The Stats of Infinite Space, Ranked

The Stats of Infinite Space, Ranked

Infinite Space III: Sea of Stars is the first (and so far only) game in the Infinite Space franchise to feature a stat system for all ships. Hints of it were present in earlier games, but Sea Of Stars expanded on this by explicitly stating stat values whenever you selected a ship from your flotilla. These values depend on the equipment fitted to that particular ship and/or the size of its hull. However, some stats are clearly more important than others, depending on the situation. So here they are, in descending order of importance throughout all aspects of the game.

Above: Each ship in the game has 8 stat categories. For example, this highly upgraded Terran Advanced Destroyer has excellent defenses and offensive potential, and can travel through open space very quickly, but is a bit slow in combat and suffers from severe slowdown in nebulae.

1. Vacuum Travel: This stat is irrelevant in combat, but is nevertheless the most important one in the game because it is vital for exploring the entire sector as quickly as possible, and unlike every other stat (except for Nebula Travel), it applies to an entire flotilla. Even in maps with lots of nebular mass, there is always plenty of open space through which ships can travel, and as such, a high superluminal velocity is often the top priority.
2. Shield Strength: Durability in combat is not entirely dependent on how much armor a ship has. In fact, its shield strength is actually a more significant contributor, since shielding protects a ship from hull damage until it is fully depleted. Stronger shields are therefore among the first upgrades that starship captains should seek out.
3. Firepower: Supposedly measured in damage per second, this stat is also a major priority in combat. This stat is actually deceptive because weapons with more damage per shot tend to have slower fire rates, and are therefore best used in conjunction with targeting computers, which make them fire faster than they would otherwise.
4. Weapon Range: Randomly-generated AI fleets become more powerful over time, with larger ships and/or better equipment, but longer-ranged weapons can help neutralize this advantage. Being surrounded by multiple hostile ships at close range is seldom a good idea, so it is worth investing credits and/or coins to obtain weapons that can shoot farther (or in some cases, much farther) that what your ship is initially armed with.
5. Armor: Survivability on the battlefield is very important, and heavy armor is one way to improve this attribute. Larger ships generally carry more armor, but this stat is less important for any capital ships with a cloaking device; as long as this system is operational, a capital ship can camouflage itself against the background of space to avoid detection if it comes under attack. It is also irrelevant for fighters, which carry very little armor at all.
6. Combat Speed: Having a high sublight speed is fairly important when following a hostile ship that is targeting another AI-controlled fleet, and can be enhanced by installing more powerful thrusters (especially on smaller craft), but is not a necessity, since it can easily be negated by various long-range weapons, and serves no purpose outside of combat situations. However, high sublight speed is useful when your weapons outrange those of your target and you want to get within maximum range.
7. Nebula Travel: Most star drives won't work in nebulae, but there are a few exceptions. These special drives consume nebular matter and make traveling through these regions of space much easier. However, having a Zorg helmsman in your flotilla makes this stat much less relevant, since it grants you the option of traversing short distances by folding the spacetime continuum and therefore reducing your travel time drastically.
8. Maneuverability: This is the least important stat in the game because it is very easily negated with cloaking devices and/or long-range weapons, and like sublight speed above, is totally useless except during combat. However, there is a special case in which having good maneuverability and combat speed can be a lifesaver: If you are targeted by a Kawangi Dreadnought's Nova Cannon, a quick turn away from the line of fire followed by moving the ship to a safer spot will often cause the Nova Cannon (which fires extremely powerful unguided projectiles) to miss your ship entirely.

Ship equipment also has its own set of stats, with different ones for each category; these will be discussed in a later post.