Apollo Class Fighter

The Apollo Class Fighter is the step up from the Artemis Class Fighter. It costs a little over twice as much, hits three times as hard, and carries more than twice the hull. It also has rapid fire against the Atlas Class Cargo, so a stack of Apollos parked at home punishes anyone who comes at you with cheap cargo ships.

It is the cheapest ship in the game with any real punch, and most commanders keep building them long after they can afford heavier hulls, because nothing else buys as much firepower per resource spent.

Building one

Apollos are built on the Shipyard page. You need Shipyard level 3, Armor Tech 2 and Pulse Drive 2. Getting there means Capitol 2 to unlock the Shipyard, and Research Lab 2 plus Energy Tech 1 to unlock the two techs.

The Base column is the ship as designed. The Current column is what your research has done to it. Weapons Tech adds 10 percent to attack per level, Shield Tech adds 10 percent to shield, Armor Tech adds 10 percent to hull and Pulse Drive adds 20 percent to speed. The commander above is running Weapons 9, Shield 8, Armor 11 and Pulse Drive 8, which turns 150 / 25 / 850 / 10,000 into 285 / 45 / 1,785 / 26,000.

Every Apollo that dies leaves 1,800 ore and 750 crystal in the debris field, the flat 30 percent of build cost that every ship leaves behind.

Rapid fire

Rapid fire gives a ship a chance at another shot in the same round every time it hits a unit it has rapid fire against. The More Info button on the Shipyard page shows both lists.

The Apollo rapid fires	Rating
Atlas Class Cargo	x3
Hermes Class Probe	x5
Helios Class Solar Satellite	x5
Genesis Solar Satellite	x5
Shadow Probe	x5

Rapid fires the Apollo	Rating
Hades Class Battleship	x4
Zeus Class	x100

What is missing from those lists matters as much as what is on them. The Poseidon Class Cruiser rapid fires the Artemis at 6 and has nothing against the Apollo, so mixing Apollos into an Artemis screen breaks the Poseidon's chain of free shots. Going the other way, the Hades Class Battleship rapid fires the Apollo at 4 and tears an Apollo-heavy fleet apart.

What an Apollo cannot hurt

A shot that lands for 1 percent or less of the target's shield rating does nothing at all. An Apollo hits for 150 before research, so anything with a shield rating of 15,000 or more shrugs it off completely. In practice that is the Zeus Class at 50,000 shield and the Hephaestus Class Attack Platform at 150,000. Weapons Tech lifts your attack and Shield Tech lifts their shield, so unless your weapons research is miles ahead of theirs, Apollos do nothing at all to either one. You can throw fifty thousand at a Zeus and never scratch it, while the Zeus kills them about a hundred a round.

The Large Decoy is the useful case. It has 10,000 shield, so at matched research an Artemis at 50 attack bounces off it forever, while an Apollo at 150 is over the line and can get through. Shields come back in full at the start of every round, so you still need enough Apollos firing at once to chew through 10,000 shield and 10,000 hull on each decoy. A couple of thousand Apollos will not dent a screen of twenty Large Decoys. Twenty thousand clear it in the first round.

Evaluation

Advantages

Pound for pound the Apollo has the best weapons rating per resource spent of any ship in the game. Counting crystal at 1.67 ore and hydrogen at 2.5 ore, one Apollo buys 150 attack for about 10,200, which beats the Athena Class Battleship, the Zeus and everything else.

That shows up when you spend the same resources two different ways. These are Calculator runs with Weapons, Shield and Armor at 10 on both sides:

1,000 Apollos against	Result
277 Poseidon	Apollos win, 429 lost
145 Athena	Apollos win, 553 lost
75 Hades	Apollos win, 610 lost
56 Prometheus	Apollos win, 157 lost
2,178 Artemis	draw on the six round limit, 360 Apollos lost against 2,140 Artemis

Each of those stacks costs the same as the 1,000 Apollos. The Artemis line is the only one that is not a clean kill, and only because the battle runs out of rounds with a few dozen Artemis still standing. On losses the Apollos are still far ahead.

That efficiency makes the Apollo a cheap way to put real weight behind a planet or a parked Hephaestus. It also makes a good partner for Artemis fodder, since Apollos break the Poseidon's rapid fire and can hurt decoys the Artemis cannot touch.

One small bonus: an Apollo and a fully upgraded Atlas move at exactly the same speed. Both sit at 10,000 once the Atlas switches over to Pulse Drive at level 5, and both gain 20 percent per Pulse Drive level after that, so an Apollo escort never slows a raiding run down.

Disadvantages

One Apollo is nothing. The 25 shield is token and any real weapon goes straight through to the hull, and anything Athena sized or bigger usually kills one with a single hit. Apollos only work in numbers.

They are expensive to fly. Each one burns 75 hydrogen where an Artemis burns 20, so moving a big Apollo fleet costs real money every single trip. Add the losses you take in a proper fight and they are one of the worst ships to run repeated attacks with.

They also cost 7 hydrogen an hour each to hold on a group defend, which adds up fast on a long wait.

Apollo against Hades in numbers

6,600 Apollos cost about what 500 Hades cost. Head to head in the Calculator with Weapons, Shield and Armor at 10 on both sides, the Apollos win in five rounds. All 500 Hades die and about 4,000 Apollos die with them.

Even after harvesting every scrap of debris from both fleets, that trade is around 13.5 million down. It is worth fighting if the Apollos are guarding something you value more, but nobody picks that fight for profit.

Send three times as many, 19,800 Apollos against those same 500 Hades, and losses drop to about 1,900. That is under 10 percent of what you sent, and that is the normal way to use them.

Turn it around and it is ugly. 1,500 Hades thrown at 6,600 sitting Apollos kill every last Apollo and lose nothing at all. The Hades also gains speed faster, since Warp Drive gives 30 percent a level against Pulse Drive's 20. And 6,600 Apollos burn 495,000 hydrogen to move, more than the 375,000 the 1,500 Hades need to come and wipe them out.

Requirements

Research Lab 1
Capitol 2
Energy Tech 1
Research Lab 2
Shipyard 3
Pulse Drive 2
Armor Tech 2
Apollo Class Fighter