The Horatio/Ships

The Horatio are Horatio, and intend to expand until all the galaxy is as gorgeous as they are.

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.

Horatio's ships have a hidden bonus (not listed in the formal faction traits) that gives them 10% more HP than other faction's ships of the same class. This helps to offset the 20% increased production cost that's listed as one of the formal faction traits. Additionally, Horatio's "Price of Perfection II" trait also benefits them with a 10% more damage on weapon modules.

Most of the Horatio ships are characterized by extensive use of multi-purpose module slots, and slightly less module slots overall than other factions' comparable ships. Although you can make 'jack-of-all-trades' ships, there's a unique opportunity to study the particular ways in which your opponent's ships are inflexible, and to equip your ships in a way that exploits that.

(Note: Curiously, the Horatio's ships of extensive multi-purpose slots but with less slots overall is the exact opposite of the ship designs of Riftborn that have no multi-purpose slots but more slots overall. The same with that Horatio's increase in 10% HP is the exact opposite of Riftborn's decrease in 10% HP)

## Colonizer

  Slots

**Available Slots:**

 = 0 ~ 3,  = 0 ~ 3

**Strategic Implications**

As one of these slots **must** be filled with a colonization module for colonizing purposes, they aren't in the highest tier of colonizer speed, but still solidly good. The fact that these can hybridize as defence slots is arguably not very useful unless your colonizer is in a fleet, since if it's caught on its own without an ability to attack against 3-4 ships, it'll still most likely die before the full battle finishes, even with hefty armour/shields, and such a ship will be very slow.

## Explorer

  Slots

**Available Slots:**

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

**Strategic Implications**

As a "pure exploration" ship this has above-par potential, only being rivalled from the exploration ships of Vaulters and Umbral Choir. Since you can equip a full 4 utility models, compared to the 2 utility models of most other factions. (whether movement or probes). With 4 slots, you've got an excellent mix for speed and probe slots; you also can sacrifice one slot for defence and still be quite speedy.

By having a full 4 utility slots(5 after researching Adaptive Colonies), one of the niche roles this is unusually good at is equipping a ship with 4 probes, making a nearly immobile ship that reveals an **enormous** radius around the system it's built in (often revealing most of a constellation, and revealing hidden nodes nearby).

Since this ship has the potential to have up to 3 defence slots, or 2 defence and 1 attack, it's also potentially a very solid early-game fighting ship, helpful for rushing opponents or fighting off pirates. This helps offset one of the Horatio faction's weaknesses, which is the normally rather high cost penalty applied to all of their ships (furthermore, it's a tool available immediately at the start of the game, without having to get the actual tech for combat ships).

## Attacker

  Slots

**Available Slots:**

= 1 ~ 3,  = 2 ~ 6,  = 0 ~ 3

**Strategic Implications**

Rather like the Sophons, this is an "attacker" ship that instead leans really heavily towards defence modules, and will tend to be durable, but have low firepower. The tough thing about this ship is that **all** utility modules come at the expense of an attack/defence module, so even the "reasonable minimum" of a single engine forces you to cut into the outright combat potential of the ship.

It's very flexible in terms of how it can be configured, but it's "maxed out potential" for everything except defence is somewhat mediocre.

## Protector

  Slots

**Available Slots:**

= 0 ~ 2,  = 1 ~ 5,  = 2 ~ 6

**Strategic Implications**

It has a fairly solid count of possible defence/utility modules - 5 is a fairly solid amount, although it's interesting that the attacker ship does (potentially) have more of them. (Because these ships do occupy different combat AI roles, and because the attacker will likely have to sacrifice a few to get decent fire-power, there are still plenty of rationales to build these). The upside is that there are enough non-hybrid utility slots that you can have solid engines without sacrificing anything else.

## Coordinator

  Slots
  Slots

**Available Slots:**

 = 1,  = 0 ~ 3,  = 1 ~ 5,  = 3 ~ 8

**Strategic Implications**

This has a "functionally" low count of potential defence modules; technically you've got 5 in total, but because they're multi-purpose slots, if you actually equip more than 3 you're losing most of your offensive potential. The same caveat applies to Utility slots, and hence, potential engines - you've got a grand total of 8, but at least 5 of them have contention with other load-outs like offence and defence. You could make an obscenely fast ship with just one heavy attack and one defence module, but you probably don't want to go that direction.

## Hunter

  Slots

**Available Slots:**

 = 1, = 2 ~ 5,  = 2 ~ 7,  = 0 ~ 5

**Strategic Implications**

Like the Attacker, this suffers from the same conundrum of leaning quite a bit heavier towards defence, and also having "every single utility slot" be in contention, so equipping even a single engine cuts into the combat potential.

Unlike the Attacker, this can field a decent solid amount of fire-power. The collection of defence modules is also quite good for a Hunter ship.

## Carrier

  Slots
  Slots

**Available Slots:**

 = 2, = 0 ~ 5,  = 0 ~ 5,  = 1 ~ 8,  = 1 ~ 8

**Strategic Implications**

Potentially 5 squadron modules. Potentially 8 Utility modules. Potentially 8 defence modules; all of this sounds great, except in continuation of the Horatio Ship Design Theme, these are mixed module types, so any specialization in one direction directly cuts into another capability.

If you specialize in one direction, you can be rather above par compared to other carriers, but if you have a mixed ship load-out you'll probably end up somewhat below the capabilities of other factions' ships, since your overall number of slots is a bit lower.