The Vaygr, our villains, can be described as highly specialised attackers. The Vaygr fleet is a self contained crusade of light, fast attackers. Mobility and striking power is definitely their best attribute, and they get extra Strikecraft to work with. The Vaygr are much more mobile, and can even Hyperspace their light shipping around the map via their own Hyperspace Gates. But being specialists, they have some drawbacks: that is, their ships very good at what they do, but very bad at what they don't. Try an use a Vaygr ship against something its not designed for and you'll almost certainly lose it. Fleets with mixed ship classes covering each other are the order of the day.
With the Vaygr - its numbers. The all important attribute of the Vaygr force is the fearsome Strikecraft Swarm. Its a formidable obstacle that can evaporate Fighters, sweep away Corvettes, savage whole Frigate walls and even take out the odd Destroyer with little effort. The swarm should be used aggressively to keep the Hiigarans off balance so the heavier Vaygr slowpokes can make it to the battle, or even make it being built. While a lot of its Strikecraft seem very light, many of them can hit above their weight. By contrast, their Frigate and Capital ships seem suited to only tackle targets their own size. Their Capital warships are especially vulnerable to Strikecraft.
When first upgrading the Vaygr, many players get a rude shock. All their regular Strikecraft have to be unlocked with separate techs, and a lot of Vaygr upgrades seem stupidly overpriced. By the time they've waded through a small but annoying set of techs just to start producing some decent Fighters - let alone Corvettes - the Hiigaran player has probably assembled their first Strikecraft force and maybe even upgraded half of it. Individual Vaygr upgrades are at least twice the cost of the Hiigarans, and you have to individually research your Corvette and Frigate hulls before you can build their manufacturing Facilities. And some of the Capital upgrades are nearly the cost of a Battlecruiser! This is a simpler and flatter tech tree. Overall, their upgrade path is actually cheaper: the only problem is finding those funds up front for those massive, one shot upgrades. So the Vaygr do have some significant perks when it comes to teching up, but its not as obvious as the Hiigaran's. They don't have an Advanced Research Facility and can't access all their units as quickly as the Hiigarans. Once fully upgraded though, the stats on many Vaygr units tend to outclass their Hiigaran equivalents - although numbers alone can be misleading. The Vaygr's bonuses have the advantage of affecting all their specialised ships as well, such as the Infiltrator Frigate, Command Corvette and the Survey Scouts.
Most Vaygr warships have a distinctive "knife-blade" or "spear-tip" shaped appearance. They don't have that many turrets compared to the Hiigarans, and many of their major weapon systems are slow firing heavy missiles or guns fixed into the nose of the ship. If the Vaygr lose their attacker's initiative, things can go pear shaped: forward facing weapons are excellent for focusing firepower in an attack, but terrible at defending counter-attacks along the flanks or fighting off swarms unless they can keep their own swarms in the game.
Last modified Thu, Oct 14 2004 by Lindsay Fleay.