The Vaygr
 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.
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