boys introduce vulnerable bridge areas on capital ships which nobody seemed
to think that 100000-1 things like these could happen if it was to be
introduced)but say if a weapon does 10 damage a hit from the front
reduces its damage to 9 the sides would increase damage done by that shot
to 13 damage points a rear aspect shot would do 16 damage points etc.

Also the MS is not affected by these values it takes the same from above
or below front or rear.

So as you can see the rear is more effective to attack getting to it
though isn't that easy as ships don't just sit there they will turn
and bank to engage you.

The turanic raiders seem to make a similar sound to the sound of imperial
probes in star wars the empire strikes back.

Homeworld ships are capital ships ie self sustaining mini cities attached
to fighting ships and therefore fully autominous and needing no outside
support.HWC ships are not true capital ships as they need support points
for each ship which is rather strange alright fighter pilots need fuel
and food but capital ships ough to have it onboard.

The ship at the end (council) was actually supposed to be a ship that 
harrassed
you all the way from Kharak to Hiigara (ie jumping in damaging you heavily 
then
jumping out again) .The originaldesignwas supposed to resemble a star shape
with 6 arms slightly twisted and swirling , though this idea was rejected
due to clipping of the arms and ships trying to go through them.

Kadeshi have blue ion cannon beams
Turanics have blue beams
Kushan are different and have red
Bentusi are also different and have white

To break groups select a single ship and assign it the group number of the
group you want to cancel.Then reselect the ships you wanted and reassign
that group back to the new number , this avoids ships being in two groups
which can be useful sometimes especially for mixing in fighters and pulling
pinchers on various ships.

To prevent missile destroyers attacking asteroids which contain RUs set them
to evasive or cancel their orders then set to evasive.

Super scouts / dancing scouts were scouts that were obsessively micro
managed so that you altered orders retargetted and repeat rapidly so
scouts would dance on their tails firing constantly and not completing
any attack runs.They were impossible to defeat even with corvette walls
with anything except perhaps probe golf scuttles and space plow capital
ships.if you want to try it on V1 of the game do this:

target an enemy ship , then press F2 then press Z then press F2 then
retarget  press  F2 then Z repeat until fuel runs out cheaty but legal
tactic until v1.05 came about.Still heavies could still eat them alive
especially when you used masses of burst you could also easily kami
them or probe golf them or just use a cruiser to go right through them
and players who did this often tied themselves up so production research
and possitions were poorer even though their scout losses were near
zero..So it never really bothered me all that much.

being trapped in hyperspace isn't what it sounds like when a gravity well
friendly or otherwise is active when a ship jumps out or jumps in to its 
area
of effect the hyperspace gate stays open and the ship gets trapped and
100% vulnerable (it cannot move it cannot shoot it can't even scuttle)

in single player divide your corvettes between carriers the MS equally
as it allows you to launch them all quickly as the MS and carriers are
limited to 2 fighters and 2 corvettes at a time.

To force ships to dock at one support ship select the ships and double
click , support frigates will only accept queues of 20 ships if you press
D and your fighters and corvettes will move elsewhere for fuel breaking
your formations and wings apart!

Repair corvettes are painful to dock with the mouse sometimes they do
with double clicks on MS or carriers , but often they do not as they think
of it as a support order.Just move support frigates some distance away
and press D instead.

Sometimes capital ship engines are active for no reason at all (like in
military parade formation or right after a hyperspace jump) you can cancel
this effect by pressing cancel orders.

kami your own ships is done in this manner:
press K
hold crtl+alt then click on your own ship
Though sometimes your pilots may ask for confirmation which you need
to redo the entire sequence

Even though the game is played out with mobiles you can actually trap
enemy ships against the corners of the map esp in multiplay.

You can also target ships outside the map just band box them repeatedly
when fighters try to turn back.You can't target ships miles outside the map
though however , there is an example of the two sensors arrays at hiigara
they are supposed to be invulnerable by virtue of being off the map but
bombers will go after them if you repeatedly order them to do so.


Kushan are the exiles even though there are taiidan ships at the start of
the manual (the taiidan scout) as found out in HWC , though then again
it could go in vicous circles.Kushan win then they force the taiidan into
exile then they come back and force the Kushan into exile etc. It was a
idea to make the first war in which the Kushan were exiled to karak in
HW2 but I do not know how far this went.Though seeing what is in karos
from past wars there ought to be some insane hardware (imagine what the
ship in the background would be like to have pieces that large).



*************
13-Known MODS
*************

There are several mods that I know of:

Turanic mod

Which allows you to play as the turanics in multiplay (they replace the
taiidan on the fleet selection menu)

Turanic carrier mod

This mod allows you to capture the turanic raiders lord attack carrier
however you cannot build and if you dock strike craft with them the
game crashes

Kadeshi world mod

This mod also replaces the Taiidan fleet selection on the multiplay menu
but it allows you to play as the Kadeshi fleet using swarmers.
The cruisers you see at Karos are kadeshi cruisers
x4 rapid fire plasma bomb launchers
x4 super ion cannons
x2 of these red (not red ion cannon) beams that are lethal
anti fighter defence cannons
100% coverage
And more
, the carriers are also kadeshi carriers and the fuel pods have enhanced 
attack
ability , and multibeam frigates are also avalible to construct .Limited 
ship
types (they are on the build menu but you can't build them) but each ship
is much more powerful , fuel limitations aside.You can also use the 
resourcers
to harvest ships which does very little damage but if you keep it up long 
enough
they vanish.

If you want any of these mods email me and I'll go dig out the CDRs which 
they
are copied onto.Or look for them on the web I answer my email infrequently
these days.

************
13-contact details
************
I can be contacted on fallonken@hotmail.com most of the time .


************
14-Credits
************

Myself obviously and my memory and many days in university contributing to
the forums at relic.
Sunny Delight - a good friend who let me testmost of these nasty tactics
on him and for proof reading the guide
IA - for Being such a good target drone on this and other games
Other Forum members who invented far nastier tricks than in this guide
Other forum members who fried my butt so many times
All forum members you know who you are
Relic for HW
negative thanks for HWC as support units were crap and made for tiny
fleets and tiny fleet enagements theres nothing quite like seeing 100's
of frigates battle it out
BPcannel for providing the missile corvette count.

**********
15-sites with permission to publish this document
**********

www.CheatCC.com
www.neoseeker.com
www.dlh.net
http://www.gamers-realm.com

**********
16 Final thoughts
**********

Thats it until homeworld 2 which may come somewhat soon in relation to the
authoring of this guide .HWC guide may come soon....


This document belongs to fallonken@hotmail.com any reproduction on the web
in games magazines or in any cover mounted or otherwise CDROMs is strictly
forbbiden.