Allegiance Command Notes

[dawn bobcat]

So I'm going to put some public drafts of some stuff I'm going to put together for aspiring commanders. Some of it will be textual, but most of this will be done with videos which are to come. Still, I'm going to try to have a text-based overview for people who prefer reading like myself. Here's the general outline:

Allegiance Command Outline:

1- Techpath descriptors
a- exp, sup, tac, GARR TECH!, Shipyard
i- What does this tech want to do?
ii- What is this tech's win condition?
iii- what is this tech's weakness?
iv - available tech overview

(Also list out what the technologies do)

2- Using the map
a- how to count helium
i- update the money spreadhseet for AC08
b- base placement in the sector

3- Commanding from the Field
This one will mostly be videos
a- juggling cons planting in 2 sectors
b- managing miners from f6
c- f5 principles

4- The Factions
a- belts/bios/giga/IC/rix
i- what is this faction trying to do?
ii- what are they supposed to do against the others?
iii- what are others trying to do to them?
iv- how good are their relative techpaths?

Also, please note that I'm not looking for feedback on the content. Frankly if I want your opinion on commanding you will know because I will have asked. This isn't to say that I don't love you, but it is to say that you haven't put as much thought into it as the person who's written 6k words on the subject multiple times. Typo and error corrections are welcome.

Expansion:

i- What does this tech want to do?

Expansion's purpose in life is to sit on helium with interceptors. The gameplan is to mine your way to heavy interceptors, and then use those defend op con pushes to secure all of the helium on the map. To do this Expansion often wants to have enh cons and quickly get mini2 interceptors, because it's very difficult to kill things defended by mini2 interceptors. In fact, expansion is fairly defensive on the whole: while it is true they have a ferocious ship in the interceptor that can be used in miner offense, even in miner offense the general goal of the interceptor is to show up and eliminate all opposition before finishing off the miner. In this sense, the int is a very defensive ship: its job is to defend a small portion of space and ensure no enemy ships are in it. This point in space can move, for example, interceptors are often asked to clear a 1000m radius bubble around an HTT. Or it can be stationary: the 500m deep cylindar around the entrance of an aleph.

ii- What is this tech's weakness?

Expansion weapons are a little weaker against utility drones. In principle this means it takes interceptors a little bit longer to kill miners, cons, and carriers. Interceptors also have a limited range: their inability to ripcord means they have to reserve enough fuel to get home. Mini1 interceptors are very likely to let enemy miners live all game, though for the most part this isn't too big of a deal because very little beats a mini3 hvy int in combat.

iii- What is this tech's win condition?

Typically expansion wants to push an outpost to the enemy techbase and capture it using heavy troop transports. This is usually accomplished by an overwhelming escort of mini3 hvy interceptors who can usually just gun down any opposition. It can get a little tricky if your opponent also goes for heavy interceptors because mini3 is a very powerful weapon, and these games usually devolve into small scale DMs that are eventually won by the team with the better int whores. When facing off in this sort of fight, it is usually preferable to go for bombers than HTTs, as HTTs will always need to dock at the green door but bombers just need to be able to put missiles into the base faster than the base can heal. For long range missions; however, always use HTTs: if you cap the base you can immediately defend if your opponent counters, plus if you select your targets right trading your adv techs leaves your team with an adv techbase that can be defended by the remaining heavy interceptors until new ships are online.

iv Available Technologies:

Ship - Interceptors, Hvy Interceptors
Interceptors mount minigun which is good vs lt hull and ok vs shields and medium hull. It is bad against utility hull, meaning you will want teamwork to kill enemy miners.

Troop Transports, Heavy Troop Transports
Troop Transports are fairly useless but you must get them to get hvy troop transports. Both will capture any unshielded base that they dock with, but only HTT carries weapons that will lower the enemy shields. They are also lowish signature so you can either cram them in with hvy int escort or sneak around for a surprise attack.

guns - Minigun 2/3
Minigun 2/3 is a very powerful weapon. In most matchups you will want to get this as soon as possible, while against other expansion teams it can be valuable to avoid purchasing it to see if you can get it off your opponent. As a caveat, if your opponent gets to mini3 hvy ints, you must at least have mini2 in order to remain competitive, but you might not need to fully upgrade to mini3 as long as you have hvy ints and damage 2.

EMP Cannon
EMP Cannon is actually useless. Against shipyard, the capital ship must be stopped by prox 2/3 which will largely eat the vessel's shields, rendering EMP ineffective at its sole job because it is redundant. TT/EMP runs are little more than a pipe dream, and in general you're better off doing anything else.

Other weapons-
Prox 2/3
Prox 2/3 is probably the most powerful and gamechanging weapon in the game. It is virtually impossible to get through an aleph that has prox2 on it as long as there is additional defense, and with a little KB it's possible that the acceleration from the aleph is enough to give you the speed that will kill you in a prox 3 cloud.

SRM EMP Missile
Need this for HTTs. So buy it if you're going HTTs.

Other tech-
Pulse Probe 1/2
PP1/2 is good for making the scout's primary role redundant. By allowing interceptors to have a very brief, 3k scan view of the sector, it allows them to locate objectives and clear them out. It also makes it difficult for the opponent to have good probe coverage. In general, this is a very useful tech to have in the late game when you really don't want people flying scouts in the enemy sectors, but still want some miner offense capability.

GAs:

HE Speed
HE Speed is fairly strong at keeping your miners alive. Very strong tech when you must defend miners against tac.

He Yield
HE Yield is positive money as long as you are going to mine at least $20000/$25000 more helium. Which you probably are, or at least hope to, over the course of the game.

Station Defense
Station Defense is really strong in specific circumstances. It adds +15% time to kill for non-missile-based base killers. Unfortunately against the SRM AB line it's largely ineffective: it takes a techbase kill from 6 missiles to 6 missiles because of the chunk damage dealt by those missiles. Still, not a bad idea to buy it against galvs... though keep in mind not even this will save your giga bases.

Accel
Accel is good for improving the DM capability of your interceptors and making cons plant more quickly. It's usually a good buy.

Ship Sig
Ship Sig is great when you're planning to do some sneaky work. It's excellent paired with adv miners and stealth HTT runs, and very strong paired with adv scouts. Please note this also works for probes, making probes harder for your opponent to detect.

PW Damage
Buy PW Damage. This is what you're doing, having the most powerful guns in the game.

PW Range
Buy PW Range for the same reasons above. Note that this tech makes the PW bullets faster which also serves to make them more accurate. This is because it takes less time for them to travel over a certain distance making it harder for the enemy ships to dodge using sidethrusters.

Supremacy:

i- What does this tech want to do?

Sup is interested in killing enemy miners as a delay tactic for its technologies to come online. Individual adv figs with all of the technology are very dangerous tools in the right hands and can be very powerful as both anti-miner ships and miner defense ships. Furthermore, the ability to mount galvonic blasters means that even your fighters act as threats to enemy bases. The goal of Sup is to have supremacy over the map: they want to prevent their opponent from being on the map at all by galving the small bases. It wants to get there by using enhanced fighters to harass and kill miners: 2 enh miners are about as deadly as 1 SF against a miner.

ii- What is this tech's win condition?

Sup usually wins with fighter bombers, which are essentially galv runs that are easier, more expensive, and wielded against techbases. Another option for sup which is frequently undervalued is AC3 heavy bombers. Combined with nan upgrades and AB3, a hvy bomber or two can deal some serious damage against incoming defenders, and the one-sided res allows for plays against enemy camped alephs. Of particular note, sup is interesting because TP2 allows it to extend its range to anywhere a scout can fly to, which makes sup a naturual techpath to mix with adv/hvy scouts.

iii- what is this tech's weakness?

The main weakness of sup is that it is very difficult to deal with mini3 hvy interceptors. Also, fighters tend to have large, bulky hulls which make it fairly easy for stealthfigthers to shoot them with sniper at range. In general, fighters do not want to face off against enemy advanced tech in combat, preferring instead to try to mass large runs against objectives.

Sup Tech Overview:

Ships:
Enh/Adv Fighter
Enh fighters add a 3rd gun and some hull, while adv fighters add an extra missile and some more hull. A key thing to note about fighters is that at every tier their shields contribute about half their tankiness, thanks to an advantageous armor type. With gat2/3 they are fairly effective at killing enemy miners comparted to interceptors, and with galvs can kill enemy minor bases.

Fighter-bomber
Fighter-bombers are one-missile ships that can get up to 120mps in short bursts with cruise booster.

Guns:
Gat2/3
Gat2/3 are important upgrades for sup. Gat2 will make it so that your enh fighters do not need to reload against enemy miners, which is key in terms of killing them quickly. Gat3 has a little bit of increased range which makes it a very formidable weapon against Exp provided your pilots know how to keep ints at range.

Dis2/3
Dis2/3 are primarily used against shipyard, though you will usually only mount 1 or 2 of them because galvs are so much more effective.

Galvonic Blaster
Galvonic Blaster is a prerequisite for figbees and also can kill minor bases, and is also a house against shipyard. Galv is the main reason to upgrade your sup.

AC2/3

AC2/3 are significant damage upgrades over AC1. If your plan involves using turret guns (not necessarily the best option but also not the worst) then definitely buy these.

Missiles:
Quickfire 2/3
Quickfire 2/3 is the short range combat missile that you will likely use against interceptors. Fully upgraded and with proper use, they tilt the DPS field to the point where it's essentially a question of how many missiles the countermeasures snag. If the CMs get half the rack, the hvy int is winning the fight.

Dumbfire 2/3
DF 2/3 is mostly effective against miners, cons, capital ships, and bombers/HTTs. Sometimes you can land them against unserious interceptor pilots and it's hilarious, but for the most part this is when your opponent isn't going to dodge and you need to get as much damage on them as fast as possible.

SRM AB 2/3
SRM AB2 adds damage to the AB missiles, while SRM AB3 reduces the reload (BUT NOT THE ARMING!) time.

XRM AB 2/3
XRM AB 2/3 are very long range, very low damage anti-base missiles. They're useful when you can get a very strong mass going and can only be mounted on figbees and heavy bombers.

Other tech:

Small Shield 2/3
SS 2/3 is a must-buy, without it your figs will be way too soft to compete with the enemy interceptors or SFs. Honestly even with it your figs will usually end up being pretty soft, but still.

Booster 2/3
Boost 2/3 increases the fuel efficiency of the booster line and does not make you faster, so it's not super important if you're playing with carriers or good teleport placement.

Minepack 1/2
Mp 1/2 is a key tool in the fighter's arsenal. With proper technique it make the distance the enemy interceptor has to travel to close to minigun range significantly longer, allowing a fighter to keep the enemy interceptor at range long enough for the fighter to have a chance at winning the fight. Particularly it is advantageous for people who know how to hit targets that are moving sideways and against people who don't know how to hit targets they are moving sidways against.

Heavy Booster
Hvy Booster makes fighters able to accelerate like interceptors for a very brief amount of time. It's an excellent escape tool though not great at traveling distances, use it to either buy time to rip or to shake up an interceptor so you can spin back and hit them while they're trying to close back in on you.

Cruise Booster
Cruise Booster is a significant upgrade over lt booster for fb runs. While fb can be successful with lt boost, they are much better with cruise booster.

EWS Probe 2/3
EWS 2 is slightly quieter (lower sig), slighter more scan range, and is a pretty solid buy. EWS 3 is still quiter, still more scan range, and also has half the cargo space so you can carry twice as many. EWS 3 is game changing, EWS 2 is just nice to have.

Teleport Probe 2
TP2 activates much more quickly than TP1. The same caveats apply: it will be seen by basically anything (EWS1 sees it as long as it's within 5000m, bases, scouts, cons, and miners within 24000m), so you must use misdirection or hide behind rocks in order to make it work. A very good upgrade for TP1.

GAs:
Ship Hull
Ship Hull makes your ships a little tougher, but only the hull section

Ship Shield
Ship Shield makes your ships a little tougher, but only the shield section. It's a good idea to buy these

Ship Sensors
Ship Sensors will make everything see things just a little bit easier. It's very good with EWS probe, makes your bases see things a little further, and makes adv scouts much more likely to track down SFs. A very good buy.

Missile Damage
Missile Damage makes your missiles a little stronger, though the same caveat with Exp's station hull comes in: it's not super useful for the SRM AB missile line because it usually takes more than N missiles but less than N+1 missiles to destroy a base. You should still get it when you can but just keep that in mind.

Ripcord
Ripcord GA is the most important GA in sup. Aside from killing small bases, the other thing that fighters can do that other ships can't do is use their ripcord to get out of danger and/or react to threats. Having a 10% discount (21% after tier 2) on that time will save a lot of pod rides and bases and miners.

Tactical Laboratory:

i- What does this tech want to do?

Tac is all about presenting deadly long-range threats to objectives. A util 2 SF will kill an undefended miner before the commander can blink. A sniper2, hunter3 adv sf sitting in an enemy's sector can eye any bomb run that comes forward and pick off 2-3 nans before the bomb run even gets together. Tac is by far the most aggressive of the techpaths, requiring pilots to spend most of their time flying around enemy sectors looking for targets of opportunity to pick off.

ii- What is this tech's win condition?

Tac wants to kill all of the enemy's miners and then blow up bases with stealth bombers.

iii- what is this tech's weakness?

Tac usually cannot survive if interceptors get into their sectors. This can be the result of a con push, or while the ints are defending a bomber, but Tac must stop all enemy threats before those threats are in the same sector as the target.

iv- Tech Overview

Ships

Stealth Fighters/Advanced Stealth Fighters
SFs/Adv SFs can mount cloak which lets them slip around undetected. They're also VERY squishy and not super maneuverable so it's important to fly them at range. They have reasonably good scan range as well so it's often preferable to use these to find enemy miners/bomb runs etc. rather than scouts if they're available. The upgrade to adv sf increases energy and lets the vessel carry an additional missile, as well as scan and hull bonuses.

Stealth Bombers
SBs are 1.0 sig ships that can use the sig claok to slip into enemy sectors. Usually you'll want 3 of them for a techbase and 4 for an advanced techbase, lined up on opposite sides of the base, working together.

Guns

EW Sniper 1/2
EW Sniper 1/2 is your primary combat gun for tac. SFs need it in order to be able to pod anything that's not a miner. This gun has pretty good range and should be used as close to its maximum range as possible, though most pilots will simply close like they're flying an int and die. Sniper2 has increased range and damage.

EW Util 2/3
EW Util 2/3 are energy efficiency upgrades over Util 1. Util2 is very important for SFs because it's not possible to kill a miner with 1 energy "rack"'s worth of Util 1, even with your hunter missiles and energy GA. With Util 2, you no longer run out of energy on your attack run, meaning solo SFs are now a serious threat to undefended miners. Util3 usually comes too late to be particularly useful.

Missiles

Hunter 2/3
Hunter 2/3 are the primary combat missiles for SFs. They outrange the AC guns that bombers are carrying and with some coordination can be used to take out scouts even through xnanning. Hunter3 in particular deals a lot of damage.

Killer 1/2
Killer 1/2 are mostly used against capitol ships, though they are very good against miners. Fire a rack of those killers on your route to a miner and it'll lose its shields if even 1 huts, allowing your util to easily run over the remaining hull. They're also very good against giga light bases, and if you can manage it, you can sometimes spike bomb runs as they enter through an aleph, particularly if there's EMP mines or prox mines.

SRM Nerve Gas
SRM Nerve Gas is a meme tech: the range is about 100m and requires the shields to be down, and can only be mounted on special SBs. If anyone suggests this they're trying to troll your opponent.

Other tech:

Sig Cloak 2/3
Sig Cloak 2/3 each upgrade the power of the sig cloak effect and are more energy efficient, leading to longer cloak times.

EMP Mine
EMP Mine will always eat the enemy's shields and deploys in a HUGE area of space. Not a bad defensive option if you can get people to fly through it, but in general if a bomber gets into the sector with the base tac is defending, that base is dead, so camping alephs with it is not a great idea. It's not really worth buying.

SC Drone
SC Drones are a little memey in that they're very good at shooting down enemy AB missiles, and have enough range + aoe damage to actually impact enemy ships. If you wanna troll someone go for it, but otherwise you're better off skipping it.

GAs

Agility GA
Agility GA modifies the turn rates of your ships. It's actually better when splashed for ints and figs, but even then it's not particularly powerful.

Energy Range GA
Energy Range GA is very important for your snipers, with EW Range 2 your Sniper2 will outrange unmodified AC, which is very important. Note about EW Range: this affects the lifetime of the particle rather than the speed, so UNLIKE PW this has no impact on accuracy.

Energy GA
Energy GA is good for letting your sbs/sfs cloak longer, which can be the difference between living and dying. Still, it's not the most important GA on the list.

Ship Speed GA
Ship Speed GA is the most powerful GA, always buy this.

Missile Track GA
Missile Track GA helps your hunt2/3 aim more effectively. It's not a terrible buy but it's also not super important if you don't buy it.

Garrison:

i- What does this tech want to do?

Garr tech is largely used to control the proliferation of small bases. Bombers can clear ops and TPs fairly easily, while adv scouts and enh cons can help you build more of your small bases. Gunships provide the ability to control a single sector against basic tech and are a dangerous threat to be dealt with against adv tech. Normally you will not want to stick with garr tech too long, but rather use it to make sure you survive to your advanced tech.

ii- What is this tech's win condition?

This tech's win condition is usually by exploiting an enemy command mistake. Did all of the miners end up in a sector next to one of our teleports? Then gunships will mop up 2-4 miners. Did their techbase end up too close? We can bomb it with nan2. Garr tech is easily overwhelmed by adv tech from any other techpath; however, so it must be viewed as something you're using for a short period of time.

iii- what is this tech's weakness?

This tech usually does not beat advanced tech. There are some exceptional circumstances in which garr tech can be used against advanced tech but these all require other technologies outside of garrison to be researched. Do not rely on gunships to keep you alive in the late game, or for heavy bombers to kill enemy techbases... at least not without dipping into other tech.

Ships:

Adv/Hvy Scouts
Adv Scouts lower the sig, increase the sensor range, increase the speed, and increase the hull of scouts while also letting them carry an extra missile. A very powerful upgrade that's usually worth getting at least at some point during the game. Heavy scouts do not increase the scan, but double the number of deployables, add an extra missile, can mount the powerful quickloading missile varients, carry a mini AC turret, and have a little more hull. These are a very powerful late game addition to most techpaths.

Bombers/Hvy Bbrs
Bbrs can carry 4 SRM AB missiles which usually means as long as you can get in range of minor bases you will blow them up. Hvy bombers can carry skycap (almost always worse than AC), aleph res (very important for late game bombing), and XRM. Bombers can also carry SRM Seismic.

Gunships
GS relay lead indicators, carry large numbers of seekers, and have 2 gun slots. GS are particularly good against fighters and stealth fighters because they use Skycap 1, which is a weak gun (about 66% the damage of AC1), but thanks to having AOE damage is useful at max range. They also have a front-facing miniAC, the combination of which makes them very effective against enemy bomb runs: they can use the mini AC to force the scouts to nan the bomber while their skycap gunners pick off the scouts. GS without lt boost are terrible. GS are tricky to use and most pilots are going to do the "boost towards whatever thing they think is important" strategy with them, so most pilots should not be trusted with gunships. Gunships are better with 1 gun and 1 nan than 2 guns, though add the second gun before adding the second nan. GSrequire significant strategic understanding of the game to pilot effectively as well: they're not very fast so you have to think ahead to get them to places where they'll be effective. GSare generally on par with enh tech if flown perfectly while also being more difficult to position.

Enh/Adv Miners
Enh/Adv Miners each add speed to the miner and lower the miner's sig, while also making the miners tougher. These are very good buys if your plan is to defend miners.

Enh/Adv Constructors
Enh/Adv constructors, much like miners, add speed and hull while lowering sig. This makes these essential technologies for pushing cons. It's worth noting that if your cons travel at least 2 sectors, enh cons will make the time to line up at least 30 seconds shorter, so if you have 2 minute research times it is perfectly viable to delay the con launch to get enh cons on your first wave of cons. Also of note, adv large constructors (Palisades, Researches, Tech Cons) will relay lead indicators. That combined with their relative beef makes them good choices to send through alephs before your runs begin, which will absorb the mines, distract the enemy campers, and make your own combat ships more effective

Enh Carrier Drone (SY on)
Enh Carrier Drones make carrier drones significantly tougher, faster, and have more energy and energy regen. If this is available and you are going carriers, it is a good idea to get this. It's usually a good idea to get this before your first carrier, even though you will likely lose out on tempo overall because of how expensive the technology is.

Guns:
EW Nan2/Nan3
EW Nan2 and Nan3 have faster projectiles and heal a lot more than Nan1. Buy Nan2 when you are HTTing or bombing and you greatly increase your chances of success. Nan3 is worth upgrading the garrison for if you are on the nan train plan.

Missiles:
MRM Seeker 2/3
Each level of seeker increases seeker range, countermeasure resistance, and tracking. Seeker 2 in particular is a very powerful weapon early in the game, as it allows teamwork to overcome some tech disadvantage. As an example: seeker2 giga patrollers are competitive against rix enh gat2 figs.

SRM Seismic
Seismic is much more efficient than other AB missiles at blowing up asteroids. You can use this to deny enemy tech rocks.

Other Tech:

Lt Booster 1/2
Lt Booster is a vital tech if you are going gunships, and surprisingly good on interceptors and fighters as well. Basically, light booster will allow your enh fighters to travel through sectors at about 220mps, which is faster than a scout, which will get them through empty sectors to where miners are much faster and more efficiently than booster 1/2/3. Usually you'll want to carry the real booster for combat and swap out the ammo for the booster.

Countermeasure 2/3
Countermeasure 2/3 are better countermeasures, but not by a whole bunch. Good to buy but not the game changer your pilots will say they are. Of note, counter3 requires an adv exp or an adv sup.

Teleport Probe 1
TP 1 is a very slow-charging teleport probe that isn't particularly effective unless it's uneyed, and with a very high scan range it will likely be eyed if there are any 2 sensor sources (say, a techbase and a teleport, or any 5 probes reasonably distributed across the sector, or a miner and a base) in the sector. Uneyed TP probes require a specific knowledge and skillset so don't just trust anyone with these... and TP 1 in particular MUST be uneyed, while TP2 (in sup) has some leeway.

Heavy Cloak 1/2
HC 1/2 are very powerful, short term cloaks. These are exceptionally powerful when paired with stealth bombers, with the best SB pilots being able to use these to kill enemy techbases uneyed.

Med Shield 2/3
Med Shield is used by cons, miners, bombers, and HTTs. This upgrade is pretty powerful but not worth it unless you're using shield-up bomb/htt runs. If you are, then buy it.

Core Version
Most cores will have a tech that declares the version of the core in garrison. It's just so you know what core you're playing on.

Shipyard

i- What does this tech want to do?

Shipyard mostly works by sitting on miners until it can get an assault ship onto the enemy techbases. Shipyard presents major threats that require the enemy team to coordinate pilots to stop.

ii- What is this tech's win condition?

This tech's win condition is exclusively by getting cruisers onto the enemy techbase without them having to walk through a camp. This generally requires careful assault ship play, multi-directional runs, and careful organization of multiple large ships, and usually can't be done. Generally it is more effective to pair shipyard with sup: even ac3 bombers with nan2 are very effective if your opponent is kitted out to stop an assault ship, while skycap 3 hvy bombers with nan3 will roll even the strongest opposition if flown correctly (read: conservatively... distance is your friend)

iii- what is this tech's weakness?

This tech is expensive and flimsy. Coordinated efforts by enh tech Tac or Sup teams and adv tech Exp teams will always result in this faction losing numbers-equal engagements. 3 dis2 df2 figs beat 1 skycap2 corvette... 3 galvs embarrass the corvette. Furthermore, the vessels require a very high degree of strategic and tactical knowledge to fly properly. When you let that voob take a corvette you are sending 3 of your pilots on a suicide mission of the voob doesn't know where to place themselves in the sector. On top of that, it'll cost you about a third of a miner load when the corvette pops.

iv- Available Tech Overview

Ships: Before I begin, I must note that capitol class ships are expensive to pilot and require even more strategic vision than gunships. Be very choosy about who flies these... most pilots don't know what they're doing with them, what's dangerous, what's not, and how to mitigate that danger. Flying capships is an art form that very few have. Also, ALL CAPSHIPS ARE SQUISHY. Dis and killer are particularly effective at killing capships, being effectively hard counters.

A note on nans: for capitol class vessels your pilots are usually better off flying a supplemental combat ship than trying to nan the carrier. Nan is not effective against large hull and loses the damage race against even minigun, let alone disruptors.

Lt Class:

Corvettes:
Corvettes are speedy and can drop prox. They have 2 turrets and 2 front-facing AC guns, making them powerful spiking machines against bombers. This is your bread-and-butter ship, you will likely want 2 of them: 1 for miner offense, 1 for miner defense.

Attack Carrier:
Attack Carriers are ok if you're going sup before you get the shipyard, but truth be told they're too slow to effectively chase miners. They make a decent miner defense ship because they will allow scouts to rip in and defend the miners.

Destroyers:
Destroyers are missile ships for most factions (with Rix using a very long range gun). They're quite effective against small numbers of small ships, and do not require gunners (nor do they have them). Generally speaking anyone who wants a destroyer isn't being serious about winning, but sometimes it's good to hand out one or two of them in a pinch.

Med Class:

Frigates:
Frigates are the first base-killing ship and are also a huge trap. Do not launch frigates UNLESS your SY is in the same sector as the enemy techbase. In that case, it is generally better to just go ahead and get bombers and escort those in with corvettes for a variety of reasons. Frigates have a huge weakness in that they cannot ripcord anywhere, so you will have 4 pilots who simply cannot participate in a fight until the frigate walks its way to an enemy base, which it is generally not fast enough to do with positive tempo. Don't give people frigates no matter how much they ask. It's a trap. I cannot stress this enough.

Assault Ship:
Assault Ships are the only other non-base large teleport in the game. Notably, AI ships will never rip to them, but you can rip in bombers and other capitol ships. This is particularly effective with figbees and heavy bombers as the enemy will often be kitted up to stop the assault ship. Assault ships are the fastest capitol ship and also can drop prox and use heavy cloak, and also have the largest scan range, which makes them very useful in a variety of support roles. The only downside is they cannot ripcord, so consider them to be one-way trips.

Heavy Class:
Cruisers
Cruisers are what frigates want to be. The 4th skycap turret is useful but where this ship really shines is that it is able to teleport. This generally saves a HUGE amount of tempo, as it can take 10 minutes to fly a capship across 2 sectors, whereas ripcording is 20-25 seconds. Also, they can ripcord back.

Devastators
Devastators don't carry missiles but do have front-facing skyrip. Skyrip is insane against basically all enemy ships and is also pretty good against minor bases. You probably won't kill many techbases efficiently with it, but this ship is your ship of choice for anti capship work (well, that or killer swarm destroyers).

Guns:

Skycap 2/3
Skycap 2/3 have the same DPS as AC 2/3 which is a HUGE upgrade over Skycap 1 (66% of AC1). Skycap 2/3 also increase the range of skycap to 2000. Half of skycap damage is AoE which means that at long range your guns will do about half what they will when the enemy closes in, for Skycap 2/3 this usually translates to 50% damage in the 1500-2000m range, 75% damage in the 1000-1500m range, and 100% damage inside 1000m.

Missiles:

SRM Nuke 1/2
SRM Nuke is a very powerful AB missile, 2 SRM Nuke 2 is usually enough to pop a techbase. They're also slow and large, thus fairly easy to destroy by shooting or by just getting in front of. For this reason watch out for enemy ships in front of you before you fire it.

XRM Cruise 1/2
XRM Cruise Missile is basically AB, but long range. Same caveat as the nuke: it's slow and large, so it's relatively easy to shoot down. Might as well just get close and nuke it.

XRM Hunter Killer 1/2
XRM Hunter Killer is basically a 1hko anti ship missile. You'll need some kb and/or GAs to really make it shine, but once it does you can fire one at anyone within 5000m of you and be relatively sure that it will connect and pop them.

LRM Killer Swarm 1/2
LRM Killer Swarm is a broad-sprectrum missile firing system that is very effective against capships. Using it requires some vector work because it is not particularly good at tracking, but it is long-range and powerful.

XRM Torpedo 1/2
Torpedo is basically the same role as Killer, but it gains a little bit of range at the cost of some damage. This makes it generally less useful in the anti capship role, as mostly you're just in a damage race that Killer Swarm will win.

Other Tech:

Large Shield 2/3:
Make your ships beefier. It's ok, but honestly capships aren't really winning damage races against most small ships. Maybe buy this against mini2/3, but dis, galv, and killer don't really care how much HP you have.

Large Countermeasure:
Large Countermeasure is actually useless. See, the way countermeasures work is they tweak the object that missiles are tracking. For small ships this means that the target is usually 10-15m away from the ship's hitbox. For large ships... this means that the target of the missile is still inside your capship's hitbox, so while the missile will deflect away from you, it will deflect to target an object that exists inside of your hitbox and thus ram your hitbox on its way to its target. Don't bother buying this, it's an absolute waste.

[faint hornet]

minor updates for modern cores:
ripcord GAs are 15% each
CM3 doesn't need adv sup/exp