It's important to look at weapons here. Hammer guns are very good at taking out large ships, but they will have trouble dealing with fighters because they're inaccurate and slow. Orcas in particular are the perfect anti-large-ship platform, because they're tough and hard to hit, so you might be unable to stop them fast enough.

You should look into anti-fighter weapons - missiles and flak work best for that. Keeping your Dragon with Artemis guns is also a good move in early game.

The description for the phalanxs says that they are built around having multiple weapon types, so that is what they recieved! The problem instead seems to be them being too slow. I am now hesitant to use phalanxs for anything at all whatsoever, and I am not sure about ghouls either for the high chance of them getting destroyed rather then disabled.

Well, Phalanx can be whatever you like, but they really work well as defensive gun platforms. You can put 18 seeking missiles on a single one, which is more than enough to disable a handful of Orcas.

You're correct that Ghouls are more fragile, especially in fleet battles.

After doing a few skirmishes with default weapons I found the Orca to be the superior fighter. With default weapons a squad of 9 orcas (combat strength 216) easily defeat 6 phalanxs (also strength 216). 18 ghouls put up a better fight, but ultimately lose as well. Ghouls also have the bad habit of being destroyed outright rather then only getting disabled, and battles in this are never one-on-one.

You sure that I should be using eradicators? From skirmishes computer-flown orcas have been doing pretty well with the Hammer. 8 hammer orcas win out against 10 eradicator orcas and don't have much trouble hitting ghouls with it either and against phalanxs they do horrible things~

I haven't tried specialty weapons yet. You are right those the Phalanx might be well-suited for that.



The rest of your heavy ships are pretty funky. The Kami has a bizarre layout where you have to point the nose just perfectly at your target for all the guns to be firing, and the invader has this to a lesser extent. The Leviathan and Anubis have more rational weapon layouts; the former able to get at least five guns on target if not the full six and the Anubis is a completely different style meant to shoot multiple enemies at once.

I also don't like the look of the invader and leviathan. They feel like they are backwards and you don't get to see guns in front of you like you do with the Anubis

My current fleet doctrine is now as follows:
Hammer-orcas and dragons as main fighting units. Phalanxes for specialty weapons, and like a actual king my personal ship has to be the Anubis

Eradicators are default weapons that perform decently and can shoot down missiles, so they're a pretty good weapon overall, but like I said, the flak & missiles is definitely top tier for anti-fighter. That's what makes the Phalanx more interesting.

As to large ships, they all have a different sensitivity to alignment, as you saw. The problem if all ships were able to train all guns at a single target is that they would become very similar - a Kami would run circles around an Invader, and it would be able to deal horrible damage to even an Anubis.

I think you've got it right for your fleet choices.

It is very not appreciated when the Orcas kill each other when going after meteorites >_<

Tried the Orca/Mjolnir in the skirmish thing. A fleet of them lost pretty bad to the same number of Orca/Hammer

Seems wrong. The Mjolnir should definitely outperform the Hammer in fighter battles, by a huge margin ! I'll look into it.

I can confrm the upcoming update will reverse the balancing of both weapons. While the Hammer will still be able to outright kill a fighter, it won't be automatic like now, and its accuracy has been reduced. By contrast, the Mjolnir gun will deal more damage.