I don't get colony capital ships ...

The cost reduction and extractor adding abilities are excellent.  I don't think much of the reduction to build time though, that one is pretty worthless.  You save thousands off the other two though.  It saves you a cost more in line with another capital ship, not just a couple carriers.

 

That said, the Akkan is the only colony cap I don't find to be badass from the start, and it's disruption capabilities are sheer devastation late game.  Popping off a cease fire at the right time can be game over.  Ever used it to bypass a heavily defended perimeter world with your entire fleet and stomp the living shit out of their entire empire from inside?

 

Malice is horrific.  Shield regeneration combined with a heavy compliment of guardians leads to a near invincible fleet.  You can greatly accelerate your expansion with the reduction in casualties and increased damage output you get from a Progenitor early on.  Resurrection I could do without, if I'm losing high level capital ships, I'm losing.  As such it's often my second capital ship, not the first.  It's still an excellent starting choice though.

 

The Jarassul on the other hand, so nice.  One on one, the Jarassul will kill any other capital ship in the game.  Go ahead and try to out damage that ability eating through your hull.  The planetary vacuum cleaner is no small thing either.  It really sucks the life out of your opponent.  You have to be much more careful with it than you would a Kortul, which is undeniably the stronger of the two, but it's got some serious power if you keep the advantage.  Unparalleled assassination capability against enemy capital ships between the Nano Disassembler and Gravity Warhead.  It's vicious.  When I use something else, it's because I want to, not because it's an inferior first choice.  You might be able to slug through a disadvantage with a Kortul, but it's nowhere near the strategic sadist.

Colonizer Capital Ships colonizer ability is often given extra stuff for their ability such as Akkans get 2 or more free extractors (depending on the planet) which helps you get your mineral/crystal production faster. The Progenitor gives a decrease in upgrade cost so it cost less to upgrade your planets. The Jarassuls currently have the shaft with thier colonizer ability but their other abilities can cause some serious issues for the enemy.

It also greatly depends on the size of map. I tend to choose carriers on small maps due to the fact I will be meeting my opponent faster.

On a large map however, that Colonly Cap will help you colonize faster. How? Well, the antimatter regen of a colony cap over a frigate is the obvious benefit and a very crucial one. Of course you can build many colony frigates but that is going to start getting expensive, especially if colonising in two directions. You need all the cash you can get to keep those early planet developments rolling.

Also as ppl above have mentioned, the bonus's of the Akkan and Progen are going to make this even cheaper. 250-500 credits in free extractors is pretty nice in those early minutes. And thats not mentioning the incredible discounts of the Progen which not only make things a lot easier early but also can help keep future colonisations (planet health upgrades and artifact expeditions) cheap as well.

However while I believe all I have said above is true, it is really map dependent. The above works great if you have a lot of room to stretch out before the plasma starts flying. However... not so good if a Skirantra turns up on your doorstep. 

One of the biggest factors that players miss is actually antimatter.  A colony frigate will become completely depleted after three jumps, and will need to wait for several minutes to recharge enough antimatter to actually colonize a planet.  If you want to keep momentum, you basically have to build a frigate factory and a new colony frigate every few jumps; we're not talking about a few hundred credits, we're now talking about a few thousand to stay competitive.  Colony capital ships with their superior regeneration rate do not have this problem.  This means you can colonize planets in far more rapid succession, getting your economy rolling sooner.  This also has another important advantage on larger maps: you can bee-line to your opponent with incredible speed and take all the most valuable planets in the mid-section of the map before they even get there.  And if you want to skip planets, the colony cap is pretty much mandatory.  Going without the colony cap, you either have to move much slower (giving your opponent free pickings) or you have to invest ridiculous sums of money to rebuild fresh colony frigates regularly.

On larger maps, the advantage of a colony capital ship is so overwhelming there is no reason to go with anything else.  Yes, you'll get more combat power out of a carrier capital ship (the Marza and Kortul are also viable in a pinch) and this will let you take on militia easier, but the colony capital ship will get you off to a stronger start and usually will pay off in a bigger military before you even hit the enemy. 

This is wrong; an early advantage to economy can be carried the entire game if you re-invest the proceeds or build a larger military and use that advantage wisely.  You can pump that extra cash into military to pin down the enemy and prevent them from expanding further, or you can put it into a trade network and leave the opponent's economy in the dust.  Even a small advantage in the early-game can have massive effects in the late game if it's applied well.

 

On smaller maps where the enemy is in striking distance at the start of the game, the colony capital ships aren't nearly as strong.  On a larger map where you're out of striking range and it's a race to capture the tactical and economic worlds in the middle... you're going to suffer if you don't pick a colony cap.

@psychoak - I think the point is that you get an Akkan / Progenitor / Jarassul for the Colonize, not for its other abilities. I can see that the other abilities are good, but for the same reason you never get an Akkan without learning Colonize, I don't think these other abilities are sufficiently good to warrant using the Akkan over other capital ships.

@Darvin3 - Well if colony frigates become completely depleted of antimatter after three jumps, then they only fail to be a viable option if you have planets to colonize three jumps away from your homeworld (and then even if that happens you have to get a new Frigate Factory eventually, so ...). How many times has this happened to me? I must say the answer is zero. I've not played any maps where there are uncontested planets more than 3 jumps away from my nearest Frigate Factory at the start of the game (there are maps where you start with two Frigate Factories, for example).

If the benefit of using a colony capital ship is free extractors (which only happens with level 3 Akkans), then you get 250g per planet colonized. If you colonize 4 planets then you save 1k gold. This is actually very generous, because you need a level 3 Akkan, by which time chances are you've already colonized a couple of planets. You also save the price needed to build ~3 colony ships, another 1.35k, as well as a smattering of crystal and metal, including the extra resources you get because you don't have to wait for the extractor to be built.

But it's still only 2.35k gold ...

What can you buy for 2.35k gold, 500 metal and 250 crystal? This really is about the price of a couple of Aeria Drone Hosts, and a distance away from another capital ship (also need to research capital ship crew for that). A level 3+ Sova Carrier would match the force of those two Aeria Drone Hosts and more, since if you run into your opponent at this point in the game he and his Akkan will be the one that's forced to flee. Your superior force at this point would thrash his units and maybe even some buildings / construction vessels, going some way to paying back the cash debt. You would actually hold this advantage well into the game because you'll always have a higher level Sova Carrier than him (assuming he gets one).

If you're colonizing in two directions at once then you'd also have to be building colony frigates regardless of which capital ship you start with, so I don't see the point.

It's my experience that there is an advantage to starting with a colony capital ship, but it's quite a small one and quickly drowned out while the advantage to having a superior combat capital ship drags on into middle-game and beyond. It could be the maps I play, but I've gone from small maps to mediums to medium-large maps and still never played a game where there are more than 4 planets to colonize uncontested. I can see the colony capital ship being invaluable if you play a 3v3 map with 2 players, but I've always played those maps with 6 players, not 2. What maps do you guys have in mind? Any specific names that I can check out in-game?

The advantage used to be bigger before the Carrier Caps got boosted in the last patch, but there is still an advantage, especially for the Akkan / Progen.  The Akkan not only saves you the money from having to build the extractors, but they are operational faster so they are earning you resources instantly.  Saving on Colony ships, faster colonization, and the money saving abilities for Akkan/Progen all snowball into launching a faster economy.  This doesn't mean crap if someone is going to rush you with a Carrier Cap several minutes into the game, but it can give you a big lead for unchecked economic growth.  If your trade economy is online first and you switch to military and drop a couple factories on the front line, you could be attacking while the enemy is still trying to put the finishing touches on their trade and isn't quite ready for you.

 

Additionally, they have very useful abilities beyond their economic value, so it isn't like they are useless.  The other caps have to be as strong as they are, or there would be NO REASON to use anything but a colony cap as your first ship.  Now that Carrier Caps are so strong, there is no reason to start your game with anything but a Colony Cap, a Carrier Cap, or a Marza or Kortul  (my opinion, obviously).

I already had a wall of text there, so I wasn't going to go into all the different permutations that deplete a colony ship.  In fact, it's still not practical to talk about all the different layouts I've seen (including having to navigate around heavy militia planets and through uncolonizables), but here's a particularly common one: a "jump - colonize - jump" operation.  Now you've reached the second planet out and you're depleted and need a new colony frigate to keep full momentum.  So really colony frigates start to fall behind colony caps at two jumps, and start to seriously fall behind at three jumps.  If you're going four jumps, then they're going to weigh you down horrendously.

This fits very well with my old guideline about rushing distance.  About 5-7 jumps distance between homeworlds is the point at which you're no longer in an imminent rush scenario (give or take depending on the map layout and militia levels), and this puts the middle ground conveniently at 3-4 jumps away, just outside of the practical range of colony frigates.  



It's rare in a 5v5 and 4v4, but it's actually somewhat common on 3v3 and smaller.  And on 1v1 maps, it's the norm.  Play a couple games on a 1v1 small-random and count the number of jumps to the opponent.  It usually comes in around 6-8, making colony capital ships absolutely huge.

The answer to your question is a concept called 'turn-advantage'. The simple premise is that early economic advantages have the effect of compounding themselves if reinvested intelligently. The extra speed of colonization with your colony cap may only save you a handful of credits early on, but the total advantage reaped from those early credits is compounded many, many times over through the course of the game.

Totally correct.

Also totally a thread necro

Considering it was still on the main page of the strategy forum, I'm completely unrepentant.