Cerberus Ships

**The article "Cerberus Ships" is a *Work In Progress.***
**Notice**: Data on this page may be for before and after the Dark Nebula update, and may otherwise be incomplete. If data you need is missing, **HadesSpace** is an excellent resource with new information.

Cerberus ships are hostile, NPC-controlled ships that maneuver towards and attack player-controlled ships. They can be found while revealing sectors in your home Yellow Star as well as stationed in White Stars, Blue Stars, and are the main enemy in Red Star Missions. Cerberus ships only become activated when a player-controlled ship enters their sector. None of the Cerberus ships (save for the Interceptor and Ghosts) will leave its home sector in pursuit of players.

All Cerberus entities save for Cerberus Stations spawn in Red Stars and Blue Stars. In Yellow Stars, Sentinels, Guardians, Colossus, and all three base types spawn.

**DPS** is an acronym, short for Damage Per Second. DPS values are used to estimate damage output.

**AU** stands for Arbitrary Unit; the measure of AU does not refer to the standard Astronomical Unit used by astronomers.

## **Sentinel**

*"Sentinels have weak hulls but are equipped with a very powerful Battery. They pose little threat individually, but are deadly in large numbers or when covered behind stronger Cerberus ships."*

Sentinels are the first type of Cerberus ships new players will encounter. They will always stay in their home sector. When strategically positioned behind other Cerberus ships, multiple Sentinels are dangerous to Battleships mounting only single-target weapons like Battery or Laser. Their incredible damage output makes them very good at melting Battleships not properly equipped to deal with multiple targets. In RS6 or higher, Rockets, Dual Laser or Mass Battery can help deal with large swarms of Sentinels.

The Cerberus Phoenix, encountered in RS8 and above, spawns *3 Sentinels* when destroyed -- a nasty parting gift for the attacking player.

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## **Guardian**

*"A strong ship that Cerberus often use to provide cover for Sentinels. Guardians always stay within their assigned sector."*

Guardians are designed to tank incoming damage for Sentinels. They are much stronger than Sentinels in terms of hull strength; however, they mount a much weaker battery. A single Guardian is not a problem, but when there are Sentinels hiding behind them, the situation can quickly turn deadly. Guardians are well suited to taking hits for Sentinels; this allows the Sentinels to put their damage output to use, quickly dispatching the health of the player’s Battleships. Attack strategically or mount multi-target weapons to clear out any Sentinels first.

The battery mounted by Guardians is commonly referred to as the "Guardian battery." It is shown in-game as a normal battery, but it deals less damage than the Weak Battery.

The Guardian piloting AI vectors the ship in front of Sentinels regardless of position; use this to your advantage. A two-pronged attack is usually very effective.

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## **Interceptor**

*"A fast and powerful Cerberus ship that can simultaneously fire against multiple player ships. Lethal against non-combat ships, which must be kept at a safe distance from Interceptors. Interceptors randomly patrol strategic locations in the star system and can move between multiple sectors."*

First encountered in RS4, the Interceptor is a dangerous ship that is different from every other Cerberus craft encountered in previous Red Stars. Its engagement tactics and rules are quite eccentric when compared to Guardians or Sentinels. An Interceptor is equipped with a Mass Battery, which allows it to simultaneously fire at up to **4 targets**: this makes it difficult to target with rockets or projectile weapons like the DART launcher or Rocket Drones.

The Interceptor **travels significantly faster** than any player ships, including the Battleship. Most importantly, an Interceptor **does not stay within its assigned sector:** it will routinely patrol strategically important locations in the system, most often the highest-levelled planet sectors. Though it will not specifically pursue player ships, the Interceptor's behavior makes it incredibly effective at destroying unprotected non-combat ships; the only way to incapacitate an Interceptor is to destroy it.

The Interceptor's mass battery can engage four targets at once; a player can have at most three Battleships, therefore the Interceptor will almost always be able to spare a battery to target your auxiliary ships. It is recommended to bring suppression modules like EMP or Barrier to help deal with unexpected interceptor attacks.

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## **Colossus**

*"A massive Cerberus ship that requires a lot of firepower and coordination to bring down."*

First encountered in Red Star 5, the Cerberus Colossus can be an intimidating new opponent, especially to players with only two Battleships or lower-leveled modules. While similar to the Guardian in terms of its behavior, the Colossus is notably more dangerous than the Guardian in two respects -- significantly better survivability, and greatly increased damage output.

While its damage output may not seem too dangerous at first, the Colossus' laser can be deadly to player ships, dealing up to 500 DPS to a single target if allowed to charge fully. Thus, it is recommended to cycle the targeted ship in and out of the Colossus' range to force its laser to switch targets and reset, to minimize damage recieved by individual ships.

The high hull strength and Salvage module also means you shouldn't let the Colossus destroy one of your ships, otherwise it'll recover a large portion of its health.

A powerful single-target weapon like Laser or Battery is an excellent choice for peeling down the Hull of a Colossus. Other modules such as Decoy Drone, EMP, and Fortify can temporarily interrupt the laser or force the Colossus to change targets. It is also recommended to equip at least one Battleship with a multi-target weapon: Sentinels and Guardians commonly spawn in conjunction with the Colossus.

Having a more experienced Corporation member come with you is a great way to defeat these ships and learn some tactics. A single Colossus is tough but is no match against 6 or more Battleships in close formation.

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 **Ramp-Up Interval** | 10s

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## **Destroyer**

*"These mysterious Cerberus ships are known to jump in Red Stars and destroy entire planets with their powerful beams. They do not directly fire on your ships."*

Destroyers always jump into the system from within the same sector of the Red Star itself. Starting from RS6, they will jump into the system within the first minute and plot a course for a planet immediately. They inflict damage upon destroying a planet or being destroyed.

Blast shield can be helpful for reducing damage recieved from the Destroyer's Vengeance detonation. EMP can also be used to temporarily stop the planet destruction process. It should also be noted that it is possible to destroy a Destroyer from outside the Vengeance blast radius, even with short-range weapons like Mass Battery and Laser.

Planet Destruction range: 100AU

Neutralized Vengeance Module damage range: 100AU

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## **Bomber**

*"A strong ship that regularly fires one rocket towards each participating player that has ships in the bomber's sector or any adjacient sectors. This ship will always stay within its assigned sector, but the rockets can be fired into adjacent sectors."*

Introduced in RS7, the Cerberus Bomber is the first ship that creates strategic problems for the player; it is advisable to eliminate Bombers whenever they cover sectors of interest to the player.

The Bomber will fire a rocket towards the players' nearest ship every 24 seconds. The rocket creates a large blast when it reaches it's target, or a smaller one at its current position if neutralized by the player. It is recommended to bring multi-target weapons like Mass Battery or Dual Laser to help neutralize incoming rockets. It should be noted that auxilliary ships will still take damage from the Bomber rockets' neutralized blasts, thus it is recommended to bring a blast shield or to keep your transports and miners at a distance until the threat is neutralized.

The Bomber's course-plotting AI tries to distance itself as much as possible from the player's ships while remaining in the same sector. These ships can create especially dangerous areas of overlapping fire if placed in adjacent sectors.

It is recommended to attack these ships with stun modules like EMP or Barrier in order to not only temporarily stun the rockets fired by these ships, but to keep them in your weapons range as well.

Neutralized damage radius is 60 AU, normal radius is 120 AU.

**Speed Stats**

 **Rocket Cooldown** | 24s

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## **Phoenix**

*"The Phoenix protects nearby Cerberus ships with its Ally shield. Once destroyed, it will spawn a small number of sentinels."*

First seen in RS8, the Phoenix earns its namesake by spawning three Sentinels after being destroyed.

While the Phoenix will always stay within its sector, its Ally shield is large enough to spill over into adjacent sectors. Because it attempts to cover the sector edge closest to the player, the Phoenix can complicate the clearing of adjacent sectors since the Ally shield will protect any Cerberus ship within its radius.

Note that the shield does not cover the deploying Phoenix, making it possible to destroy the Phoenix without disabling its shield. It should also be noted that the Phoenix will sometimes delay the deployment of its shield, giving the player a chance to slip in and destroy other Cerberus units first.

**Speed Stats:**

 **Ramp-Up Interval** | 15s

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## Storm

*"This ship always follows a circular path within its sector. It is equipped with a powerful long-range weapon that regularly launches fast DART missiles against all enemy ships in range."*

The Storm's much larger attack radius (**200 AU**) and fast-reloading DART Barrage means that single-target Battleships will struggle against its damage output.

The Storm's DART barrage fires one DART rocket against each valid target in its range. It is a ship is best taken on with a group of Battleships, with a mix of single and multiple target weapons. Spawning in RS9 and above, sometimes in pairs, the Storm is best engaged with Barrier and/or EMP modules, as the hail of DART rockets can deal a serious amount of damage.

**Speed Stats**

 **Dart CD** | 5s

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## Ghost

*"A group of fast ships that jump in unpredictably and move collectively to the nearest target, anywhere in the star system."*

Ghosts spawn out of Cerberus Jump Gates that appear randomly on the map during the whole Red Star mission.

Cerberus Jump Gates cannot be targeted or used as a move target. After the appearance of a Gate, it will start a countdown of 45 seconds, release the Ghosts and then disappear afterwards.

## Hydra

*"A massive, strong ship, equipped with a powerful Barrage that deals significantly more damage when there are more player ships in its sector. When it runs out of hitpoints, it will split into two smaller, weaker Hydras. The smaller versions will themselves turn into two tiny Hydras when destroyed."*

The Hydra and Hydralings are equipped with a Barrage-like weapon. The presence of any Player Ships within its current sector significantly increases the damage dealt to its single target.

The Hydra only spawns in RS11, in planet sectors with level 11 planets. When destroyed, it spawns two poorer equipped Hydralings. Those Hydralings, when destroyed, spawn two more, even weaker Hydralings; all of the Hydralings are equipped with a similar (but weaker) Barrage-style weapon. Ships spawned from Hydra will move to their original sector if the Hydra was bonded to a new sector.

All of these ships have a stat called "EMP Resist" which reduces the duration of EMP on these ships by the percentage of "EMP Resist" (80%). Thus, EMP is not always a viable option against Hydras. The Solitude module is an excellent choice for both boosting your Battleships' DPS and minimizing the Hydra's damage output. Multi-target weapons like Mass Battery and Dual Laser can be useful for dealing with the Hydralings that spawn afterwards, as well as other threats like Bomber rockets or Storm attacks.

## Cerberus Bases

Cerberus Bases are hostile, immobile units that can be found from new sectors in yellow stars.
 All Cerberus bases will continuously spawn and replenish one Cerberus Guardian daily. Do not attempt to approach a base before building a sizable combat fleet. Destroy the Weak Cerberus Bases using a fly-by tactic. If possible, position your Battleships in such a way that they can target the Base with their weapons, but are still out of range. Alpha, Delta, and Blast shield modules are not effective shields to use when attacking Cerberus bases. Passive and Omega shield is the best idea, as they can soak up much more damage in a shorter span of time.