Hephaestus Class Attack Platform

Hephaestus Class Attack Platform Production information Ore Cost 20,000,000 Crystal Cost 20,000,000 Hydrogen Cost 10,000,000 Technical specifications Cargo capacity 1,000,000,000 Base Speed 90 Engine unit(s) Warp Drive Requirements Shipyard 13 (plus Foundry 3)
	[Source]

The Hephaestus Class Attack Platform is the latest in planetary assault technology. It can be deployed into orbit in a solar system and act as a mobile base for your fleet. This ship is currently available for both versions of the game.

Description

The Hephaestus Class is a roaming attack platform. Those familiar with the TV series Battlestar Galactica may consider this ship a riff on that notion. A player may only have one of this ship. When first built in your shipyard, it orbits the planet on which it was constructed, however it then may be sent to any other planet (as any other ship) or deployed to an open planet slot. In its undeployed state, it behaves as any other ship, including the capability of passing through a Warp Gate.

Once deployed to an empty planet slot, it acts much like a colony planet. The owner may deploy other ships to it. The Hephaestus itself may be moved (as long as it has no fleets originating at it going to or from it) and all ships deployed to it will move along with it for free. The parenthetic description there is a subtle distinction. If you deploy or transport ships to the heph, it can be moved out from underneath them, and they will simply bounce back to the location of origination. If you recall the Heph prior to the "landing" on the moved Heph, the deployment/transfer will take place as though it never happened. If, however, from the Heph, you attack another planet, deploy or transport ships or res from it to another planet, then the Heph will be "pinned" until either the ships in question return or the deployment has completed. This is one of the key risks of a Heph, and being conscious of potentially inimical forces around it, as well as mitigating those risks by various techniques (such as also firing off a MAC, and deploying ships to it for action -- particularly slow ships like Dios) is an important skill to develop.

The Hephaestus functions like any other ship in battle. If it is destroyed, all ships deployed to it or on tasks originating from it are lost in space. By and of itself, it can only be harmed by a Zeus or a Prom (see Ineffectiveness Rule, below). Any other attacking ships may harm the associated fleet, but only Proms and Zeus will do damage to the Heph itself.

Any ships docked on the Hephaestus when it is attacked contribute to the battle for the defense of the ship. For this reason it is common to have a number of Zeus Class on it as mobile defenses. The typical Zeus count runs from zero to seven, with 4 or 5 being a common choice.

Once you deploy a Hephaestus, it can never return to a planet, without the assistance of a Lunar Dock to first undeploy the ship. In the absence of the ability to undock the Hephaestus, the owner must either have adequate hydrogen infrastructure to resupply the Hephaestus or raid frequently to keep it stockpiled. A deployed Hephaestus also can't make use of a Warp Gate.

You typically have 9 "planet/colony" slots at the top of your screen. When deployed, the heph will add one more to that. The heph's position in this list will vary with your preference settings and/or its location in the universe.

A heph cannot/does not do "harvest" missions. It changes its "orbit", which is effectively how it is FRSed, as it is untouchable when in the transition state (its prior colony slot will state that the colony slot is "Unavailable"). It cannot be espied or scanned by an Oracle, though its "tail end" will be visible (via the "Unavailable" marker) in its former location until it lands at the new location. This prevents another heph or Gaia from being deployed there, and, if the heph failed to be able to land at its target, allows for it to return to its previous location much as a Gaia returns to its starting planet if the colonization fails. There may be some tactical tricks that might be played if one gained any idea of where the heph was aimed, though this would be difficult for the most part given its behavior in transit with regards to Oracle scans.

Evaluation

ADVANTAGES

The Hephaestus Class allows a fleet to move from one system/slot to another while only paying the fuel cost for the Heph, in much the same way an aircraft carrier can move aircraft from one place to another without the aircraft using any fuel.

Since in-system distances are much smaller than those between systems, once the Hephaestus is deployed to a system with likely targets, attacks take much less time, require less fuel, and (most importantly) give minimum warning.

It allows a player to roam the Universe without the need to colonize a planet and "use up" a planet slot—or two to create an MAC every time they want to attack a distant target. Planet slots can thus be used for infrastructure, especially Mines and Research Labs.

Merchant trades can be done in quantities much larger than those normally possible on planets: for up to 1 billion (1,000,000,000) of the target resource.

DISADVANTAGES

The Hephaestus is by far the most expensive unit in the game.

It's slow, much slower than a MAC would be (unless the MAC itself includes a Zeus).

It consumes a considerable amount of Hydrogen, making it a bad choice for players who do not have very large fleets.

Unlike those from a Moon, attacks from it can be locked by Oracle.

Unlike a planet (a MAC) or moon, a Hephaestus can be destroyed. This makes slow operations (harvesting with Dionysus, out-of-system attacks) extremely dangerous as the Hephaestus is held in place and vulnerable until all fleets have returned. If it is destroyed whilst fleets are incoming or outgoing from it, all ships in the fleets (incoming/outgoing) are lost. Hence, for practical purposes, attacks are limited to the system to which it is currently deployed.

The Hephaestus cannot manufacture new ships, so the only way to replenish losses are to deploy replacements to it from a planet.

SPOTTING

A Hephaestus deployed to a planet slot has an icon next to the planet name, indicating that it is a Hephaestus. This icon is on the left side, and is a smaller version of the image used to represent the ship.

(Formerly, it was necessary to either notice if the planet slot was capable of being targeted by IPBMs—Hephaestus do not show the "initiate missile strike" icon on the galaxy page—or probe to be sure.)

Statistics

Specifications

Hull Rating: 4,000,000
Shield Rating: 150,000
Weapons Rating: 0
Cargo Capacity: 1,000,000,000
Base Speed: 90
Hydrogen Consumption: 450,000
Engine Type: Warp Drive

Cost

Ore: 20,000,000
Crystal: 20,000,000
Hydrogen: 10,000,000

Requirements

Shipyard 13
Foundry 3
Armor Tech 12
Weapons Tech 12
Shield Tech 12
Particle Tech 10
Warp Drive 9
Expedition Tech 8

Time and Fuel Costs

(based on Warp 9, one way)

Planet-to-moon 00:24:47, 257 hydrogen

Next Planet 5:20:38, 51,686 hydrogen

Maximum in-system (slot 15 to/from slot 1) 5:30:50, 55,029 hydrogen

Next System 8:54:36, 143,741 hydrogen

Next Galaxy 23:49:46, 1,028,560 hydrogen

Size Issue

There have been many arguments whether or not the Hephaestus is larger than the Zeus, though, considering that one may deploy multiple Zeuses to a Heph, this seems ludicrously obvious.

The Hephaestus has two large spherical shields on the side, and the Athena looks even more minuscule in proportion to the Hephaestus than it does to the Zeus, leading to the assumption that the two spheres on the side of the Hephaestus may be storage hangars for two Zeus ships.

Ineffectiveness Rule

Note that the base Shield rating is 150,000. In the older universes, due to the Ineffectiveness Rule, only the relatively slow Prometheus (base Weapon: 2000) or extremely slow Zeus (200,000) have a high enough Weapons rating to do any damage. Nova added the (very slow) Thanatos (20,000). Consequently, in-system attacks using only fast ships (usually Athena and Hades, but possibly including intermediate-speed ships like Artemis, Atlas, or Curetes) carry no risk of the Hephaestus being locked in place and destroyed, as the only ships that can destroy it would take longer to reach it than the attacking ships take to return. Attacks on the Hephaestus using any number of fast ships can be defended against simply by fleet saving. Although Nova also added the quite speedy Empusa, its base Weapon of 1250 is still substantially below 1500, the level at which it would be relatively likely to be able to be effective.

Conquest added two ships, the Erebus and Moros, which have a different weapons system that bypasses shields, allowing them to be effective against the Hephaestus. These ships are usually faster than the Prometheus, and although they are still slower than the Athena and Hades, they do make attacks including intermediate-speed ships more risky.

The new ships in Hired Guns do not necessarily pose a danger (they are light- or medium-weight ships with conventional weapons), but it also adds Eradeon, which allows the base stats of ships to be boosted. As lighter-weight ships are more easily boosted than heavy ones, it seems increasingly likely that an active Hephaestus could be destroyed by a fleet of fast ships, especially, perhaps, Athena.

See Also

• Ships