Zeus Class

The Zeus Class is the biggest warship in SFC2 and the most expensive thing you can build in a Shipyard. One costs 5,000,000 ore, 4,000,000 crystal and 1,000,000 hydrogen. That is ten million resources sitting in a single hull, and it is not a mistake to think of it as a small moon with guns on it.

On paper nothing else comes close. 200,000 attack, 900,000 hull, 50,000 shield, and rapid fire against every unit in the game except five of them. Per resource spent it is the best attack value in SFC2, better than the Prometheus and better than the Athena.

The two things the stat line does not tell you are that it fires once per round at anything it does not rapid fire, and that it flies at 100 base speed. Both of those decide how the Zeus actually plays, so most of this page is about them.

Getting one

The Shipyard page only lists Shipyard 12, but there are seven techs behind it as well. The More Info button on the ship shows the whole list.

Starting from nothing, those seven techs cost 29,336,300 resources to research and Shipyard levels 1 to 12 cost another 2,866,500. Call it 32 million before you build a single Zeus, which is three Zeus worth of research to unlock the first one. Warp Drive 8 alone is 9,180,000 of that, and Laser Tech 14 is another 4,914,900.

The good news is that most of that list is on the way to somewhere else. Warp Drive 8 is what swaps the Ares onto a warp engine, A.I. Tech 10 is the gate on the Foundry, and Weapons Tech 11 is helping every other ship you own. By the time a commander is thinking about a Zeus, the only real gaps are usually Laser Tech and the last few Shipyard levels.

Build time

Build time comes off the ore and crystal cost only, so it is the same 9,000,000 of build points every time. That makes the Zeus a very long build at normal Shipyard levels, and the Foundry is the only thing that really fixes it. Each Foundry level halves the time.

Shipyard	No Foundry	Foundry 1	Foundry 2	Foundry 3	Foundry 4
12	5d 18h	2d 21h	1d 11h	17h 18m	8h 39m
14	5d 0h	2d 12h	1d 6h	15h 00m	7h 30m
16	4d 10h	2d 5h	1d 2h	13h 14m	6h 37m
18	3d 23h	1d 23h	23h 41m	11h 50m	5h 55m
20	3d 14h	1d 19h	21h 25m	10h 42m	5h 21m
25	2d 21h	1d 11h	17h 18m	8h 39m	4h 19m

A Foundry is not cheap either. Level 1 costs 1,000,000 ore, 500,000 crystal and 100,000 hydrogen and needs Capitol 10 and A.I. Tech 10. If you are going to own Zeus in any number, build it first.

You can also win them off the Get Lucky wheel, one, three or five at a time. It is rare, but it is the only way to get a Zeus without paying for it, and five at once is fifty million resources of ship for a single token.

On the Shipyard page

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 the base attack per level, Shield Tech 10 percent of the base shield, Armor Tech 10 percent of the base hull, and Warp Drive 30 percent of the base speed. The commander above is running Weapons 11, Shield 10, Armor 10 and Warp Drive 8, which turns 200,000 / 50,000 / 900,000 / 100 into 420,000 / 100,000 / 1,800,000 / 340.

Cargo capacity is the one number research never touches. A Zeus carries 1,000,000 forever.

In a fight

Three rules do all the work here, and none of them are obvious from the stat line.

A ship fires once per round at anything it does not rapid fire. Rapid fire is what buys extra shots. The Zeus has rapid fire against nearly everything, so against a normal fleet it fires again and again. Against the handful of units it has no rapid fire on, it gets exactly one shot per round, and six rounds means six shots.

Damage does not carry over. A shot picks one target. 420,000 attack landing on a 20,000 hull Plasma Cannon kills that one Plasma Cannon and the other 400,000 is gone. A Zeus is not a shotgun.

A shot that lands for 1 percent or less of the target's shield rating does nothing at all. That is the bounce rule, and it cuts both ways. The Zeus's own 200,000 attack is over the bar against everything in the game, so it never bounces. Working the other way, its 50,000 base shield puts the bar at 500 before any research, and every Shield Tech level raises the bar by another 50.

Here is what that means in practice. With Shield Tech 10 on the Zeus its shield is 100,000 and the bar is 1,000, so the attacker needs a unit that lands for more than that.

Unit	Base attack	At Weapons Tech 10	Hurts a Zeus
Plasma Cannon	3,000	6,000	yes
Prometheus Class Destroyer	2,000	4,000	yes
Gauss Cannon	1,100	2,200	yes
Athena Class Battleship	1,000	2,000	yes
Ares Class Bomber	1,000	2,000	yes
Hades Class Battleship	700	1,400	yes
Poseidon Class Cruiser	400	800	no
Pulse Cannon	250	500	no
Apollo Class Fighter	150	300	no
Particle Cannon	150	300	no
Laser Cannon	100	200	no
Missile Battery	80	160	no
Artemis Class Fighter	50	100	no

Everything not on that list has an attack of 50 or less and bounces off a Zeus at any tech level. Six units in the whole game can damage one, plus another Zeus.

That is not the whole story though, because a Zeus can only shoot so many times.

One Zeus against a defense wall

Run one Zeus at 50 Plasma Cannons through the in-game Calculator, both sides at Weapons, Shield and Armor 10.

The Zeus loses in three rounds and takes three Plasma Cannons down with it. Fifty Plasma Cannons cost 6,500,000 resources. The Zeus cost 10,000,000. The wall wins the trade by a mile, because there is no rapid fire on the Plasma Cannon so the Zeus only gets three shots the whole battle, and 420,000 attack does not spill from one 20,000 hull cannon to the next.

The reverse holds too. One Zeus parked over 14,000 mixed Laser, Missile, Pulse and Particle guns cannot be hurt at all, but it still only clears about a thousand of them in six rounds and the battle ends a draw. A Zeus is not a one-ship army. It is a very durable, very slow gun that needs a fleet around it.

Killing one

The other side of that is what it costs to kill a Zeus sitting on a planet by itself. All numbers here are ten runs through the Calculator at Weapons, Shield and Armor 10 on both sides.

Attacking fleet	Fleet cost	Kills it	Ships lost doing it
50 Plasma Cannons (on defense)	6,500,000	every time, 3 rounds	about 4 cannons
80 Prometheus Class	10,000,000	9 times in 10	about 20 (2,460,000)
200 Athena Class	12,000,000	every time, 3 rounds	about 77 (4,640,000)
300 Hades Class	25,500,000	every time	about 52 (4,380,000)
600 Poseidon Class	17,400,000	never	about 153
3,000 Apollo Class	25,500,000	never	about 560

The last two rows are the bounce rule doing its job. 25 million resources of Apollo Fighters cannot scratch one Zeus and just feed it, while 10 million of Prometheus kills it and comes home. If you want a Zeus dead, bring Prometheus or Athena. If you want to stop one, build Plasma Cannons.

Rapid fire

Rapid fire gives a unit a chance at another shot in the same round each time it hits a listed target. The Zeus has the longest list in the game.

Nothing in SFC2 has rapid fire against a Zeus. Its own list covers every ship and defense except the Plasma Cannon, the Decoy, the Large Decoy, the Hephaestus Class Attack Platform and other Zeus. Those five are the only things in the game it has to spend a whole round's shot on.

The x1250 entries are probes and satellites, which is a polite way of saying it wipes them. The ones that matter are x500 against the Zagreus, x250 against the Atlas, Hercules, Gaia and Dionysus, and x200 down to x5 against the fighters, cruisers and battleships. A single Zeus in a defending fleet will take an enormous number of shots at an attacker built out of Athena and Poseidon.

Speed

Base speed 100. Nothing in SFC2 is slower except the Hephaestus platform at 90. For comparison the Dionysus, which everyone calls slow, sits at 2,000.

The Zeus runs on Warp Drive and never swaps engines, so Warp Drive is the only research that will ever make it quicker, at 30 percent of base per level. Travel time goes with the square root of speed, so doubling your Warp Drive level does not halve the flight.

One way trips at the 100 percent speed setting:

Distance	Warp 8 (340)	Warp 10 (400)	Warp 12 (460)	Warp 14 (520)
1 slot away	2h 39m	2h 26m	2h 16m	2h 08m
10 slots away	2h 42m	2h 30m	2h 19m	2h 11m
1 system	4h 25m	4h 04m	3h 47m	3h 34m
5 systems	4h 42m	4h 20m	4h 02m	3h 48m
10 systems	5h 02m	4h 39m	4h 20m	4h 04m
25 systems	5h 56m	5h 29m	5h 06m	4h 48m
50 systems	7h 12m	6h 38m	6h 11m	5h 49m
1 galaxy	11h 47m	10h 52m	10h 08m	9h 32m
2 galaxies	16h 41m	15h 22m	14h 20m	13h 29m
3 galaxies	20h 25m	18h 50m	17h 33m	16h 31m

Double those for a round trip. Dropping the speed setting stretches them in a straight line, so 50 percent doubles the flight and 5 percent multiplies it by twenty.

Two things follow from this. The first is that a Zeus in an attack fleet gives the target four hours of warning to move everything, which is why almost nobody attacks with them except against players who have stopped logging in. The second is that a fleet moves at the speed of its slowest ship, so one Zeus tucked into an otherwise fast fleet drags the whole thing down to 100 base. Check the Duration line before you launch.

The one thing it is cheap at is fuel. Fuel consumption is 1, the lowest of any warship in the game. The trip above, one system over, cost a single unit of hydrogen. Moving Zeus around costs you time, not resources.

Cargo and plunder

A Zeus carries 1,000,000, more than any other ship in SFC2. Eight Carmanor Class Cargo carry the same amount, and unlike them the Zeus can look after itself.

It counts as a plunder carrier, so on a winning attack its hold takes a full share of the loot. One Zeus can lift a million resources off a planet by itself. See Plunder for how much of a planet you actually get to take.

Group Defend

This is the Zeus's best-kept secret. Hovering on a Group Defend mission costs hydrogen per ship per hour, and most heavy hulls are expensive to park. A Prometheus costs 100 an hour, an Ares 100, an Athena 50.

The Zeus costs nothing. Three Zeus hovering over an ally for the full 24 hours shows a hover fuel bill of 0. Three Prometheus doing the same job would cost 7,200. If you own Zeus and your alliance runs group defends, they are the ships to send.

When one dies

Losing a Zeus is loud. It drops 1,500,000 ore and 1,200,000 crystal into the debris field, which is 30 percent of its ore and crystal cost like every other ship. That single field is enough for an 18 percent moon roll on its own, near the 20 percent cap.

It also hands the other side 10,000 Destroyed Ships Points, which is more than any other ship in the game apart from the Hephaestus. One Zeus kill is worth more on the leaderboard than a hundred Hades Class kills.

Two things do not threaten it. Interplanetary Ballistic Missiles only ever hit defenses, never ships, so a Zeus parked at home cannot be missiled. And there is no moon destruction in SFC2, so a Zeus cannot be used to blow up anybody's moon no matter what the old guides say.

Quests

Two quests involve the Zeus. The Superweapon, under Military Strength, wants you to own one and pays 452,300 ore, 418,800 crystal and 328,900 hydrogen. That's No Moon, under Operations, wants you to destroy one in a single battle and pays 17,100 ore, 357,700 crystal and 325,200 hydrogen.

Evaluation

Advantages

The best attack per resource in the game. 20 points of attack per 1,000 spent, against 16 for a Prometheus.
Six units in SFC2 can damage it at all. Everything else bounces off, whatever the numbers say.
Rapid fire against every unit except five, and nothing has rapid fire against it.
1,000,000 of hold, the biggest of any ship, and it counts for plunder.
Free to hover on Group Defend, where a Prometheus costs 100 hydrogen an hour.
Fuel consumption 1. It is nearly free to move once you accept how long it takes.

Disadvantages

Ten million resources in one hull. Lose it and you lose it all at once, plus 10,000 points to the other side.
Base speed 100. Attacking with one gives the target hours of warning, and it drags any fleet it joins down to its speed.
One shot per round at anything it does not rapid fire, and damage does not carry over. A cheap wall of Plasma Cannons beats it.
Days to build without a Foundry, and about 32 million in research and Shipyard levels before the first one.
Its debris field alone is an 18 percent moon roll for whoever kills it.