Am I doing fauna fleets wrong or is the fleet power massively overestimated?

[Calvax]

I'm doing a beastmaster run and it was going well. I had an early power spike thanks to my fleets growing to destroyer and cruiser size ahead of my neighbours. But now it's the midgame and the Khan has spawned. My fleets lose everything. I have mixed fleets of all kinds of fauna with mixed designs (adding a bit of defence and offence to complement the natural weapons). Even when I send 100k against 30k I lose. It feels like my fauna are made of paper despite costing so much that I can't replace them quickly even with +1k minerals and +700 food a month.

Anyone else found this? Do they need a serious balance pass or is there some trick I'm missing?

 

[Knonier]

don't worry , I was not able to defeat the sector with three stations from the marauders. I sent 4 fleets of space fauna, and... well this fleets was eaten

 

[Calvax]

I’m not so much worried as feel like the fauna fleets are very underpowered. They’re great around year 20/30 when you get that first spike of young ones growing into destroyer/cruiser size. But they drop off hard.

They’re very slow and just melt to any conventional ships, even if they have much greater fleet power.

I’m not just specc’ing them into one thing either, nor am I ignoring their need to have some defences added. But even with fleets of mixed designs to cover different weaknesses, weapons that complement their natural ones, all the special mutation projects done, I’m stil getting wrecked.

 

[Knonier]

I’m not so much worried as feel like the fauna fleets are very underpowered. They’re great around year 20/30 when you get that first spike of young ones growing into destroyer/cruiser size. But they drop off hard.

They’re very slow and just melt to any conventional ships, even if they have much greater fleet power.

I’m not just specc’ing them into one thing either, nor am I ignoring their need to have some defences added. But even with fleets of mixed designs to cover different weaknesses, weapons that complement their natural ones, all the special mutation projects done, I’m stil getting wrecked.

Maybe the damage bonuses we get don't increase the damage of fauna, only the damage they receive

 

[Dragatus]

Do you have the Advanced Controlled Mutations technology? That's the one that opens up all 6 mutation slots.

My own experience as a beastmaster is muddled by also having Cordyceptic Drones along with Wild Swarm, so I was able to explode my fleet power to many times what my neighbours could muster and turn the entire (tiny) galaxy into tributaries. It also makes my weapon mutations stronger. But I've made some observations by comparing fauna to ships.

First of all, you do get fauna equivalents for all ship weapons, but they seem to all have the stats of one size smaller components. For example eye beams are the laser equivalent, but an X sized Gamma Eye Beam has the stats of an L sized Gamma Laser. Similarly, an L sized Neutronium Carapace adds as much armor as an L sized Neutronium Armor. The energy torpedo weapon stats are effectively reduced in size even more, with an X sized Neutron Thrower mutation having the stats of a G slot Neutron Launcher.

So a battleship sized fauna like a Tiyanki Ox that uses 3 slots for offensive mutations and 3 slots for defensive mutations will get from them half the firepower and half the defenses of an actual battleships. Fauna does have innate weapons appropriate to their size, but they're roughly tier 2 in power (Blue Lasers, Coilguns)), so they have less than half the power of tier 5 components (Gamma Lasers, Gauss Cannons). Fauna also have innate defenses, but they're a little weak and have a hull focus, which is the weakest defense (albeit the one most vital to being able to retreat from battle).

A Space Amoeba Mother with 3 shield and 1 armor mutations will have roughly equivalent defenses to a cruiser with 3 shields, 3 armors and 2 crystal platings. This then leaves them with only two mutation slots available for weapons, which using regular T5 components means you have 45% firepower from innate weapons and 33% firepower from offensive mutations (two thirds of the slots at half power per component). So you end up with about equivalent defenses and 80% firepower of a cruiser. And actual cruisers using shields instead of crystal plating will have stronger defenses too, so the amoeba also has about 80% of the cruiser's defenses. Which then translates into somewhere in the ballpark of 64% overall power.

What improves the situation for fauna somewhat is the ability to go all-in on what are normally X slot weapons, although these are scaled down. Arc emitters in particular can be deployed quite effectively by size 8 fauna like Tiyanki Oxen or fully grown Cutholoids. 3x Focused Lightning Emitter mutations will have roughly 150% of the firepower of a Focused Arc Emitter, though range will be down to 120 from 150. Your defenses will be lower than a battleship, but the whole point is penetrating them anyway, so it makes no matter. The actual downside is that both of those will be terribly slow, with 80 baseline speed compared to 100 for a battleship and the battleship gets a bigger bonus from thruster and can benefit from afterburners without losing defensive and offensive capabilities.

Another ace up the fauna's sleeve is theunique mutation Elastic Tissue which improves all defenses by 35%. A Tiyanki Ox with Elastic Tissue, 2x Hyper Energy Skin and 3x Tachyon Beam will have around 12k defenses and 200 damage compared to around 9k defenses and 240 damage for a battleship with a 3x Hyper Shields, 3x Neutronium Armor, 1x Tachyon Lance and 4x Gamma Lasers. So they should be fairly even in terms of power, although the battleship will be much faster (195 sublight speed with a single Improved Afterburner vs the Tiyanki's 128).

The other mutations I am less impressed with. Restorative Enzymes will restore 25% of the fauna's armor and hull upon death to another ship in the fleet, but that's less than the 35% to all defenses that you get from Elastic Tissue. Catalytic Bladder is the same in reverse, doing damage to an enemy instead of restoring an ally. Enhanced Maneuvering Tentacles are Improved Afterburners, but applied to a lower base than on a abttleship and coming at the cost of reducing fighting power. Artificial Fire Control Instict is Auxiliary Fire Control, but just having an extra offensive mutation will give you more firepower than using it. Camouflage is a Cloaking Field Generator and cloaking is a little awkward. Plus if it isn't strong enough your fauna may grow to become too big to benefit from it. Still, there is probably some design space for defensive fleets with camouflage and 5x offensive mutations, slowly moving next to an enemy fleet bombarding your planet and blowing it up with one volley. Combat Synapses are +15% damage and +15% fire rate, but again you probably achieve more by just adding another offensive mutation. Berserker glands woth +30% fire rate sound interesting, but the bonus only lasts for 5 days after taking damage and it's questionable if you wouldn't again gain more offensive ability simply by adding another offensive mutation.

Overall I think that regular ships are better than fauna, but fauna can come close if you lean into 3x offensive mutations, 2x defensive mutations and Elastic Tissue. They will be plagued by slow speed though. It might be worth introducing a special slot just for the unqiue mutations, but as things stand that slot would be always used for either Elastic Tissue or Manuvering Tentacles. Then again that would be a step up from the current situation where Elastic Tissue is the only unique mutation worth using.

The main use of fauna currently is as a sink for excess food and minerals. A purely beastmaster playstyle is possible, but harder than using fauna to complement normal ships. It might be worth using the Primal Calling origin without the Beastmasters civic, which sets you back in when you can utilize fauna, but also doesn't punish you for using normal ships. On the contrary, if you do go for the Beastmasters civic you are pretty much forced to combine it wtih the Primal Calling origin for the much needed +10% bonus to fauna speed.

 

[Dragatus]

And to answer the original question, fauna fleet power is overestimated by the game, much like starbase fleet power is overestimated, due to fairly high innate hull points and low innate offesnive capabilities. But adding offensive and defensive mutations reduces this effect.

 

[BookHermit]

...

Overall I think that regular ships are better than fauna, but fauna can come close if you lean into 3x offensive mutations, 2x defensive mutations and Elastic Tissue. They will be plagued by slow speed though. It might be worth introducing a special slot just for the unqiue mutations, but as things stand that slot would be always used for either Elastic Tissue or Manuvering Tentacles. Then again that would be a step up from the current situation where Elastic Tissue is the only unique mutation worth using.

...

Thanks for that post. You did a great job summing up the info on Fauna fleets.

The one question I am still left with is: How do the fauna compare to each other?

The wiki is still pretty bare of info for this most recent update and I've only had Tiyanki fleets so far (my Beastmaster plays have had the starter Amobae die pretty much immediately and then I got Rare Tiyanki right away and swapped) so not sure how well the other species behave in comparison (or even what their unique research project Mutations are).

Have you been using single-species fleets or seen any value in mixed species fleets?

 

[LavanGrimwulff]

The one question I am still left with is: How do the fauna compare to each other?

Have you been using single-species fleets or seen any value in mixed species fleets?

Crystalline are the fastest being equivalent to corvettes in base speed, should be slightly faster after rarity bonus. I've had good use out of their shardlings using them as corvette speed carriers, its hard for people to close distance with them. Downside is it took me forever to get the tech for AI on fauna so they were stuck on the default for way to long.

Ameoba base form wasn't anything special, Mother has an innate hangar bay which is nice, more things PD needs to shoot down but size 4 means you could just run 3 extra size 1s for even more strike craft. Otherwise nothing to special

Tiyanki are decently tanky and have a size X which is equivalent to a battleship. Really slow though so didn't use them much, might have a use against specific enemies or camping a hyperlane entrance

Cutholoids another decent tank, has a special innate weapon but never actually saw it get used so can't comment on its effectiveness, another slow one

Voidworm has the best stats from what I saw besides speed, decent innate weapon, good general pick.

Best use I've gotten is just spamming shardlings and kiting with strike craft, the others all underperform against equivalent regular ships no matter how I've tried to build them. The best the other ships do is also just spamming hangars and hoping the enemy can't get in range but they die the second the enemy does which basically means they lose against anything smaller since smaller usually means more speed or anytime they can't run away. Against same size they can usually stalemate against enemy carriers as the carriers never close to use their other weapons, regular ships remain more versatile though since you'll have missiles, torpedos, or lasers/railguns.

 

[LavanGrimwulff]

The main use of fauna currently is as a sink for excess food and minerals. A purely beastmaster playstyle is possible, but harder than using fauna to complement normal ships. It might be worth using the Primal Calling origin without the Beastmasters civic, which sets you back in when you can utilize fauna, but also doesn't punish you for using normal ships. On the contrary, if you do go for the Beastmasters civic you are pretty much forced to combine it wtih the Primal Calling origin for the much needed +10% bonus to fauna speed.

The civic really just needs to be reworked, its overlap with the origin is awkward and doesn't really give much beyond earlier access to the tech that should've been baseline in the origin. To me it feels like they made the origin and then peeled parts of it off to make the civic and so neither is quite right.

 

[Thiend]

I think the space fauna need moderately improved inherent components and then they'll be fine. They're less flexible than regular ships, so I would prefer if they were moderately stronger overall instead of a bit weaker - for example, their inherent weapons cannot be changed to counter something in particular. If you have tiyanki, they're countering shields, and if the prethoryn or voidworms show up, you can't change them to anti-armor. They're also pretty rigid in their focus on armor, and getting them shields costs DPS.

I don't mind that semi-rigid design focus, it seems appropriate, but their base damage output is a little too low considering you can't change the type and have shields competing with adding complementary damage. I'd like to see their components upgraded over the course of the game, perhaps by getting the techs of those sizes - so you would have components weaker than L slots until you have the ability to clone L size fauna.

Its not that bad as it is, but they are a little weaker than sacrificing flexibility needs to be worth.

Also, cutholoids need different no-computer behavior. They have a limited firing arc but try to approach and circle, which disables their inherent weapons completely. Alternately, remove the firing arc limit.

 

[LavanGrimwulff]

Its not that bad as it is, but they are a little weaker than sacrificing flexibility needs to be worth.

The funny thing is when I got a dev response they were saying how flexible the fauna were, meanwhile a decent chunk of the community thinks its the other way around. Sure I've got 3/6 slots that can go either way but the general design feels way less flexible. Fixed innate slots and limited builds that actually work is not flexible.

Personally I feel forced to just go 6 hangars, trying to go defense on them just leads to the hangars getting taken out by enemy hangars/PD and best case the fight stalls out. Similar issue with missiles except then you also get outranged by enemy hangars. Using neither missiles or hangars you're just lower DPS and lower durability than regular ships, you then have to close distance while taking fire from their hangars and missiles

 

[Thiend]

The funny thing is when I got a dev response they were saying how flexible the fauna were, meanwhile a decent chunk of the community thinks its the other way around. Sure I've got 3/6 slots that can go either way but the general design feels way less flexible. Fixed innate slots and limited builds that actually work is not flexible.

Personally I feel forced to just go 6 hangars, trying to go defense on them just leads to the hangars getting taken out by enemy hangars/PD and best case the fight stalls out. Similar issue with missiles except then you also get outranged by enemy hangars. Using neither missiles or hangars you're just lower DPS and lower durability than regular ships, you then have to close distance while taking fire from their hangars and missiles

They would be flexible IF their base stats didn't badly need both shields and DPS. If it was just one or the other, they'd be quite flexible because you could choose more of whatever you wanted, but as it is you basically NEED some shielding and then every slot you can spare as DPS, so they're instead inflexible.

Its hard to describe, the design is flexible but because the stats are low the reality is inflexible.

 

[Dragatus]

The one question I am still left with is: How do the fauna compare to each other?

The short version is:
1) Amoebas should be considered the default fauna and they're best when using SC centered designs. Their downside is they can only grow to large size, but on the upside they skip the medium size stage.
2) Crystals are just bad because they are fragile and while the early growth stages make up for it with speed, they lose all their speed advantage as they grow, but stay squishy.
3) Cuthuloids have good offense, great armor, but low hull and low speed in their final stage. They grow from medium through large to huge size.
4) Tiyanki are tanky, but slow. They are the only fauna with four growth stages, from small to huge.
5) Voidworms would've been perhaps the best fauna, except there seems to be a bug with the adult stage (or maybe it's deliberate) where either it uses too much naval cap (they're size 8 instead of size 4) or their component size is too small (they use L components instead of X). Either way their mutations are half as strong as they should be given how much naval cap they use up.
5) Voidworms have a thing where adults use 8 naval capacity, but only use size L mutations. However, groups of 3 adults will eventually combine into size 16 troikas, which do use X sized mutations. They still have a disparity between mutation size and naval cap usage though, which makes them less generally useful. Troikas do have 3x the hull and armor of adults and twice as many innate weapons and they have 3x Regenerative Hull Tissue, so they have good base stats, they just are not at all efficient at utilizing mutations.

Effectively this leaves us with three types of fauna worth using: amoebas, cuthuloids and tiyanki. Amoebas are the fastest. Cuthuloids have the best offense and strong armor, but are slow and have low hull. Tiyanki are the toughest, but slow and have the weakest innate weapons.

Now for the long version with the base stats of all growth stages:

AMOEBAS

Amoeba Weapons are an energy weapon that deals +25% damage vs armor and +33% vs hull. Amoeba Flagella are bombers with 100% shield penetration and +50% damage vs armor. They have medium hull and armor and don't lose speed as they grow. Fully grown amoebas will be slightly slower than battleships. They are the natural choice for a design centered around strike craft.

Space Amoeba
Cost: 500 Food
Size: 1 (Corvette)
Mutations Size: S
Natural components: 3x Small Amoeba Weapon, 1x Regenerative Hull Tissue
Hull: 300
Armor: 100
Evasion: 65
Speed: 100

Space Amoeba Mother
Cost: 1900 Food
Size: 4 (Cruiser)
Mutations Size: L
Natural components: 1x Large Amoeba Weapon, 2x Small Amoeba Weapon, 1x Amoeba Flagella, 1x Regenerative Hull Tissue
Hull: 2000
Armor: 1500
Evasion: 30
Speed: 100


CRYSTALINE ENTITIES

Shard Throwers are a kinetic weapon with +50% damage vs hull. Crystals start out much faster than other fauna, matching corvettes in speed. But as they grow they become slower until they are a little slower than battleships. They have weak defenses too with no natural armor and bad hull progression. Shardlings can be nice for their speed, but don't let them grow. Amoebas are better in almost every way, except initial speed.

Saphire Crystal Shardling
Cost: 300 Minerals, 15 Rare Crystals
Size: 1 (Corvette)
Mutations Size: S
Natural components: 3x Small Shard Thrower, 2x Small Crystal-Forged Plating, 1x Regenerative Hull Tissue
Hull: 520 (300 base, 220 plating)
Armor: 0
Evasion: 60
Speed: 160

Saphire Crystal Shard
Cost: 500 Minerals, 25 Rare Crystals
Size: 2 (Destroyer)
Mutations Size: M
Natural components: 1x Medium Shard Thrower, 4x Small Shard Thrower, 2x Small Crystal-Forged Plating, 1x Regenerative Hull Tissue
Hull: 870 (650 base, 220 plating)
Armor: 0
Evasion: 35
Speed: 140

Saphire Crystal Quintessence
Cost: 700 Minerals, 35 Rare Crystals
Size: 4 (Cruiser)
Mutations Size: L
Natural components: 1x Large Shard Thrower, 4x Medium Shard Thrower, 2x Small Crystal-Forged Plating, 1x Regenerative Hull Tissue
Hull: 1620 (1400 base, 220 plating)
Armor: 0
Evasion: 15
Speed: 100


CUTHOLOIDS

Meteoroid Slingers are kinetic weapons with +100% damage vs shields, -50% vs armor and 120 range. Devouring Maws allow Cutholoids to eat ships that are 1 size smaller than them, so the biggest ones can eat cruisers. They have low hull, but great armor. They start out fairly speedy, but get slower as they grow, so that a Cutholoid Hatchling is faster than a Space Amoeba, but an adult Cutholoid is slower than an Amoeba Mother. They make good "tanks", but watch out for armor penetration.

Cutholoid Hatchling
Cost: 1200 Minerals
Size: 2 (Destroyer)
Mutations Size: M
Natural components: 2x Medium Meteroid Slinger, 1x Medium Devouring Maw, 1x Regenerative Hull Tissue
Hull: 200
Armor: 1000
Evasion: 15
Speed: 120

Cutholoid Juvenile
Cost: 2100 Minerals
Size: 4 (Cruiser)
Mutations Size: L
Natural components: 2x Large Meteroid Slinger, 1x Large Devouring Maw, 1x Regenerative Hull Tissue
Hull: 400
Armor: 2600
Evasion: 10
Speed: 100

Cutholoid
Cost: 3700 Minerals
Size: 8 (Battleship)
Mutations Size: L
Natural components: 4x Large Meteroid Slinger, 1x Huge Devouring Maw, 1x Regenerative Hull Tissue
Hull: 800
Armor: 4500
Evasion: 5
Speed: 80


TIYANKI

Energy Siphons are an energy weapon with +100% damage vs shields and -75% damage vs armor and 60 range. Tiyanki are overall the toughest space fauna, but have a weak innate offense and low speed. They do well with mutations that add an anti-armor weapons, but unfortunately they get a reduced benefit from Maneuvering Tentacles (biological afterburners) due to low base speed. Good on defense, but the slowness is annoying.

Space Whale Hatchling
Cost: 550 Food
Size: 1 (Corvette)
Mutations Size: S
Natural components: 3x Small Energy Siphon, 1x Regenerative Hull Tissue
Hull: 500
Armor: 200
Evasion: 25
Speed: 80

Space Whale Calf
Cost: 1100 Food
Size: 2 (Destroyer)
Mutations Size: M
Natural components: 3x Medium Energy Siphon, 1x Regenerative Hull Tissue
Hull: 1100
Armor: 300
Evasion: 20
Speed: 80

Space Whale Bull/Cow
Cost: 1700 Food
Size: 4 (Cruiser)
Mutations Size: L
Natural components: 6x Medium Energy Siphon, 1x Regenerative Hull Tissue
Hull: 2400
Armor: 500
Evasion: 8
Speed: 80

Space Whale Ox
Cost: 3300 Food
Size: 8 (Battleship)
Mutations Size: X
Natural components: 6x Large Energy Siphon, 1x Regenerative Hull Tissue
Hull: 5000
Armor: 1500
Evasion: 0 (-100%)
Speed: 80


VOIDWORMS

Spikespores are missiles with 100% shield penetration and high hull (but not quite as high as Swarmer Missiles) and 90 range. Voidworm Fangs are an extremely short range weapon that doesn't have a type (kinetic/energy/explosive), but has +100% damage vs shields and +100% damage vs armor. Their speed is on par with amoebas, but they're a little weaker defensively, though they can grow to a larger size. They are the fauna best suited to be equipped with missile mutations, since they already have 1-3 natural missiles. They'd be really good, except there is a mismatch between the size of the adults and the size of the components they use. With all other fauna size 4 gives you L sized mutations and size 8 gives you X sized mutations. This might be a bug or it might be intentional, but in any case it means adult voidworms are only half as strong as they should be given how much naval cap they use.

Voidworm Nymph
Cost: 250 Food, 250 Minerals
Size: 1 (Corvette)
Mutations Size: S
Natural components: 1x Medium Spikespores, 1x Small Voidworm Fangs, 1x Regenerative Hull Tissue
Hull: 400
Armor: 0
Evasion: 70
Speed: 100

Voidworm Juvenile
Cost: 500 Food, 500 Minerals
Size: 2 (Destroyer)
Mutations Size: M
Natural components: 2x Medium Spikespores, 1x Medium Voidworm Fangs, 1x Regenerative Hull Tissue
Hull: 800
Armor: 200
Evasion: 35
Speed: 100

Voidworm Adult
Cost: 1600 Food, 1600 Minerals
Size: 8 (Battleship)
Mutations Size: L
Natural components: 3x Large Spikespores, 1x Large Voidworm Fangs, 1x Regenerative Hull Tissue
Hull: 4000
Armor: 1000
Evasion: 10
Speed: 100

Voidworm Troika
Cost: 4500 Food, 4500 Minerals
Size: 16 (Titan)
Mutations Size: X
Natural components: 7x Large Spikespores, 3x Large Voidworm Fangs, 3x Regenerative Hull Tissue
Hull: 12000
Armor: 3000
Evasion: 10
Speed: 100

Edit: Forgot to mention quality. Quality is a general modifier that is used to increases the stats of your fauna. It progresses from Common to Rare to Epic to Exceptional. I can no longer check in my game what Rare quality does, but Epic fauna gets +20% to hull, armor and shields and +10% to weapon damage, evasion and sublight speed, while Exceptional fauna gets +30% to hul, armor and shields, +20% to weapon damage and evasion and +15% sublight speed. As you can see the bonuses get quite substantial.

Edit 2: Added info on Voidworm Troikas.

 

[Dragatus]

Have you been using single-species fleets or seen any value in mixed species fleets?

To be honest, Ive mostly been using reanimated fauna because I went for the Cordyceptic Drones combo.

The funny thing is when I got a dev response they were saying how flexible the fauna were, meanwhile a decent chunk of the community thinks its the other way around. Sure I've got 3/6 slots that can go either way but the general design feels way less flexible. Fixed innate slots and limited builds that actually work is not flexible.

It's a matter of perspective. Individual species are partially predetermined, so they don't feel flexible. But fauna do become flexible if you think of the species as one of the variables you can change. So all Tiyanki will feel largely the same and in that sense the design has limited flexibility. The flexibility in fauna design comes from deciding whether your fauna will be Tiyanki or Cuthuloids or Amoebas, which all have distinct advantages and disadvantages.

 

[LavanGrimwulff]

To be honest, Ive mostly been using reanimated fauna because I went for the Cordyceptic Drones combo.

Cordyceptic makes a huge difference, the reanimated fleets become more effective since they have reduced naval capacity usage and it has a 125% DPS increase. Cordyceptic is just ridiculous currently

 

[Masked Ermine]

I'm doing a beastmaster run and it was going well. I had an early power spike thanks to my fleets growing to destroyer and cruiser size ahead of my neighbours. But now it's the midgame and the Khan has spawned. My fleets lose everything. I have mixed fleets of all kinds of fauna with mixed designs (adding a bit of defence and offence to complement the natural weapons). Even when I send 100k against 30k I lose. It feels like my fauna are made of paper despite costing so much that I can't replace them quickly even with +1k minerals and +700 food a month.

Anyone else found this? Do they need a serious balance pass or is there some trick I'm missing?

Kinda, but back when cordyceps was new one of the reasons I didn't bother with it was because the AI didn't understand that your massive fleets were a paper dragon...and I remember just getting spammed early game with the entire galaxy requesting to be my vassal.

 

[Calvax]

@Dragatus thanks for your analyses, those were really useful. I had tried out a mix of designs and fleets mostly trying to add weapons that compensated the natural ones. I didn't use the elastic tissue, my typical design would be use combat synapses for the bonus to fire rate and damage, one shield, one armour, and three weapons. On different ships I used different weapons but found none of them solved the issue that fauna feel like slow, expensive, glass cannons. It seemed like my short range ships would end up getting eviscerated before they got into range and attempting to make ships that relied on swarmers and missiles didn't work because they were too slow and got hunted down (though swamers also seem to be bugged sometimes and not want to fight).

It's interesting to hear the devs think that fauna are more flexible. My impression is that they're differently flexible at best. Yes you get six slots that you can use for anything but given you're locked to the natural weapons you're stuck with either complementing them or going with a clashing mix that seems unlikely to be effective. The fauna are so naturally squishy and slow that you're kind of forced to put some protection on.

I did note that I seemed to have the best success with worm fleets but even then the sheer cost didn't seem competitive. I ended up rushing mega-engineering while playing politics so I could build a megashipyard for a fed fleet and GDF (I only had beastports available). It took a little juggling of my economy to get a good amount of alloys but immediately I had far more effective fleets to use. I ended up in a war against a successor Khan state and my Federation fleet ended up wiping the floor with the enemy before my fauna even arrived.

I hope the fauna get whatever buffs they need to keep them competitive with regular ships. I probably won't be using them again as separate to the balance issues I found the fleet manager messy to use. Turning off growth felt like like a poor choice given how expensive cloning larger ships was, but having fleets randomly split while the fleet manager gets full of 0/10 smaller ship requests was also a big pain. I really value convenience in fleet management so this probably isn't for me.

 

[Abdulijubjub]

Fauna are inflexible at the start, when you don't have all (or any) mutation slots, and their base stats are extremely important. Later on, fauna are the most flexible possible ship in the game, but their base weapons are mostly vestigial.

But I think it's always a mistake to invest in anything for defense except, maybe, the 35% hull/armor component. If you've got 1 slot for speed and 1 slot for defense, and 3 already for weapons, why would you choose adding e.g. +20% HP (armor on an amoeba mother) when you can add +33% damage instead?

The armor/shield components underperform, in that way: when defense comes at the direct cost of offense, and you already have ~60% of a normal ship of that size's total HP without equipping anything, it doesn't make sense to invest any further.

 

[blahmaster6k]

The main use of fauna currently is as a sink for excess food and minerals. A purely beastmaster playstyle is possible, but harder than using fauna to complement normal ships.

And unfortunately, a properly minmaxed empire won't have excess food and minerals, because you'll ideally produce just enough to support your upkeep costs for pops and building construction. If you're producing more food and minerals than you need those pops should be producing alloys, science, or unity instead. If you're not fully investing into space fauna with something like cordyceptics or the beast civics/origin, normal ships are going to be a more efficient use of naval capacity.

If I'm not playing a beast empire, I see no reason not to intentionally ignore the beast techs and the entire mechanic to focus my research into things that will actually help me.

 

[Toby-wan_Strife]

Cordyceptic makes a huge difference, the reanimated fleets become more effective since they have reduced naval capacity usage and it has a 125% DPS increase. Cordyceptic is just ridiculous currently

Also the fact that some of your fauna can be used TWICE makes it even more egregiously overpowered. Some of your fauna can be reanimated (although not all sadly) and can be used twice, it’s still well worth it to reanimate your fallen space fauna after a battle though. Cordyceptic was already busted before, but now it’s quite possibly the best hive mind civic in the game. That combined with reanimating leviathans like the Ether Drake which has a ridiculous 120k fleet power and you can easily steamroll the galaxy in the mid game and go well over your fleet capacity no problem. Truly the civic of all time.