Hercules Class Cargo

The Hercules Class Cargo is the middle hauler of the three cargo ships in SFC2. It carries 25,000, five times what an Atlas Class Cargo carries, for three times the price. It is the ship most raiders settle on once the Atlas stops keeping up with what they can take off a target.

It is not a warship. 5 attack and 25 shield mean it cannot hurt anything worth hurting. What it has over the Atlas is 1,200 hull instead of 400, and one fewer thing shooting at it. The Apollo Class Fighter rapid fires the Atlas three times a round and does not rapid fire the Hercules at all.

Building one

Hercules ships are built on the Shipyard page. It needs Shipyard level 4 and Jet Drive 6. Neither is in the starting kit, since you land with Capitol 2, Shipyard 3 and Jet Drive 3, so there is a real gap to cross first. One Hercules costs 6,000 ore and 6,000 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 Jet Drive adds 10 percent to speed. The commander above is running Jet Drive 6 and two levels in each combat tech, which turns 5 / 25 / 1,200 / 7,500 into 6 / 30 / 1,440 / 12,000.

Cargo capacity is the one number research never touches. 25,000 is 25,000 forever.

Build time comes off your Shipyard level, and the Foundry halves it again for every level of that:

Shipyard	Foundry	Time for one Hercules
4	0	28:48
6	0	20:35
8	0	16:00
10	0	13:06
8	3	2:00

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

Speed and fuel

The Hercules is on the Jet Drive and it stays there. It gains 10 percent speed per Jet Drive level and never swaps engines, and that is the single biggest difference between it and the Atlas.

Jet Drive	Hercules speed
6	12,000
8	13,500
10	15,000
12	16,500
14	18,000
16	19,500

The Atlas starts slower and ends faster. Below Pulse Drive 5 it runs on the Jet Drive just like the Hercules, off a base of 5,000 instead of 7,500, so the Hercules is half again as fast. Research Pulse Drive to 5 and the Atlas swaps engines. Its base speed doubles to 10,000 and it starts gaining 20 percent a level, and from there it leaves the Hercules behind for good.

That is the disadvantage the old version of this page pointed at, and it is real, but it comes with a bill. The swap also doubles what the Atlas burns, from 10 to 20. Here is the same 100,000 of cargo moved over the same 3,080 distance at the same 100 percent speed setting:

Fleet	Speed	Flight time	Hydrogen
20 Atlas, Pulse Drive below 5	8,000	57:19	71
4 Hercules, Jet Drive 6	12,000	46:49	71
20 Atlas, Pulse Drive 5	20,000	36:17	141

So the Hercules is not simply the slow option. Before the swap it is faster than the Atlas for exactly the same fuel. After the swap the Atlas gets there in about three quarters of the time and pays double for it. On a raid you run over and over, that speed is worth the fuel. On a long haul between your own planets it usually is not.

Hauling

There are three ships in SFC2 built to carry resources. Costs below are ore plus crystal 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 Hercules sits exactly where you would expect. It buys hold at three fifths the price of the Atlas and it is three times the hull. The Carmanor Class Cargo beats it again on both counts, but wants a lot more research first and is slower than either of them.

The unlocks run Shipyard 2 and Jet Drive 2 for the Atlas, Shipyard 4 and Jet Drive 6 for the Hercules, and Shipyard 6, Jet Drive 10 and Expedition Tech 4 for the Carmanor.

Fuel tells the same story. Per 1,000 of cargo moved, the Atlas and the Hercules both burn 2, right up until the Atlas swaps to the Pulse Drive and starts burning 4. The Hercules never swaps, so it stays at 2 forever. The Carmanor pays under 1.

One thing that catches people out. Fuel comes out of the hold, not out of the planet's stockpile on top of it. Those 10 Hercules show 249,824 of capacity rather than a clean 250,000, and the missing 176 is the hydrogen for the trip.

The fuel tank myth

The old version of this page said a Hercules could be used as a fuel tank alongside a Gaia Class Colony Ship to extend its range. That is not how SFC2 works. The same line is still sitting in the More Info panel, carried over from the old game, and it is wrong there too.

A fleet's range is limited only by the hydrogen sitting on the planet it launches from. Adding a Hercules does not add fuel, it burns more of it. One Gaia sent 3,080 out on its own needs 352 hydrogen. Add one Hercules and it needs 363. The flight time does not move either, because a fleet travels at the speed of its slowest ship and the Gaia is the slowest thing in the game.

What a Hercules alongside a Gaia is genuinely good for is cargo. A Gaia holds 7,500 on its own. Add one Hercules and there is 32,500 of hold behind it, which is the difference between a colony that can start building on day one and one that sits there.

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 a Hercules holds 25,000.

That is 100 Apollo and 4 Hercules 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 10 Hercules.

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

Rapid fires the Hercules	Rating
Zeus Class	x250
Hades Class Battleship	x3

The four things it 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 short one, and that is the point. The Apollo is the cheapest ship in the game with real weapons and nearly everybody stacks them early. It gets three chances a round against an Atlas and none at all against a Hercules. Against a planet defended by Apollo fighters, a Hercules is not just three times the hull of an Atlas, it is three times the hull taking a third of the shots.

In a fight

1,200 hull, 25 shield, 5 attack. The Hercules is in the battle whether you want it there or not, and once the fighters are gone it is the next thing to die.

Its own attack of 5 is not worth counting. A shot that lands for 1 percent or less of the target's shield rating does nothing at all, so a Hercules 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 the same one that applies to the Atlas. Do not send Hercules to a fight you might lose. Send them to a fight you are sure of, and send just enough to hold the plunder.

What it cannot do

Harvest. A harvest only counts ships flagged as recyclers, and the Hercules is not one. Send Hercules to a debris field and they collect nothing. Use the Dionysus or the Zagreus.
Colonize. It has no colony flag, so a Gaia has to be in the fleet.
Spy. Espionage only allows probes in the fleet, nothing else.
Carry anything on a group defend. That mission does not allow cargo, and a Hercules parked over someone else's planet costs 5 hydrogen an hour each, five times what an Atlas costs to hover and more than a Carmanor's 4. Leave them at home.

Evaluation

Advantages

Best hold per resource of anything you can build before Expedition Tech. 480 per 1,000 of cargo against the Atlas's 800.
Three times the hull of an Atlas, and the Apollo does not rapid fire it.
Fuel efficient, and it stays that way. 2 hydrogen per 1,000 of cargo forever, because it never swaps engines. A post-swap Atlas pays 4.
No hydrogen in the build cost, so you can turn out ore and crystal you were sitting on anyway.
Faster than an Atlas right up until Pulse Drive 5.

Disadvantages

Falls behind the Atlas on speed the moment Pulse Drive 5 lands, and never catches up, because 10 percent a level cannot keep pace with 20.
Needs Shipyard 4 and Jet Drive 6, and you start with neither.
12,000 a ship, so you cannot top your hold up a little at a time the way you can with the Atlas.
The most expensive hauler in the game to hover on a group defend, at 5 hydrogen an hour each.
The Carmanor beats it on hold per resource, fuel per unit of cargo and hull, once you have the research for one.

Requirements

Research Lab 1
Energy Tech 1
Capitol 2
Shipyard 4
Jet Drive 6
Hercules Class Cargo

Trivia

In Greek myth, Heracles (Hercules to the Romans) is the strongman, best known for the twelve labours. A fair name for a ship whose whole job is lifting more than the last one did.