Latest additions (January 2002) in red, to help folk who've read this before. There are a lot of changes since the last version a year ago. Many of the assumptions we made when the race pack came out were wrong: how Stormers should fight, which ships were best, etc. And there have been some major changes to Stormer-related rules.

Acknowledgements: I would like to thank Jelmer Renema, David Ouimet, Weis Guy, Tim Wisseman, Jon Nunn, Dave Feshy, Mark Heinrich, Michael Henderson et alia for their help, comments, clarifications when putting together this document.

See also: Tim Wisseman's guide to the Stormers, at http://www.vgaplanets.com/v4guide/stormers.htm

Overview

The Stormers are based on the Fascists (Klingons) of Version 3. They have bonuses on ship and ground assault attacks, but poor ship defense; they are potentially very powerful in the hands of an experienced, aggressive player; but they have poor defense (light ships, no Base Shields, Raid Shelters or Undercities). They are strong at the start, then weak in mid-game, until they get their top hull and superweapon technology. They have cloaking ships.

The key thing to keep in mind about Stormer ships is to visualise them as made of tin foil and sticky tape. They are cheap, light, maneuverable, and can dance round the lumbering enemy (ie have huge attack bonuses), but you have to consider them as expendable because they ain't going to last long! Except maybe the Vickie.

The ships come in two varieties: lightly armed cloakers which have specialist uses (minesweeper, terror raids etc); and two combat hulls (Vickies and Ill Wind). There are some other hulls, but they're largely useless.

Points to note

• Their ships are good at hitting things, but tend to blow up when hit themselves, due to poor shields and armour.
• They get hit a lot because they've no evasive bonuses. You rely on Standoff Range a lot, combined with long range weapons.
• Instead of armour their ships have lots of point defense slots and PD tech is vital to this race.
• However fitting really good PD weapons to the cheaper hulls is a waste of money. Intercepts can more than double the cost of these ships, so it is generally best to use the expensive PD's on the expensive ships and just count on masses of losses for cheap ships, should they get into fleet actions. (What the hell - the crew should have known better than to wear red shirts.)
• Tim designed them as a race which uses swarms of cheap ships in battles: these are lighter ships than most races', so Stormers expect lots of losses, but don't care because there's plenty more ships, troops and high guard left. The flaw in this scheme is that the ships are expensive, so you need to build an excellent economy to afford a Swarm. The key to success seems to be locating an amorph world to "Pop" early on, (in late game when Spice prices are high amorphs are more valuable kept alive) and in late game, capturing lots of Prisoners for your Labour Camps. Note how needing to capture prisoners is an incentive to play aggressively. This funds your economy fairly well, which is just as well because your farmable climate range is narrow (most planets are too hot or cold and you cannot terraform), and you Gather contraband from planets at an average, ie slow rate.
• In one-on-one slugfests the medium ships can often blow enemies away before being hit themselves, by using Photon Torps at long range. Thus Stormers are powerful in mid game when their cloakers can choose their optimum solo targets. But in the late game's massed fleets, small ships are of questionable value.
• The Stormer nightmare is fighting really well armoured (Lizard), or perhaps really well shielded (Evil Empire), enemy ships because if the enemy can survive long enough to close, the heroic Stormer ships will be scrap metal after just a few hits from a blaster cannon or whatever.
• The fighters are good at shooting but have almost no armour, so used to be relatively easily shot down by sandcasters... if you could get in range... which is why Stormers love the Exotic Tech "Fighters Immune to Sandcasters" in late game. However since (following Host changes to make fighters more powerful) sandcasters now only hit about 50% of the fighters in a Wing per shot, even Stormer fighters are likely to last some time now. The fighters have extremely good range themselves. The fighters are also extremely good at killing other fighters. Stormer fighters have good "punch" and are very effective.
• Their cloakers' scanners are very weak.
• They begin combat with their power banks highly charged, most of the time their weapons are ready to fire.
• They are an extra happy race. [Happy -> resistant to Spying.]
• They have a high growth rate (for a Tim race) and a high training rate, so they are potentially very good at ground combat against all standard races except Lizards.
• Use the starting Deth Spec to catch enemy colonisation pods (to generate revenue from prisoners), as well as picking off lone enemy ships. You could also use it to capture someone else's nice starting ship, which could really set them back. (Fill it with troops for capturing purposes.) You seem powerful at the beginning, but if you start a war too early, you soon find your economy is not up to producing your expensive hulls quickly enough.
• Unlike all other races except Feds, Stormer ships can transfer guests and crew onto other vessels even if they are undamaged. This is incredibly powerful. Apart from stealing ships with lurking cloakers, you can turn major battles around by pre-setting transfer targets in the enemy fleet. Capturing several enemy ships before a shot is fired quickly turns odds in your favour when the shooting starts. Incidently, this is where the training rates really count, because unlike ground combat, High Guard actually fight and die in hand-to-hand combat taking over ships. The Stormer HG have a huge combat strength and by mid game you have thousands running around, whilst other races only have hundreds. You can afford to transfer hundreds at a time onto enemy flagships to capture them!
• Unlike VGAP3, these Klingons can no longer Pillage. "When you overrun an enemy base in ground combat and capture everything on that base you have in effect pillaged it." says Tim. Instead, they have a decent ground combat ratio. This may not look too brilliant at first until you realise:
• They have a very high conversion ratio of colonists -> troops -> High Guard. Their colonists / troops / ground vehicles are at least 6 times more powerful in ground combat than the equivalent Fed units, and you'll see that Feds, Peeps, University Alliance, and even Borg have good reason to fear ground assault from cloakers. Only a few races can beat them in ground combat, and their training rates are generally worse. Also, your growth rate is better than theirs - you can afford losses.
• Their cloaking ships can carry huge numbers of troops (and some can carry assault vehicles in pods too).
• The only Tim race to have Glory Devices. But, no base shields, raid shelters, or undercities - again, the race is more into Offense than Defense.

Using special racial abilities

How to make lots of money

• Send a cloaker into enemy space - ideally a Deth Spec. No other cloakers have pod bays.
• When you see an enemy Life or Assault pod nearby, look at its Data Pad to check it has several thousand people in it. If so, set the cloaker to Intercept it and also to Capture it. (These commands are accessed through the ship's Nav screen.) You will have to turn off Attack Enemies or the ship will blow the pod away!
• After capturing it, dock the pod and flee home. The colonists etc on board have been turned into prisoners. The original owner cannot self-destruct the pod or transfer them into your ship to capture it.
• Once near home, drop the prisoner-pod onto a nearby base which must not be your homeworld. Build some Labour Camps: you will need 1 per 100 prisoners. They only cost 2mc and 1 supply each. Each turn thereafter, each camp will produce 10mc and 1 supply. To put it another way - if you capture a pod with just 5000 colonists on board, you will get an income of (5000 / 100 = 50 camps x 10 mc each) = 500mc / turn. That's like having 5 free cities!
• Bonus: each labour camp will reduce the enemy race's Happiness by 1% per turn. This will make their race easier to Spy on and reduce their income.
• You could build labour mines too, but unless you're short of colonists to man them (I think you need 70 per mine), there seems no point in building them. They reduce enemy happiness too, but do not produce cash or supplies.
• The downsides of Labour camps / mines are, that about half the time, the prisoners riot and destroy things on that planet. Normally this is supplies and structures, but it can include cash and personnel (I think). This can include structures you cannot rebuild, like terraformers, which is why you must not keep prisoners on your homeworld. Reinforcing the planet with troops and High Guard seems to reduce the riot level to around 1 turn in 4. Dump any cash the camps make into a government centre as soon as you have it, and pod excesses off-planet. Also, the enemy will receive messages in his base logs like this: "colonists are unhappy that prisoners are being held at 3023,5032!" so he will know where the prison camps are. Make sure they are well protected by minefields, etc - you may as well use it as a trap.

Using special ship devices

• [See main guide for information on how Cloaking works]
• The World Crusher Missile and Nemesis Torpedo is covered in a special section below

Recommended colonisation strategy

Of course, you need to temper your colonisation strategy according to your circumstances. In one game, we gained a victory point for every enemy base we knocked out, so the Borg had a big incentive to attack. In other games they may prefer to conserve their resources. In which case send 1 colonist down along with 1 food to very planet you can. It slows other people grabbing the resources and using them.

Because Stormers' training centres are so efficient, and their breeding rate not the highest, do not build training centres on your homeworld. Otherwise all your breeders (colonists) get converted to non tax paying, non breeding crew and troops too quickly. Instead, send a pod of say 100,000 colonists and most of your spare crew to a nearby easily-defensible planet where you can build several training centres and maybe a city, and use this planet to raise troops without getting too many crew (who pay no taxes and don't breed). A planet with contraband is a good place for training centres because it funds the centres.

Try to trade with e.g. Feds for climate control ships to boost your economy. Or just steal the ships with cloakers!

Bear in mind that: the Glory Device will solve your cash problems if you find an amorph planet; but due to the randomness of each universe, you cannot count on finding Amorphs near you in every game, although the latest Host increased the occurrence of all natives slightly. So Stormers could be quite hard, or weak, depending on location of these planets. The contrast is startling.

Tim designed the Stormers as a very offensive race who would attack with swarms of cheap ships, losing many but overcoming the enemy by sheer force of numbers. To my mind, he's been only partly successful. Stormers are very effective against races which have light armour / shields on their ships and poor personnel combat stats, like low tech Peeps and Fed ships. In these cases, the ship which hits first tends to kill the other one, and the Stormers use standoff range / photon torps to ensure they hit first. The Stormer ships are actually appallingly expensive, particularly when you fit several engines on them, so building swarms of them is not really an option in the early game, and you want to concentrate on big ships in the late game. However this is offset by the fact that most of the lower tech Stormer ships can cloak, and one cloaker is worth several normal ships, because the enemy can't tell where they are. You can choose the battle ground, gang up several cloakers on one enemy, or sneakily capture enemy ships by crew-transfer from invisible ships. In the early game, the Stormers are fearsome.

But by late game, everyone's using exotic techs to boost shields; and building their well armoured top ships. Now the enemy can take considerably more hits than the light Stormer ships, and as long as they can close to within range, one volley of Blaster Cannon (or whatever) finishes off even Vickies. Also you are in more fleet battles. Standoff range becomes meaningless in a big melee as the brave Stormers cannot cower beyond enemy range any more.

So in late game, you rely almost exclusively on 2 ships. The Ill Wind has a special power which allows it to fire large weapons very rapidly. Use it with Blaster Cannon to take on anything up to tech 9 hulls. It doesn't even need particularly good point defense because the enemy is usually an expanding cloud of chaff within seconds. However if they DO land a hit on it, it's probably dead. The tech 10 Vickie is your other serious fighting ship. Expensive... but the essence of VGAP4 battles is that one ship with 20 mounts is better than 3 or 4 with 10 each. It's simply because the enemy can only mount a maximum of 10 point defense weapons. The Vickie fires a volley of 20 at once, so 10 will almost certainly get through. (Note that volleys are most effective if they're all the same weapon type, so they fire simultaneously, thus enemy PD has no chance to recharge.)

So, try to get hull tech up to at least 6 as soon as possible. Otherwise, you're just throwing cash into a hole called Expensive Low Tech Hulls Which Can't Fight.

There's an interesting twist at the end of the game. Simulations show that Stormer ships are no better with, say, Gatling Phasors than Pulsed Phasor Cannon, which themselves are only slightly better than Photon Torps. And the World Crusher superweapon only gets off one shot in a fight, yet is so expensive (1,000kT moly for a start) that it is better to build two Vickies with Photon Torpedoes or PPC's and no superweapon in place of one expensive one. In this regard, it is indeed a case of "swarms of cheap Stormer ships hurling themselves at the expensive enemy ships", although I doubt there are many games where a "basic" Vicky at 25,000mc can be churned out in vast numbers 8)

• he's probably not at point blank range; (accuracy is reduced 40% at extreme weapon range);
• weapons have their own accuracy, sometimes just 10% of all shots will hit
• so if you hit every time and your enemy only hits one-in-twenty times, you can tackle much larger ships and win.
• Jesus Bartolome did some simulations and reported: "the Victorious is a wonderful ship. Huge attack bonus, (a very easy tactic to kill other battle ships, is just set a high stand off distance, and take adventage of your greater hitting odds, if anyone doesn't agree I invite them to make the simulations between the Victorious and a Super Nova, and the Victorious is much cheaper)."

• (100 / ( hull_mass + 1 ) ) * 30 + Rnd * 4
• A 100kt ship will take 30% to 35% from a boarding laser attack
• A 2500kt ship (cube-o-death) will take 1% to 6% damage per boarding laser attack
• There will be no damage cap, the boarding laser will be allowed to destroy ships.

Tax rates: My own strategy for Stormers is: All tax rates seem to give the same population growth (6.6% per turn). Liberal and Complex give you slightly more cash but you take a big hit on Happiness. Use Conservative or Ultra Conservative for max happiness. Max happiness is best strategy because it gives you more money in the long run which helps taxes, breeding rates, makes your empire resistant to spying; and happy natives attract more natives. Once happiness is very high - ie 300 - switch to Complex Tax rate for a turn or 2 to temporarily boost your income, but use Ultra Conservative as the basic tax rate.

Jelmer has a different tax strategy. I suspect he plays in games with much more cash or population. He uses Liberal or even Enslavement, which gives more revenue, and builds Government Centres and Public Spaceports to raise happiness.

Technologies: note that until your hull tech is very high, your ships have very poor shields. So don't bother investing in the higher shield techs to start with. Even the Vicky will only ever need tech 9 shields.

In addition to the normal frantic rush to improve Engine and Hull tech, Stormers need to get their Large Weapon Tech up to Photon Torps ASAP. This is because their ships need weapons with long range, low ordnance usage, high Shield Drain etc in mid-game. (Other races generally don't need to worry about how much Ord etc their ships can carry, and lacking good Offensive Bonuses, aren't interested in combat at extreme range to minimise chances of being hit themselves.) Note: there is no point in Stormers increasing Large Weapon Tech beyond Pulsed Phasor Cannon. There's a big gap above here where you can't fit several types, due to mass; and simulations show no advantage in fitting the final type, gatling phasors, to ships instead of PPC's.

Planet Tech - the other expensive one - isn't as urgent as usual because you'll never be able to afford fighters anyway, so why struggle to Tech 4.

Because Stormers lack decent shields or armour on their best fighting ships, it is imperative that you get Point Defense tech maxed out as soon as possible. Mounting Intercepts on your ships is often the only way to stop them being blown up by ship weapons (though they are useless versus fighter Wings). Intercepts are expensive - but they work. Perhaps Auto Blasters or Quad Lasers will do if money is short.

Jelmer Renema provided his own Stormer Tech strategy, in order of priority:

1. Engine tech to Tylium Thrusters
2. Hull Tech to 6 (Deth Specs)
3. Planet Tech to 4 (Deth Specs)
4. Weapons to Photon Torpedoes
5. Point Defense to Auto Blaster
6. Shields to 350

This allows you to build cheap Deth Specs that do a bit of damage.

Exotic Techs: I suspect there are a number of these which would make a big difference to Stormers, but I haven't had the opportunity to test my theories yet:

• +10% evasive bonus. Your ships lack good shields and armour. Believe me, you want this. It's relatively cheap and affordable by turn 20. Don't waste money on it before you get into serious fights. Eventually, you'll want the +20% etc bonuses too, but they're really expensive.
• +20% population growth rate. At 8,000mc / turn maintenance this is perhaps not very affordable, but in the mid game it is extremely useful, because you'll need lots of people for all those ground assaults... and income depends largely on your colonist population base. Remember that this is a 20% boost to your breeding rate, which is about 6.6%, not a free 20% of your total population per turn.
• +100 shield power, or higher. The basic one is pretty cheap, and because Stormer shields are so awful, you're practically doubling your shield power. Maybe your ships will now last long enough to do some serious damage.
• Fighters immune to sandcasters. The only reason Stormer fighters are awful is, they have no armour and thus are immediately blown away by sandcasters. If you patch this weakness, they are excellent (if expensive). This is a very expensive Exotic Tech; but then, you won't be able to afford fighters until the late game anyway.
• Small weapon boosts. (+2 armour, shield damage etc.) In theory, your ships have loads of small weapons, so these look like good value for money. However, my experiences with them make me suspicious of their usefulness. I suspect that if you're relying on small weapons, you're near enough to the enemy to be blown away easily. Perhaps Sabers (30 small weapons) with ALL small weapon Exotics, using long range small weapons (Tachyon Guns) might be another story; I'll have to try that!

You start with 3 large freighters and a well armed Deth Spec. Load the Deth Spec with troops (for boarding) and a few colonists and send it off to raid. Carry the fight to others ASAP, put them on the defensive. If your game uses the standard Echo Cluster map, bear in mind that it's a 2000 x 2000 square centred round co-ordinate 2000,2000, and Master.exe's default setting puts players in a ring round the centre. From this, you should be able to guess the direction of your nearest neighbor.

Dave "Feshy" comments: Stealing ship plans [with the Spy mission] also works pretty well too... Got ahold of a luxury cruiser in one game -- might help solve some of those stormer cash flow problems. That, and the thought of a "Klingon Luxury Cruiser" is just too good.

In the first few turns, everyone will be on just a few bases. Using the Spy mission to Sabotage an enemy base, you have a good chance of hitting his homeworld and knocking out a vital structure (shipyard, base shield etc) he won't be able to replace for ages. Select a victim and try to sabotage their bases for the first 3 turns or so.

Miscellaneous notes

• Ignore the accuracy rating of the weapons mounted on the Deth Spec, Vickie, Ill Wind and Saber, most likely they are all automatic hits.
• Take the battle to your opponent, leave him guessing where your going to strike next.

>> Why are they called The Stormers? Is this a reference to a movie I haven't seen?

I wanted to retire the ugly name "Fascist" and their old race symbol. After noting that their ship names refer to Wind and Cold I decided to call them Stormers. It is also a slight reference to elite troops known as "Storm Troopers" (Not the Star Wars flavor of Storm Trooper, mind you that can be taken out by a 40 pound teddy bear with a small bow, what is the point of that white armor anyway. . . :) )

The race symbol is the symbol used by weathermen to denote anvil shaped Cumulonimbus clouds (Thunderheads) and lightning storms.

They are sort of a Klingon / Teuton fusion. - Tim

Jon Nunn points out that:

• against any ship with < 300 shields, their shields might as well not exist.
• The large weapons with natural shield arcs are now more useful against ironclads and other vessels with less than about 900 shield power.
• It's generally agreed that Disruptor Cannon are a good Stormer weapon.
• What's doing light blast damage per shot benefits the most from the +3 Blast Bonus. Ion Cannons might actually be useful against Iron Clads with this bonus. (I can confirm that. An Ion Cannon or two on a Vickie can make a big difference in a long battle between big ships. I think it wears down the enemy systems and makes them fire more slowly.)

People are always coming up with interesting new weapon combinations. Feel free to send me ideas 8)

Note that on the Stormer hulls with high attack bonuses - Deth Specula,Victorious and Sabre - you can mix weapons without the usual penalty. (Ie: most races need to fire co-ordinated salvoes to maximise chances of penetrating Point Defense fire - ie equip ships with the same weapon in each slot - to saturate PD fire.) - PH

Remember that if you have >24% damage to ship systems (ie, Hull Damage) your ship won't cloak. In VGAP4, Cloakers do not have a reduced chance of hitting mines: this depends only on a ship's speed. See the main guide for further information on using cloakers.

• Painmaker: I never build these. Not cost-effective. By the way, with an Attack Bonus of "only" 80%, they do not get the advantage of enemy PD weapons haing lower chances to hit incoming fire. (They'd need A.B. > 100% for that.)
• Small Transport: I never build these. Jelmer Renema came up with an amusing use for them though. If you use all the Exotic Techs to add Attack Bonuses, and throw 120 (!) of these set to "Ram" against even the largest enemy ship, they will destroy it - and the graphics are superb as the masses of Transports hurl themselves at the Gorbie or whatever. Unfortunately, most huge ships will be accompanied by smaller ones, so I'm not sure this will work in practice.
• Little Pest: 150% Attack Bonus. Jon Nunn wrote: "Avoid using the still easy to hit Streak Missile. Other than that, it's early game (i.e, no Interceptors on enemy craft); all weapons should get thru most of the time." However, I can't say I've ever found this hull useful myself. Another low tech hull so expensive to build, you may as well wait for a decent mid tech one.
• Cold Pain: Attack bonus "only" 70%, so no Point Defense effect. The first heavier warship: with five lighter heavy mounts and six small weapons backed up by a cloaking device, I'm told the ship can be effective in early combat, and its large guest capacity is good for dropping ground assault troops on enemy planets from cloak; but I found it too expensive to build until late game at which point it dies as soon as a larger ship turns its battery upon the Coldpain. Its long scanner range also allows it to work well as a patrol ship and scout. Like the Painmaker its dual engines can make it expensive to build. Jelmer: it's too noisy, fuel consuming and weak - wait for the Deth Spec instead.
• Ill Wind: Attack Bonus "only" 60%, but this hull has a special power, the "Mark VII Negative Improbability Targeting Computer" (Hits the otherwise impossible to hit hulls with very high evasive bonuses); Armored large weapons mounts (Large weapons are immune to weapons damage); and a Large weapon super chargers (Large weapons charge ~5 times faster than normal)! The power generation doesn't matter - just make sure it's sufficient for a normal ship with these weapons. The ideal large weapons for this ship then become 10 Blaster Cannon or possibly 10 Pulsed Phasor Cannon, if you feel rich. I usually back these up with 15 pulsed lasers to make a cheap but effective shock trooper. In one-on-one combat they can take out almost any equivalent ship; in big fleet battles, many will die in the crossfire due to poor defenses, but they will wear down the enemy forces very quickly.
• There is no point mounting gatling phasors on these beasts because even with the hull's special ability, they don't seem any more effective than Pulsed Phasor Cannon in my simulations - perhaps they just cannot fire any faster than twice a second.
• The Ill Wind is hamstrung by only having room for 600 Ord although it can mount 10 large and 15 small weapons, and can take up to a 150 size Large weapon; you would normally expect ~6,000 ord to feed this lot; so you need to be very careful when choosing its weapons. No Photon torpedoes, for example, or it may not survive even one fight. Luckily there are many weapons which use no Ord at all... of course don't use those against Crystals!
• I have heard that Ill Winds with Disruptor Cannon are very effective, but I haven't checked this myself.
• Before the hull gained its special powers, a common complement used be two or three sand casters backed up by six or seven disrupters or other energy weapons [the SC's will stop using Ord once enemy shields are gone].
• With its high crew and guest capacity its a very effective ship for capturing others during fights. Simply be sure to set the Transfer target before moving in on your prey.
• It also has a good scan range (400), so makes a good set of "eyes" for your fleet - Mark Heinrich.
• (Question:) Ill Wind cruiser fires large weapons very quickly now. Does this only apply to ord-based large weapons? Do Ill Winds need bigger generators as a result? (Answer:) No, the Ill Wind has special power generators in each of its large weapon's mounts. It requires less generator power, not more. All large weapons on the Ill Wind get the bonus.
• I used to think this ship was not suitable for fighting Lizards (in one on one fights) until I discovered the "Strike Through" combat option was needed. Then I stopped using it because once our game progressed to fleet actions, even Strike Through couldn't keep it out of harm's way in the melees. Now it has this new rapid-fire power, and I've begun using the hull again, it may be worth trying Strike Through again.
• Weis Guy: If what you are saying is that most ships aren't very useful when you have reached a certain level, you probably have a point; some races follow the tech evolutionary scale in battleships, or just have a huge assortment of ships that the ones atop the tech levels are the only ones you need to use.
  To address a specific ship, the Ill Wind in my opinion is a great low tech ship.
  Even before the charge bonus that was added, it only took 4 or 5 Ill Winds with Blaster Cannons to decimate a capital ship. (May have included a few armored transports to draw fire) Assuming the 20 - 30 turn range, capital ships with Microsandcasters or Quads and either PPC or PTT armed. Once you get past turn 30, I would definately change my position and make the assumption that ships are loaded no less than PPCs and Interceptors and require I meet them with the Victoriou.
  Ill Winds even in the late game are great support ships! What I've tried and does work more often than not is using Ill WInds to target the enemy fleets support ships and use one or two Ill with BCs, and another 2 with Disruptors/Force Beams. Let the BCs rip through the sheilds, and then let the disruptors arc through the remaining sheilds and armor. Most medium support ships dont have more than a few 100 armor. You can't forget that the Stormers have 300 shield and armor arc! Thats a very important and special stat for stormer ships.
• I'm sure you've tried it already, but large disruptors on an Ill Wind are an awesome sight to see. Since the charge rate is amplified by 5, the disruptor fires every darn second! Very, very cool. Nobody wants to get a ship caught with less than 900 sheild and 400 armor vs a stormer. If not they are asking for trouble. Muhahahaha! -Chancellor W. (Robert Weisenbaum)
• Jelmer Renema points out: since the Ill Wind fires unnaturally rapidly, it gets maximum advantage from the +3 Blast power of Stormers.
• Thorn: 240% attack bonus. Until enemy builds Interceptors, every weapon a Thorn fires will get thru all point defenses and auto hit. Unfortunately - having no large weapons reduces its usefulness. A useful ship in a cloaking task area for it's minesweeping and barbitic mine dropper devices. Remember, though that minesweeping will increase its sensor image and stop it cloaking. It's also the only cloaker the Klingons have with towing capacity. David Ouimet points out: the Thorn is the only Stormer cloaker which is still cloaked with sensors on, due to having a Warp Signature of 40 instead of 50 like the others; though even the Thorn can only use its short range sensors. It is weakened as a cloaking lurker by having a cloak cost of 5 and only a 300 tank. You should have at least one of these supporting any attack. Later in the game, it is better used as a support ship than a front line fighter, because if the defensive systems are swamped the ship is as prone as any other Stormer ship to explode.
• Valiant: (Carrier design with limited ordnance) 1000 [type 2] fighters... it's a carrier. Like most carriers, it's pretty weak. In fact it's very weak. Since Vickies can carry a couple of Wings, it's questionable whether you'll ever want to build one of these.
• Deth Specula: This is the most dangerous of the cloakers, as it can go at speed 190 and cloaks very well. It doesn't need much fuel (it is light and has a low Cloaking fuel burn). Remember to turn the Boarding Laser On, it costs nothing to run.
• With a 300% Attack Bonus, you can ignore the enemy's Point Defense odds: every time a Deth Specula fires, the target gets hit. Even when firing Photon Torpedoes [Point Defense Odds = 95% ie only 1 in 20 normally get through], and the enemy is armed with Interceptors [90% accuracy], the enemy cannot defend itself unless it has a significant Evasive Modifier. Only things that matter are the damage factors per shot, time per shot, and range of the weapons. - Jon Nunn
• Do note this ship is FAST and DOES have a pod bay, so it is a VERY effective transport as well when used in systems with Pod Launchers! - David Ouimet.
• Personally, I found that this ship was very ineffective until I hit on the following solution. Its problem is that with no evasive bonus, shields or armour to speak of, it blows up very easily, ie before it kills its target. Therefore for maximum killing power in mid game, equip it as follows:
• 2 Photon Torps, and set standoff range to 900;
• Small Weapons: 10 Pulsed Lasers (don't use ord, reasonable stats and range)
• Key weapon: four Intercepts for Point Defense. Because these are the only way you can stop it being hit. These make a huge difference when fighting tough ships like a Lizard Class Carrier. Unfortunately they're very expensive, but do you want the ship to survive or not? - Following the Point Defence changes of Feb 2001, Quad lasers or Auto Blasters might be best now. Debateable. I still think it would be best to use Intercepts if you can afford it.
• And for a fighting Deth Spec, use a Tylium Thruster engine. Yes, it's a fuel hog and it can only go max speed 105. But again, it is vital in order to soak up the damage which will leak through.
• And of course, load on a High Guard; use max armour / shield (Corber 350 / 40 armour); and transfer a crew member onto the enemy ship (to make use of the Boarding Laser) if possible.
• However, in the late game don't bother using it in fights, it will die in swarms before it can make an impact on the enemy. Just fit Disruptors (for cloaked boarding capture attempts) and Transwarps and Auto Blaster point defences and use it as a fast transport, plus occasional hijacker.
• Weis Guy, another experienced Stormer, agrees with me: "the more you can keep those sacred boarding wonders we call Deth Specs doing boarding actions instead of being used in battle, the better, and the the more worried the enemy is because of the simple fact that he never sees any!"

Jelmer Renema: I disagree with (ever) using Intercepts on Deth Specs. They are not needed if the purpose is nipping an unguarded ship. In a big fleet battle they are knocked out in the first big volley regardless. With free engines (not a bad assumption for birds) a microsand version of the Deth Spec prices out at about 1400 MC. Four intercepts are 3880 MC. Granted this does not factor in minerals used for construction, but for my money I'll go for volume. Which would you rather face (presuming no fighters...pure ship to ship combat), 5 DS with intercepts or 18 DS with microsand. You have a lot more options with 3.6X as many ships cruising around too.

• Nefarious: (attack bonus "only" 60%)
• If intended purely for Glory Device use: no weapons, generators, shield or PD because it won't be participating in combat.
• Personally, I think Nefariouses are actually quite effective multipurpose ships. They can also drop mines. Also usable as a floating scanning platform. With its 550 scanner range its the most effective detection ship in the Stormer fleet.
• They make good anti-fighter ships. They have enough Ord to use a Sandcaster effectively, and can mount 10 Turbo Laser anti-fighter point defenses. I always include some of these in my fleets now to take out Wings. If you're not worried about expense, a more effective anti-fighter combination might be: 2 micromissile launchers, 8 turbolasers, a sandcaster and, either pulsed lasers or, streak missiles combined with a standoff of 900. An evenmore effective anti fighter ship might be the Thorn (10 PD's, a much larger attack bonus - which helps PD hit fighters - but no large weapon mount, ie no sandcaster.)
• Sabre: Note: the notes on this ship are under review. I'm still trying to find a use for it. 200% Attack Bonus. Prone to blowing up on the first volley despite its 60% damage modifier. Requires Intercept Point Defenses (very expensive) to be effective in a fight, but then it is pretty good. While its heavy weapons complement is not impressive its attack bonus of 200 insures that every shot will count. Backed up with 30 small weapons and a defensive complement fo 10 point defense systems the ship is defently a warship to be considered. In addition a high tractor strength gives a fleet many options. Be warned that when properly decked out the ship is very expensive requiring four engines and it suffers from the low shield and armor level common to Stormer ships. In desperate situations it can also be used for its glory device. Following the September 2000 rule mods: "The Saber: 200% Attack Bonus. Against Stormers, an enemy is likely to have all Interceptors for Point Defenses. [And by the time you can build Sabers, their Point Defense tech is likely to be able to build Intercepts.] So pick naturally hard to hit weapons for good odds getting thru them. [Every weapon has a different 'intercept chance' statistic.] Natural inaccuracy of the weapon doesn't matter; if the PD doesn't hit it, the weapon autohits: ie:
• SandCaster (automatic hit whatever the Point Defense is)
• Force Beam (automatic hit)
• Fusion Cannon (98% chance of getting thru)
• Blaster Cannon (90% chance of getting thru)
• Ion Cannon (90% chance of getting thru)
• Gatling Phasor (80% chance of getting thru)
• Disruptor Cannon (75% chance of getting thru)
• Pulsed Phasor Cannon (75% chance of getting thru)"
• Further notes on Sabre - PH, December 2000: I originally thought this ship was of little use, because it seemed to blow up whenever I simulated an attack against a similar-tech ship. Not enough armour or shield to survive, I thought, and not enough Large Weapons (4) - especially after the 30 Small Weapons' effectiveness was diminished in Host Beta 62 (Tim found Small Weapons had been too powerful all along). However, I now realise it is actually an effective fighting ship if you give it good Point Defense, which is a substitute for armour and shields. Curiously I found Micro-Sandcasters worked best with this ship (though against a fighter race it might be a different story... and following the Host changes to Point Defence due Feb 2001, Quad Lasers or Auto Blasters might be a better PD weapon choice, yet still affordable). In addition, use Photon Torpedoes, set Standoff to 900, and make the 30 Small weapons Pulsed Lasers. (Not Streak Missiles, which you might think the obvious choice for a large standoff range. Pulsed Lasers just seem to work better.) This combo seems a very hard ship. Of course you should have a High Guard on board. Notice anything about this ship and the reccommended weapons? It's really cheap compared to enemy equivalent-tech ships.So you only win 60-70% of the battles. So what? You can build 3 times as many as the enemy!
• Sabre notes from Weis Guy: I haven't really tested this much yet, but try mounting Plasma Bolt Cannons on the Saber (I'm pretty sure this one carries 150KT mounts.) The Blast Power of this weapon is monstrous. Group two or so into one attack vector and let them sail about the battlefield peppering the enemy. What I have seen is that as long as the enemy doesn't target them right off the bat for their weapons, and they don't get wasted in the first few rounds of fire, that they'll make a decent impact on their whole fleet: The ships smack the enemy ship with high blast as they pass by, and if your main attack ships are in range before the enemy recovers, they get more hits in. Don't forget the Plasma Bolt really has some great destructive capability. It's certainly not warranted to buy many Sabers, but ships that cause a diversion, to me, are valuable and save your other ships from the greater chances of being wasted in head to head combat. I probably wouldn't use this pair where you are facing huge fleets of Cubes or anything, but if you are facing a fleet of one Big Enemy battleship and a hodge podge of medium size ships, the suggestion might help.
• Victorious: this ship can take on about any other single warship found in space. With a strong complement of weapons including the option of mounting a Nemesis Torpedo or World Crusher missile this is a ship to be feared. Tied to a 180% attack bonus, even Photon Torpedoes can be used effectively against less advanced combat races. Care should be used in selecting the Super Weapon and Heavy Weapons to be used. Against other Stormers, photons would prove ineffective, but against a race like the borg they can prove devastating.
• Suggested equipment:1 Sandcaster. 1 Ion Cannon. 18 Photon Torpedoes or Pulsed Phasor Cannon. 200 type 3 fighters. Sometimes a World Crusher, though this makes the ship really expensive, in minerals as well as cash; occasionally a Nemesis Torpedo to keep the enemy off-balance. If using a Nemesis, DON"T load any Vickie in the fleet with any fighters. Also, don't use any ship other than a Vickie in the fleet and load them with plenty of repair pods.
• Superweapons only fire once per battle, so I now only fit superweapons to a handful of my Vickies, and use the spare cash / minerals to build more Vickies. An extra weapon platform carrying 20 large weapons which always hit, and fire multiple times, into a battle is generally more useful.
• Simulations show that despite its 50% damage modifier (ie, most shots only do half normal damage to a Vickie) and no soft spot, its Achilles' Heel is the lack of armour / shield / evasive bonus. The only way a Vickie can survive a fight with another top tech ship is by fitting 8-10 Intercepts to it. Suddenly it becomes very hard, albeit 9,000mc more expensive!
• The Victorious can mount a World Crusher OR Nemesis Torpedo. The addition of the Nemesis Torpedo to the Stormer arsenal effectively adds a proper Glory Device to their fleets. Consider: advantages - it will destroy all enemy fighters in a battle, so it is brilliant against a fighter race. Stormers tend not to use fighters so no problem for them. It is lower tech than the WC, so is much more easily acquired. Disadvantage: ironically, the Nemesis will also seriously damage the Stormer ships, because most of them are quite small hulls!

Fighting specific races

• Children of the Apocalypse: The Stormers are immune to the COTA Doom device, which teleports a single enemy ship into a COTA fleet. Hurrah! However the COTA have another device which nullifies enemy ships' attack bonuses. That could be disastrous for Stormers.
• Crystals: clear a path through masses of Webs using cheap Nefarious hulls with nothing but engines. Don't "pop" these directly over a Crystal planet, though, as they actually appreciate the increased HD Stress. Beware their Diamond Flame, which can chew up any Stormer ship except a Vickie. Use your World Crushers to fire through Webs to eliminate their population. Try to capture some of their own ships to lay grav mines, to protect your worlds from their Crystal Lights. Crystal ships are easy to capture, they have poor personnel combat stats and Stormers can transfer to other ships even without a boarding laser. The Ill Wind, Sabre and Victorious are the only ships with decent Repair Unit capacities: 2,000 / 4,000 / 40,000 respectively, but I'm not convinced the Saber is any use. Your ships have low Ord capacity, but you need weapons which use Ord to fight Crystals effectively. Your ships have low capacities for Repair Units, which is normally OK as they're small and don't need many... but the Crystal "X Field" requires large quantities of repair units to survive. So, load all your fleet's Repair Units into one Vickie, and use the "fleet ord sharing" ability (Fleet screen) to share these - that way the X Fields only rob one ship of 500 Repair units a turn. Build lots of Thorn minesweepers. And finally, their Web mines make your cloakers more visible.
• Lizards: tricky. Lokis decloak your own ships. They can build ships which beat up your own, for less money. An Ill Wind with Blaster Cannon can generally take out a Lizard Class Cruiser. Use Exotic Tech to increase your weapons' armour drain. Once the big fleet battles begin, you'll find you need lots of Vickies. Remember your race's +300 shield arc bonus? Note that none of the heavily armoured Lizard ships have >300 armour except the T-Rex (310 points), so for all intents and purposes, you can ignore their shields and simply choose anti-armour weapons when fighting them, until they begin buying Exotic Tech to boost their shields.
• Peoples' Army: Their ships are easy to kill (even the top ones, versus Vickies); and they are easy to capture by boarding due to low crew counts and awful personnel combat stats. Any Stormer should be able to thrash the Peeps in one-on-one fights. Try to take out their high population worlds since they depend on their massive growth rate to generate cash for swarms of rubbishy ships.
• Evil Empire: I haven't fought them, but I note that Stormers have pop ships, Nemesis torpedoes and fighters which are extraordinarily good at killing other fighters. You will probably want lots of sandcasters and Turbo Lasers in your fleets to remove EE fighters and their powerful shields. Note that superweapons will remove even the largest shield in one hit.
• Tim Wisseman commented: "As a Borg I would naturally eat the Feds for lunch, but I would be scared to death of Stormers or Birds sneaking around, with all my planets wide open to sneak attack. Most of my low tech ships are weak." Consider: Firestorms and Fireclouds only have about 190 crew, so they are really easy to steal by transferring troops from a cloaker...

Anti-Stormer tactics (By Jon Nunn and me)

1. Close To Point Blank. Stormers attempt to minimise your chance to hit by keeping at max standoff range for their weapons. Their attack bonuses mean that they can ignore the accuracy penalties, but you cannot. Get as near as possible and pour as much fire into them as quickly as possible, because their hulls are generally badly armoured and shielded and cannot take many hits.
2. Use more arcing weapons (both types) than normal.
3. In general, it's a very bad move for most races to design their offense against the Stormers around carriers and fighters.
4. Don't have too many ships in the same spot at the end of movement. Try to be unpredictable about where you're going to stop.
5. You need lots of planetary defenses to counter the Stormers very high ground combat rates. (Watch out for them establishing a base on your planet as well.)
6. On offensive, blast the base from the safety of orbit.
7. Mines, mines, and more mines.
8. Use Lokis or other ships with Tachyon Scanner devices to decloak Stormer ships
9. Photon Torpedoes will not be as effective as you hope against Stormers, because their shields are especially resilient to hits from PTT's.
10. Stormers have many Small Weapons on their ships so when fighting their smaller ships, choose PD weapons with this in mind. (On the large ships, it's the large weapons you shoud be worried about.) Flake Cannon, 35mm and Auto Blaster might now be VERY effective versus Stormers, though the first two have drawbacks (like, they use lots of Ord).
11. Since Stormers like to use Streak Missiles as a Small Weapon (so they can use long standoff ranges), fitting the occasional 35mm might discourage them as Streaks will rarely get through this PD weapon.
12. Quad Lasers and Auto Blasters now have bonuses firing against Ord-based weapons. Stormers favour Photon Torps, which are ord-based. Still not as good as fitting Intercepts, but a fraction of the price! Holo decoys are especially good versus the favourite Stormer weapon, Photon Torpedoes.

Notes on the Nemesis Torpedo and World Crusher Missile

All SuperWeapons will destroy the entire shield of an enemy ship, and do some armour damage on top of that (and Blast [Hull] damage if they get through the armour). This makes them very useful against other races' top ships e.g. Cubes with 3000 points of shields. World Crushers do 1000 points damage to the armour and hull. Not so useful versus Lizard hulls (5500 points of armour and hulls with 50% damage modifiers) but still helpful.

The World Crusher is mountable only on a Victorious class ship. It needs a KILL target (NAV screen) in long range mode: they can fire at a Base up to 100LY away. You must also switch the Superweapon ON in the ship's ATTACK screen. The Victorious doesn't need to be any particular speed to fire in Long Range Mode (I originally thought it had to be stationary).

World Crusher's do not require any special setting for ship to ship firing in battles, except you must switch the World Crusher ON in the ATTACK screen. Question: how does the World Crusher know which enemy ship to fire at? Answer: use a Kill target (NAV screen) or the Target Dangerous attack setting.

All superweapons will destroy a base shield if fired at point blank range. The World Crusher is unique in that it can also fire from 100 LY away. In this mode, it cannot fire through a Base Shield unless you have the extremely expensive Exotic Tech Transphased World Crushers. Another thing to watch for in Long Range mode is that although you'll destroy the population and structures, the rest of the base's contents (contraband, minerals, some Natives) will survive and can be regathered.

Superweapons such as the WC fire on tick 310 of combat, and destroy the entire shield and 1000 armour. Considering a Cube or SuperNova has 3000 of each, Superweapons are a bit pathetic really, especially considering how one WC missile costs about as much as the rest of the ship put togeether! So Tim has more or less agreed that he will alter them to completely eliminate all shields, plus 1000 armour, in a new Host yet to be released. This would probably put a Victorious on a par with other races' top tech ships.

Q: What exactly are the effects of a Nemesis on nearby ships which are NOT the target? (Docs state that it will destroy "small" ships nearby. And all Wings. How big / armoured / shielded etc does a ship need to be to survive?)

A: All ships under 100kt are destroyed. All wings destroyed. All pods destroyed.

All ships larger than 100kt with more than 50 shield points will lose 50 shield points. A 500kt ship with no shields at point blank range of the center of the explosion would take 43% hull damage.

A 500kt ship with no shields at point blank range of the center of the explosion would take 43% hull damage.

A 500kt ship with no shields at 1300 combat vcr units range of the center of the explosion would take no hull damage. (The combat map has a radius of 1000 units, it is 2000 units across the combat screen)

Q to Tim: How does one set a World Crusher to zap a target 100LY away? Is there a special screen I'll see when I have a World Crusher? Does it only target bases or will it get ships at that remote point too? Ie if I set it to kill a planet 88LY away, will ships at that planet be damaged when it arrives and explodes? Answer from Tim: Set waypoint 1 to the target planet and turn on the weapon. It will hit any bases on the target planet, but not any ships. When it is used in its long range mode it ignores the base shield and does full damage to the base.

Remember that Superweapons take 310 seconds to charge. So, if facing a huge ship such as a Cube, set the SuperWeapon-bearer (and any other ships) to attack in the second wave. This means they enter combat at Tick 310, the SW-ship immediately fires the SW at its Intercept (Kill???) target(?), and the target ship's shields are immediately eliminated, plus 1000 of its armour.

Note that the World Crusher and Nemesis have range 1000, so can be used in conjunction with Photon Torpedoes and a standoff range of 900.

In order to keep all information readily to hand in one place, here's what Tim says on these two superweapons:

Nemesis Torpedo: A powerful anti-fighter weapon. All fighters and pods in a battle are vaporized when the weapon is fired. All ships with a hull mass of under 100 KT are destroyed instantly in the blast. Ships with a hull mass of more than 100 KT and more than 50 shield points will be drained of 50 shield points and take no damage. Ships with a hull mass of over 100 KT and no shields remaining will take damage ranging from 1% to 130%, depending on how far they are from the center of the blast and their hull mass. This weapon will destory your own ships and fighters just as well as enemy units.

World Crusher Missile: Has a range of 100LY. Uses 300 ord when fired. Can be fired as long as you have ordnance to arm it. To use it turn it on and target an enemy base or planet within 100 LY of your ship (set the PLANET as the KILL target in the NAV screen). The missile has a 33% chance of hitting each base on the target planet. When a base is hit it is completely destroyed. The surface of the planet will be covered with the remains of the base. A shield will protect the base from being harmed unless the Stormer has the Exotic Tech labelled "Transphased World Crusher", which allows the WC to destroy even a shielded base at long range. The world crusher firing takes place after movement and combat. The world crusher missile targeting system produces 120 units of sensor image noise when used. Note that if a Superweapon is fired at point blank range, even a Base Shield will not protect the base. The Transphased World Crusher tech is only required if you are trying to destroy shielded bases at long range.

Afterword (1)

By now, you'll have realised that I am a brilliant Stormer player and I crush all in my path. Indeed, I recently received this glowing testimonial from my co-players which you may wish to think on as you follow my infallible advice:

Paul,

After the debacle at your homeworld, the lads got together and booked you on a training course. Here's the front cover:

Afterword (2) - comments by Mark Heinrich

I need to get further into a decent game, but my impression is that the Birds and Stormers core strategy is to board ships, overrun bases, spy (Birds), and stir the pot of colonist discontent. Diplomacy will be important so they do not become the gnats to be swatted like the Privateers in V3. Pick one brute force race to ally with and overlap turf. In head to head attrition combat they will not do well unless they are able to steal the heart out of an enemy fleet (by boarding the heavies) before cleaning up the support ships.

A current problem with intercept logic short circuits the Deth Spec's best strategy. If you have 4 set to intercept/board, they will do so quite well. However, there is a bug where all subsequent Nav commands disappear after the intercept target disappears (you blew it up in first 50 or so movement ticks). These leaves these light ships at a standstill in the middle of the enemy fleet, which may or may not be your intention. If for some reason you blow away your enemy fleet leader and are not detected by the surviving ships (strange), who knows what will happen?

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