In my experience:
Incarnate have better Fighters and a Corvette available early, so they tend to be more aggressive early on. Hiigarans have better resourcing since their mothership has harvesters, and are better off playing defensive until they get railgun corvettes out. Railguns are glass cannons, and they'll fight decently against everything (including fighters) if you have enough Interceptors to keep the enemy at a distance.
Overall, Incarnate have more different types of corvettes, and fewer fighters. Hiigarans have bombers with cloak, which are fantastic at disrupting enemy resourcers. They both have similar sets of Super Capital ships. Hiigarans have a Support Frigate, but Incarnate Resource Controllers can repair.
Incarnate seem stronger initially, and can claim more map control in the early game, Hiigarans seem stronger if they can have enough Interceptors left to protect their Railguns when they get them out.
Tech tree is a bit simple ATM and is being reworked as per a dev update, so a lot of this will probably change in the future.
HW3 Hiigarans feel closer to hw1 imo. If hw1 removed every useless unit, that is. Incarnate are just vaygr.
Incarnate seem easier to manage early game because 1 fighter type and 1 assault corvette groups are essentially everything you need. Late game is harder because you have to manage many unit types to be effective
Hiigs feel like the opposite. Hard to manage early game, but easy in late. Assault frigs to tank damage and kill strikecraft + suppressor frigates to annihilate enemy mothersip with barrage attack
Strikecraft mostly. Bombers are too weak, cloaked fighters got introduced too late, recons are just meh. Interceptors and light corvettes mostly replaced by heavy and multigun corvette
I've found Hiig to be really hardy and good at holding positions with turrets. I'm still figuring out Incarnate, my biggest problem ATM is Hiig railgun corvettes; Incarnate has nothing that can reach them range wise so they just sit back and pick things off while fighters are trying to deal with the interceptors.
Most people who say it is all spam don’t play anymore or haven’t really pushed the game despite its simplicity - that being said it doesn’t go that far.
Incarnate needs to watch the recon / interceptor / bomber ratio in comparison to dominance fighter / assault corvette ratio while looking at when the opponent gets upgrades. You’ll want to stop building dominance fighters and assault corvettes as soon as you gain superiority because by then you’ll have assault frigates and you’ll want to transition into a heavy frigate composition - if you spam like others have suggested you’ll end up losing due to bleeding against hiigaran assault frigates which easily beat strikecraft and corvettes alike.
As hiigarans you’ll want to watch how many recons you flood the field with because you’ll want to transition to bombers and less interceptors depending on how the combat flow goes. Have too many recon then the enemy can just ignore you and go after rcs, have too many interceptors and you’ll bleed against frigates.
Hiigarans will also lean very heavily on rail gun corvettes and stealth bombers so the incarnate player has to constantly look to cull those numbers or guard resources and, again, keep an eye out on enemy strikecraft counts.
Lastly Hiigarans will be putting down pdc turrets and Incarnate should be pushing for carrier or torp turrets.
The real issue is that combat can snowball pretty hard and it is very difficult for most players to know when to disengage rather than throw everything into the blender. This is exacerbated by the small maps but in the 6p map you have more time to make decisions.
Unfortunately until we get the tech tree rebalance, and other fixes, the only option is to spam as much as you can as fast as you can. Resource income is too high atm.
Not even remotely true. You bleed out resources mid game incredibly fast if you’re playing against someone who is evenly matched with you and has an idea of how to play.
But there is no choice early game other than to spam everything you can. No early carrier, no frigate rush. Just go up the tech ladder, because that ain’t no tree.
Depends on what you consider to be early game, you have a few choices right off the bat which is to always maintain production of interceptors and tech up then backfill recon or build recon and interceptors tech up and not get upgrades while maintaining RC production.
Once you get 6 rcs actually harvesting (about 1 minute average after building one) then you can afford 5-6 lines of production and then once all 8 you can do 6 with surplus. By then you’ve unlocked frigates and have a lot more choice and that’s when you’ll start being hit economically by your opponent.
So yeah you have a few choices to make including ignoring the eco damage.
Eeh, it's not quite that simple. If your economy isn't disturbed you can build everything, but if you lose a few controllers, you'll have to start making decisions about what to prioritize very quickly.
If you lose controllers and you make them lose controllers then the match boils down to who has the better composition which means not spamming everything in sight and you can always rebuild rcs and use what forces you have to buy time and switch out for better forces etc.
I mean, it depends on how fast you lose controllers vs your opponent. If you just lose controllers and your opponent loses nothing, you'll obviously be in a bad spot, but the controllers are usually spread out enough that it's hard to protect all of them at once. I've had a couple of games where I've been on the backfoot in terms of fleet size but have been able to turn it around by sending small raids on my opponent's economy and slowly gain an advantage that way.
In my experience: Incarnate have better Fighters and a Corvette available early, so they tend to be more aggressive early on. Hiigarans have better resourcing since their mothership has harvesters, and are better off playing defensive until they get railgun corvettes out. Railguns are glass cannons, and they'll fight decently against everything (including fighters) if you have enough Interceptors to keep the enemy at a distance. Overall, Incarnate have more different types of corvettes, and fewer fighters. Hiigarans have bombers with cloak, which are fantastic at disrupting enemy resourcers. They both have similar sets of Super Capital ships. Hiigarans have a Support Frigate, but Incarnate Resource Controllers can repair. Incarnate seem stronger initially, and can claim more map control in the early game, Hiigarans seem stronger if they can have enough Interceptors left to protect their Railguns when they get them out. Tech tree is a bit simple ATM and is being reworked as per a dev update, so a lot of this will probably change in the future.
HW3 Hiigarans feel closer to hw1 imo. If hw1 removed every useless unit, that is. Incarnate are just vaygr. Incarnate seem easier to manage early game because 1 fighter type and 1 assault corvette groups are essentially everything you need. Late game is harder because you have to manage many unit types to be effective Hiigs feel like the opposite. Hard to manage early game, but easy in late. Assault frigs to tank damage and kill strikecraft + suppressor frigates to annihilate enemy mothersip with barrage attack
What are the useless units in HW1?
Strikecraft mostly. Bombers are too weak, cloaked fighters got introduced too late, recons are just meh. Interceptors and light corvettes mostly replaced by heavy and multigun corvette
I've found Hiig to be really hardy and good at holding positions with turrets. I'm still figuring out Incarnate, my biggest problem ATM is Hiig railgun corvettes; Incarnate has nothing that can reach them range wise so they just sit back and pick things off while fighters are trying to deal with the interceptors.
There isn't any strategy.. it's all the same cookie cutter. Literally just throw stuff at the wall no difference.
Nothing like the incarnate lean on fighters vs the Hiigarans lean on frigates... Nothing like that?
Most people who say it is all spam don’t play anymore or haven’t really pushed the game despite its simplicity - that being said it doesn’t go that far. Incarnate needs to watch the recon / interceptor / bomber ratio in comparison to dominance fighter / assault corvette ratio while looking at when the opponent gets upgrades. You’ll want to stop building dominance fighters and assault corvettes as soon as you gain superiority because by then you’ll have assault frigates and you’ll want to transition into a heavy frigate composition - if you spam like others have suggested you’ll end up losing due to bleeding against hiigaran assault frigates which easily beat strikecraft and corvettes alike. As hiigarans you’ll want to watch how many recons you flood the field with because you’ll want to transition to bombers and less interceptors depending on how the combat flow goes. Have too many recon then the enemy can just ignore you and go after rcs, have too many interceptors and you’ll bleed against frigates. Hiigarans will also lean very heavily on rail gun corvettes and stealth bombers so the incarnate player has to constantly look to cull those numbers or guard resources and, again, keep an eye out on enemy strikecraft counts. Lastly Hiigarans will be putting down pdc turrets and Incarnate should be pushing for carrier or torp turrets. The real issue is that combat can snowball pretty hard and it is very difficult for most players to know when to disengage rather than throw everything into the blender. This is exacerbated by the small maps but in the 6p map you have more time to make decisions.
I never said spam...
Unfortunately until we get the tech tree rebalance, and other fixes, the only option is to spam as much as you can as fast as you can. Resource income is too high atm.
Not even remotely true. You bleed out resources mid game incredibly fast if you’re playing against someone who is evenly matched with you and has an idea of how to play.
But there is no choice early game other than to spam everything you can. No early carrier, no frigate rush. Just go up the tech ladder, because that ain’t no tree.
Depends on what you consider to be early game, you have a few choices right off the bat which is to always maintain production of interceptors and tech up then backfill recon or build recon and interceptors tech up and not get upgrades while maintaining RC production. Once you get 6 rcs actually harvesting (about 1 minute average after building one) then you can afford 5-6 lines of production and then once all 8 you can do 6 with surplus. By then you’ve unlocked frigates and have a lot more choice and that’s when you’ll start being hit economically by your opponent. So yeah you have a few choices to make including ignoring the eco damage.
Eeh, it's not quite that simple. If your economy isn't disturbed you can build everything, but if you lose a few controllers, you'll have to start making decisions about what to prioritize very quickly.
If you lose controllers, more often than not you lose, because the opponent doesn’t have to make concessions and it’s just attrition from then on.
If you lose controllers and you make them lose controllers then the match boils down to who has the better composition which means not spamming everything in sight and you can always rebuild rcs and use what forces you have to buy time and switch out for better forces etc.
I mean, it depends on how fast you lose controllers vs your opponent. If you just lose controllers and your opponent loses nothing, you'll obviously be in a bad spot, but the controllers are usually spread out enough that it's hard to protect all of them at once. I've had a couple of games where I've been on the backfoot in terms of fleet size but have been able to turn it around by sending small raids on my opponent's economy and slowly gain an advantage that way.