The Hissho/Ships

Fierce and aggressive, Hissho are fearless in battle. Driven by a sense of honor and respect for tradition, they prefer war to peace.

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.

The standout design trait of Hissho ships is that they tend to have a lot of hybrid Defense/Utility slots where many other factions have dedicated slots. Hissho ships generally also have a pretty decent set of dedicated attack slots, and tend to have slightly more attack slots than "usual", and slightly less defense slots.

The main implication of this is that you don't have contention for your attack slots - you'll always have pretty good attack power as the Hissho, so your choice lies in being able to build in three possible directions: outfitting balanced, slow ships with a mix of attack and high defense; building fast ships with poor defense, or building mixed ships with weapon amplifiers and other such devices in the utility slots, leading to ships with particularly good offensive power.

## Colonizer

  Slots

**Available Slots:**

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

**Strategic Implications**

As with all colony/explorer ships, you typically have to "subtract one" from the potential count of engine slots if this ship is going to fulfill its *normal* role. This would leave you with 2 engines, which means you'll have decent speed. Unlike the Sophons, you don't get a cool +2 speed boost to all your ships.

It does come with a few defense modules, but because of the way the game's structured, you basically never will willfully engage in combat with this, and usually can sneak to your destination without running into enemy ships - your only scuffles might be a few early raids by pirates where they attack without warning, and with a little luck, the defense modules may help this survive (especially if it's auto-joined into another friendly fleet).

## Explorer

  Slots

**Available Slots:**

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

**Strategic Implications**

As a "pure exploration" ship this has below-par potential, since you only have two slots. Since one of them will likely need probes, you're probably effectively down to one.

What sets this apart from other factions is that - assuming you scrapped engines entirely, you've got a potential 2 attack slots and 3 defense slots. This is one of the most powerful "fighting scoutship" models in the entire game. If you're able to somehow accelerate it (via, say, hero boosts, or the scientist party law), you can economically pump out some surprisingly good combat ships very early on at low cost. Great for killing pirates.

## Attacker

  Slots

**Available Slots:**

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

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

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

**Strategic Implications**

This ship has solid attack power, with the above-average 4 slots for weapons (all of which are totally uncontested), so it'll have good firepower. The defensive slots have a lower overall count, and also are contested for utility slots, but you've still got the option of having 3 of them with a single engine equipped.

## Protector

  Slots

**Available Slots:**

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

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

Total:= 2 ~ 3,  = 1 ~ 4,  = 1 ~ 5, +  = 8

**Strategic Implications**

A little bit high on the attack, with 3 possible slots; a little low on possible defense, with only 4 possible slots, 3 of which contend with utility slots. Much like the attacker, you can have a 1-engine ship whilst maxing out your attack-defense slots.

## Coordinator

  Slots

**Available Slots:**

Base: = 0 ~ 2,  = 0 ~ 2,  = 2 ~ 4,  = 2 ~ 5,  = 8

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

Total:  = 1, = 0 ~ 3,  = 0 ~ 3,  = 2 ~ 4,  = 3 ~ 6,  +  = 11

**Strategic Implications**

Essentially continues the same hissho theme of "more attack slots than usual, less defense slots than usual". Unlike the protector, this has multiple uncontested utility slots, so you've got a lot of room to do interesting things.

## Hunter

  Slots

**Available Slots:**

Base: = 3 ~ 5,  = 0 ~ 1,  = 1 ~ 4,  = 7

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

Total:  = 1, = 3 ~ 5,  = 1 ~ 3,  = 1 ~ 5,  +  = 10

**Strategic Implications**

The trend continues. Much like the attacker/protector, there's a single uncontested utility slot, if you want to max out the attack/defense. Also like the attacker, there's no contention between attack/defense slots, so you're maxing out the full attack/defense potential of the ship if you do so, without compromising one or the other.

This ship also has less module slots with a total of 10 that is less than the module slots of 11 of most other factions.

## Carrier

  Slots

**Available Slots:**

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

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

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

**Strategic Implications**

We once again continue the same trend as before. It's interesting to note that despite being biased a bit towards offensive slots, this ship isn't at the top end of carrier weapon slots - it's only got 7 to the UE/Sophons' 8. Nevertheless, it still holds to the Hissho theme. You've got one slot of contention between defense and firepower, but you've got a full 3 open utility slots to work with, so most of the hybrid ones are safe to commit to arms and armor.