The Avem Empire is my custom airship faction. It was first inspired by a few fairly common reference pictures of dieselpunk airship fleets, but I've taken it in my own direction after the first few builds. I made six airships in the first round and another six in the second, though two of them were really just retrofits. In the third batch I released 14, more than doubling my fleet size. The last update came with twelve new designs, though once more two are only variants.

My craft feature a common tech level, with the main focus on APS, CRAM and simple weapons. There are a couple distinct styles (if you know where to look). Some airships like Unity, Resolution, Bombardment, and Respite lack a wooden deck and instead feature a much less covered gasbag. Most of the other airships could pass for ships if you half sank them. The deckless ships stayed truer to the original reference images I used, while the more traditional looking ones were often based on real life ships, such as IJN Myoko for Conqueror, American cruisers for Excellence, the German BB Nassau for Nassau, early Russian dreadnoughts for Iron Sky, and USS Atlanta for Mirror and Airlanta.

There is also some level of technological evolution within my airships. While there isn't much that shows in terms of FtD performance, many airships such as Steadfast, Aedile, Fortitude, Jester, Iron Sky, Nassau, and Respite are designed to fit an older style, from the age of armored cruisers, central battery ironclads, and pre dreadnoughts and early dreadnoughts. Others such as Conqueror, Excellence, Monarch, Vengeance, Zenith, and Rapid have a more modern look to them.

This collection, while still incomplete, should be more than sufficient to serve for your fleet in campaign mode, if you want to play with them like an RTS. I must warn you, though, than HMAS Vengeance is the only airship to feature smoke and surge protectors. If you'll be facing EMP or lasers, you really need to give them smoke and surge prots yourself if you want to survive well. While this is something I possibly should have done myself, I personally can't justify adding surge prots or smoke when these are ONLY effective against EMP and lasers, respectively. It just seems wasteful and is imo a poor game design to have weapon and defense types perfectly matched with no overlap. Before the last EMP update, they could serve fairly well due to HA as an EMP absorber. But rn even a big ship like Unity can get knocked out by just a couple medium EMP missiles.

Here are my personal favorites:

Assault Ships:
Heliofire (must have)
Resolution (must have)
Vengeance (must have)
Empyreal Imperium (must have)

Carrier Ships:
Endeavor & Endeavor (Hawks' Nest)

Escort Ships:
Adventure
Rapid (must have)
Ransbel

Line Ships:
Fortitude
Aedile
Airlanta
Steadfast (must have)
Raider
Conqueror
Excellence
Monarch (must have)
Zenith
Iron Sky (must have)
Warrior
Respite