Two Fleets? Or Tier Three Ships?

[Realityfelon]

Hello fellow Starbase Commanders.

The other day I started a new playthrough of H6 intending to try and finish it. It wasn't Sept 9th but I had early access so I figured what the hooha? Then the Chimera arrived and stomped me flat. I was thinking though that it was my own fault:

See I recruited and rescued three more officers and had two fleets of tier 2 ships flying around doing stuff. If I hadn't built that second fleet, I might have had the resources to have more than one tier three ship when the Chimera came calling. So what do you think? Do you prefer MORE ships? Or ships that are better?

[MongooseCalledFred]

I beat the game twice in early access: the second time I had a full fleet of T3 ships (they had no problem), and my secondary officers were running around in the hand-me-down T2's. The first time, I had two sets of T2 fleets, which somehow managed to knock off the Chruul support fleets using a Tac-Eng1-Eng2 combo. I then proceeded to lose both T2 fleets, one T1 fleet, and one or two fleets of shuttles in my successful attempt to beat the Chimera.

Moral: if you choose T2 fleets, research all the upgrades on the ships that you are using.

[lod]

In early access, I typically flew 2 fleets. One to gather resources and aid as backup and one one to fly missions.

In the full game, I run 3 full fleets, and was able to bring all 3 to tier 5, but it takes a lot of resource management and active management of the officers to assure that they are all working.

[Scuttlefish]

Always prioritize quality over quantity. If your A fleet doesn't have the best ships possible, don't do anything else until you get them there.

-This post paid for by the Starship Builders' Union-

[ComTrav]

Yeah, in my first game I built a bunch of tier 2 ships and things went badly for me, now I prioritize ugprading faster and have a second fleet with "last gen" ships. If you have an officer with the requisite level, upgrading a tier always seems to be a good choice.

...it does seem like a long way from tier 4 to tier 5, though.

[lod]

Upgrading is always recommended, but try and keep two fleets at equal level. Even if you need to use the officer's lounge to do it. That way your highest level fleet can be backed up by a fleet no more than 1 tier below it. The cast off ships from upgrading can go to the secondary fleet. It is of little benefit to have more than a 1 tier span in ship class, as the enemies scale to +1/-1 of your highest available tier. And once they start coming on hard, your older fleets are toast.

[Absher]

Is keeping both fleets at about the same level still the best strat? I haven't had much success with it so I'm curious.

[MongooseCalledFred]

I haven't used it recently, so I don't know. Here's a 1-day link to the Discord server where the experts (who probably do know) are: https://discord.gg/DHHEJj