Poseidon Class Cruiser

The Poseidon Class Cruiser is the fodder killer of SFC2. It has rapid fire against Artemis Class Fighters, Missile Batteries, both probes and both solar satellites, so it strips a cheap screen faster than anything else near its price. It is also the fastest combat ship in the game at 15,000 base speed. Only the two probes move quicker, and neither of them fights.

What it is not is a line warship. At 400 weapons and 2,700 hull it loses badly to Athena, Hades or Apollo fleets that cost the same money. Build Poseidons to clear a screen, not to fight what is standing behind it.

Building one

Poseidons are built on the Shipyard page. You need Shipyard level 5, Pulse Drive 4 and Particle Tech 2.

Particle Tech is the real gate. Before you can research it at all you need Research Lab 4, Laser Tech 5 and Energy Tech 4. Pulse Drive 4 and Shipyard 5 are easy by comparison, so most commanders unlock the Poseidon a good while after the Apollo.

The Base column is the ship as designed. The Current column is what your research has done to it. Weapons Tech adds 10 percent of base attack per level, Shield Tech does the same for shield and Armor Tech for hull, and none of it compounds. Pulse Drive adds 20 percent of base speed per level. The commander above is running Weapons, Shield and Armor at 14 and Pulse Drive at 14, which turns 400 / 50 / 2,700 / 15,000 into 960 / 120 / 6,480 / 57,000.

Build time comes off the ore and crystal cost, then gets divided by your Shipyard level plus one and halved again for every Foundry level. For a Poseidon that works out like this.

Shipyard	Foundry	Time per Poseidon
5	none	54:00
5	2	13:30
7	2	10:08
8	3	4:30
9	3	4:03
10	5	0:56
12	8	0:06

The Foundry matters more than the Shipyard here. Every Foundry level cuts the time in half, while a Shipyard level only ever shaves a fraction off.

Rapid fire

Rapid fire gives a ship a chance at another shot in the same round every time it hits a unit on its list. The chance is (rating minus 1) divided by rating, so x10 is 90 percent, x6 is 83 percent and x5 is 80 percent. The extra shot picks a fresh random target and can chain, so one Poseidon firing into a wall of Missile Batteries averages about ten shots a round instead of one.

The More Info button on the Shipyard page shows both lists.

The Poseidon rapid fires	Rating
Missile Battery	x10
Artemis Class Fighter	x6
Genesis Solar Satellite	x5
Helios Class Solar Satellite	x5
Hermes Class Probe	x5
Shadow Probe	x5

Rapid fires the Poseidon	Rating
Zeus Class	x33
Hades Class Battleship	x4

What is missing from the first list matters as much as what is on it. The Poseidon has nothing against the Apollo Class Fighter, nothing against any cargo hull, and no rapid fire against any defense except the Missile Battery. A defender who screens with Apollos or Laser Cannons instead of Artemis and Missile Batteries turns the Poseidon back into an ordinary 400 attack ship.

Only two units rapid fire the Poseidon, but the Hades at x4 is common and it takes Poseidon fleets apart.

Clearing fodder

This is the job the ship exists for. All of the runs below come out of the in-game Calculator with Weapons, Shield and Armor at 10 on both sides. Each attacking fleet costs about the same, roughly 3.65 million ore once crystal is counted at 1.67 ore and hydrogen at 2.5 ore.

Attacking 500 Artemis with	Result
100 Poseidon	wins in 3 rounds, loses nothing
361 Apollo	wins in 5 rounds, loses 8
52 Athena	runs out of rounds, kills 297
27 Hades	runs out of rounds, kills 147

Attacking 1,000 Missile Batteries with	Result
100 Poseidon	wins in 3 rounds, loses 56
361 Apollo	every Apollo dies, 606 batteries killed
52 Athena	every Athena dies, 128 batteries killed
27 Hades	every Hades dies, 51 batteries killed

Put the two together and you have a normal defended planet. Below is 500 Artemis sitting behind 1,000 Missile Batteries, attacked by 150 Poseidons. Both sides cost about 5.5 million ore.

Three rounds, the whole defense gone, 68 Poseidons lost. The same money in Apollos, Athenas or Hades loses that fight outright.

The catch is the bill. Sixty-eight dead Poseidons is 1.97 million spent. The debris from both sides puts 1.15 million of it back, and the fuel comes to 15,352 hydrogen, so the run finishes 836,552 down before anything is plundered. Debris is a flat 30 percent of ore and crystal only, so the 2,000 hydrogen inside every Poseidon is gone for good. Clearing fodder for its own sake loses money. Do it because there is something worth taking behind the screen.

Where it loses

Against anything that is not fodder the Poseidon is poor value. Same test, 1,000 Poseidons attacking, everything on the other side costing the same 36.7 million ore.

1,000 Poseidon against	Result
7,857 Artemis	wins in 3 rounds, loses 18
284 Ares	runs out of rounds, loses 543 and kills 260
203 Prometheus	runs out of rounds, loses 605 and kills 186
3,606 Apollo	every Poseidon dies, 1,492 Apollos die
524 Athena	every Poseidon dies, 149 Athena die
273 Hades	every Poseidon dies, 97 Hades die

The Hades line is the worst of them, because the Hades rapid fires the Poseidon at x4 on top of hitting for 700 with 400 shield. The Athena line has no rapid fire in it at all. The Poseidon simply does not carry the weapons rating to trade with a real battleship, and the answer is not more Poseidons.

The Ares and Prometheus lines look better than they are. Neither of those ships has rapid fire against the Poseidon, so the fight just runs out of rounds with heavy losses on both sides.

What a Poseidon cannot hurt

A shot worth 1 percent or less of the target's Shield Rating is absorbed completely and does nothing. A Poseidon hits for 400 before research, so anything with a shield rating of 40,000 or more shrugs it off. In SFC2 that is the Zeus Class at 50,000 shield and the Hephaestus Class Attack Platform at 150,000. Weapons Tech and Shield Tech both add 10 percent a level, so pushing research does not change the answer.

Ten thousand Poseidons attacking one Zeus do not scratch it. Six rounds go by, the Zeus takes zero damage, and it kills about 195 Poseidons on the way through.

The Large Decoy goes the other way and is worth knowing about. It has 10,000 shield, so the bar is 100 and the Poseidon at 400 is well clear of it. A thousand Poseidons wipe out thirty Large Decoys in two rounds without losing a ship, which is something an Artemis screen can never do.

Speed

The Poseidon runs on Pulse Drive and never swaps engines, so it gains 20 percent of its 15,000 base for every Pulse Drive level and nothing else changes it.

Drive level	Poseidon speed	Athena speed
0	15,000	10,000
4	27,000	22,000
8	39,000	34,000
14	57,000	52,000

The Athena runs on Warp Drive at 30 percent a level, so it closes on the Poseidon in percentage terms but never catches it. At matched drive levels the Poseidon is exactly 5,000 faster, at every level. In practice Pulse Drive and Warp Drive are separate techs and most commanders have them sitting at different levels.

Flight times at 100 percent speed:

Trip	Pulse 4	Pulse 8	Pulse 14
Same solar system, 8 slots away	18:12	15:09	12:33
Ten systems across the galaxy	34:00	28:18	23:26
One galaxy over	1:19:28	1:06:08	54:44

That speed is what makes Poseidons useful on a group defend. They land on the planet ahead of everything else you could send.

The cost is hydrogen. A Poseidon burns 300 fuel a trip, the same as a Dionysus and more than a Hades at 250. Holding one on a group defend costs 30 hydrogen an hour, which is more than the Hades at 25 and over four times an Apollo at 7. A long defend with a big Poseidon fleet gets expensive fast.

Free Poseidons

Five quests pay out just for owning them. Poseidon Production I through V ask for 1, 8, 25, 100 and 500 Poseidons and reward resources. Four more, Cruiser Crusher I through IV, pay for destroying 4, 10, 30 and 100 Poseidons in a single battle.

The Poseidon is also in the Lucky Draw pool, as a single ship, a set of 3 and a set of 5.

Evaluation

Advantages. Nothing else in SFC2 clears cheap ships and cheap defense as efficiently. The x10 against Missile Batteries and x6 against Artemis mean a modest Poseidon fleet does work that costs a battleship fleet several times as much. It is the fastest combat ship in the game, which makes it the first thing to reach an ally under attack. It is cheap enough at 29,000 resources that losing some of them is not a disaster.

Disadvantages. 50 shield is nothing and 400 weapons is not enough to trade with real warships, so an unsupported Poseidon fleet folds against Athenas, Hades or a big Apollo swarm. It is a hydrogen drain, both flying and sitting on a defend. And it is helpless against the Zeus and the Hephaestus, which absorb its shots completely. Send Poseidons to open a door, then send something heavier through it.