The Vaulters/Ships

Inquisitive and fearless, the Vaulters seek traces of their past and sources of knowledge across the galaxy.

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.

A recurring theme with Vaulter ships is a high number of Defense/Utility wildcard slots; you have the flexibility to make a fast, fragile fleet, or a slower, more durable fleet (or any number of other useful modifiers like weapon-enhancers used in utility slots). Even without swapping out defense/utility slots, there are a high number of plain utility slots, so it's most likely your fleet will always be able to be reasonably fast.

The vaulters have access through an early quest to a hyperium engine which gives a *much* higher amount of evasion than usually given by such engines; a common trick with them is to exploit this by giving them at least 3 or 4 of these engines, which gives their ships a very large amount of evasion (easily in the neighborhood of 15-20%) and can make them markedly more survivable.

Rather than having colonizers like most factions, the Vaulters have the Argosy, which behaves quite differently.

## Colonizer

  Slots

**Available Slots:**

Base:  = 0 ~ 2,  = 2 ~ 4,  = 4

Upgrade:  = 0 ~ 1,  = 0 ~ 1,  = 1

Total:  = 0 ~ 3,  = 2 ~ 5, = 5

**Strategic Implications**

There is only one Argosy; you do not and cannot build more. Like the Vodyani Arks, it can be repaired if destroyed, but if it's destroyed at the absolute start of the game before you found your first colony, there's nobody available to repair it, so you're screwed (that's a game over condition).

Rather than being consumed when it builds a colony, the Argosy can repeatedly found them (more on these mechanics are described above, in the faction description).

This is also potentially the fastest of colonizing ships compared to all other factions.

The Argosy starts extremely fast, and starts with an extremely large vision radius. Later in the game you can get a modest upgrade to give it another pair of Defense/Utility slots, which boosts its travel speed, but by then you likely have portals at most distant planets.

  Slots

**Available Slots:**

Total:  = 0 ~ 1,  = 3 ~ 4,  = 4

Though the default Vaulters faction does not have a traditional colonizer ship, the Barge-Class acts as a colonizer for custom factions with the Vaulters visual affinity and a gameplay affinity other than Planet Brokers, Metafolding and In The Shadows (it will also be an Entwiner for Celestial Vines and a Leecher for Shipbound)

## Explorer

  Slots

**Available Slots:**

Total:= 1 ~ 2,  = 0 ~ 1,  = 2 ~ 4,  = 5

**Strategic Implications**

This is one of the three best explorer ships in the game, on the same level with the exploration ships of Umbral Choir and Horatio. Able to suit a variety of different roles. It can equip up to 4 Utility slots, meaning it can have a great mix of vision and speed.

## Attacker

  Slots

**Available Slots:**

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

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

Total:= 3,  = 1 ~ 3,  = 2 ~ 4,  + = 8

**Strategic Implications**

This ship doesn't have the highest complement of attack/defense slots, although it's reasonably formidable. The main attraction here is a large set of utility slots, which give it a lot of flexibility and let it actually use utility modules without gimping its speed.

## Protector

  Slots

**Available Slots:**

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

Upgrade: = 1.  = 1,  = 1,  = 3

Total:= 2,  = 1 ~ 3,  = 3 ~ 5,  +  = 8

**Strategic Implications**

As with the attacker, this has a mediocre complement of attack/defense slots; especially before the upgrade. It has a lot of utility slots.

## Coordinator

  Slots

**Available Slots:**

Base: = 0 ~ 2,  = 0 ~ 2,  = 1 ~ 3,  = 3 ~ 5,  = 8

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

Total:  = 1,  = 0 ~ 3,  = 0 ~ 3,  = 1 ~ 4,  = 4 ~ 6,  +  = 11

**Strategic Implications**

Here, the vaulters ships take a sharp detour from the theme being established with their L1 ships; this ship actually has a very solid set of combat slots, and also optionally can go heavy on utility slots as well. It has both good offense and defense.

## Hunter

  Slots

**Available Slots:**

Base: = 3,  = 1 ~ 3,  = 1 ~ 3,  = 7

Upgrade:  = 1, = 1,  = 0 ~ 1,  = 1 ~ 2,  = 4

Total:  = 1, = 4,  = 1 ~ 4,  = 2 ~ 5,  +  = 11

**Strategic Implications**

Like the Coordinator, this is another "combat workhorse" with a solid complement of offense/defense slots. If necessary, you can swap out defense slots for additional utility slots (potentially to augment firepower, or enable other effects).

Oddly, unlike many other factions the upgrade gives 4 more module slots instead of 3 more module slots, in this class-type it is the same as Lumeris, but unlike Lumeris, the total number of module slots is the same as most other factions of this class-type of 11.

## Carrier

  Slots
  Slots

**Available Slots:**

Base: = 1, = 0 ~ 3,  = 0 ~ 3,  = 0 ~ 3,  = 3 ~ 6,  = 10

Upgrade:  = 1, = 0 ~ 1,  = 0 ~ 1,  = 2 ~ 3,  = 1 ~ 2, = 1, = 4

Total:  = 2, = 0 ~ 4,  = 0 ~ 4,  = 2 ~ 6,  = 4 ~ 8,  + +  = 15

**Strategic Implications**

This has a solid complement of attack/defense slots; it's a bit low on the number of squadron slots, compared to most carriers - having only a potential 4 of them. There's also a fair bit of contention between defense and utility slots, but the number of open utility slots without any contention is very large, so this can easily be a fast ship, and can equip quite a few combat modifiers.