The Sophons/Ships

A nation of restless, argumentative scientists, the Sophons eagerly take death-defying risks in the laboratory.

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.

One thing noteworthy is that the Sophons have a faction trait called "Fast Travelers II" that directly benefits ships under their command with +2  Movement points.

## Colonizer

  Slots

**Available Slots:**

Total:  = 3,  = 3

**Strategic Implications**

One of these slots *must* be filled with a colonization module, so you at most can equip 2 engines. You'll have average speed.

This is one of the most straightforward colonizer ships. It's got a decent loadout of engines, but since it has nothing but utility slots, it's basically a straight colony ship and nothing else. Having two engines, and the sophon's inherent movement bonus means it can get around at a pretty decent clip.

## Explorer

  Slots

**Available Slots:**

Total:= 2,  = 2,  = 4

**Strategic Implications**

As a "pure exploration" ship this has below-par potential, since you only have two utility slots (and if you're using probes, that means you've got only one engine). Normally you'd have a low-ish speed compared to most faction's exploration ships, but this is offset by both the innate speed boost Sophons get as a faction (+2). It's still not super fast.

This ship **does** have two attack slots, though, so it can pack some serious firepower if you need that, early. It's quite fragile, but if you plan to do this, it's ideally done with other protector/attacker ships in the same fleet, since the game has a targeting bias that preferentially will shoot at those before targeting your explorers.

The Sophons have a strange value proposition with exploration; this ship (or a hero ship) obviously must be used to explore curiosities (it's strictly impossible to put the probe modules on anything else), but the Sophons are rather unique in that their Protector ship can mount six engines, compared to this ship's maximum of 2. If you'd simply like to zip through the hyperlanes and get a sense of the map, a few Protectors outfit that way can do so much more quickly than these.

Furthermore; there's a strange quirk in the Sophon's quest rewards - if you follow the initial science quest path, the reward is an engine module, called "Sophon Free Move", which has the unusual property of giving increased vision range in addition to the normal move speed. *Normally, their protectors would have no vision range (like all combat ships)*, but these unusual engines - especially if you equip six of them, give an enormous vision range.

Because of this, it's not unreasonable to use those Protectors to scope out the map, and to use these Explorers and a hero ship to actually probe curiosities.

## Attacker

  Slots

**Available Slots:**

Base: = 2,  = 3 ~ 4,  = 0 ~ 1,  = 6

Upgrade: = 0 ~ 1,  = 1 ~ 2,  = 1 ~ 2,  = 3

Total: = 2 ~ 3,  = 4 ~ 6,  = 1 ~ 3,  +  = 9

**Strategic Implications**

This is a strange ship, as far as attackers go. It's far more heavily loaded with defensive modules than offense.

It's got a couple hybrid slots, so you do have options for how you built it out, and it's got enough utility slots that, if desired, "amplifier" modules can be used to improve your combat power.

It is also one of the Attacker ships to have a total potential of 9 module slots which is more than the slots of 8 of most other factions, on par with Vodyani and Lumeris.

## Protector

  Slots

**Available Slots:**

Base: = 1,  = 1 ~ 2,  = 3 ~ 4,  = 6

Upgrade: = 0 ~ 1,  = 1 ~ 2,  = 1 ~ 2,  = 3

Total:= 1 ~ 2,  = 2 ~ 4,  = 4 ~ 6,  +  = 9

**Strategic Implications**

The standout feature of this ship is a whopping 6 utility slots, 4 of which are completely uncontested.

As mentioned above, in the explorer section, this has excellent potential for scouting.

Due to the loadout of the ship, it's a bit of an odd duck in the Protector-as-a-Tank role; a more "normal" protector (like the Unfallen's protector ship) would have a very large complement of defense modules; this ship can load 4 once you've got the upgrade, which is decent but below the average count (which is around 5). The trick to using this as a combat ship is to not think of it as a "Tank" - especially, the trick is to not treat the "utility" slots as useless boondoggles outside of fitting engines - you need to actually rely on support modules that affect combat. You may, for example, want to effectively 'shift' these out of a protector role by equipping jammers - you could then give them repair bots, shield boosters, or some sort of specialized weapons+amplifiers. If you don't want to tech to these upgrades, you're probably better off fielding combat groups primarily composed of Kilos (Attackers), and perhaps holding out for the Peta (Coordinator) to use as a "Tank".

It is worth noting that some weapons, even early weapons like  lasers and beams, apply "debuffs" to enemy attackers hit by them, often lowering their damage output. The game has special targeting rules where protectors will preferentially shoot at attackers before anything else, and vice-versa, so equipping such weapons on these ships can be a good way to lower enemy DPS in a way that attacker ships cannot (since attackers will preferentially shoot at enemy protectors before finally training their guns on the attackers).

Similarly to the attacker class, it is also one of the Protector ships to have a total potential of 9 module slots which is more than the slots of 8 of most other factions, on par with Vodyani and Lumeris.

## Coordinator

  Slots

**Available Slots:**

Base: = 0 ~ 2,  = 0 ~ 2,  = 3 ~ 5,  = 2 ~ 3,  = 8

Upgrade:  = 1,  = 0 ~ 1,  = 1 ~ 2,  = 3

Total:  = 1, = 0 ~ 2, = 0 ~ 2,  = 3 ~ 6,  = 3 ~ 5,  +  = 11

**Strategic Implications**

Very much unlike the Protector-class ship, this puppy can equip a *bunch* of defense slots, so you can make these very tanky. Their offensive capabilities are pretty decent - they do have two squadron slots without needing the upgrade, although they don't get another one after upgrading. They don't quite have the crazy utility loadout of a protector, but they're damned close, so these can also equip a bunch of combat modules as well as having good engines.

## Hunter

  Slots

**Available Slots:**

Base: = 2 ~ 3,  = 3 ~ 5,  = 1 ~ 2,  = 8

Upgrade:  = 1, = 0 ~ 1,  = 0 ~ 1,  = 1 ~ 2,  = 3

Total:  = 1, = 2 ~ 4,  = 3 ~ 6,  = 2 ~ 4,  +  = 11

**Strategic Implications**

Continuing a trend seen on the Attacker, this has a surprisingly high number of defense slots for an offensive ship, and somewhat lower-than-usual offense slots. Unlike the Attacker, this does have a "Heavy Weapon" slot in addition to the basic weapons, and that tilts this more towards an even mix of offense/defense, rather than being biased in one direction.

## Carrier

  Slots
  Slots

**Available Slots:**

Base:  = 1, = 0 ~ 4,  = 0 ~ 4,  = 2 ~ 5,  = 1 ~ 3,  = 10

Upgrade:  = 1, = 0 ~ 2,  = 0 ~ 2,  = 1 ~ 2,  = 1 ~ 2, = 2, = 3

Total:  = 2, = 0 ~ 6, = 0 ~ 6,  = 3 ~ 7,  = 2 ~ 5, ++ = 15

**Strategic Implications**

This ship bucks the trend established by the Attacker/Hunter ships, and has a very strong complement of weapon modules. If you count the overall number of offensive slots (8), it's actually the highest in the game (tied with the United Empire carrier).

Despite this, though - the Sophon Carrier is not a glass cannon, and also has a high potential for defense modules as well. Most importantly, only 2 of these contend with Attack modules, so you're not forced to make this ship weak in one respect in order to be good in the other - at worst, the other stat will be decent rather than bad.

The other contention of slots lies in utility slots, but even if you sacrifice all of those for more Attack/Defense slots, you're still left with a quite decent 2 engines.