Atlas Class Cargo

The Atlas Class Cargo is the small hauler every commander starts with. A new homeworld comes with one Atlas already parked on it, next to two Artemis and two Hermes, and you can build more from your first minute in the game.

It carries 5,000 and it does nothing else. With 5 attack and 400 hull it is not a warship and was never meant to be one. Its job is to bring plunder home from a raid, shift resources between your own planets, and carry your stockpile out of the way when you fleet save.

Building one

Atlas ships are built on the Shipyard page. On paper it needs Shipyard level 2 and Jet Drive 2. In practice you land with Capitol 2, Shipyard 3 and Jet Drive 3 already built, so both are met before you do anything, and the game does not even bother listing the Jet Drive requirement in the More Info panel. One Atlas costs 2,000 ore and 2,000 crystal, and no hydrogen.

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 the engine tech adds to speed. The commander above is running Weapons 9, Shield 8, Armor 11 and Pulse Drive 8, which turns 5 / 10 / 400 / 5,000 into 10 / 18 / 840 / 26,000.

Cargo capacity is the one number research never touches. 5,000 is 5,000 forever.

Every Atlas that dies leaves 600 ore and 600 crystal in the debris field, the flat 30 percent of build cost that every ship leaves behind.

The Pulse Drive swap

The Atlas ships with the Jet Drive and gains 10 percent speed per Jet Drive level. Research Pulse Drive to level 5 and it swaps engines. Base speed doubles from 5,000 to 10,000, and from then on it gains 20 percent per Pulse Drive level instead. Your Jet Drive level stops mattering the moment that happens.

Jet Drive	Pulse Drive	Atlas speed
3	0	6,500 (what you start with)
6	4	8,000
6	5	20,000
8	6	22,000
12	8	26,000
12	12	34,000

Look at the jump. One research level, Pulse Drive 4 to Pulse Drive 5, takes the Atlas from 8,000 to 20,000. Nothing else in the game moves like that.

There is a cost the Shipyard page does not tell you about. The swap also doubles what the ship burns, from 10 to 20. Both the Base and the Current column keep saying 10, and the real number only shows up in the Fleets summary once you pick a destination. Same 20 Atlas, same 3,080 distance, same 100 percent speed setting:

Engine	Speed	Flight time	Hydrogen
Jet Drive 6, Pulse Drive 4	8,000	57:19	71
Jet Drive 6, Pulse Drive 5	20,000	36:17	141

So you get there in about two thirds of the time and pay twice the fuel for it. Worth it on a raid you are running over and over, less obviously worth it on a long haul between your own planets.

Hauling

There are three ships in the game built to carry resources. Costs below are ore plus crystal plus hydrogen added together.

Ship	Cost	Cargo	Cost per 1,000 cargo	Hull	Base speed
Atlas Class Cargo	4,000	5,000	800	400	5,000 (10,000)
Hercules Class Cargo	12,000	25,000	480	1,200	7,500
Carmanor Class Cargo	36,000	125,000	288	3,600	4,000

The Atlas is the most expensive way to buy cargo space in SFC2. Spend 12,000 on Atlas and you get 15,000 of hold; spend it on one Hercules and you get 25,000. The Carmanor gives nearly three times the hold per resource that the Atlas does. What the Atlas has is that it is the only one you can build early: the Hercules wants Shipyard 4 and Jet Drive 6, and the Carmanor wants Shipyard 6, Jet Drive 10 and Expedition Tech 4.

Fuel tells the same story once the engine swaps. Before Pulse Drive 5 the Atlas and the Hercules are dead level, both burning 2 hydrogen per 1,000 of cargo moved. After the swap the Atlas pays 4 and the Hercules still pays 2. The Carmanor pays under 1.

What the Atlas keeps is speed. Once it is on the Pulse Drive it is the fastest hauler in the game, and it pulls further ahead every level, because the other two are stuck on Jet Drive at 10 percent a level. At Jet 12 and Pulse 8 the Atlas moves at 26,000 against the Hercules' 16,500 and the Carmanor's 8,800.

One thing that catches people out: fuel is taken out of the hold, not out of the planet's stockpile on top. Those 20 Atlas show 99,859 of capacity rather than a clean 100,000, and the missing 141 is the hydrogen for the trip.

On a raid

An attack cannot carry anything out. The mission does not even offer a cargo box. What the fleet carries is what it takes off the target on the way home.

A won raid takes 50 percent of each of the defender's three resources, 55 percent if the two of you are at war, minus whatever their Resource Den is protecting. Those three amounts are then evened out and loaded until the hold runs out. Every ship in the fleet that is not a probe and not a Hephaestus carries plunder, so your fighters do chip in, but an Apollo holds 100 and an Atlas holds 5,000.

That is 100 Apollo and 20 Atlas hitting a planet holding 15 Artemis, 5 Laser Cannons and 700,000 in resources, run through the in-game Calculator. There is 350,000 there to take, the fleet has room for 110,000, and 110,000 is what comes home. The Calculator even tells you what would clear the rest, in this case another 48 Atlas.

Two things worth knowing. The cargo that counts is what survives the fight, not what you sent, so a hauler that dies is hold you do not get to fill. And the load is split evenly across ore, crystal and hydrogen, so a fleet that only just covers the plunder comes home with roughly a third of each rather than the ore you were probably after.

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 Atlas rapid fires	Rating
Hermes Class Probe	x5
Shadow Probe	x5
Helios Class Solar Satellite	x5
Genesis Solar Satellite	x5

Rapid fires the Atlas	Rating
Apollo Class Fighter	x3
Hades Class Battleship	x3
Zeus Class	x250

The four things the Atlas rapid fires are probes and satellites, which is a polite way of saying it rapid fires nothing that matters. Those all die to a stiff breeze anyway.

The list pointing the other way is the one to care about. The Apollo is the cheapest ship in the game with real weapons, nearly everybody stacks them early, and it gets three chances a round against your cargo. The in-game description of the Apollo says as much.

In a fight

400 hull, 10 shield, 5 attack. The Atlas is in the battle whether you want it there or not, and it is the first thing to die.

Both of these are engine runs with Weapons, Shield and Armor at 10 on both sides, against 100 parked Atlas:

Equal-cost attacker	Result
47 Apollo	all 100 Atlas dead in 3 rounds, attacker loses nothing
100 Artemis	95 Atlas dead on the 6 round limit, attacker loses nothing

Its own attack of 5 is not worth counting either. A shot that lands for 1 percent or less of the target's shield rating does nothing at all, so an Atlas cannot scratch anything with a shield rating of 500 or more. That is the Prometheus, the Ares, the Zeus, the Hephaestus, the Particle Cannon, the Decoy and the Large Decoy.

The rule that follows is simple. Do not send Atlas to a fight you might lose. Send them to a fight you are sure of, and send just enough to hold the plunder.

Evaluation

Advantages

Available from minute one. You land with a Shipyard 3, a Jet Drive 3 and one Atlas already sitting there, so there is no research gap to cross before you can start raiding.

Cheap in absolute terms. 4,000 for 5,000 of hold means a new player can add capacity a few thousand resources at a time instead of saving for a 12,000 Hercules.

Fastest hauler in the game once Pulse Drive 5 lands, and it keeps gaining 20 percent a level after that while everything else that carries cargo is stuck on Jet Drive's 10 percent.

Disadvantages

Worst cargo per resource of the three haulers. The Hercules gives you two thirds more hold for the same money and the Carmanor gives nearly three times as much.

The Pulse Drive swap doubles the fuel bill, and nothing in the Shipyard page warns you about it.

Paper thin. 400 hull and 10 shield, with the Apollo and the Hades rapid firing it at 3 and the Zeus at 250.

No use on a group defend. That mission does not allow cargo, so an Atlas parked over someone else's planet is 4,000 resources doing nothing except waiting to turn into 1,200 of debris for the attacker. It costs 1 hydrogen an hour each to sit there as well.

Requirements

Capitol 2
Shipyard 2
Jet Drive 2
Atlas Class Cargo

All three are already met by the starting kit, so in practice the Atlas has nothing to unlock.

Trivia

In Greek mythology, Atlas is the Titan who holds up the sky. He is the brother of Prometheus, which is where the destroyer gets its name.