Top 8 Faction Rankings

[Zardnaar]

 The following is my purely subjective rankings of the factions in various categories. Generally I refer to 4 fleet types.

1. Balanced Fleets
This is a mixture of capital ships, cruisers, frigates, starfighters etc. All facitons can build these types of fleets.

2. Kill Fleets.
These fleets are all about pure firepower and are usually various types of imperial fleets or late era fleets.

3. Carriers Fleets
 These fleets are usually either 100% carriers of have a handful of capital and cruiser ships (that tend to carry craft) with at least half the fleets devoted to carrier type this.

4. Super fleets.

 These fleets are built around super star destroyers/Star defender ships (Bellators and up).

 Generally I rate the factions based on unit roster (due to FTGU scenarios), admirals, heroes and finally starting positions on the larger sand box type maps. Gnerally I think its easy for the top 2 facitons the bottom 2 but the middle is very subjective.

Top 8 Overall

8. Yevetha
Perhaps the only outright bad faction the Yevetha do not have enough going for them. They are missing a lot of basic imperial units, have weak heroes, and only have 1 unique ships which did not even seem that good.

7. Eriadu Authority.

 Tectors, Torpedo Spheres and a unique escort carrier make them very competitive. Praetors seem to have been nerfed though from 2.1 and there heroes are average at best. Good capital ship faction. Weak Admirals, a bad location and weakest Imperial on the land puts them down here.

6. Zsinj
 This faction is not bad as such more average and awkward to use. Mostly ranked this low simply because the other factions are better IMHO.


5. The Empire. They start off very good with Tectors and strike cruisers with good support ships. They peak in Era 3 with XR 85's, modular task force cruisers, heroes and Sovereign class Star Destroyers. During era 3 I would bump them up to 1 or 2 and everyone else shifts 1 position down the list.

4. Pentastar Alignment.

 Formally the best in the game they lost their 2 starting SSDs, they get one of them back at week 20. Compounding their problems the Praetor seems to have been nerfed along with the carrier strategy which they were the best at. They are beaten at carriers by Greater Maldrood and arguably Zsinj and they do not have the great unique units cruisers and 6 point ships (Tectors, Crimson Command VSDs, Allegiances etc)  to make up for it. Still Praetors will get the job done and they get Secutors and as well as Munificent's and the procursator. Since they are basically a era 4 or 5 Empire they have been placed ahead of the Imperial Remnant

3. The New Republic.
 Very good faction even inn era 1, but they take a bit to get going and their best units are era 4 and 5 where I would rate them as number 1 or 2 (1 in Era 5).

2. Greater Maldrood.
 Much like the Empire of the hand, great cruisers, capitals, heavy ships, can build Bellator SSD and Alegiance and has great units to go with them. Good on the ground,

1. Empire of the Hand.
 More or less blatantly overpowered on all the criteria I used. Best starting location, good heroes, great units good on land and space.

Top 8 Personal Favorites

 This list is based on what factions I find fun to play, generally on admiral difficulty and on the Art of War GC.

1. Greater Maldrood
2. Empire
3. Zsinj
4. Yevetha
5. New Republic
6. Pentastar Alignment
7. Eriadu Authority
8. Empire of the Hand

Top 8 Carrier Factions

8. Yevetha.
Well these guys can't build crriers at all and have no bomber units. At best they can have a cloud of trifoil fighters.

7. Eriadu Authority. Fairly generic units with shield equipped TIEs and no exclusive carrier units. Can spam lots of TIE hunters though they are btter used in the other fleet types.

6. Empire Better than the EA but not by much.
 Gets better in era 2,3 and 4 but its mostly less awful relative to the other factions.

5. Pentastar Alignment.
Very good carrier faction, only let down on a higher placing due to 4 other factions being better. The PA is also quantity over quality with its Secutors, Acclamators and Venator carriers.

4. Greater Maldrood
 Can go several ways with carrier fleets building around Secutors, ISD II's, or TIE Avengers/ARC 170's. Probably has 3 + types of viable carrier fleets.

3. Empire of the Hand
 Almost everything that launches out of an EotH fleets seems good. Would be placed higher but they lack the Nebulon B frigates and underpriced Lucrehulks and Zsinj level ISD II equivalents.

2. Zsinj
 Zsinj doesn't have the variety of the PA and GM but makes up with in cheap spammable TIE Raptors and the Lucrehulks. Zsinj ISD II's carry 2 TIE Raptors while quasar fires and Nebulon B offer quantity and quality.

1. New Republic
 The best carrier faction in era 1 and doesn't really lose the crown although you could make the argument that in era 4 and 5 Zsinj or the EotH might be better due to the loss of the Nebulon B but they pick up E and K-Wings and various support ships so they mostly have quantity and quality in most eras.

Kill Fleets.

8. The New Republic
The New Republic ships tend towards the carrier side of things and they lack the required units to make dedicated kill fleets not really picking up the right ships until era 3 or  4. An era 1-3 NR kill fleet looks a bit more like a balanced fleet and/or still has lots of X-WIngs attached.

7. Yevetha.

 The Yevetha only really get the Allegiances but lack the required support units such as good AA corvettes and srike cruisers to really make them shine. Still they get allegiances.

6. Pentastar Alignment.
 These guys ge Praetors over Allegiances but lack a good AA unit to suport them but they do aquire procursator cruisers and Accalmators which helps and its enough to put them 1 ahead of the Yevetha

5. Zsinj. Zsinj gets Allegiances and is rich enough to afford them. He is in a similar boat to the Pentastar Alignment but has better 1 and 2 point units to support said kill fleet. Still its not really this factions specialty.

4. Empire of the Hand
 While the EotH lends itself to building carrier and balanced fleets they have a good selection of capitals, cruisers and frigates they can use to cobble togather a kill fleet. At least better than the factions ranked lower than them.

3. Eriadu Authority.
 The Eriadu Authority gets Praetors, Tectors and good support ships to back them up such as TIE Hunter escort carriers, tartan patrol vessels and Torpedo Spheres. Would be rated higher but faction 1 and 2 get strike cruisers.

2. The Empire.
 The Empire gets tectors era 1,4 and 5 along with Allegiances Era 2 and 3, the lancer right through and Praetors era 5. They also have the incomparable strike cruiser which is the work horse of these types of fleets as the other factions have to make do with Victory/Procursator Cruisers.

1. Greater Maldrood.
 Allegiance check. Strike cruisers check *2 allegiances, 9 strike cruisers is not to bad). Good AA corvette check. Additionally they get 2 more good choices of cruisers to help with the CC VSD, and the Procursator. Even the venerable VSD I and the Bulk Cruisers can be used here. If I had the choice I would probably pick Tectors over Allegiances but nothing is perfect.

[Zardnaar]

Reserved

[Zardnaar]

reserved

[Douk Nouk Kem]

I define how good the faction is by two metrics:
1) How good is overall unit roster ( space unit quality > ground unit quality ), because I prefer building very few fleets that usually oriented around heroes, and that leads to...
2) Quality of the hero roster

With that I would rank factions as such:
8) Yevetha: unfortunately too limited for their own good, but I do like their infantry and would probably say that it's the best in the game, but beyond that everything is rather poor, although their faction leader is respectable because he gives a fat +25% to damage

7) Zsinj: imagine 80's cartoon where tha main villain is a mad genius, but all of his henchmen are doofuses or clowns and you get Zsinj, one of the most solid faction leaders and 19 km long ship to protect him, but all of his posse consist of mediocre tier IV, horrible tier V commanders and an economy advisor, add to that unit roster that has less things to choose from than other Empire tech factions and you get yourself a really underwhelming force.

6) Pentastar: they start off great, with solid heroes and good unit variety, but in later eras they basically don't have a single hero worth of mention and their space unit roster suffers from 3-point ship bloat.

5) Eriadu: even worse hero roster that Zsinj, but they have reliable space roster and few gimmicky ground units, a bit boring but reliable faction.

4) Empire: the wild ride rollercoaster that always keeps on giving, while later eras are a bit hard on them you are guaranteed to have a decent faction leader right after Pestage kicks the bucket and up until the end and units like Eclipse and Sovereign give them repellent for SSDs and powerful heroes Ackbar.

3) Empire of the Hand: good quality units all around in space roster, but surprisingly lacking when it comes to heroes ( ignoring Thrawn ) and their ground roster in my experience left me waiting for more.

2) Greater Maldrood: you can get get the best starting setup of heroes in which you end with 3 tier II commanders ( Teradocs + Okins even though manual says that he's tier IV ) and tier III with Syn, you can't get better than this when it comes to space admirals not counting New Republic, their space roster is competent, you can build individual squadrons of ARCs and their 4 point ships are pretty much best all around, the only thing is that their land roster is fairly mediocre and doesn't have any stand out units.

1) New Republic: ACKBAR, add to him a giant hero roster than has various space admirals, jedis, spies and economy advisors, you can't get better than this, actually you can, because even in era I their space roster can go toe-to-toe with any faciton without problem and will only get better as the time goes by, add to that ground roster which is already solid with light factory alone giving you everything that you could ever need and you have a faction that under player's control can do pretty much anything, I honestly treat playing as NR as nothing more than baby mode because they simply lack any meaningful downside.

[thatsashirt]

I worry about what will happen to Zsinj once he loses the Lucrehulk... Nebulon B spam sucks and the only other solid units he has with Raptors are ISDs and Quasars. I really enjoy the patchwork nature of his unit selection imo.

[MrDrProf]

The EotH ground roster leaves you wanting more? Isn't this ground roster like absurdly op (looking at u MMT). I haven't played with each factions enough to do much ranking. It I find the IR pretty competent when it comes to carrier fleets when they have the venator. Also if there was a category which was just for fighter spam fleets, or if that was merged into the carrier category, the IR would come out pretty high with the Tie Defenders and Preybirds.

[Zardnaar]

The EotH ground roster leaves you wanting more? Isn't this ground roster like absurdly op (looking at u MMT). I haven't played with each factions enough to do much ranking. It I find the IR pretty competent when it comes to carrier fleets when they have the venator. Also if there was a category which was just for fighter spam fleets, or if that was merged into the carrier category, the IR would come out pretty high with the Tie Defenders and Preybirds.

 TIE Defenders cost 2 pop points (IDK if this has been changed recently) so I stopped using them.

 The IR can cobble together a decent carrier fleet, but they are weak relative to say the NR, Greater Maldrood, Zsinj, and Pentastar Alignment.

 This leaves them better off vs the Yevetha debatable vs Eridu (better bombers vs better fighters), and they are also out clased by the EotH.

[Katarnstar]

>New Republic
First thing I do in any GC is neutralize them as soon as possible. Or atleast try and keep the early Imperial Leaders alive.