Control (the most popular game mode for Nebulous: Fleet Command) hinges on capturing and controlling more control points (CPs) for longer than the opposing force (OPFOR). Play that prioritizes capturing CPs is colloquially known as the cap game. One player in a team will typically bring a fleet containing small ships that specialize in playing the cap game. Such a fleet is called a cap fleet by the Nebulous community. This guide seeks to introduce this play style to players that are already familiar with the controls of Nebulous who would like to start running cap fleets.

A good cap fleet has ships that are specialized towards four roles: capturing CPs (capping), killing light ships that approach CPs, giving the team sensor coverage, and killing the OPFOR's sensor ships. These roles and how they might be fulfilled will be covered. Next, we will talk generally about the concentration and dispersion of cap fleet assets. Afterwards, a few cap fleets will be discussed in the context of the four roles.

This guide was last updated July 2025. Cap fleets have seen rapid evolution in the last two years and will most likely continue this trend. Consequently, you are encouraged to consult more recent guides on this subject matter should they exist. Despite the evolution of cap fleet composition, many of the discussions herein regarding how cap fleets conduct themselves are expected to remain salient. Time will tell just how hubristic the expectation that "the roles of cap fleets will say the same" is.

Cap fleets can be expected to perform a variety of roles for their team: capturing CPs, preventing the OPFOR from capturing CPs, providing sensor coverage, and neutralising the OPFOR's light sensor assets. Most good cap fleets will have one or more hulls that can cover each of these roles. It is generally best to specialize individual ships to perform no more than two of these roles at a time. Half-cap fleets may elect to have worse performance at one or more of these roles so that they may also bring 1000 to 2000 ship points (SP) worth of front-line assets (such as a CLs, a CH or LNs).

Capturing CPs is the primary task of the vast majority of cap fleets. Every ten seconds after the start of the match, the teams are awarded two points for each CP they control. Generally four or more ships in a cap fleet will be primarily used for capturing CPs. Such ships are called cap ships. Since CPs are often exposed positions and their capture is time-sensitive, the best cap ships make use of cheap, fast hulls such as the Sprinter class corvette on ANS and Ferryman class shuttle on OSP. The first orders given to a cap fleet at the beginning of the game should be vectoring cap ships onto CPs. Try to prioritize capturing CPs in descending order of how likely you are able to successfully capture and successfully defend them.

The cheapest cap ship that is worth taking (also called a cringe capper by the community) typically has a drive, reinforced magazine, CIC, VLS-1 containing a 1pt offensive missile (to count as being armed for the purposes of capturing CPs), and a rapid DC locker. This build will cost 111 SP for ANS and 86 SP for OSP. Due to their low cost and impotence, these ships are used to capture CPs that both you and the OPFOR are covering with anti-cap ship weapons. Your ship must survive on the CP uncontested for 60 seconds to capture it, so it is often worthwhile to invest more SPs on increasing survivability of an individual ship (such as auxiliary steering, a stronger drive, and a reactor for power redundancy), or hull redundancy (throw enough cringe cappers at a strongly contested CP such that they collectively exist on the CP for the full minute). Hull redundancy can be worth using in some scenarios such as capturing CPs as OSP that are covered by a beam DD, since no amount of SP investment will meaningfully increase the survivability of a single shuttle that is getting beamed.

Cap fleets will often take some cap ships that are capable of fighting other cap ships, such as torpedo corvettes, gun corvettes, rocket shuttles or gun tugs/shuttles. These ships can be quite useful for situations where your cap ship cannot be effectively covered by a larger anti-cap asset. Additionally, these ships can be used to defend your CPs from capture by OPFOR's cap ships. Some examples of these ships will be discussed in the 'example fleets' section of this guide.

Naturals describe CPs that are significantly closer to one side and can be captured without much expectation for enemy opposition. At the start of the game, you should plot courses to capture these CPs first. Capturing naturals quickly is important since close games (and ties) can happen and you never know when every victory point (VP) will matter. If points allow, it is recommended to install drives that will get your cap ships onto the naturals as fast as possible (this will be either the raider or whiplash on ANS depending on the distance to the cap point and the sundrive for OSP). If not upgrading the drive means you can squeeze in another hull or meaningfully increase the survivability of an important sensor or anti-cap asset, stick with the stock drive. Once the naturals have been captured, it is a good idea to move your cap ships off the CP and hide them somewhere nearby.

Occasionally, the OPFOR's missile or carrier player may launch a strike against the naturals, so bringing appropriate soft and hardkill is strongly recommended. Some CPs may also contain some sections of rock (such as C point on pillars) which your cap ship can hug to avoid most missile strikes. ANS can launch hybrid missile strikes against naturals, so OSP cap ships should bring chaff and anti-missile missiles (AMMs). Likewise, OSP can launch cruise S2s or containers against naturals so ANS cap ships should bring softkill and defenders or rebounds. Since most naturals are only contested by indirect fire methods if at all, ships that capture naturals do not necessarily need the capability to fight opposing cap ships.

Neutral CPs are points that are roughly equidistant from both spawns. You can expect opposition from the OPFOR’s capping ships and any anti-cap assets that are able to fire onto the CP. Cap ships that are sent to neutrals should be built with the expectation that they will come under direct fire from guns, missiles, and craft. It can sometimes be desirable to equip cap ships that are sent to neutrals with the ability to fight other cap ships, so long as it is still disposable enough to risk putting it in a neutral CP.

When a map has only one neutral CP, the map is called a centre point map and the neutral is most often the A-point. Getting the initial capture of the A-point places the onus on the OPFOR to push into your defences. As such, this CP is heavily defended and ships sent to capture this CP are unlikely to survive long enough to get off the CP and into cover. A good A-cap ship is agile enough to dodge most ballistic fire levelled at it, durable enough to withstand fire that does hit it and have softkill for dealing with the likely types of missile threats to the ship while being cheap enough that the loss of the ship will not be a detriment to your fleet.

The midgame begins when the two front-line forces make contact with one another and spans until there is a clear military winner. In the midgame, the cap ships are charged with defending CPs, skirmishing with the OPFOR's cap fleet, or scouting and/or capturing lightly defended CPs, depending on the situation and what they are designed to do.

If you are ahead on VPs and CPs, there is little point risking your ships to capture CPs unnecessarily unless you are quite confident that a CP is unguarded and can be captured without consequence. Since you want to maintain a game state in which your team has more VPs than your opponents it is often more effective to focus on defending the CPs that you control over trying to capture more CPs. Armed ships that cannot harm an enemy ship can still defend a CP from capture by moving around on the CP and staying alive for as long as possible. Be aware that EWAR was recently changed to no longer count as an offensive weapon for the purpose of contesting a CP.

If you are not ahead on VPs and CPs, you will need to extrapolate out the VP scores to find out who will win and how many CPs you need to control in order to win. Combined with the knowledge that two VPs are awarded per CP every ten seconds, you can determine how aggressive you need to be when capturing CPs. If you have the time, it is best to be cautious when capturing the OPFOR's CPs since rushing into a CP from the quickest and most obvious path comes with the risk of being ambushed or mined. It is good practice to pay attention to your cap ship as it moves onto a CP (and to burnthrough often to catch guards or mines early as ANS). If this is not possible for whatever reason, it may be best to instead hide your ship in cover near the CP until your attention is no longer diverted.

Later in the midgame, you will likely have spotted most or all of the OPFOR at some point in the game and have an idea where all but about 1k of their SPs are located. If you think you can slip a cap ship into one of the OPFOR’s CPs without being detected, it is worthwhile to take the free point, but be wary of any ships or mines that might still be covering the it.

For the purposes of this guide, the endgame begins once the front-line combats have developed to a point such that their conclusion is clear. By this definition, not every game will necessarily have an endgame. Often when the game reaches the endgame, one or both teams will be close to winning.

In the endgame, if the scores are close, it is every player’s responsibility to secure CPs by parking armed ships on CPs (some team-mates may require encouragement to split their formations and send ships to sit on nearby CPs).

If there is not an urgent need to capture a CP (i.e. you will not lose the game if you do not capture a CP soon), we could make a rough estimate for how long the CP would need to be held, , to make up for a lost cap ship with value in order to capture a CP by making the assumption that you must lose your entire fleet of cap ships in order to accumulate enough VPs to win:

Where is the total SP value of all of the cap ships controlled by you and your allies and is the number of VPs that the win condition is set to.
Ideally, outside of the early game, you avoid sending ships to CPs where they are likely to die.

The anti-cap role is described by the destruction of the OPFOR's light assets that may be used for capturing CPs. There are two different scenarios where anti-cap ships may be used: covering (preventing the enemy capture of) a CP, or hunting down cap ships that are not immediately threatening to capture a CP.

Anti-cap ships that are covering CPs need to kill light assets within a minute, meaning they should favour weapons systems that can quickly kill corvettes, shuttles, and tugs. Beams, FBUs, R1s, R2s, S1s, S2s, S2H, S3s, S3H, 100HE, 120HE, 250HE, and 600mm HESH are all suitable for this purpose. Some cap defence ships want to be farther away from the CP and in cover with an unobstructed view to the CP such as beam DDs, while others such as torp tugs want to lie in wait near a CP and pop-out when the CP starts getting captured by the OPFOR. If the OPFOR has cruise missiles or craft, it is advisable to move your anti-cap asset if it has been spotted or used. Neutral CPs tend to be more suited for the longer range anti-cap options since they seldom need to expose themselves to effectively cover the CP and they can more easily get the CP into range. Conversely, naturals lend themselves to the short-range ambush-oriented anti-cap ships where it is much easier and safer to keep a ship close to the CP. Some enemy naturals can be covered with fast anti-cap assets such as 250 CLs or rocket shuttles. Examples of vulnerable naturals are Pillars E, Yukon C, and Yukon E. Killing OPFOR cap ships while they are capturing their team's natural is commonly called poking.

Mines may also be used to defend a CP, but this is not recommended since they are trivially defeated by craft guns since mines do not trigger on craft. When using mines, you want to lay sprint mines against a rock in such a way that they will all trigger the moment a cap ship crests a rock as it enters the CP. Mines can be countered without fighter cover by approaching a point with care, thinning the field with RPF and angling PD appropriately. Consequently one must always be cautious not to over-invest in mines. See Tuna's mine guide for more precise details.

Anti-cap assets that are not covering a CP can also be used to hunt the OPFOR's cap assets in areas of the battlespace where the front-line is not present. It is quite common for anti-cap ships that hunt cap ships rather than defend CPs to also act as sensor assets (multi-mission tugs (MMTs) are a good example of a ship that excels at both the sensor and anti-cap roles). 100, 120, 250, S2, S2H, and S3H are all suitable direct weapons systems for hunting cap ships. Since most cap ships have limited options for missile defence, cruise missiles may also be used to great effect against cap ships that are tracked by friendly sensor vessels. Not every anti-cap asset is suitable for hunting cap ships. MNs and DDs are great for defending CPs, but are too slow and cumbersome to be used in the hunting role because their powerful anti-cap tools are spinal mounts.

While it is not always advisable to bring a carrier as part of a cap fleet, craft are excellent tools for the anti-cap role. They excel at hunting cap ships and defending points when the capture occurs within a predictable window of time (such as neutrals at the start of the game).

In a game like this one where consequences can lag several minutes behind your decisions, having a rough idea where the OPFOR is and what it is doing (more commonly called situational awareness or SA) is a force multiplier for both the cap fleet and front-line. Cap fleets often bring sensor assets to provide SA for their team.

Huntress and spyglass radar provide SA in all directions while early warning radar (EWR) provides SA in one direction at long range. Bloodhound long-range tracking radar (LRT) when paired with a couple of track correlators (TCs) can give radar tracks in a narrow cone that are accurate enough to be worth shooting at. Bullseye fire control radars (FCRs) on sensor vessels can give offset locks which is useful for long range fires or resisting jamming. At risk of editorializing, cap fleets should only supplement the rest of the team's FCR capability, and not be the sole or major provider of FCR quality tracks. ANS also has access to electronic intelligence (ELINT) tools in the form of the pinard. ELINT gives a line of bearing (LOB) to radar sources from beyond their ranges. If the source of an ELINT LOB is within range, a bullseye on the same ship as the pinard can lock a track from it. If two ships with ELINT detect the same radar, they will provide a crossfix which increases in accuracy as the angle between pinards at the crossfix increases. OSP's directional radar emits side-lobes which can be detected by ELINT albeit at shorter ranges.

Sensor ships can have a lot of build variety since sensor ships can also specialize in the anti-cap or anti-sensor roles. Ships that purely specialize in the sensor role are often quite cheap, mounting nothing more than pinards, bullseyes, EWRs or LRTs as well as a VLS-1 with softkill, an offensive S1, and sometimes AMMs. These ships will also mount a spyglass or huntress radar. More expensive sensor ships will also mount electronic warfare tools (EWAR) to reduce the chance that it gets acquired while it is tracking the OPFOR. Sensor ships that also hunt down cap ships or other sensor ships will typically mount direct-fire missiles for incapacitating its target and small calibre guns for finishing-off the target. One of the most famous sensor and anti-cap builds is the MMT which carries a huntress radar and mounts an MLS-2, C30, bellbird, VLS-1 and either a pinpoint FCR or a PD turret (some flavours of MMT will replace the bellbird or MLS-2 with a TALS for anti-craft capability).

Sensor craft provide very affordable long range radar and ELINT for ANS and long range radar and EO targeting balls for OSP. OSP can quite easily bring craft sensor assets on the backs of anti-cap assets such as LNs and MNs, but ANS will need to bring a CVL to access the long range radar of the SEWACS.

Sensor assets typically get placed on the flanks of the main front-line such that they provide an extra 0-4km of radar coverage and/or can see around any obstacles that the front-line must pass. Care should be taken to not push the sensor assets too far ahead of the front-line or else the OPFOR may opt to quickly hunt your sensor asset with their front-line before engaging your friendly front-line. Try to keep an eye out for the spotted symbols next to your ships in the list in the top left and pull spotted ships back if you can still provide adequate sensor coverage by doing so. Once you know what and where roughly 75% of the OPFOR is, you can afford to be more aggressive with any sensor assets that have anti-cap or anti-sensor capabilities to hunt down the OPFOR's cap fleet and any squishy backline targets such as container liners or missile FFs.

The first step in destroying the OPFOR's sensor assets is to detect them; ideally without being detected yourself.The only way to stop a bad guy with a sensor asset is a good guy with a sensor asset. One of the main differences between ANS and OSP is their ship-based sensor tools (ANS has ELINT while OSP has EWR and LRT). Consequently, the two factions play the anti-sensor role differently.

ELINT gives ANS the ability to detect any OSP sensor from 1.25 times that sensor's maximum range.N.B. craft ELINT works differently by detecting all radar emissions up to their maximum range. EWAR can be directed down these lines of bearing once your ship is detected to prevent the OPFOR from holding a track on you for very long. Missiles can also be fired along the direction of the ELINT LOB to generally good effect since sensor assets often lack adequate missile defence to protect against all of the common seeker combos. Bullseyes on the same ship as the pinnard can be tasked to lock the line of bearing or crossfix to the sensor if its range allows it. OSP's sensor ships are most likely to be tugs, meaning 450mm fire can be used effectively against OSP sensor assets when a lock is obtained. A lock enables direct CMD missiles (especially S2H and S3H). Sprinter bombers are a popular anti-sensor corvette build equipped with ELINT, EWAR, bullseyes and CMD S2H. They rely on ELINT to detect OSP sensors before locking them with a bullseye and launching CMD S2H under the cover of EWAR. EWR and LRT platforms typically play far enough away to not be very accessible to craft strikes but more forward assets such as skiffs, pikes and huntress tugs can be close and isolated enough to be struck by craft.

OSP sensors can track ships at longer range than ANS thanks to EWR and the burnthrough-capable huntress radar, but should expect a competent ANS player to know roughly where active sensors are thanks to ELINT. Outside of LRT, the long range track quality will generally only be suitable for missiles, craft, or 600mm bombshell if you have a friendly MN ball nearby. OSP anti-sensor assets will generally rely on direct S2s to cripple ANS sensor ships before closing range and finishing the ships off with guns.

As the cap fleet, your goal is to control over half of the CPs. This requires dispersion of your forces such that you have sensor coverage over your CPs and their approaches, you have anti-cap assets covering the CPs that are most likely to be challenged by the OPFOR, you can prevent the OPFOR from detecting your anti-cap asset on top of getting your own capping assets onto these CPs. If two equally competent cap players with competently built fleets fight over a region of the battlespace, the player that invested more SP of ships into this fight will be most likely to win. This introduces a tension between the need for dispersion and concentration of force when playing cap fleets. Dispersion and concentration are controlled in-game and in the fleet editor.

The cap game is a lot like gambling against the OPFOR such that you want to use as little force as necessary to over-match the opposing cap and anti-cap assets to control a CP lest your opponent over-match you at too many other CPs. Often, cap ships are built as cheaply as possible or built with the minimum investment required to defeat the average OPFOR cap ship. This leads to a trend where the 'meta' cap fleet build's average ship cost increases over time until it reaches a critical point where the points are too concentrated such that a greater quantity of worse (but cheaper) assets is better able to control more space.



In game, good sensor coverage lets you determine the disposition of your opponents, making it much easier to decide how you want to position your assets to most optimally fight your opponent. It should be stressed that the cap game does not occur in a vacuum and there exist frontline assets (Allegedly). which can defend points from capture. If you have a beam capital in close proximity to a CP or ships with small calibre guns watching a CP on your team, you do not need to also watch the same CPs with your own anti-cap assets. You can instead use these assets to concentrate your force elsewhere.

Let us now look at some example cap fleets and discuss how they fulfil the four main roles of the cap fleet: capping, anti-cap, sensor and anti-sensor.
We shall look at two starter cap fleets Tantalum Squadron (OSP) created by Goodnut and Xenophon of Athens, TF Willow (ANS) by Xenophon of Athens, a fleet from Nova28 (NGAD (ANS)), and a few fleets from Jraamus (250LN;Caps (OSP), CAP_1NATS_DD;FFs;GunSprints (ANS), and Meatcaps (OSP)). These fleets offer examples of many of the more common cap fleet ship archetypes.

Tantalum squadron is an OSP starter fleet by Xenophon of Athens and Goodnut and contains three types of ship.

'Time Dilation' is a cruise S2 MN. It contains several 15km cruise missiles which can be used to strike at the OPFOR's light assets. Cruise S2 can be a great option for isolated assets that can be otherwise difficult to dislodge such as beam DDs. It may be a good idea to ungroup the MLS-2s on this MN and consider swapping half of the missiles over to ARAD/ACT so as to enable mixed salvoes.

'Ranger', 'Bailiff', and 'Custodian' are examples of MMTs equipped with a huntress, bellbird, S2s, C30, VLS-1, and pinpoint. These tugs are meant to operate independently from one another to provide good sensor coverage while hunting down the OPFOR's dispersed sensor and capping assets. The huntress is buffed with an ARR for acquiring sensor and cap assets at which point the bellbird can be used to hide the MMT and S2 can be fired at the target. When it is safe to do so, the MMT can close to pinpoint range and finish-off the target as needed.

'Scoundrel', `Charlatan', `Swindler', and `Hustler' are cap ships. Their load-out of a T20, VLS-1, and pavise is the most popular for capping gun shuttles since the softkill and AMMs provide adequate protection against cruise missiles and the pavise provides good protection against S1s and S3s. The pavise only covers half of the space around the shuttle so the shuttle's heading and roll should be set to keep the pavise and T20 pointed towards opposing ships.

This fleet fulfils all of the main roles of a cap fleet: the shuttles capture CPs while the MMTs perform anti-cap, sensor, and anti-sensor duties. The S2 MN supplements the anti-cap, and anti-sensor roles while also being an excellent tool for suppressing anti-cap tools.


The above figure shows an example deployment on Nyx's Eye. The shuttles are rapidly sent to the points that your team intends to control while the MMTs help to cover the points and provide dispersed sensor coverage. The missile MN moves to a safe centralized location where it can lob cruise missiles at the neutral points.

TF Willow is an ANS starter fleet by Xenophon of Athens and contains four types of ship.

'Beyond Conventional' is a CL equipped with 250mm, and SDM2. It can be used to supplement the front-line or be used in the anti-cap and anti-sensor roles. If you can find the spare points, a blanket jammer or direct S2s with weave can be good investments in the defensive and offensive capabilities of this ship respectively.

'Word Cadence' is a FF with a spyglass, blanket, ELINT, and EO S3H. It is primarily a sensor ship, but the S3H can be fired along ELINT LOBs to damage OSP sensor assets (the CL can subsequently finish off these ships with her 250s as needed).

'Cloaked Intentions', 'Golden Iris', and 'Perverse Axiom' are examples of one of the two common loadouts for torpedo capping corvettes (also called torp corvs or torp sprinters). They have a CLS-3 CLS-3 and VLS-3 are both common, but TLS-3 should not be used since it delays launching until it has traversed towards its target introducing an unnecessary delay before launching. filled with torpedoes, a VLS-1 in the nose and defenders on the wings. AMMs keep them safe from small amounts of S2s from MMTs whilst the defenders provide good defence against rockets as well as the odd container or S2 that leaks past the AMMs.

'Daggers Drawn' and 'Be Objective' are cheap gun corvettes which are sufficiently armed to slowly finish-off crippled cap ships. Their main use is as a cheap ship for capturing potentially contested CPs.

Depending on how it is played, TF Willow can be viewed as either a cap fleet or half-cap fleet. The CL can perform the anti-cap and anti-sensor roles, but if the CL is primarily used as a front-line asset then this fleet will be a half-cap fleet. The FF provides some sensor coverage and can perform some anti-sensor work while the corvs perform capping and anti-cap duties.



Above, we see an example deployment on Arroyo. The torp corvs capture the naturals and go into hiding until openings in the OPFOR's frontline for them to slip through are identified. The CL takes cover behind the rock in the lower right corner of the mid plane of the map, affording protected, clear line of sight over the entire A point. The other side of this rock can be used by LNs with 250mm or 100mm. This rock provides excellent cover from direct fire, but can leave ships vulnerable to cruise missiles or craft. The spyglass frigate provides sensor coverage for one of the hemispheres of the map.
In this example it is covering the bottom where it can spot missiles and craft that may try to slip under the CL's rock.

NGAD is an ANS cap fleet by Nova28 that contains four types of ship.

'Toxic Input', 'Lurid Laser', and 'Zero Dank' are a team of sprinter bombers. They use ELINT to detect sensor assets and isolated cap assets which they proceed to lock jam and missile. These ships also carry missiles for protection against bombers and fighters. These ships can also be used to attack the OPFOR's carrier and missile platforms.

'Boxer One' and 'Boxer Two' are 120mm gun frigates which, while not always able to stop a point from being captured when alone, are excellent tools for hunting the OPFOR's cap assets. While not the case here, gun frigates are often paired with a PD and utility frigate or sprinter for defence against missile and craft threats (such pairs are called 'police frigates').

'Daisy', 'Gain After', and 'Rag' are gun corvettes for capturing points.

'Sheep and Brick' is a so-called 'cringe capper'. It is for being sent to hotly contested caps. This particular ship could do with having its Auxilliary Steering changed to a Basic CIC and have a VLS-1 with a one point arming missile added to it so that it may count as armed.

The gun corvettes and cringe capper take capture points while the police frigates fill the anti-cap role. The sprinter bombers contribute to the anti-cap role while also filling the sensor and anti-sensor roles.



The above image shows an example deployment on Bloodmoon. The corvettes move to immediately capture or lurk around the points while the police frigates control the lower neutral points. The sprinter bombers work to control the top half of the map where they can strike the initial capper for the C point before moving on to strip the OPFOR of its sensor assets and any soft targets in their backline.

250LN;Caps is an OSP cap fleet with five types of ship/formation.

'Rubicelle' is a 250/100 LN which is built to cover points and hunt cap ships and light anti-cap ships (such as DDs). This example invests somewhat heavily in missile and craft defence since isolated LNs tend to be an otherwise easy target for indirect fires.

'Pleonaste' is a torpedo tug for guarding CPs at close range. Unless you are unlucky, a couple of torpedoes should be able to take out a sprinter with assistance from the C30.

'Magnetite' and its companion, 'Lodestone', behave like a more expensive-but more capable-MMT. 'Lodestone' provides jamming and some PD while 'Magnetite' carries a TALS-2 and MLS-2 allowing mixed salvoes of up to six missiles and anti-craft capability. As with a standard MMT, 'Magnetite' also carries a huntress with an adaptive radar receiver for scouting.

'Spinel' and 'Galaxite' are gun shuttles, primarily for capturing CPs.

'Graphite', 'Saltpeter', and 'RDX' are low-investment capping shuttles that are only armed with an arming missile.

Capping is fulfilled by the shuttles while anti-cap duties are performed by the LN and tugs. The tug/shuttle team can perform sensor and anti-sensor duties, supplemented somewhat by the LN.



The example deployment on Styx is shown above. The shuttles move in to capture or hide near the points. The LN covers D from long range. The torp tug covers C from a concealed position a close distance from C. The tug shuttle team is covering the E point from behind some rocks in the bottom middle of the map where it can access good lines of sight in the bottom half of the map with little movement.

CAP_1NATS_DD;FFs;GunSprints is an ANS cap fleet with six types of ship/formation.

'Realgar' is a beam DD which can guard points from up to 5km away. This particular example probably overinvests in PD (you can get decent beam DDs with a jammer for as low as 600-650 points). The blanket makes it more difficult for the OPFOR to track and shoot your DD which is very important for surviving the occasions that you need to stick your neck out to beam a point.

'Getchellite' is a spyglass/ELINT frigate armed with SDMs and S2H for some limited anti-sensor work.

'Orpiment' and 'Dimorphite' are a police frigate squad which are primarily intended to guard points and occasionally hunt cap ships. The parallax radar on the frigate and bullseye on the corvette affords this team some scouting capability when they are not lying in wait near a point.

'Uzonite' is an S2H/SDM2 corvette. It is meant to engage opposing cap ships from range with its missiles before going onto points itself, but can be immediately sent onto safer points. Once the S2H have been expended, the nose mk61 keeps this ship armed and capable of slowly whittling-down cringe-cappers. The SDM2s are limited in quantity, but can help to fend-off low-investment craft strikes.

'Alacranite' is a torp corv which also sports a nose mk61 for finishing-off targets. This particular example has a raider drive for reaching close naturals as quickly as possible. Torp corvettes are well suited to capturing naturals since they can hide nearby immediately after capturing the CP to ambush back-cappers in the mid and late game.

'Laphamite' and 'Kalgoorlieite' are gun corvettes for capturing points.

The gun, torp, and S2H corvettes primarily capture points, with the latter two types providing some anti-cap capability. The spyglass frigate provides sensor some sensor coverage for the team. The police frigate team and beam DD are excellent offensive and defensive anti-cap assets respectively. You could easily put stock drives back on the corvettes and downgrade the PD on the DD to squeeze 120-140 points worth of extra corvette into this fleet. In general, upgraded drives are only worth taking on cap ships when doing so does not affect your hull count.



Above is the deployment of this fleet on Gold Rush. The torpedo corvette captures the close natural and moves to an ambush position nearby. The S2H corvette heads for the C neutral which is somewhat ANS favoured. One of the gun sprinters hugs the cover in the A point while the remaining gun sprinter is held in reserve. The police frigate team rapidly pushes up to the rock just above the A point where it has clear line-of sight to the entire point (A can only be seen in it entirety from above and below). Due to the cover around the A point, the slower beam DD moves to guard the C point where it can more easily get clear line-of-sight. Since the parallax in the frigate team provides some radar coverage at the top of the map, the spyglass frigate is left to monitor the bottom half of the map.

Meatcaps is an OSP cap fleet that contains three types of ship.

'Idler' and 'The Mealy Folk' are cheap 250-100 LNs. Two LNs represent over two thirds of the fleet's SP spent on the anti-cap role, but allows you to lock-down at least two points against anything lighter than a CL.

'The Over Lair', 'Scarf and Dream', and 'Angry Lilac' are so-called 'meat tugs'. Originally popularised by Hunter, these tugs are designed to be as tanky as possible while costing about the same as a gun corvette. These tugs will struggle against torp corvettes, but will otherwise beat ANS cappers in a duel over a CP.

'Almeda K. Collins' and 'Spice' are cringe cappers which are meant to reach points quickly to begin capturing the CP while the slower tugs make their way to park on or near the point.

The main purpose of this fleet is to be as durable as possible so that the OPFOR does not have enough time to destroy all of its ships before the game ends. The shuttles and tugs capture points under the dispersed overwatch of the two LNs. Outside of the huntress radars on the LNs, this fleet offers little in the way of scouting.



In an example deployment on honeycomb, the shuttles move to quickly capture the natural and the C point while the tugs wait near the neutrals for the LNs to clear-out the OPFOR's cap ships and light anti-cap assets such as beam DDs. Once the way has been sufficiently cleared by the LN for the tugs to survive the capturing procedure, the tugs are moved onto the neutral. In this example, the LNs are overwatching the D and E points as these are the points that are covered by a beam DD the most often.

• Try to play in a voicecall with others.
  Playing in a voicecall helps to ensure that your allies can help you to deny CPs and can also act as another set of eyes that can warn you when the OPFOR is threatening CPs.
  
  
• Try to push your micro ability when possible, but do not overwhelm it.
  Your attention can only be stretched so far. Try to focus on as many ships/fights as you can at one time and keep the remaining ships hidden from the OPFOR.
  
  
• Adjust cap ship speeds to arrive at CPs at different times when playing multi-neutral maps.
  Running some ships at lower speeds helps to ensure that your cap ships arrive at the neutral CPs at different times so that you do not need to focus on too many fights at once.

I would like to thank Xenophon of Athens and Nova28 for letting me discuss their fleets. I would like to thank Scrubus and Subtle Hubris, Vastol, and Xenophon of Athens for their feedback across the various iterations of this guide.