Drall Fist:
Nanotech level 13, Missiles level 12, Hull level 12
- Affects up to 20 ships each.
- Affected ships have 10% chance per shot to capture enemy ships that have their shields down.
- Each affected ship may capture a maximum of 1 enemy ship per tick.
- The capturing ship has its shields reduced if it makes a successful capture.
Starting Out (1-30 planets)
- Drall start out researching Missiles.
- Drall will find average to slightly above average habs from greys, so hab is not particularly problematic starting out
- With the fastest pop-growth in the game, a Drall with a well-managed economy will be amongst the fastest colonising players in the game.
- Build every 5th planet as an all-mega planet, with your first all-mega at #3 or #4 (homeworld is #1).
- Drall can add more economic buildings sooner and faster than other players without losing efficiency. A Drall micro-manager will have one of the strongest economies in the game.
Ideal alliance parters
- Toag: opposite hab, market discount.
- Kreel: oppositie hab, first strike. If you and you allies are using beams/fighters, you can clear away shields in a hurry, and capture half the enemy fleet before they fire a shot.
- Ji: opposite hab. A Ji using carriers and gateways is the most efficient way to clear enemy shields.
- Gorgoth: opposite hab, market discount. If you're building a capture fleet be careful of Gorgoth, they will kill everything in sight and you might not capture much.
- Oomari: only for the 2-tick travel times.
Drall Killer Fleet Strategy
- Ignore the Drall unique, it is a waste of resources, and will hardly make a contribution.
- Your bonus tech is missiles, so take this as high as possible, and build heavy battle ships armed with missiles. This will maximise your accuracy and firepower, and you can pretty much ignore enemy shields.
Drall Capture Fleet Strategy
- This is much more difficult, requires strong economy and strong research, and a good understanding of the battle-code.
- Go for uniques as early as possible, you will be building LOTS of them (preferably weaponless) to cover all the escort ships we will be building.
- Ignore engine malus and put a lot of effort into building engine-tech as high as possible, as well as stealth and sensors. We will be building lots of escorts, and while evasion is not important, it is very nice to have lots of speed to capitalise on escort bonuses.
- 70% of resources into uniques and beam HBS, 10% of resources into highly evasive heavy corvettes with 1 beam slot, 20% of resources into high damage HECs (fast and shielded, but no stealth, and 3-4 weapons slots minimum)
- Most players target caps or sotl in the early rounds of battles. Your beam HBS will be enough to stand up to this while clearing out minefields and enemy shields.
- Your escorts will either evade enemy fire, or more likely won't be targeted at all.
- Your 'secret weapon' is the escort carriers. Having large amounts of HECs armed with fighters means each ship has several chances to capture an enemy ship, and having many of them also significantly increases your chances of successful captures (remember each can only capture 1 ship per tick). Also, a few HECs losing shields on capture is no big deal.
- In combat, you will find that after 1 or 2 ticks, no enemy ships will have shields, and you will make a huge amount of captures by tick 3.
- A capture fleet will not earn you a lot of kills or battle points, but you will finish battles very quickly, capturing everything in sight as soon as enemy shields are down, and will soon have an enormous tonnage of captured ships.
- The only problem is that many of the captured ships will probably not suit your combat style and may be of poor design, but they can be put to use as bombers and planet-conquerors.
- Capturing is an extremely efficient way of finishing combat, as the captured ship is immediately removed from the battlefield, while other players have to spend several ticks killing damaged ships, and often losing lots of firepower to 'debris shots'.
- An alternate strategy is to make use of heavy assault carriers and beam battleships, with fewer escorts. This way you might end up having more firepower in the capship class, and will need fewer uniques to cover them.
