Fighting Guides and Manuals

Hi guys,
This post is here to offer some knowledge about fighting, developing a fighter career, tactics and basic guidelines as to how do you become a strong fighter pilot, and what can you do when you get there.
A lot of what i'll say here you would probably run across - put down in different words - in other manuals, or may be even the message boards, but i wanted this to be here close to home. Besides there are things you are not told in manuals.

Basics
First thing to know is: Being a fighter pilot does not mean piloting a ship loaded with guns.
The most important quality that a fighter pilot is measured by are his/her skills. A well skilled pilot flying an interceptor may very well rip appart an oponent flying a hawk with no skills.
Many pilots devote themselves to trading for a long time than kill a lot of dragons and inexperienced pirates and buy a hawk, and only than begin the real training.. an interceptor pilot that was flying around training skills can no doupt blast such a hawk out of the sky with the appropriate equipment.
This is also why it is important to select a ship fitting your skills and purposes. An advanced fighter in an inexperienced pilot's hands will only produce huge repair bills and not bring same results as a less advanced Model.

Many pilots strive to collect a lot of ribbons, and sometimes judge other pilots' skills based on the ribbons they have.. I have only this to say: When you get ripped appart by an oponent in a small cheap ship that can't possibly match your awesome ship and huge lasers, the ribbons will offer no consolation. 50 young dragon kills and 1000 young dragon kills are the same thing skillwise.. even with X-squads, the skill limits are attained long before the first ribbon is earned... Ribbons are a state of dedication, not a state of strength.

So the big question is: How do i know what ship to take, what guns to load and what beasts to kill? And what is it all good for?
To answer that, this guide will detail on skills, ships and battle tactics.
Skills - What are they. How best to gain them. What to use for that.
Ships - Every ship has advantages and weaknesses, as well as possible different usses.
Warfare & Tactics - How would eventualy things can be put into use.

Skillsz
In short about the fighter related skills and the meaning:
Tactics(TAC) - an allaround skill, it affects allmost everything but to a very small degree, the main factor for raising this skill is being shot at by worthy oponents.
Hit Accuracy(HA) - Well, kind of obvious what it does isn't it? Affects the chance to hit your target with laser fire, and respectivly increases when you attempt to hit such target.
Maneuvering(MAN) - This skill is the most significant one in the aspect of avoiding enemy laser fire, as well as some other benefits, and to a verry verry small degree to avoid missiles.
Weaponry(WEAP) - This skill will affect to a very slight degree the damage done by your weapons, you will notice that different foes (with same armor type) sometimes take a different amount of dmage from same lasers.. this would be the works of this skill.
Engineering(ENG) - Well this would be the counter skill to the weaponry skill, i don't know if it affects anything else.. i never saw any affect from it on the damage repaired by robots.. that is mostly the type of armor.

The skill that a fighter pilot is measured by is his/her HA Skill, the reason for that is simple: It's commonly the highest skill a fighter has. The reason for that is that HA raises every time you shoot at a worthy oponent, and with the existing design of weapons you often shoot much more than you are being shot at.

Skilling is a fun, but demanding process. The more advanced you are, the harder the foes you need to face to advance further. The process consumes a lot of credits for repairs, and initial equipment cost, and it is adviseable to combine staged skill training with trading in a large trade ship to secure your financial state for each stage.
I break the skills into five different levels (by HA), my breakdown is a bit different from the traditional 3 stage breakdown, but the reason for that is simple: more detailing.

1) 30 and less.
Well we all start somewhere. At first even the maggots may seem as a tough oponent, but eventualy with a rustfire or an interceptor, killing young space dragons and bio scavangers one might raise easily to a skill level that will make the small fights easier 20TAC 25HA 20MAN.
Any ship can be used to get to these skill levels, as they do not require fighting overly strong foes, and the fights are swift and not demanding.
A Rustfire with a couple of 1MW particle lasers or 5MW impulse lasers could master this easily.

After that is done, the next best step is the Space Worms, and Inexperienced Pirates
A couple of 1MW lasers can kill a worm, but this would probably require more than a single battle, and if you're flying a larger ship (rustfire size 60) you'd be taking quite some damage.
With a couple of 4MW lasers the worms become much easier prey, and would go down in less than 20 rounds most of the time.
Pirates would give about same gain as the worms but they are a bit more dangerous due to their missiles, especialy the experienced ones. With less than 30HA it's probably a good idea not to mess with the experienced pirates unless you are in a fighter class ship.

* This sort of skilling can usualy be well combined with ranking, you can find out more about that in the ranking manual.

2) 30-40.
Let the X-993 squad hunt begin!
They are the best foe to face in order to get through this stage of training. These guys pack 4 5MW impulse lasers, so you get shot at four times per round! Just remember to bring a big shield to minimize your repare costs, standart or larger.

There are different suggestions for setup to fight them:
The cheap setup - Zortium or Equal level Exotic armor. Three 4MW particle lasers. Ion drive. Standart Shield. This is more than enough to face them, will be harder at first, but will ease up a lot at ~35HA. This setup is good if you want to get through this stage of training and switch to a trade ship to save up for the next. A marauder with this setup would cost ~1.3 Million credits, which is a low price for a fighter ship.

Long term setup - Level 3/4 Exotic armor. Mixture of 4MW lasers and exotic weapons of same level. Standart shield. Ion drive. This setup is way stronger and more expensive than it takes to get through this stage of training, but it will allow you to progress to the next one without upgrading.
A Marauder or Mercury with this setup would cost 3-4 Million credits.. Depending on the exotic equipment type.

Power skilling setup - Level 3 exotic armor. Set of 1MW particle lasers. Standart or Medium Shielld. Ion drive. This setup has one purpose: Get as much skillgain from a single foe as possible. Due to the low damage dealt by your weapons the fight will last longer and will include more exchange of fire. That means the skills gained from killing a single foe would be much greater. The exotic armor and larger shield would significantly decrease the repair costs.

X-993 battlecruisers are also a nice foe to face (with about 35HA) just watch out for the missiles, since ECM is not part of the suggested setup for the squads who lack missiles. The battlecruisers have a bit higher skill limits so when the squads skill gains drop, they can offer some more boosts. Towards the 40-ish skills the squads can be easily taken out in a single 20 round battle with 4MW lasers.

3) 40-60.
Here comes the part where you fly around chasing your dreams The foes you would face for this srage of training are not ones who stay in fixed locations, they appear randomly in different sectors across the clusters they dwell in.
These foes belong to two different life form categories: EM energy-bees and sparklers. Organic Medusa swarmlings and Medusas (watch out for the missiles on the big Medusas!!!).
It's best to concentrate on a single category and get geared up approprietly.
In the OPC sectors in UNRC (Union North Rashkir Core) the energy creatures are more common. The Medusas are mostly found in the southern parts of the galaxy.
The energy beasts are a bit easier to fight than the Organic ones, but also have lower skill limits.

A Marauder or Mercury would be able to face these with appropriate armor (exotic level 3 or higher) ORG vs the organic beasts, EM vs the EM beasts. Although the better suited ship for this purpose would be a Hawk.
No need to mention that you'll want the strongest shield you can get for this purpose to lower your repair costs as much as possible.
While this beasts can still be faced with 4MW lasers, it would be the same affect as using 1MW lasers on the x-993 squads. More suitable guns may be in order: 120MT cannons against the medusas, or BioSpore arrays/EndoPlasms against the bees and sparklers. I'd suggest putting two exotic weapons combined with three (or 1 if you're not in a hawk) conventional weapon, preferably a 4MW or 20MW laser. 4MW would be better for skill gains and repair costs.

A ship cost like that could jump well over 4 millions - 1.5 millions fpr a level 4 exotic armor. ~400k for an endoplasm cannon. ~950k for 120MT or Bio spore array. along with the pirce of the hawk itself: 1.7M.
Due to the dangerous retreat blocks these foes are known for, carrying robots on board is adviseable for in-battle armor repairs.
Usualy to get to this stage pilots save up money flying a trade ship for a while.

4) 60-80.
The sweet ASP aera. ASP - Advanced skill points. Think they are meaningless? Think again, they can strengthen your ship damage capacity by over 50%, which with the Union defensive technology is a VERY significant factor. Not to mention the Defensive/Offensive combat modes and other benefits.
At this, the longest stage of training, the best fight you will find are the the Z-15 ships found in the neutral zones. The repair costs are high and an ECM becomes a "must have".

Small fighter ships are what it takes, since a big ship's repair bills would simply drain your credits before you blink. The best ship option for the union pilots is still a Hawk (the ultimate training vessel) - more lasers means higher HA gain, means more avaiability to trade them in for the ASP.
The Chiltin is rather large for this purpose, chiltins would stand little chance to avoid the Z-15 missiles.

Any sort of Exotic armor would come in handy to halve the damage taken since these foes use conventional weapons. Robots are a big big "must have" in these battles since they can easily hold you 3 times for 8-12 rounds, which is a lot of potential damage.
The 60-ies are about the average fighter skills, since it's the tradeout point of skills<->ASPs and are relativly easy to get to for a dedicated fighter.

5) 80 and more.
Well here the Z-ies fighters and pads are still a nice gain for a while.
Z-16 ships have a bit higher skill limit, but you should start looking towards the pardus cluster, with it's unique foes. The skill gains become much much smaller and harder to get.
Lucidy squads are a nice target to go for, but this really requires a high skill and carefull approach due to their insanely strong weapons.

True to the date this manual is written - At this stage you can consider your training over, you are now one of the elite. Even though there are pilots with 100+ skills in paralile universes, from this point on you wouldn't be an easy target for anyone ever again, rule out the guys piloting cubes

Overskillz
Skills in pardus however are capped by the pilot's experience... A pilot who just works on skilling without gaining any experiense will lose skills if they are too high for his experiense.
A formula for HA for example is: HA Skill=42+0.000131*EXP.
This for example would mean that with 100k experience you would be capped to about 55HA skill.
Keep that in mind when skilling - Sometimes you need to take a break to kill dragons/pirates or other beasts that give exp and die fast in order to not go over your head with skills.

Ships:
I won't go over every single ship there is in the galaxy, Just the ones that i think a fighter could use for the purposes of fighting. a lot of what will be stated here relates to what is more detailed in the "Warfare and Tactics" section, so when you run inso something unfamilliar, you can probably find it there.
*All ships setups in this guide assume that an e-pod, fuel scoop, autorefueler are allways equpted on ships.

In this guide the ships will be ranked by performance in three categories.
Training - The performance of the ship for the purpose of increasing skills at reasonable costs.
Scouting - More commonly known as "Ambush Breaking" The performance of the ship for the purpose of locating enemy positions, drawing their fire at yourself and surviving, while causing the foe to waste amo and time with not results.
Battle - The performance of the ship for the purpose of attacking the enemy with the purpose to destroy them, or defending against enmy attacks.

The lowest possible rank is one , The highest possible rank is five .
All the ranks are given respectivly to the the ship's level. An advanced ship can have the same ranking in a category as a basic ship, that doesn't mean it's not better, it means it's equaly good on it's level.
Ranking that has no stars at all means the ship is utterly useless for that purpose will be marked with - .

The Interceptor -
The ultimate young pirate vessel, and for a good reason. The second smallest ship there is (after the imperial SSC). It can be used as a nice ambush breaker thanks to it's size. If it gives up some of the guns, even a faster than ion drive can be installed - giving the ship even more chance to avoid enemy fire and break through ambushes alive.
An example setup for a inty used as an Ambush breaker:
Mutagen armor (ORG level 4). Two LW-4MW lasers. AM drive. ECCM. Small shield, and other accesories. would leave about 7 tons of fuel space. In war, such scouts are priceless when piloted right.

A pilot in training however could load it with 1MW particle lasers to hunt down worms and pirates, or perhaps even go after X-squads with it if he/she don't have plans to stay in a fighter for long and don't want to spend money switching into a Marauder.
Also the missile mount can give a nice advantage when fighting pilots more who are more or less equaly skilled. However due to the low damage capacity the missile mount isn't so usefull without the enhanced maneuvering abilities.
Training -
Scouting -
Battle -

The Marauder -
A fine training ship for a fighter. One of the finest of it's class really, thanks to it's ability to mount larger guns and low price. It can be equipted with even 20MW or BSA lasers if needed which most fighters of it's class can't claim. A good training setup would be: Exotic x3 armor. 4MW lasers or equal exotic weapons. Ion drive. Standart shield. Other accesories. The cost would be minimal, the results are great.
For the purpose of scouting and breaking ambushes, it could be equiped with: Mutagen armor or higher. Couple of LW lasers. AM or Hyper drives. ECCM. Standard or Med. shield.
However for purposes of battle this ship is beyond useless, unless you are battling traders in junkers
Training -
Scouting -
Battle -

Mercury -
A very nice multi purpose tactical fighter. It's not really the best for any of the fighter purposes, but it is fairly good for all of them.
If you are in a marauder and you want to upgrade to a mercury for skilling purposes, not really a good move. Yes, it is a bit better, but also larger, and for skilling it can't offer anything that a marauder can't. If you are in an inty however, this would be a good ship upgrade to consider.
As an ambush breaker it's not neerly as good as the Marauder or Interceptor, but in the hands of a skilled pilot can be used for that as well, along with dealing damage in the process of avoiding enemy fire.
The three missile mounts make it a quite efficient ship in battle. With appropriate skills and armor it could hang in for 12 rounds to shoot all three missiles and add up a nice amount of damage. With the potential for ~750 damage, a squad of these ships can make a formidable force. Perhaps the best ship available to union pilots for purposes of battle at the early stages.
Training -
Scouting -
Battle -

The Slider -
One of the finest hybrids ever made. But not really a fighter ship.
The size of this ship can mark it as a very small cruiser, or a very large fighter. Size: 38, so take your pick.
The biggest disadvantage of the slider is the low armor (285), the big advantage is the 180 capacity.
It could be used for skilling up to 60-ies without repair bills going through the roof, because it's high capacity allows installing much larger shields than any other ship suitable for training. However, a strong armor will be required to compensate for the low capacity of armor.
The large cargo space can also allow to install large lasers increasing fire power significantly.
The two missile mounts are really not enough for a ship of this class, but can make it a nice support ship in battles.
However the ultimate use for the Slider is the mixture of fighting with trading. With three 4MW lasers, or same level exotic weapons, Standart shield and Ion drive, it could still hold ~96 tons of cargo. Perfect for fighters who want to save up some money or gain some ranks with ease.
Training -
Scouting -
Battle -

The Hawk -
The ultimate training ship for the more advanced stages of training. But much like the Marauder - Completely and utterly useless for purposes of battle, unless you'll be battling a significantly weaker oponents.
Thanks to it's 5 laser mounts the hawk allows the pilot to gain HA significantly faster than any other training ship, and when training the advanced skills that is very important.
However, due to the higher cost and size than other small fighter ships the hawk is much less efficient as a scout ship. Truth be told, scout ships are the ones that take the largest risks and thus often look death directly in the eyes. Hawk's after death repairs are too high to risk it.
Training - ... (rules are made to be bend)
Scouting -
Battle -

The Chiltin -
The first battlecruiser available to the Union fighters. Four Missile mounts - just one less than the optimal amount, since in a 20 round battle a maximum of NN550 missiles can be fired is Five. Four missiles would fire in 16 rounds.
It is a great battleship. With the union equipment the Chiltin is superior even to the Federation's night hawk deluxe. The size of the Chiltin is significantly smaller than most battlecruisers of it's class, that can be a significant advantage.
However, if you run into a well planned ambush with this one, your chances to get out alive are not to encouraging. And if you thought that this would be a good ship to train your skills in... you better have a small treasure hidden because that what it will take to cover the repair costs.
Training -
Scouting -
Battle -

The Gargantua -
A standart battlecruiser. Large size, large weapons, high price. Six missile mounts, perfect amount - with advanced ambushing skills you can hold your prey for up to 24 rounds, which means you can fire 6 missiles (provided you survive).
Four laser mounts and the capacity to allow installing big guns there. Just watch for the repair costs.
As for skilling and ambush breaking - All that was said about the Chiltin - 2 fold!
Training -
Scouting -
Battle -

Scorpion and Liberator -
They are listed here together because they share the same properties:
Cruiser sized: Liberator-82 Scorion-84. The liberator has a lower damage capacity and 2 extra missile slots which don't add much unless you run into extended ambushes.
These ships, in the Union hands, have the highest damage capacity in this galaxy! Along with Hull strengthening and shield powering the Scorpion can take over 5,500 damage. Even the Doomstars are far behind those numbers!
These ships surprisingly can be used for the advanced stages of training, but their real power is in battle.
With the Union technology they allow great survival chances battles, along with heavy damage dealing ability.
Both ships can also be used to combine fighting and trading equipment which is priceless considering the cost of these monsters.
Training -
Scouting -
Battle -

I'll break this part into 3:
Pirate Handling, War Tactics, Factions' dangers.

Before starting to describe anything it is important to understand that a ship's strength is not measured by it's laser mounts, two main reasons:
1 - High level armor brings the laser damage down so significantly that the damage is hardly noteable next to a damage caused by missiles. If the armor is exotic and not countered by weapons that are 130% effective against it, than the damage is really low.
For example - a shot from a 100MW laser (strongest Conv weapon available to us) can do 84 damage. Against a level 5 exotic armor it would be reduced to 10 - so with a set of 4 100MW lasers, your maximum damage per round can be reduced to 80.. which means that against a significantly less skilled oponent you would do 40 damage in one round because the common good ratio is 50% in average... which brings to the next point:

2 - When you will face a more or less skilled oponent, most laser shots will be evaded by both of you, and the damage done will be more or less equal unless one of you will have the advantage of better equipment to counter the oponent's armor... In a equal fighter's fight, one missile can do more damage than 10 rounds of laser fire.

Of course all of the above is not true when you happen to be lucky and run into an equaly or less skilled oponent with armor that is weak against your exotic type of weaponry.. But that is not something to rely on, that is just a lucky shot
In battles that take place between equaly experienced fighters, the main damage comes form the missiles. Also a big advantage is that missile damage is not affected by any exotic armor types.

Pirate Handling
Fighting pirates is much different from fighting in a war. The reason for that is that pirates are not looking for a battle, they are looking for easy prey in a big trade ship or undefended instalations they could raid.
They usualy fly small fighters that are good only in DogFights - Easier to cloak, and harder to hit increasing their chance to survive ambushes.

The less successfull pirates make an easy prey for an experienced fighter pilot, since they get killed a lot, and have low skills because of that.
The succesfull pirates are the hard prey to catch, they have skills that combined with small ships can allow them to survive through single ambushes.. the trick with them is waiting for an ambush layed by them and scouting out their retreat point.

Hunting Pirates:
Pirates that are faction affiliated are easier to hunt down, since they can be hacked at any faction SB or planet and with enough hacking you can find out what sector they are in and where their buildings are.
Hunting neutral pirates gets tricky, to find them you have to rely on GNN, intel and experience.

It is possible to follow the pirate's attacks in GNN, asking the victims where the attack occured, and trying to scout for the pirate's retreat points... Or trying to guess which direction they are headed and laying ambush along their path.

Fending Pirates:
Pirates are usualy going for the buildings that produce expensive goods, in a hope to raid them.. Buildings deep in faction teritory are often less protected. When a raiding pirate is spotted in neerby sectors picking a lightly defended high level building and laying ambushes under it would be a good idea.

Also the "bait and hunter" trick is good to get the pirates who just fly through and shoot down trade ships.. how does it work you ask? well:
When several ships are located on the same square tile in space, the NAV scanners will only show the largest ship located there... When a pirate attack is reported in a neerby sector, a trap can be arranged.
A big clumsy trade ship, floating around in space looking undefended, while covered by the big ship are several hunters laying an ambush for the pirate.
The pirate can be attracted by the possibility of an easy kill or raid, and will be shot down by the Fighters the moment he/she is within firing range from the trade ship.



War Tactics

Recon and Scouting
The key to a succesfull battle is knowing what the enemy you are about to face has to throw at you, and disrupting the enemy's first response force to allow your own attacking forces to engage with a headstart.
This part is usualy carried out by the small ships, such as the Union Marauder or Imperial SSC.

The big benefit of these ships is the ecouraging survival chances against attackers, and the ability to break enemy ambushes without deing. A suitably equipted Marauder piloted by a skilled fighter can fly into an ambush set by multipile enemy cruisers, avoid the enemy fire, resulting in wasted amunition(missiles) and cleared path for the main assault force, that would probably take heavy damages or even ket annihilated completely if they ran into such an ambush.

For example:
A marauder with 2 4MW-LW lasers, Positron armor, Q-Med shield, AM drive and a stron ECM would be next to imposible to hit with NN550 fleet missiles and very difficult to hit even with the imperial "smart" missiles..also a skilled pilot would avoid most cruiser laser fire.
Such a setup would even make a better recon ship than the imperial SSCs.

One of the best operations of all times (not in Artemis ) was an invasion in Ras Elased. The battle itself was carried out by heavly armed imperial cruisers, among them a MC, that left nothing but Debries from a MO full of Thors.
However this operation would fail without the help of a couple of SSCs, (one of which joined the MO debries) who flew over to the MO and broke a heavy ambush layed by multipile federation cruisers.


Assault
Assault can be of two kinds. The first is the obvious one, fly into enemy space, wiping out MOs and capturing Starbases.
Such attacks are not as simple as they sound.. A ship suited for battle such as this is a cruiser, that can load missiles and robots (since without robots there is no way to repair in enemy space), a small fighter such as the marauder would be useless in a battle, however it is esential for the recon missions that would allow a battlecruiser rach it's destination..

The second type of assault is territorial control.. Joined ambushes of heavily armed cruisers in enemy space, blocking supply routes, or reinforcement from reaching their destinations. Recon ships sometimes join such ambushes for the mere chance that the first triggered ambush would be a recon ship ambush and will leave the enemy without enough missiles to fend against the heavy cruisers.

If there is a possibility to set the retreat point behind a friendly/neutral MO it would be the best option, just in case the foe will survive the ambush and try to find his/her attackers' retreat points.

Defense
The most important thing about defense is GOOD intel, to know where and how an enemy will strike and wait for them there ...
The Union has the best fitted ships for such defense, like was mentioned in the Ships section, the scorpion or Union libby potentialy have the highest damage capacity in the known galaxy.
With advanced skills and union equpment the Scorpion can take a maximum of 5691 points of damage, while a Doomstar at it's best can take 5343. Now with Union technology the union pilot would have a great advantage, due to it's enhanced missile evasion chances even with the big size, and it's ability to practicly nulify the evasion chances of anything the size of a Venom and larger using the ECCM jammer.

A NN550 missile causes about 250 damage.. The most of these that can be fired in an ambush is 6, with advanced skills, 5 without. that's 1250-1500 damage. If to take into account that the Shields and Hull are more submisive to laser fire it is safe to assume that 3 Union cruisers are able to take out the strongest possible enemy ship there is!
Of course a Moon Crusher with Plasmas and Kraaks looks much more intimidating, but it has much less damage capacity, and though the Kraak is one bad missile, only one can be fired in 20 rounds.. 2 tops.. and due to it's size (142) the laser fire will be much more effective against it.

Even Mercuries can serve a good defense forse with the ability to load 3 missiles, and strong ECM jammer along with ECCM, they have the ability to cause 760+ damage in an ambush of 12 rounds (no point for longer ambushes with a merc in such situations), and avoid most enemy fire thanks to their size,
So ~ 6 Mercuries can stop a heavy heavy doomstar.. And the mercuries are quite easily attained by experienced pilots.

Also in defensive purposes, the hybrids and the large trade ships, can we used as missile boats, simply to increase the ammount of missiles thrown at the attackers.


Factions tactics
Federation
The Federation has the largest selection of battle suited ships. Even their most available fighter - Viper Defense Craft - has the ability to carry 2 missiles, and is easily available and can be equiped to avoid most enemy fire.
The Nighthawk Deluxe is the most efficient tactical fighter there is, and the Doomstar has a huge load of effective weapons combined with the thickest known armor capability.
The only technology available to the federation aside from the fearsom ship design, are the advanced drives, which is not really helpfull on the large cruisers, but makes the federation tactical fighters even more dangerous, providing a significant advantage for them in dog fights and in scouting.

The best way to counter federation attacks would be large squads of small fighters armed with missiles, ECM, ECCM and fast drives that boost the evasion.
The ECCM would increase missile hit probability, while the quick drives will increase chances of getting out of it allive..
A wing of mercury sized ships with ECCM would be able to shoot down scouts, and would be able to withstand the avalanche of doomstar fire enough to shoot their three missiles at it.
Chiltins and heavier cruisers would require a powered shield and a strong armor to do that.

The best way to carry out attacks against the federal forces is usualy by sending out scouts that can cloak easily with the cloaking devises and strike the less defended positions.

The federal fleet ships are designed with great taste, but they don't have the advanced Union technology, and thus the union ships are actualy much more effective in a fight, with higher missile hit chance and higher damage capacity, not to mention the advanced cloaking abilities.
What the federation has is a huge number advantage, and a great organization - to counter that, during time of conflict the Union pilots must work together, and pay close attention to the chain of command that will be formed by the situation.. and attempt to avoid the mass of federal forces to strike them in their weakest spots.

Empire
The empire fleet might look less intimidating than the rich design of the federal fleet, however due to the advanced weaponry technology, the imperial fleet is potentialy much more dangerous!
Though lasers are not a real factor in equal battle, with the ones the empire has available for their highest nobles they become quite the threat.
A 40M plasma cannon can cause 270 damage, which is more than a NN550 fleet missile unless facing exotic armor.. It doesn't fire as much as gatling guns, but the experience have shown that higher damage - less fire rate guns are much more effective when it comes to battle.
Aside from the fearsome laser arsenal the empire has access to the most devastating missiles that exist in the galaxy, stronger than even the lucidy missiles - King Relon 1200 , King Kraak 1800. The weakness of these monstrosities is that only 1-2 can ever be fired in a single battle.. however, along with the plasma fire, this can bring down the strongest ships.. Though the most common use of those missiles are MO breakthrough, when the cruisers or Mooncrushers carrying the missiles are escorted by a wing of fighters and don't engage any combat with enemy ships, acting mostly like heavy bombers.
The more common imperial missiles in a possible conflict, due to the igh prices of the Relon and Kraak, are the Imperial Elite Mk.I and Imperial Elite Mk.II. these missiles are much lighter to carry and cost less.. their damage is slightly higher than a NN550 fleet missile's - 270 - however they are much more dangerous due to high intelligence .. 4 and 5 while the standart missiles are topped at 3. These missiles rarely miss, even experienced recon pilots find it hard to escape the MK.II missile.

In addition to that firepower the imperial fleet also has the lightest fighters of all factions.. The SSC (shadow stealth craft) (7) and the PASC (phantom advanced stealth craft) (23).. without the Union technology and Federation drives they are not as good for scouting purposes, but are still very hard to hit or spot.

The best way to counter the imperial fleet is with extended wings of light fighters equiped with strong ECM's and fast drives, to make the enemy waste their missiles before they can reach their destination, followed by cruisers that can withstand the damage thrown at them and empty missile banks at the imperial bombers... Due to their large design and lower armor, the imperial cruisers are much easier targets than the federation ships.
To defend an MO position against an imperial attack it is usualy enough to have scouts in ambush that could pull the missile fire away from the MO.. without the missiles the imperial ships are not quite adept in attacking heavily armed instalations.

Few tips about how to set an ambush that won't get you into trouble.
The bible of ambushing:
0) The first rule for ambushers - ANY attacker triggers ambush.. without that, some lowlife in a sabre can kill you by attacking retreating and repairing.

0.1) Include missile fire - Nothing worse than looking at the combat log and realizing you been ripped appart by oponents missiles while yours were just collecting dust.


Some other things:

1) Unless you have been very persiatant in having your friend foe lists updated, never set an ambush against foes. Any alliance/Faction on the foelist will be targeted without regardto the situation.

2) If you are hunting for bounties, and doing it with low tech link, don't include all bounties... a 500c bounty is not really worth making an enemy over, especialy if it's some hacker who have been peacefully practicing on getting dirty details about your life Get an advanced link for bounty hunting.

3) Even with advanced link, it is illadvised to hunt all bounties because sometimes pirates place bounties just to cause trouble without the targeted pilot deserving that.. For example, take the bounties placed by Inigo Montoya.

4) In war times, in combined or defensive ambushes, never ambush for more rounds than it would take to fire all your missiles... the laser fire is to insignificant to risk for it.

5) Choose retreat points wisely - If there are friendly MOs in the area, preferably behind them.. Or in far reaches of the secctor where no casual pilots would travel. Never make the ambush retreat in openspace, unless you have a cloaking devise and a small ship.

6) Allways exclude alliances that we have NAPs with!!!

The Warfare and tactics chapter related to ship combat, and the closest relation to territorial warfare there was the mention of battles with MOs (Military Outposts).
In this section i will bring up few points for consideration when fighting with the purpose to gain territory rather than just shoot down the enemy's ships or prevent him from invading your space.

Basic Knowledge
Few things to know before expending on the topic:
Buildings have a damage capacity of 100 points.
Attacking a building will cause it to lose one point, and will cost the attacker 50 APs.
This means, that destroying a single undefended building requires a total of 5000 APs
Maximum amount of APs that can be stored is 6150 (advanced skills, premium, original premium)
The maximum amount of modules on an MO is 14, 4 more than a usual building.
Attacking a starbase is different from attacking a building, and requires squadrons.
Drugs can increase APs, by 200 APs max, and reduced when used more than twise at once.
Additional modules increase the chance that a building attacker being held for extra rounds.
MOs consume 5 fuel and energy. Once supplies run out, they are open for passage.
Repair bays loaded with robots allow in battle repairs to be performed in buildings.

Territorial Defense
In case the territory requiring defense is guarded by MOs, such as faction space or nooks, the most important factor is the defense of the MOs that guard it. For the MOs, the most important thing is to make sure they are well stocked, and that they have the capacity to last for several days without stocking. A capacity of 300 is the minimum adviseable it should allow an MO to operate for 5 days.
There are two possible setups for the MOs.

MO offensive setup: An MO with full build of Avenger or more advanced drones. The young pilots often consider it as an unpassable barrier.. And are right doing so. However for a fleet lead by comanders who know what they are doing, such an MO is not an overwhelming obstacle.
An attack by cruiser in the fleet would probably cost the loss of a module, and if the cruiser survives the missile avalaunche they would be able to retreat and repair to be well suited for another attack. Not to mention that with each attack it becomes easier to survive.
If the attacks will be carried out by skilled fighters piloting tactical fighter ships the MO defenses would probably be even less effective since due to the size and skills most laser and missile fire will be avoided.
However such an attack would require a really good organization and skilled fighters.

MO deffensive setup:
This MOs aim to prevent from the attackers to break through them untill reinforcements arrive. They are not as good for killing the attackers as the offensive MOs.
These MOs are fitted with a large number of extended repair bays, advanced tractor beam, command center and drones. The damage dealt by such an MO in a single round is much lower due to the lower amount of weapon instalations. However, it is virtualy imposible to break through such an MO in a single strike.
The damage caused by the attackers is repaired by the repair bays, and thus it takes much more attacks (and with that more APs) to take down a single module. The command center increases the skill levels of the drones, resulting in reduction of sustained damage. And eventualy a tractor beam forces the attacker to remain in combat for more rounds, sucking even more of their APs.
If to take into account the amount of APs requiered to destroy a building, such an MO is allmost the best way to ensure that a single attack wave will never be enough to break into your territory, and buy you enough time to ammount a counter attack and send an oposing fleet.


The attackers are likely to suffer many casualties and be significantly weakened by the breakthrough in case they don't "break their teeth" on the MO defenses.
For that reason, even buildings closed in a nook covered by MOs need to have defenses. If the buildings are unguarded, once the MO is breached, a sabre pilot's attack would be just as efficient against them as a Mooncrusher.

The best and cheapest defense for a building is 4 mmt (medium missile turret) models. This would allmost fully guarantee that all 4 missiles will be fired at the attacker. NN500 missiles cause over 250 damage if they hit, and that means a potential 1000 damage in a single attack.. That's enough to ensure that the building won't be submissive for attacks by less than well trained fighters, and the less experienced ones will get some pod flying training.

With an addition of a Tractor beam module to the building even the heavier cruisers would be taking a serious risk attacking your building, and ensure they would need to carry a significant amount of robots to recover from the damage dealt to them.
In addition such defenses consume a lot of APs from the attackers and lower the chance that they will be able to destroy your building before reinforcements arrive to defend the area.

The addition of ADDs Golems and Seekers (drone types) to the building would increase the APs required to breach it's defenses, but would probably be less efficient than MMTs against skilled pilots, since they mostly rely on laser fire.
The construction of 4 mmt's is the most efficient building defense from the performanse/price view. Only 100k with no droids required, when even a single ADD costs 150k and requires five droids.
The addition of 4 modules requires ~60 metal, ore and energy.

Territorial Offense
The most important thing in territorial offense is the size of the fleet you can gather for the attack. With a fleet large enough you could wipe out a whole secor in a day or two.
There is not really much left to say about MO battle.. If you know how to defend them, you know how to attack them. First of all you will need to send out several recon ships - small fighters equiped for evasive maneuvering - that will be able to scout out enemy ambushes at the MOs. In the absense of hackers, the recon ships would also be needed to find out the defenses MOs are packing.

The best ships to attack MOs are suauly tactical fighters that can combine evasive maneuvering with dealing damage and shooting missiles. However if the MOs have tractor beams it's better to send larger cruisers packed with missiles to do the job.

Once the MOs are breached, and you are within enemy territory, once again: hack or use recon ships to find out the defenses on the buildings in the area before assigning targets to the fleet pilots. The undefended buildings can be assigned to the less experienced pilots, flying none combat efficient ships.
Against an undefended building a Sabre is as Efficient as a Mooncrusher, so here you can send them to do the damage while reserving the heavy assault ships' APs for meeting the counter attacks, or attacking buildings with modules. The battleships should never engage combat with undefended buildings unless there is noone else left for the job.

If the sector you are attacking contains an Star Base owned by the enemy, you will have to bring squadrons with you. The more the better. Squadrons are expensive, they require a high amount of HW (hand weapons) to remain functional, and they are rather slow (750-850 APs max). If it is at all possible they are best to be aquired as close to the target SB as possible.
Of course, in MOed sectors or nooks attacking the SB right away is a foolish move.

Once the "Breaking and Taking" process is complete, you need to secure the sector, before enemy forces arrive!
Attack fleets should be escorted by large trade ships, carrying robots and resources in order to build new MOs instead the ones you just destroyed. As sad history from paralile worlds teaches us that without efficient ground control, any territorial war will be lost eventualy.
The construction of MOs once the enemy's MOs were destroyed is even more important than wiping out all the buildings and capturing the SBs.

Once you have sealed off the area, the enemy's SB will have no supplies, and will begin losing populaion. With the loss of population the SBs defenses weaken, and it can eventual be driven back to become a trade outpost easy to capture with much lower defense capavilities. Such tactic is commonly refered to as "SB starving".

The SBs have habitational rings.. 500, 10k, 15k, 30k(population) - four maximum rings. Each ring has to be broken through in order to access the comand center and capture the SB. With each level of population lost, the attack will be easier to acoomplish.
However keep in mind, that if the enemy will deside that all chance of victory is lost, they may self destruct the SB and leave you with nothing but a sector full with debries.

Following requests, here is a list of the known locations of the labs that can offer the equipment.

Electro-Magnetic Equipment
Weapons
Empire Ska'ari Core - Waiophi (7,12)
North Pardus Rim - Remo [21,18]

Armor
Federation Human Core - Pass FED-01 (1,10)

Organic&Biological Equipment
Weapons
East Pardus Rim - Nunsakan (1,7)
West Pardus Rim - Zamith (2,7)
Empire Kheldon Core - Fomalhaut (5,13)

Armor
Empire Keldon Core - Keldon (20,29)
West Pardus Rim - Laolla (3,13)