After a great many hours playing Stars in Shadow, I decided to try my hand at creating a faction guide. If this experiment goes well, I will add guides for additional factions in the future.

My background is in the design and development of tabletop games (predominantly board games, card games, and miniatures games), but I'm also a big fan of turn-based strategy PC games and of 4X games in particular. The Stars in Shadow developers have done an exceptional job creating unique and compelling races and a faction guide is one way I thought I could celebrate that success.

I've broken the content down into the eponymous four Xs - Explore, Expand, Exploit, and Exterminate.

The Ashdar Colonials (or "Teros") are a well-rounded faction, arguably the most well-rounded faction in the game and one that makes a great starting point for new players. If pressed to pigeon-hole them, I would call them "The Carrier Faction," although a compact label fails to capture the full story as well as it does for other factions. Let's take a deeper look at each of their four Xs.

As with most topics, when it comes to galactic exploration, the Teros have no particular advantages or disadvantages. Their starting scout ship gets the job done, and they can begin building fuel outpost stations as soon as they'd like. Their racial production advantage makes building fuel stations (or additional scout ships) a little easier but not enough to warrant calling this out as one of their strengths.

Some players may find it worth the investment to retire the starting scout ship for a Destroyer-based scout, which cuts the ship upkeep cost by as much as 50%. This also allows the Light Cruiser that was formerly a scout to take on a more combat-oriented role. Oddly enough, the Heavy Cruiser can also make a serviceable scout vessel that is much more durable than the Light Cruiser and only slightly more expensive to upkeep. All a "scout" really is, after all, is a ship with a Deep Space Scanner (which mounts to a medium hard point) and a Warp Lane Amplifier (which mounts to a system hard point).

Teros players who choose to keep the Light Cruiser in the scout role should at least swap the positions of the Deep Space Scanner and their weapon of choice when given the chance. The default layout puts the Deep Space Scanner in a 4x medium hardpoint, which offers the player no advantage over a Deep Space Scanner in a 2x medium hardpoint. The cost to swap is minimal, and it doubles the damage output of the scout in case of emergency.

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Exploring the tech tree is just as important as exploring the galaxy itself. Once again, the Teros are solid but unremarkable. Their population produces the standard amount (0.5-science-per-million), their empire produces the standard amount (5-per-turn), and they get a 20% discount on techs from the construction field, which is one of the more common fields throughout the tech tree.

They have a single faction-specific tech, Escort Carriers. This tech allows them to build ships on the unique Escort Carrier chassis, an early, low-upkeep carrier with low durability but an impressive complement of fighters.

It's also worth noting that the faction's reliance on fighters puts a little extra pressure on their tech exploration. Once they've researched Multirole Fighters, Teros players will want to divert research into beam weapons, kinetic weapons, and missiles in addition to all their other tech needs.

Teros colonists are not quite at the top of the heap, but they're above average. A production bonus is beneficial no matter what strategy a player may prefer, and that grants every Teros colony a slight edge over that of many other races.

Teros will rely on the usual expansion method of reaching out with fuel outposts and new colonies to allow their empire to grow throughout the stars. They should prioritize arid and garden planets, but they're not restricted from colonizing any of the habitable planet types.

The neutral races they'll find most beneficial to integrate into their empire when possible are the Tarib, Wrem, and Threshers. The faction races they'll find most beneficial to integrate (or purchase from slavers if desired) are the Orthin and Phidi.

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As a race expands its influence, they are able to interact with new races using the diplomacy interface. Once again, the Teros are firmly in the middle of the pack.

They do have a minor advantage when dealing with the Ashdar Imperials (Haduir), which is labeled "Our kind should stick together." They also have a minor disadvantage when dealing with the Gremak, "Our people are ancient enemies."

This racial divide plays out with neutral entities as well as the Haduir and Gremak factions. Neutral colonies of Ashdar (Haduir or Teros) are more likely to join the Teros empire, and neutral Gremak slavers are more likely to oppose them.

Beyond that, they should simply align themselves with the factions that suit their gameplay preferences. For example, the Phidi AI is looking for peaceful merchant allies, the Orthin AI is looking for top-notch researchers, and the Yoral AI is looking for military strength.

The two listed strengths of the Teros are "Industrious Workers" and "Escort Carriers."

"Industrious Workers" refers to Teros colonists producing 3 Labor per turn instead of the usual 2. This is a solid faction benefit from the start of the game right up until the very end, but it also isn't one that really defines a play style. Even the Phidi start with 80% of the Teros production capacity, and their faction focus is not production.

"Escort Carriers" refers to the custom Escort Carrier hull, but it also includes a faction bonus that adds one fighter to each squadron. The Escort Carrier hull is a nice addition to the ship lineup, and it truly does allow the Teros to dabble in carriers long before other factions are able to do so. The bonus fighter per squadron is even more important, however. This adds 1 bonus fighter to the Escort Carrier. It adds 2 to the Light Carrier, Starbase, Fleet Base, Super Dreadnought, and Dread Star. And it adds a whopping 3 to the Fleet Carrier.

In fact, the Teros are the only race with a custom design for the Starbase, Fleet Base, Super Dreadnought, and Dread Star designs due to the additional fighters they can hold (assuming an identical hard point load-out).

Taking advantage of the strengths the Teros faction has to offer is pretty straight-forward. They should focus on rapid expansion and a carrier-based offense.

As previously noted, the Teros offense (and defense, for that matter) should focus on Carrier hulls over most other options. They should supplement their hangar bays with missiles, not as their primary offense but as a way to force the enemy to burn through their point defense batteries.

With an existing focus on fighters and missiles, taking over enemy ships can be a viable strategy with boarding shuttles slipping through the enemy’s spent defenses. The Light Carrier hull actually excels in the military transport role relative to the dedicated Military Transport hull. It can hold an extra ground unit, which increases its crew complement from 150 to 200. Players who focus on boarding actions should be sure to grab Xeno-Engineering early and Quantum Decryption as opportunity allows to maximize the gains of a capture-based offense. Just keep in mind that the Teros faction's research is already stretched a bit thin to maximize their hangar bays.

Fortunately, fighter-based hulls are a very efficient tool, and the faction's production bonus allows them to replace fallen ships a bit more rapidly than most factions can replicate.

Regardless of a player’s faction, it’s always important to keep enemy fleets in mind. If an opposing faction (or even a neutral enemy) has an abundance of point defense weapons on their ships, it may be worth diversifying fleet weaponry despite the Teros preference for fighter-based offense.

When facing ships with small crews but effective point defense weapons, boarding enemy ships can be an effective counter to their counter. Simply place a ship with boarding shuttles adjacent to the enemy before initiating the boarding action, and the boarding combat will take place without giving point defense weapons an opportunity to fire.

It's no secret that Stars in Shadow undergoes frequent updates. This led me to muse on what I would change about the factions in some magical fairy land where I controlled what came next. When it comes to the Teros, there truly isn't much.

I'd love to see some very small hangar bays on a few more of their hulls. A 2-fighter hangar on the Battlecruiser (potentially replacing a Medium hard point) would certainly be a good place to start to reinforce faction identity.

I could also see an argument for Flak Fighters (point-defense fighters) and Heavy Bombers (torpedo fighters) as additional tech options. That would give Teros players more strategic choices in the mid-game and late-game instead of leaving strike fighters as the only option. These could be Teros-specific options, further solidifying faction identity or could be global options to enhance late-game player choice regardless of race.

That's really it, though. The Teros are well-balanced, are a great first play-through faction, and have enough individuality for veterans to return to them time and time again.

• April 9, 2020 - Guide created
  
• April 12, 2020 - Couple typo corrections
  
• April 19, 2020 - Edits to multiple sections based on forum feedback