Hephaestus Class Attack Platform

The Hephaestus Class Attack Platform is the most expensive ship in SFC2. You build it at a Shipyard like any other ship, then deploy it into an empty planet slot, where it becomes a mobile base. It parks anywhere in the universe, holds a fleet, and moves again whenever you want. Ships stationed on it ride along for free. You can only have one at a time.

It is also the only base in the game that can be destroyed outright, and it is the single biggest prize on the board when it is.

Cost and requirements

Cost		Requirements
Ore	20,000,000	Shipyard	13
Crystal	20,000,000	Foundry	3
Hydrogen	10,000,000	Armor Tech	12
		Weapons Tech	12
Total	50,000,000	Shield Tech	12
		Particle Tech	10
		Warp Drive	9
		Expedition Tech	8

Its stats before research:

Hull	Shield	Weapon	Cargo	Speed	Fuel	Engine
4,000,000	150,000	0	1,000,000,000	90	450,000	Warp Drive

There is no Shipyard on a moon, so it has to be built on a planet. Only one may exist per account at a time. If it dies you may build another.

Deploying it

Building it gives you a ship sitting in the Current Ships list on that planet. It is not a base yet. It shows up in the ship list on the Fleets page like anything else parked there, and you can send it out on ordinary missions, but until you deploy it, it is just a very large hull. To turn it into a base:

1. Switch to the planet that actually holds the ship.
2. Open Galaxy and find an empty slot.
3. Click the four point star in the Actions column, "Deploy Hephaestus Class Attack Platform here".

The dispatch window opens with the Hephaestus already picked, so you can load escorts and cargo onto the same trip. The star only shows up while you are viewing the planet that holds the ship, and looking from the wrong planet is the usual reason people cannot find it. If you already have one deployed, or you have no free fleet slot, the star is there but greyed out and the tooltip tells you which of the two is stopping you.

When it lands, the platform appears as an extra tile in your planet bar, next to your planets. It does not use one of your 10 planet slots.

What it can and cannot do

It is a base, but a stripped down one. It cannot:

• Build any structure, mine, or power plant. The Buildings page sends you back to Overview.
• Research anything, or build ships or defenses. Same bounce on the Research, Shipyard and Defense pages.
• Run missions. The Missions page bounces as well, so no NPC encounters and no secret missions from a platform.
• Produce resources. It has no fields and no mines, and it does not even make hydrogen. Everything on it was flown in or taken.
• Use a Warp Gate. Gate jumps run moon to moon only.
• Grow a moon. A battle at a platform never rolls for one.

What it can do:

• Hold 1,000,000,000 of each resource. A planet with every warehouse at level 14 holds about 36 million, so the platform stores nearly thirty times more.
• Send fleets like any planet: attack, transport, deploy, harvest, spy, group defend. It draws on the same account wide fleet slots.
• Run Trade Merchant swaps against that 1 billion cap, which is the largest trade room in the game.

One thing worth knowing before you load it up: it also has no Resource Den and cannot build one, so every resource sitting on it is exposed to plunder.

Moving it

Open Galaxy while the platform is your selected base, then click the arrows on any empty slot, "Move your Hephaestus platform here". Pick a speed and confirm.

The rules:

• Fuel comes out of the platform's own hydrogen. If it does not have enough, it does not go.
• Everything stationed on it moves along for nothing. That is the whole point of the ship.
• It cannot move while it has fleets in transit. Recall them first. This is what people mean when they say a Heph gets "pinned".
• Speeds run from 100% down to 5% in steps, plus 3% and 1% crawls. Slower is much cheaper on fuel and much slower in the air.
• The destination must be an empty slot in the same universe, and never a secret mission system.

While it is in transit the platform is off the board completely. It cannot be attacked, it cannot be spied on, it does not defend anything, and it cannot launch anything of its own either. Its old slot reads "Unavailable" to everyone until it lands, so nobody else can drop a colony or a platform there in the meantime. If the landing fails it stays where it was.

There is no cooldown between moves.

Docking it

A deployed platform gets back to being a ship one way only: dock it at one of your own moons that has a Lunar Dock. The control is on the platform's Overview page under Dock / Recall: pick the moon, pick a speed, send it. The Galaxy list carries the same action, the small tray icon on your moon's row.

The Lunar Dock costs 2,000,000 ore, 2,000,000 crystal and 4,000,000 hydrogen at level 1 and needs a Lunar Base, so a moon has to be ready before the platform ever needs it.

When it docks, its stored resources and every ship on it unload onto the moon, and the Hephaestus goes back into that moon's ship list ready to redeploy. Docking follows the same in transit rules as a move: no outbound fleets, and it is untouchable the whole way there. If the moon has lost its Lunar Dock by the time the platform arrives, the platform simply stays put.

Combat

The platform fights as a single unit with zero attack. It never shoots back. Its 4,000,000 hull and 150,000 shield climb with your Armor Tech and Shield Tech the same way a ship's do, so at level 12 it really fields 8,800,000 hull and 330,000 shield. Everything stationed on it fights normally alongside it. Allies can group defend it with ordinary ships, but they cannot bring their own Hephaestus to it.

Why most fleets cannot scratch it

A shot worth 1% or less of the target's full shield bounces off for nothing. With Shield Tech 12, which every Heph owner has by definition, the platform carries 330,000 shield, so a shot has to beat 3,300 to register at all.

Attacking ship	Base weapon	Weapons Tech needed to get through
Zeus Class	200,000	none, always gets through
Prometheus Destroyer	2,000	7
Athena Battleship	1,000	24
Ares Bomber	1,000	24
Hades Battleship	700	38
Poseidon Cruiser	400	73
Apollo Fighter	150	211
Everything else	50 or less	out of reach

The bar moves with the owner's research, not the attacker's. At Shield Tech 20 the platform carries 450,000 shield and the Prometheus needs Weapons Tech 13 instead of 7. In practice this is a two ship list: the Zeus and the Prometheus.

An empty platform is free money

Bouncing off is not the same as being safe. The Hephaestus has no weapon, so a fleet that cannot hurt it still wins the field, and winning the field is what lets you plunder. Here is 1,200 Athena against a bare platform in the in-game Calculator, matched research on both sides:

Six rounds, attacker wins, 1,800,000 taken, no debris, no losses on either side, no DSP. The Athenas did literally zero damage and still walked off with the loot. A raid takes half of what is stored, 55% in a war, up to whatever the fleet can carry, and 1,200 Athena only hold 1,800,000 between them. Bring cargo ships and that number climbs fast. A platform with nothing parked on it is a warehouse with the door open.

The fix is ships. Stationed ships are the only defence a platform has, since it cannot build a single gun. Against 20 attacking Zeus, matched research:

Zeus stationed on the platform	How often the raid is beaten off
10	never
20	about half the time
30	every time

Killing the platform itself

With matched research at 12, a bare platform goes down to:

Fleet	Cost to build	Chance the platform dies
2 Zeus	20,000,000	a bit better than half
3 Zeus	30,000,000	19 in 20
4 Zeus	40,000,000	every time
200 Prometheus	25,000,000	about 6 in 10
300 Prometheus	37,500,000	19 in 20
400 Prometheus	50,000,000	every time

Those numbers are for a platform with nothing on it. Add stationed ships and the attacker has to chew through those first, which is exactly what they are for.

When the body dies the platform is gone for good, and with it:

• Every ship stationed on it.
• Every resource stored on it.
• Every fleet it had in the air, including the return legs. Those ships are not lost in space, they are simply gone.

Fleets other planets had inbound to it are fine. They get a Target Not Found report and turn around with their ships and cargo intact. If the platform was leading a group attack, the other attackers get bounced home rather than orphaned.

For whoever killed it, a dead Hephaestus is the best payday in the game: 50,000 DSP plus a 12,000,000 debris field, 6,000,000 ore and 6,000,000 crystal, sitting in the slot waiting for recyclers. That is on top of whatever was plundered. Expect people to come looking.

Other combat notes

• Missile strikes cannot target a platform at all. It owns no defences, so there is nothing to shoot at.
• The Hephaestus earns no share of attack plunder when you send it along on a raid. Its hold carries freight, not loot.
• Undeployed, it is still a ship with 4,000,000 hull, and it can be sent on most fleet missions, spying aside. It makes a large and very tough decoy, but it is also a 50,000,000 resource target with no gun.

Time and fuel

Travel time depends on your Warp Drive level and the speed you choose. Fuel depends only on distance and speed, so raising Warp Drive makes the trip faster without making it dearer. Times below are at Warp Drive 9, the minimum you need to own one.

Move	100% time	100% fuel	25% time	25% fuel	5% time	5% fuel
To the moon in the same slot	11m	258	45m	101	3h 46m	71
One slot over	2h 40m	51,686	10h 41m	20,190	2d 05h	14,246
Right across the system, slot 1 to 15	2h 45m	55,029	11h 01m	21,496	2d 07h	15,168
Next solar system	4h 27m	143,743	17h 48m	56,150	3d 17h	39,620
Ten systems away	5h 05m	187,715	20h 21m	73,326	4d 05h	51,739
Next galaxy	11h 54m	1,028,572	1d 23h	401,786	9d 22h	283,500

At Warp Drive 14 those times drop by roughly a sixth: one slot over becomes 2h 15m, the next galaxy becomes 10h. The fuel figures do not change.

Note how cheap the crawl speeds are. Dropping from 100% to 5% cuts the fuel bill by about three quarters. Since a moving platform cannot be touched, a slow move is not only cheaper, it is also several days of guaranteed safety.

Spotting one

A deployed platform shows in the Galaxy list with a "Platform" tag next to the name, so there is no guesswork. A slot reading "Unavailable" with no owner is a platform in transit, either arriving or leaving.

The Oracle sweeps the systems in its range and reports what is parked there right now, platforms included. It has no memory, so it will not follow one from slot to slot. Scan again after it moves.

How to use it

The value of a Hephaestus is that it puts your whole fleet somewhere far away without your whole fleet paying for the trip, and once it is there, in-system attacks arrive in minutes with almost no fuel and almost no warning. It is a forward operating base, not a colony.

A few things that keep one alive:

• Never leave it empty. An unescorted platform is a free plunder run for any fleet in range, even fleets that cannot hurt it.
• Keep Zeus on it. They are the only thing that reliably beats off a serious raid, and they are also the only thing a serious raid will be made of.
• Keep it able to run. It cannot move while its fleets are out, so long slow missions are what get platforms killed. Prefer fast ships on jobs that end back at the platform.
• Watch the hydrogen. It makes none. If the tank runs dry it cannot move, and a platform that cannot move is a platform that stays where its enemies last saw it.
• Move it often. Every move buys hours or days of being untouchable, and it wipes whatever anybody had scouted.
• Have a Lunar Dock ready before you need one. It is the only way home.

Name

Hephaestus is the Greek god of blacksmiths, craftsmen, metalworking, fire and volcanoes, the Roman Vulcan. He was the son of Zeus and Hera and made the weapons of the gods on Olympus.

See also

• Ships
• Lunar Dock
• Mobile Assault Colony
• Zeus Class
• Combat
• Plunder