Strategies

With the rather wide variety of weapons, modules, escorts and enemies you will be facing, finding effective builds and tactics in SPAZ 2 can be a bit tricky especially for late-game play, and the final battle. But the following tips and strategies for combat and builds may help you progress.

## General Combat Strategies

* For the vast, vast majority of your non-arena fights throughout the game, you will be outnumbered. Given that the enemy ships you encounter will have the same kind of progression in their shield and hull strength, weapon damage, speed and escort fleet as you do, so an enemy mothership at your level will be a fairly comparable match, you can't crudely rush into short range of a larger fleet of equivalent-level enemies and expect to survive. Your defenses will simply be overwhelmed by their much larger collective firepower, so an evasive (kiting) strategy from long range is the best way to endure these fights.
* While missiles and fighters are good early-game to give you accurate long-range firepower on enemies, in late-game there are just too many defenses against them. Defensive fighters in decent numbers are vastly effective at countering both (which late game enemies frequently use), and defensive turrets also help. If late-game you go for a pure carrier or pure missile-boat build for your fleet, well over half your firepower is going to get shot down before it can do anything.
* Just as you can't afford to rush in close to superior forces, neither can your Escorts. By default they will rush in blindly to the closest enemy and start firing, and receiving fire. You want to keep your escorts (and more importantly, their weapons) alive and firing as much as possible, so use the Command key (default E) extensively; the very instant a fight starts, use the command on a section of empty space AWAY from the enemy fleets and also move your mothership there as well. Enemy escorts always blindly rush forward typically outrunning their motherships, so keep your entire fleet out of range of the enemy motherships and pick off the escorts as they get close to you. No enemy mothership or base, anywhere, has an unlimited number of escort ships so no matter how long it may take, you WILL eventually exhaust their support fleet. If you have managed to keep all of your own escorts alive by careful control and keep having them fight at long range, enemy motherships won't be able to survive for long against concentrated long-range firepower from your entire fleet.

## Ship Build Strategies

* As mentioned above, fighters and missiles are too easily countered in late game. Early-game (before level 10) do use them, but once you gain access to equipping two-slot modules plus their corresponding heavier weapons, start switching at least most of them out.
* Also as mentioned above, short-range weapons (i.e. range less than 450) will also make you receive too much enemy firepower to survive, so it is heavily suggested to ignore all of them.
* For weapons, you need Shield-breakers and Hull-breakers; no weapon ever does both effectively.
	+ For Shield-breakers, one thing to keep in mind is that you don't necessarily need an extensive set of these. Once an enemy shield is down, damage of any kind (including from Hull-breaker weapons that do nearly no damage to shields) will prevent the shield from reforming, so you just need enough to drop the shield the first time. Laser Fighter bays work quite well on your Mothership and Escorts (yes this conflicts with the anti-carrier notes above, but with some on your Mothership and every single Escort enough should get through at least to break the shield), and one Range Laser on your mothership can be an effective backup
	+ For Hull-breakers, Sniper Cannons have proven to be astounding. They outdistance nearly every other turret type and even some Missiles, and cannot be intercepted by defense turrets or fighters. Escorts have pinpoint accuracy with them, for your Mothership if you're aiming at a target (including a very small, fast Escort), and you fire when the center of your targeting reticle has turned red, you are 100% guaranteed to hit the ship no matter how small or fast it is. Any Escort with a Medium turret (and explicitly this size; Small, Large or Omni ones cannot equip it) can fit one, you can find 2-slot modules for your Mothership with them or 3-slot ones with a pair.
	+ Defensively, you will want Defense Fighter bays. For Escorts small, medium and large Launchers (not Omni) can fit them, and it is generally a good strategy to have half the bays as Laser Fighters and the other half as Defensive. The Tug is an excellent example: one Medium Turret for a Sniper Cannon and two launchers to have one each of Laser and Defensive fighters. Try to also put at least one decent bay's worth of each on your Mothership (a 3-slot fighter module holds 8 fighters, so try to get the equivalent of at least 8 fighters each of both types).
* For modules related to movement in a kiting long-range fleet, you don't necessarily need a lot of wings to turn very fast but you DO need strong engines; you must be able to keep yourself out of range of enemy motherships with lots of nasty close-range firepower. So have a good spread of engines on your ship.