/vr/ - Retro Games

>>5140485
Ok Cataclysm tips.

First off the new difficulty level feature.
Very easy and easy are pathetic with severe buffs/debuffs to your ships/enemy ships and reduced numbers of enemy ships. Don't play on these.
Hard and very hard are simple -15% and -30% HP on your ships respectively. You will have more attrition of your units here. Choose these for later playthroughs as the default is already harder than HW1.

Cataclysm AI and mission design is much improved. Enemy fleets will keep on sending waves at you and the missions are longer with more objectives and fewer resting moments than the first game. The enemy will actually build new ships to kill you with so it really pays to scout out their harvesting operations and destroy them.

Formations and tactics work the same as HW1 so what worked for you there will be useful here as well.
Don't retire your starting 3 scouts. You need them to explore the map which now has fog of war. Put them in sphere formation to maximize their increased view distance.
Don't build any resource processors, they are slow, not very good attackers, and are too large to retire.
Resources are so plentiful you will have all you will ever need by halfway through the game and time compression means your initial two workers will be enough.
There is no reason not to have maximum size fleets (enemy fleet scaling is gone; replaced by difficulty select).
Build Acolytes until you run out of command points. As you lose some of them you can then build newer, larger ships but Acolytes can clear the first half of the game by themselves.
Your mothership can move now and has very good guns. Always lure enemy ships to her so she can help kill them.
ACVs are better against fighters and vettes because they have more armor (less attrition).
Acolytes are better against capital ships because missiles.

Multibeam frigs are for killing fighters and vettes.
Drone frigs are for killing capital ships.
Ramming frigates kinda suck desu.

Destroyers are super.