The cost reduction and extractor adding abilities are excellent.  I don't think much of the reduction to build time though, that one is pretty worthless.  You save thousands off the other two though.  It saves you a cost more in line with another capital ship, not just a couple carriers.

 

That said, the Akkan is the only colony cap I don't find to be badass from the start, and it's disruption capabilities are sheer devastation late game.  Popping off a cease fire at the right time can be game over.  Ever used it to bypass a heavily defended perimeter world with your entire fleet and stomp the living shit out of their entire empire from inside?

 

Malice is horrific.  Shield regeneration combined with a heavy compliment of guardians leads to a near invincible fleet.  You can greatly accelerate your expansion with the reduction in casualties and increased damage output you get from a Progenitor early on.  Resurrection I could do without, if I'm losing high level capital ships, I'm losing.  As such it's often my second capital ship, not the first.  It's still an excellent starting choice though.

 

The Jarassul on the other hand, so nice.  One on one, the Jarassul will kill any other capital ship in the game.  Go ahead and try to out damage that ability eating through your hull.  The planetary vacuum cleaner is no small thing either.  It really sucks the life out of your opponent.  You have to be much more careful with it than you would a Kortul, which is undeniably the stronger of the two, but it's got some serious power if you keep the advantage.  Unparalleled assassination capability against enemy capital ships between the Nano Disassembler and Gravity Warhead.  It's vicious.  When I use something else, it's because I want to, not because it's an inferior first choice.  You might be able to slug through a disadvantage with a Kortul, but it's nowhere near the strategic sadist.

It also greatly depends on the size of map. I tend to choose carriers on small maps due to the fact I will be meeting my opponent faster.

On a large map however, that Colonly Cap will help you colonize faster. How? Well, the antimatter regen of a colony cap over a frigate is the obvious benefit and a very crucial one. Of course you can build many colony frigates but that is going to start getting expensive, especially if colonising in two directions. You need all the cash you can get to keep those early planet developments rolling.

Also as ppl above have mentioned, the bonus's of the Akkan and Progen are going to make this even cheaper. 250-500 credits in free extractors is pretty nice in those early minutes. And thats not mentioning the incredible discounts of the Progen which not only make things a lot easier early but also can help keep future colonisations (planet health upgrades and artifact expeditions) cheap as well.

However while I believe all I have said above is true, it is really map dependent. The above works great if you have a lot of room to stretch out before the plasma starts flying. However... not so good if a Skirantra turns up on your doorstep. 

@psychoak - I think the point is that you get an Akkan / Progenitor / Jarassul for the Colonize, not for its other abilities. I can see that the other abilities are good, but for the same reason you never get an Akkan without learning Colonize, I don't think these other abilities are sufficiently good to warrant using the Akkan over other capital ships.

@Darvin3 - Well if colony frigates become completely depleted of antimatter after three jumps, then they only fail to be a viable option if you have planets to colonize three jumps away from your homeworld (and then even if that happens you have to get a new Frigate Factory eventually, so ...). How many times has this happened to me? I must say the answer is zero. I've not played any maps where there are uncontested planets more than 3 jumps away from my nearest Frigate Factory at the start of the game (there are maps where you start with two Frigate Factories, for example).

If the benefit of using a colony capital ship is free extractors (which only happens with level 3 Akkans), then you get 250g per planet colonized. If you colonize 4 planets then you save 1k gold. This is actually very generous, because you need a level 3 Akkan, by which time chances are you've already colonized a couple of planets. You also save the price needed to build ~3 colony ships, another 1.35k, as well as a smattering of crystal and metal, including the extra resources you get because you don't have to wait for the extractor to be built.

But it's still only 2.35k gold ...

What can you buy for 2.35k gold, 500 metal and 250 crystal? This really is about the price of a couple of Aeria Drone Hosts, and a distance away from another capital ship (also need to research capital ship crew for that). A level 3+ Sova Carrier would match the force of those two Aeria Drone Hosts and more, since if you run into your opponent at this point in the game he and his Akkan will be the one that's forced to flee. Your superior force at this point would thrash his units and maybe even some buildings / construction vessels, going some way to paying back the cash debt. You would actually hold this advantage well into the game because you'll always have a higher level Sova Carrier than him (assuming he gets one).

If you're colonizing in two directions at once then you'd also have to be building colony frigates regardless of which capital ship you start with, so I don't see the point.

It's my experience that there is an advantage to starting with a colony capital ship, but it's quite a small one and quickly drowned out while the advantage to having a superior combat capital ship drags on into middle-game and beyond. It could be the maps I play, but I've gone from small maps to mediums to medium-large maps and still never played a game where there are more than 4 planets to colonize uncontested. I can see the colony capital ship being invaluable if you play a 3v3 map with 2 players, but I've always played those maps with 6 players, not 2. What maps do you guys have in mind? Any specific names that I can check out in-game?

I already had a wall of text there, so I wasn't going to go into all the different permutations that deplete a colony ship.  In fact, it's still not practical to talk about all the different layouts I've seen (including having to navigate around heavy militia planets and through uncolonizables), but here's a particularly common one: a "jump - colonize - jump" operation.  Now you've reached the second planet out and you're depleted and need a new colony frigate to keep full momentum.  So really colony frigates start to fall behind colony caps at two jumps, and start to seriously fall behind at three jumps.  If you're going four jumps, then they're going to weigh you down horrendously.

This fits very well with my old guideline about rushing distance.  About 5-7 jumps distance between homeworlds is the point at which you're no longer in an imminent rush scenario (give or take depending on the map layout and militia levels), and this puts the middle ground conveniently at 3-4 jumps away, just outside of the practical range of colony frigates.  



It's rare in a 5v5 and 4v4, but it's actually somewhat common on 3v3 and smaller.  And on 1v1 maps, it's the norm.  Play a couple games on a 1v1 small-random and count the number of jumps to the opponent.  It usually comes in around 6-8, making colony capital ships absolutely huge.

Totally correct.

Also totally a thread necro