The United Empire/Ships

There are many paths for these humanoids, though they tend to prefer economic and military development.

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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.

## Colonizer

  Slots

**Available Slots:**

 = 1,  = 3

**Strategic Implications**

If this is going to colonize planets, then one of these slots *must* be filled with a colonization module, so you at most can equip 2 engines. You'll have decent speed.

This ship actually has a weapon slot, which is curiously much more useful than a lone defense slot; early armor only reduces damage by about 10-15%, but in a "lone" fight, your ship spends enough time in the fight that, even with an armor module, it will get fully destroyed. With a weapon module, it's shooting back, so even if it's taking full damage, the opponent is also taking a lot of damage. At best, a ship with an armor slot will lose most of its health but leave your opposing ship intact. With a weapon, you'll do significant damage before dying (to early-game pirates and such), and if you've got escorts, you might even destroy them before they destroy you. Besides which, you only have to survive long enough to reach the planet you want to colonize - being damaged has no effect on colony viability.

## Explorer

  Slots

**Available Slots:**

= 2,  = 1 ~ 2,  = 1 ~ 2

**Strategic Implications:**

As a "pure exploration" ship this has below-par potential, since you only have two slots. You will never be very fast compared to other faction's scout ships, and you'll be even slower if you equip any probes.

However, this ship has the potential to have up to 2 defense slots, and 2 attack slots. It's a very solid fighting ship you can field without having to research the actual combat ship technologies, available immediately at the start of the game.

## Attacker

  Slots

**Available Slots:**

= 3 ~ 4,  = 2 ~ 4,  = 1 ~ 2

**Strategic Implications**

This is a fairly well-rounded ship; it's got a potential for 4 attack slots, but it's also fairly durable. Only 2 potential engine slots.

## Protector

  Slots

**Available Slots:**

= 1,  = 3 ~ 5,  = 2 ~ 4

**Strategic Implications**

This ship can equip a ton of defense modules, and only one weapon. All the protector ships in a flotilla have to die before enemy attacker ships will start shooting at your attackers, so these guys can actually take advantage of that mechanic by genuinely being tanky. 4 potential engine slots, which is two more than the Attacker ship equivalent - this has odd implications; you could equip these guys to move very quickly, but you'd be forced to go without attackers.

## Coordinator

  Slots

**Available Slots:**

 = 1,  = 0 ~ 3,  = 0 ~ 3,  = 2 ~ 5,  = 3 ~ 5

**Strategic Implications**

The utility module slots can also be filled with four titanium siege modules and an engine to result in one of the better siege machines, with squadrons and a heavy attack module letting them fight off smaller fleets trying to break the siege on their own.

## Hunter

  Slots

**Available Slots:**

 = 1, = 3 ~ 5,  = 2 ~ 5,  = 2 ~ 3

**Strategic Implications**

Second highest offense of any Hunter, with Defensive and Utility being below average.

## Carrier

  Slots

**Available Slots:**

 = 2,  = 0 ~ 6,  = 0 ~ 6,  = 3 ~ 7,  = 3 ~ 4

**Strategic Implications**

The UE Carrier is fairly flexible due to multi-purpose slots. There are at least 3 core slots that give a choice between an offense module (whether squadron or weapon) or a defense module. Thus, this ship is pretty well-rounded and suitable for a variety of different roles. Has 4 potential engine slots, with one requiring the upgrade.

If you go all-in on offensive slots, it's actually tied with the Sophons for the highest number of offense slots in a Carrier (8) - unfortunately if you do so, you'll be left with a rather low number of defense slots (only 4, 1 of which requires the upgrade).

One standout feature is that this carrier potentially has a whopping 6 squadron slots, though 2 require the upgrade. This is very high (the average is something like 3 or 4).