The Riftborn/Ships

The Riftborn are sentient beings from another universe who naturally control the fourth dimension: time.

About
Gameplay
Traits
**Ships**
Strategy

This page lists all of the ships available to this faction, and lists what sort of equipment they're able to equip.

Each ship in the game has a set of slots it can equip armaments on; these are limited to only allow certain kinds of things in certain slots. This is indicated with a series of icons. If a slot includes more than one icon, then it can hold either kind of equipment.

 = **Attack**: slugs, missiles, lasers, beams, et al. Notably does *not* include fighters/bombers.

 = **Defense**: shields and armor.

 = **Utility**: engines, damage enhancers, targeting modifiers. Some items like probes are limited to explorer vessels, and some other modules can only be equipped on support ships.

 = **Squadron**: i.e. fighters/bombers.

 = **Heavy Weapons**: A weapon slot with doubled stats, which also can mount certain exotic weapons like Blast Effect Batteries, or on Carrier-class ships, can even mount Core Crackers.

Each ship comes with several  neutral slots, which are available immediately once the ship is available. Most ships have a second upgrade that can be researched which unlock a set of additional slots, but to equip an item in these slots, you have to pay a single unit of a strategic resource, such as  or .

Every kind of hull has a name to it, but every particular player-designed equipment loadout does as well. We list the default name the game gives for the equipment loadout in quotes after the hull class name.

Ships have a  size modifier which multiplies the cost of a piece of equipment, and the power of it. Ships also have a  command-points modifier which lists how many 'slots' a ship takes in a fleet. Neither of these vary from faction to faction.

To make the information easy to read, we tally up the number of different slot types available to a ship under the heading **"Available Slots"**. Quite a few slots are hybrid slots, so this number varies depending on what you commit the slot to being, since using a slot for one purpose means you're now *short* one slot for whatever the other option was. Because of this, these numbers are usually a "range" rather than a single value.

Riftborn have a hidden modifier which makes all of their ships have 10% less health than other factions; this is not listed with the rest of their formal faction traits.

Riftborn ships tend to have more slots in total compared to the ships of other factions, also none of the ships of Riftborn have hybrid slots.

The Riftborn also have a faction trait called "Wary Travelers I" that directly penalizes ships under their command with -1  Movement points.

## Colonizer

  Slots

**Available Slots:**

 = 4

**Strategic Implications:**

This ship has an unusually high number of utility slots of 4, compared to the 3 slots of most other factions colonizing ships. So you can actually make this quite fast, enough to offset the Riftborn's inherent speed malus, and still have some extra speed left over to make it faster than other faction's ships. (excluding Vaulters' argosy and Vodyani's Ark)

Curiously, like the exploration ship of Riftborn, when compared to Sophons their ships have exactly the same module slots except that Riftborn have 1 more support slot.

## Explorer

  Slots

**Available Slots:**

 = 2,  = 3

**Strategic Implications:**

As a "pure exploration" ship this is fairly decent, since you have 3 slots, compared to most other factions who only have 2 slots. You get hit by the Riftborn speed penalty, but the potential for two engine slots in addition to the probe keeps this fairly good.

It also has two weapon slots, which means it's a fairly solid early fighter. Not amazing, but not a complete pushover.

Curiously, like the colonization ship of Riftborn, when compared to Sophons their ships have exactly the same module slots except that Riftborn have 1 more support slot.

## Attacker

  Slots

**Available Slots:**

= 4,  = 4,  = 2

**Strategic Implications**

This really characterizes the Riftborn ships - it's a very unusually focused loadout. The character of this ship actually changes dramatically during the upgrade, because you go from having 1 defense slot, to having 4 defense slots. This starts as a glass cannon, and then after you get the upgrade, it's a well-rounded ship (though it has few utility slots).

At any rate, the 4 attack slots on an attacker ship is incredibly high, and potentially extremely powerful. This ship has a total of 2 potential engines, and only 1 of them is available before the upgrade.

## Protector

  Slots

**Available Slots:**

= 2,  = 3,  = 5

**Strategic Implications**

This ship is actually a bit low on the number of Defense modules it can deploy - it can only field 3, when some other factions can put 5 on a ship of similar class. Not only that, one of them is locked behind the upgrade. However, it does have 5 utility slots (2 of these locked behind the upgrade), and these can be filled with support modules which cover the relative lack of defense (like flotilla shield modules). 5 utility modules of course means 5 potential engine slots, though the Attacker these go with has only 2.

## Coordinator

  Slots

**Available Slots:**

 = 1,  = 1,  = 4,  = 6

**Strategic Implications**

The standout thing about this ship is it's got only one squadron slot. This is the very low-end of slot loadout for Coordinator ships. In fact, overall this has very low options for attack, without the upgrade, and even with the upgrade, it's rather mediocre at damage. This ship is firmly focused on two things: tanking damage (the four defense slots are "alright but not amazing"), but more than anything, boosting allied ships with support modules. The Riftborn are unusually able to do this because they've got abnormally high access to Strategic Resources (depending on the quest path you take, you're potentially able to get on the order of 60-70% more resources out of a lode than other factions - but more importantly the Riftborn need much less investment to get onto most sterile planets that house exotic strategic resources).

This ship can field 6 engine slots (2 with the upgrade), but due to the slow speed of other Riftborn ships, and due to the advantage of using these as support slots instead of engines, you're much better off filling most of these with support modules.

## Hunter

  Slots

**Available Slots:**

 = 1, = 8,  = 2,  = 1

**Strategic Implications**

This is not a well-rounded ship; this is a completely lopsided, vulgar display of raw firepower. This is a glass-cannon ship, plain and simple. Your hope with this ship is that you kill the opponents before they burn through your Protector/Coordinator ships and start hitting this ship instead, because it can't take much abuse.

It's also got an extremely low number of utility slots: one. You've got a tough choice here - you could put an engine in this slot, but the potential payoff of adding a weapon intensifier is scary (at best, these could boost the already far-over-the-top damage potential of this ship by about 40%). You'd be relying on fleet accelerators to allow this ship to move at all, in that case, but you'll probably care to do that *anyways*, so it might not be such a raw deal.

## Carrier

  Slots

**Available Slots:**

 = 2,  = 5,  = 5,  = 4

**Strategic Implications**

Unlike most of the Riftborn's other ships, the carrier is surprisingly well-rounded. You can field up to 5 Squadrons (2 locked behind the upgrade), and you've got decent defensive options. 5 Squadrons is average or slightly above average for Carriers, and it helps to cover for the painfully low count on the Riftborn Coordinator ship.

The other benefit of the Carrier is that it's fairly balanced both before and after the upgrade. You don't have some major unaddressed problem (like the Riftborn Attacker's low defense) that the upgrade is necessary to patch up.

With only 4 utility slots, you don't have a lot of extra room to cover both engines and support modules (like squadron boosters), but you've got enough, especially if your Coordinators are picking up the load by using fleet accelerators.