Fascists

Fascist race icon from VGA Planets Nu

Overview

The Fascist Empire is a race inspired by the Klingons from the Star Trek universe. They are primarily a torpedo based race although their largest warship (the Victorious Class Battleship) is one of the least powerful capital ships in the game. Their lack of raw fire power is offset by several sinister racial advantages including two ships armed with Glory Devices (self destruction by command).

Race Characteristics

• Fascist ships cannot be attacked by enemy planets or starbases. They can however attack planets or starbases.
• 15:1 Attack Ratio and 5:1 Defense Ratio during ground assault.
• The Fascists fleet includes two ships fitted with Glory Devices: The D19b Nefarious Class Destroyer and the Saber Class Frigate. This device enables the ship to self destruct causing significant damage to all ships in the immediate vicinity (your own ships get just 10%/20% damage). It can also be set to trigger in the presence of cloaked ships.
• The Fascists are the only race who can execute the Pillage mission. This mission allows any armed Fascist ship to plunder enemy, or friendly, planets for money and supplies.
• The Fascist fleet has 3 ships which can cloak and a number of ships with 10 beam weapons, providing some small defense against fighter carriers.

Ships

Tech	Name	Mass	Fuel	Cargo	Crew	Engines	Beams	Torps	Bays	MC	Dur	Trit	Moly	Special
1	Small Deep Space Freighter	30	200	70	2	1				10	2	2	3
2	D7a Painmaker Class Cruiser	170	230	120	352	2	4			90	42	81	43
2	Little Pest Class Escort	75	180	20	175	2	6			60	12	27	45
3	Neutronic Fuel Carrier	10	900	2	2	2				20	10	2	20
3	Medium Deep Space Freighter	60	250	200	6	1				65	4	4	6
4	D7 Coldpain Class Cruiser	175	430	100	373	2	4	2		120	42	71	63	Cloaking Device
4	Small Transport	30	180	50	15	1	2			25	2	2	20
5	Ill Wind Class Battlecruiser	275	480	260	525	2	10	2		320	82	91	93
5	D3 Thorn Class Destroyer	90	120	40	222	2	2	4		110	32	43	25	Cloaking Device
6	Large Deep Space Freighter	130	600	1200	102	2				160	85	7	8
6	Valiant Wind Class Carrier	180	190	80	322	2	7		3	380	52	61	123
6	Deth Specula Class Frigate	113	140	35	240	2	6	4		280	25	45	89	Cloaking Device
6	D19b Nefarious Class Destroyer	96	160	40	265	2	7			180	32	53	65	Glory Device
8	Saber Class Frigate	153	150	25	420	2	10			280	25	35	95	Glory Device
9	Neutronic Refinery Ship	712	800	1050	190	10	6			970	125	150	527	Alchemy Ship
10	Super Transport Freighter	160	1200	2600	202	4				220	125	13	18
10	Victorious Class Battleship	451	290	130	810	2	10	6		410	170	193	90
10	Merlin Class Alchemy Ship	920	450	2700	120	10	8			840	625	250	134	Alchemy Ship - 3 Supplies -> 1 Mineral

Most useful ships

• D7 Coldpain Class Cruiser: This is the most useful ship in your fleet. It has a mass of 175 kt, 100 Cargo room, 4 beams 2 torpedo bays and it has a Cloaking Device.

• Ill Wind Class Battlecruiser: Level 5 battleship with a mass of 275 kt, 480 fuel tanks, 260 cargo space, 10 beams and 2 torpedo bays! This ship is amazing.

• Valiant Wind Class Carrier: 7 Beams and just 3 bays. Only build this ship if you get free fighters from your allied race. Remember: Fascists are a torpedo based race.

• Deth Specula Class Frigate: 6 beams 4 torpedo bays - but a small fuel tank (140) and just 35 cargo space. Use this ship together with the D7. This ship has a Cloaking Device.

• D19b Nefarious Class Destroyer: This ship has a Glory device. If this ship explodes, your ships at the same location will receive 20% of a mine hit of damage. At your second base build this ship or the Saber. Build them with X-rays or lasers and low tech engines.

• Saber Class Frigate: This ship has a Glory device. If this ship explodes, your ships at the same location will receive 10% of a mine hit of damage. Build them with X-rays or lasers and low tech engines (they will explode some day).

• Victorious Class Battleship: 10 beams 6 torpedo bays and a strong hull with 451 mass. This ship is cheap to build both in minerals and in cash.

Strategies

Build bases everywhere

Build up my home base with Engines 10 (Warp 9), Hull 5, Beams 1 and Torpedoes 5 (Mark 4). Raise up the factories to maximum and mines to at least 200. Save your money in the beginning at your home base to send out a D7 in every direction first.

The costs are: 1 D7 Coldpain Class Cruiser: 768 MC, 82 Du, 83 Tr, 135 Mo - Hull + 2 x Transwarp Drives, 4 x X-Rays + 2 x Mark4 torpedo launcher.

Watch your next planets to decide where you should build your next base as soon as possible. Why? There you start building a fleet of Glory device ships (Hull 6 with Engine 1, X-Rays)! This is your main weapon. Be sure to have a couple of them before turn 20. Later you'll tow them with your Vics into war, and to safeguard your ships from robbing Priv cloakers.

You will go out of Duranium soon. Thats why I prefer building no Disruptors on my first D7-Scouts...but try to built Disruptors + Mark7 as soon as possible.

You have to build some freighters to bring back minerals to your home base. Don't fly through the open space with them, don't show your neighbors where your home base is.

The Fascists are the only race other than the Empire who should build a base on any planet with good temperature and some minerals. You don't need the native race advantage, because you just have to raise the hulls up to 6 and that costs 1500 megacredits. Believe me, you will have enough money...and build a D19 every turn. The costs for a D19b Nefarious Destroyer are: 189 MC, 34 Du, 70 Tr, 65 Mo - Hull + 2 x Stardrive1 + 7 x Lasers or X-Rays.

Expand cloaked with the D7

Use your fantastic D7 (100 Cargo + 175 Mass) to expand (never build anything else on it as X-Rays or Disruptors). Your tubes can be Mark 4 - that depends on your tactics. Use this ship to cross over distances above 81 LY. I usually send this ship out without torpedoes, just put 100 clans on board. Set down 3 clans on every planet until you reach a good one with a lot of natives. Drop down 30 clans and pillage in the same turn. Next turn the planet is yours, and you have about 30 supplies and money on board. Next turn beam down supplies and some money and beam up some minerals. Then you fly on cloaked while building torpedoes on board using the Friendly Code "mkt".

You will have 2 logistic problems: bringing home the money and bringing a lot of clans to the front to take over bases: Send out some Deth Speculas to bring home money soon.

Send out some Illwinds behind them, to bring clans and build torpedoes. An ideal little fleet: D7 Coldpain Class Cruiser, a Deth Specula and an Illwind.

Fly behind the lines

Don't attack too early. Fly behind the lines and wait with your D7 and stay cloaked on a planet until a Freighter arrives. Tow him out with Warp 1 (into the warp wells), set Primary Enemy (PE) to this race and Friendly Code (FC): NTP - so you don't destroy the freighter with your torpedos - you'll capture it. Maybe you'll get some clans to drop down ont the next planet.

Pillage & don't fight planets

Remember: You are a Warrior race, so don't wait too long to attack. Choose your Ally soon. Build some Illwinds in the early stages with X-Rays and Mark 4's and make trouble (remember: planets do not attack your ships!). Later in the game, this is your armed transport. If this ship is damaged after a fight or by a mine hit, you just have to pillage. With this big cargo room, you'll repair 52% damage from pillaging in 1 turn! This ship shots down about 40 fighters in a fight, but why fighting a planet. Pillage it. But if you want to take over a homeworld:Send 2 Illwinds, that works after 1 round pillaging.

Take over planets by beaming down clans. 100 clans will be as strong as 1000 clans, because of your ground attack ratio being 10:1. In the early stages, you'll take over every planet by dropping clans from your D7 - and if there are too many enemy clans, pillage a few turns and you'll see, there will be less.

There are two ways to fight: Never go to a planet with Primary enemy set, first have a look at what's going on. You can tow out carriers with your D7 to a couple of Vics with Glory Device ships. Try to fight carriers with 2 Glory Devices and 2 Vics with Mark 7 torpedoes (have at least 40 Supplies on board!).

Application is the trick!

Do you know "Juniper's Guide to Fascists" (By Juniper - Revised 5/29/1998)? He used this headline in his guide to explain in a fabulous way, how to get priority points using the Glory device:

"The Fascist, in order to be successful needs information. If he has enough Victorious Battleships and enough Glory devices and enough information he can both defend his territory fiercely and invade enemies successfully. Utilize Glory Ships to the max. They are your main weapons. Used in packs they are devastating.

Now, let's talk about trading lots of ships for few ships. Most races cannot get away with this. Why? Well, most races do not get priority points for the ships that it loses. If you go into battle with 2 Victorious Battleships and 2 glory devices against a Virgo, and you pop two ships you will usually lose a Victorious and the enemy loses 1 Virgo. How can this possibly be good for you? Well, first it is obvious that the Virgo would take out several Victorious without the help of the glory device and the Virgo would still live against 2 Victorious so that is clearly worse. However, with the glory devices, what happens after the battle? The enemy gets 5 priority build points from the Vicki, you get 7 from the Virgo, plus 2 for the two pop ships. This means you get 9 priority build points and he only gets 5. These are used to build ships after the ship limit is reached.

Before the ship limit is reached you can outbuild him because of the inexpensive nature of your ships and because you are building stripped down glory ships that cost about 300 MCR and almost no minerals.

After the 500 ship limit you should be able to keep up with your opponents because you have more priority build points and because your ships cost you less priority build points to build them. In order to maximize your builds you will have to make judicious use of the ship queue and the planetary PBx friendly codes."

The Glory Device mission

What is a Glory Device? It is a device that is installed on two of the Fascist ships the D19b Nefarious Destroyer and the Saber Class Frigate. The device is a ship feature and NOT a race advantage. Anyone owning one of these ships can use the device. When one of these ships set off the Glory Device it does 1 minehit (1 minehit = 10000/ (hullmass+1) ) of damage to all ships at the same point in space and destroys itself.

Controlling the Glory Device

By using different friendly codes the glory device can be used in different ways:

A) By using the "pop" friendly code the D19 or Saber class starships will automatically explode after the movement phase of the hostrun.

B ) With a friendly code of "trg" the D19 or Saber class starships will explode after the movement phase of the hostrun, if:

Primary Enemy: The D19 or Saber has a primary enemy set and a cloaked ship belonging to that primary is at the same location as the D19 or Saber. Mission set to KILL: The D19 or Saber has a KILL mission, and a cloaked ship not belonging to the same owner or one of his allies is at the same location as the D19 or Saber.

Glory Devices and fuel

To explode, a D19 or Saber does not need fuel. More precisely:

A friendly code of "pop" will cause the ship to explode, even if it has no fuel A friendly code of "trg" together with a primary enemy setting will make the ship function as a cloaker-detector against ships belonging to that primary enemy, even if it has no fuel. A friendly code of "trg" together with a KILL mission does require fuel, because having a mission set (in this case: KILL) requires fuel.

Exploding Glory Devices

When a Glory Device explodes the ship's owner is informed by a message. When exploding, the glory device does less damage to Fascist ships than other races' ships. The D19 will do 20% of normal damage and the Saber will do 10% of normal damage to ships that the Fascists own. If a glory device that is owned by someone other than the Fascists is set off, ships of that race that are in the same place will also only suffer a partial minehit of damage. Official allies of the Fascists still suffer a full minehit of damage from glory devices if they are in the same place as an exploding glory device. Fascists will always suffer only a partial minehit, no matter who owns and sets off the glory device and no matter if it is set off by an ally or enemy.

Ships that are hit by an exploding Glory Device send a message to their owner, and a copy is also sent to the owner of the exploded Glory Device ship.

Glory Devices and planets

If the explosion takes place over a planet, a number of things happen.

• 25% of all planetary structures are destroyed.
• 40% of a planet's colonist population is killed.
• 40% of thenative population is killed.'

Siliconoid, Reptile and Bovinoid natives as well as Lizard and Crystalline colonists are immune to Glory Devices' effects. Starbases do not suffer any damage from exploding Glory Devices. Exploding a Glory Device over one of your own planets does not cause any damage to the planet.

The Berthold rays that result from a Glory Device explosion will kill ALL Amorphous life on a planet that occupies the same point in space as the exploding starship. This will cause all of the Amorphous natives to be converted directly into supplies. They will be converted at a rate of 1 supply unit per 1000 natives. That's a lot of money!

The Pillage Mission

This mission is a useful addition to the Fascists arsenal. Pillage is a race advantage. It allows a ship to kill natives and clans on a planet and also provides income from the attack. The attack will kill 20% of the natives and 20 percent of the colonists and create 100 supplies and 100 MCR from every million natives.

Any Fascist starship with beams can plunder a planet for money and supplies. A Fascist ship with it’s mission set to “Pillage Planet” will pillage the planet it is orbiting after movement, if that planet is owned by anyone. The Fascist can pillage enemy planets, as well as allied or even their own planets if they desire to do so. The Fascist Pillage mission is not cumulative: a planet can only be pillage by one ship at a time. If multiple Fascist ships are set to pillage a planet only the one with the lowest ID will actually Pillage.

Effects on the planet

As a result of the pillaging, one megacredit is generated for every 100 native clans (10,000 natives) and one megacredit is generated for every 100 colonist clans (10,000 colonists). Additionally, 1 supply-unit is made for every 100 native clans and another supply-unit for every 100 colonist clans. After this has been done, 20% of the natives plus an additional 120 clans are killed. Also 20% of the colonists plus an additional 20 clans are killed. Pillaging will also reduce the happiness of both colonists and natives by 10 points.

The planetary population sends out a distress message to it’s central command, informing them of the planet’s troubled situation. The message includes the planet’s ID number, a short version of the effects of the pillage mission, and the number of clans left after the pillaging. The Fascists automatically receive a copy of this message because they scan broad-range communications during pillaging. They just love to hear about the terror they’ve struck among their enemies.

How to pillage

• pillage amorphous planets by dropping down 1 clan each turn.
• pillage planets with bad income until there are less then 2 Million
• if you want to pillage more then 1 round, just drop down 1 clan in the first turns - at the last turn drop down 30 clans
• if you pillage foreign planets (owned by other players) you don't need to beam down clans - you can pillage
• the pillage mission will act after movement, so you can fly to a foreign planet and pillage in the same turn!
• remember: pillaging kills 40% of its colonists + 20 clans
• for every 1.000 natives on a planet 1 supply unit will be generated: "So, a population of say 7 Million will produce a 7.000 supply stockpile!!