Dark Fleet

Wow, lots of questions. One answer. It's their "super weapon" that you achieve through their military branch of the tech tree.

I think.

I don't play Vasari right now, but you can see it by looking at the tech tree.

It is in imperial tech tree actually. Dark fleet is the grand armada of the Vasari. The Vasari you fight in the game are just a vanguard I believe. Once you research returning armada, you can use phase stabilizers to summon ships from the dark fleet to join your side. These are random assortment of fighting ships (No support or siege ships). They cost no money, but still use up supply. So claim it is too good, I think it's very right. It is not easy to set up, and you neglect lot of military research for it.

Its not their super weapon.
The Vasari super weapon is a disabling cannon which disables buildings for a few minutes and ships for a few seconds around a planet.

The technology the OP means is called Returning Armada.
Its a high end tech.
The different names come from the lore explanation, which is that the Vasari call in surviving ships of the dark fleet or dark armada.

Only phase gates can use the ability.

It has to be researched in the imperial tech tree.

Every phase gate can use it and starts with it on autocast if you researched it.

It is good because it gives you free ships in regular intervals per phase gate.

You use it by using the ships it gives you

It is an upgrade for phase gates, its at the end of the empire (civil) tree, and as such requires 8 imperial labs.
Returning armada, thats the actual name, will call reinforcements for you which are send from the remnmants of the dark fleet (yknow, the once feared vasari fleet).
Each phase stailizer will call in several cruisers/frigates (depoending on your level of returning armada) for you, for free. It only costs the antimatter of that stabilizer.
In short: once you have returning aramada, build a lot of phase gates and go win the game.

You'll also notice a lot of comments like this on these boards - either from people who know something I don't about using Returning Armada or haven't actually played Vasari very much.

It's a powerful ability, but by no means an 'I win' button.

This is a problem I am now encountering, having only begun playing this race. Is there a way, possibly by disabling autocast, to stop this tech from using up all the available supply?

I notice if I have any supply available, or I create more supply and don't use it right away, the dark fleet assigns it to a point of negative value in some cases. Right now I am at -4 supply.

I assume now, that at some point when I get into a battle with my offensive fleet I might not be able to replace my losses as the dark fleet might assign my remaining supply to the defensive forces??? or even worse... I have heard that some players have had negative supply in the hundreds and after losing ships in their offensive fleet are still negative and cannot replace the lost ships????

If you're losing loads of ships, your supply will come back up to reflect that. If a fleet is demolished, and your supply is STILL negative, that means you've got a boatload of ships SOMEWHERE that you can still use.

the -4 supply probably means you are in a processing of upgrading another fleet supply and it have not finished yet, but you queued up a lot of ships that are not going to build until it is above the supply.

Lord Allen,
I have strickly played the Vasari, and can tell you that you can shut off the phase gate's ability by turning off the autocast. Just select the gate, then click the button and your done. When your ships get killed off, the ship cap will go back to normal, allowing you to build more ships. I had the same problem, and this fixed everything. It is a cool tech though, epsecially if you need ships and are low on cash and need to defend your planets.

DANMAN

Nutshell answers to the specific questions:

1. It's an ability for the Phase Stabilizer tactical structure. It summons random combat ships for free once enabled.

2. Ravastra Skirmishers, Kanrak Assailants, Junsurak Sentinels and Skarovas Enforcers can be summoned by Phase Stabilizers.

3. When you build 8 Imperial Labs and research the tech 'Returning Armada'.

4. Anywhere. Phase Stabilizers allow near-instant travel for your ships between any two of them, so the Dark Fleet is easy to mass into one group and deploy to just about any region of your empire.

5. It's good because the ships are free(or rather prepaid) and they are numerically unlimited - so you can mass huge forces or rapidly replace losses, but you don't get to choose which ships you get and don't get any capital ships or support cruisers(which also means that you don't get any strikecraft forces).

6. You use the Dark Fleet by following these steps:
1. Research Returning Armada.
2. Build Phase Stabilizers.
3. Receive your new combat ships, at your doorstep hot & fresh, within 5 minutes.
4. Enjoy.

Actually at this point I only had about 25 supply and had not upgraded for additional supply it ate that up to -4. I saved the game and decided to upgrade to the next level and just watch what happens, and it began using it up again and sending ships to the 3 planets I have stabilizers at. At that point I just quit the game without saving and decided to check with the guru's here about the problem...

Thanks.

Thanks Danman, If I am following you correctly... I disable autocast, now no new ships will be spawned and sent to that planet(s). So, I just spawn what I need at each new gate when created, as needed, and then turn it off or... once a new gate is built, turn it off immediately so as not to create additional ships and the dark fleet will go there to defend if that planet is attacked?

If this is how it works, it is truly an awesome tech!

Thanks

well, i am also a strictly vassari player and i actually did unlock the returning armada on my first game, the upgrade is very hard and expensive to get to but defenetly worth it, i built a phase stabelizer on one of my frontal planets and just kept getting the returning armada to back up my main fleet who was in the middle of a huge battle, so the dark fleet helped me to win, i would say that it is a partial easy button to winning

With enough gates, 10+, you can call in 500-700 pop worth in ships every 7 or so minutes. If you don't need the ships you can scuttle them for cash and resources.

If your near fleet cap but have enough space to call in one more gates worth of troops, about 70 population, select all your gates and call them all in at the same time, this will put you to like -400 fleet cap, I'm sure its a bug that needs to be looked at. Vasari can get to 2300 fleet cap with research anyway and doing this can put you at 2700+.

Transporters are also summoned.

People keep complaining about this, but I really don't think it is a bug, and I often wonder why people are complaining. I mean, you just got a bunch of free ships. The fact that you are now at negative fleet cap means you actually have more ships than what are "technically" allowed under normal circumstances. And this is a bad thing why?

If you don't want the ships and negative supply for some reason, just scuttle ships, turn off phase gates, etc. I really think it is a "feature," not a "bug."

I meant I think its a bug because its unfair to anyone who isn't using it. Vasari ships take more pop per ship than other races because they are more powerful. By being able to jump over the pop cap by so much you pretty much end up with the same amount of ships as other races, execpt yours are more powerful.

The key to using returning armada ist to "stab up" and "Supply up".


Im talking about a seriuos incestment that will make or break your game. you need at least 12 stabs to get any real benefit out of it. Why?

The "strenghth" of RA is your ability to fight a war of attrition on a scale only the TEC can realy compare with. Its about sending all those frigates, cruisers and carriers to your enemy to snipe key buildings (tradeports, culture spreads, labs, shipyards) then go to another systen and snipe antoher building. Or mass a fleet to hunt capitals, lowering the overall level of the enemys fleet (usualy around 4, won't do you much good vs advent). You have a free cost harrassment force, use it. your main fleets (you have build "real" fleets, yes?) waits until you get an opening to snatch or just glass an opponents world (realy, its about inflicting economic harm to your enemy). The Supply is needed so you can get more ships out, simple easy: more supply = more ships you can have = you need more stabs. And you need more ships because for quite a while they will have to brute force the enemys fleets, brizzling with support ships and all the fancy stuff.

The more stabilizers you have the faster your losses will be replenished and the more pressure you can apply. its advisable to have the stabs grouped in groups of three to four and use returnign armada manualy, so you dont have stabs wasting their "call" if you dont have enough fleet supply. usualy suply goes in the red, but once in a while the call is wasted instead wasted. It also gives you time to replace "real ships" (support cruisers, siege ships, caps if you loose one).

If you don't use mass stabs, RA will be useless. You have to constantly send in ships and you have to constantly replace them with RA, so only a few stabs won't do the job.

Once you have RA, research support techs (hp, am, support ships and abilitys).
Bring your military tech up to par. Its paramount. After RA you should have the ressources to do that, you wont be spending them on ships after all.
Research salvaging too, give 25% of ressources for every kill you make.

Good cap ships to use: Evacuator for its imba dot and its ability to vampire ressources for you, the marauder to return the evacuator to safety in a pinch.

Keep at least 3-4 shipyards around (depending on map size), should you ever need other ships then carriers cruisers and enforcers. (like support cruisers, siege frigs, or just want to use those ressources you salvage or drain)

Oh, and i don't recommend it for 1v1 games.
Its a tech that promotes semi-senseless attacking, act accordingly.

It's overpowered

Either you're able to successfully scout and disrupt his imperial labs/phase stabilizers in ~45 minutes or you lose because he has entire fleets showing up absolutely free of cost

It's only effective on medium-large maps with allies protecting the vasari, but that does NOT make it balanced

That might also land you in jail!  

I agree. While beating a player with Returning Armada can be done, your effort far outweights the Vasari's and your chances can be pretty small depending on the games current enviroment. (Remeber this was the reasoning behind siege frigite nerfs. The counter took more effort then the original strategy.)

I would like to at least see it changed to only summon ships that you can actually build from the current possible armada list. This way the Vasari player needs to have weapon labs to get those Transporters and Enforcers. When the player loses Imp. Labs they should also lose the ability to call in more ships until they reach the tec's required labs again, which is the same as would happen if you lost too many weapon labs to produce a ship type.

This point I'm a bit puzzled about. I have used RA to bring a couple defensive ships to each planet I am protecting in my empire, I then have turned off the stab. This seems to work real well for rebels and pirates.

If I wanted to mass one large fleet and let it patrol the entire empire, how would I mobilize it to a specific planet when one is attacked?

Simple. All your RA ships come from Phase Stabilizers. So when you want to mass them, just use those Phase Stabilizers to fly them all to the planet where you want to form your fleet. Then if you ever get attacked, send groups of ships back through the Stabilizer to the planet which is to be defended, or to the nearest Stabilizer-armed planet and then jump the normal way to the scene of the battle.

I tried to send them once by clicking on the fleet I wanted to move and then the target planet to send them to and they didn't "instantly" travel there by means of the phase gate, but used the conventional means via the phase lane. I must be doing something wrong... that's when I decided to just put a couple units on each planet and shut down the gates until I lost units.

So, how exactly do I send them through the jump gates?

Thanks for your feedback PeskyFly...

They don't 'instantly' re-appear at the other planet(like when you use a wormhole) They still phase,but instead of having to phase through every planet to get to the destination,they can just make 1 long phase directly to the planet you told them to go to.