Introduction

Admiral, welcome on board the Ankylon class titan. This magnificent ship requires extensive resources to be constructed, including the rarest of the exotics. This manual will help you put such an investment to the best possible use.

Short Lore

After several decades of constant war, the TEC loyalists have designed a ship which represents their war goals perfectly. The Ankylon titan excels at defense and helps you to dig in and hold the line against the enemies of humankind.

The Ankylon has a crew of 5.000, which is twice the size of a Kol class battleship. It is often called a “moving fortress” due to how formidable its defensive capabilities are.

Basics

The Ankylon titan focuses on its own survivability and to some extent as a support role for your fleet. Those exceptional capabilities come at the price of firepower; this is not to say that your titan does not have any. It will even slightly outperform combat focused capital ships, such as the Kol, in overall damage output. But you definitely should not expect this titan to go solo against an enemy armada and win.

While its starting firepower may put the Ankylon onto the level of battle capital ships, it is not the final form of the titan. You could add several extra weapon banks which would increase your DPS more than 10x.

There is the downside of using 2 titan module slots, but those upgrades are definitely worth it and you have 8 to work with!

The Ankylon titan will still lose head-on fights against other titans, which is why you should focus on its fleet wide supporting abilities.

Abilities

The first thing to know about the Ankylon’s abilities is that they are stronger when you are in a friendly gravity well. A friendly gravity well is either your own planet, or a planet of a player you are allied with. Neutral and enemy gravity wells will have a negative effect on your abilities.

This makes the Ankylon excel at defense, which should be kept in mind. Always try to force a defensive engagement, and only once your enemy is weakened, push into their territory. In-game tooltips are very good at describing the abilities, so do not worry about memorizing stuff from this guide.

The first ability is the “Disruption Matrix.” It deals small AOE damage, which will not be enough to kill even corvettes in a single cast. However, since Ankylon is a fleet support titan, this will create a massive shortage of HP on enemy ships, allowing your fleet to finish enemies off.

Next is “Furious Defense.” This ability boosts your titan’s damage and heals it. Even though the Ankylon lacks the raw DPS of other titans, this ability will put it closer to its enemies. The main idea of this ability is the heal (which again, is stronger in a friendly gravity well).

With the extremely long duration of the ability, you can have it online almost all of the time at higher levels. Even at level 1, this ability provides the best healing in the entire game, as it heals a total of 3600 hull points per cast. Combined with how tough the Ankylon is by itself, this is the go-to ability that will allow you to throw your titan into battles where other titans would die too quickly.

Shield Surge is the final, non-ultimate ability. It's kind of the healing version of Disruption Matrix as it provides AOE heal to your ships. Its AOE capabilities are weaker, however it provides a huge shield restore buff to Ankylon itself, giving you yet another tool to expand the survivability of your titan.

Invulnerability Field is your ultimate ability. It makes all your ships in range invulnerable, as the name suggests. In friendly gravity wells, you get this effect for an entire 30 seconds! Obviously, this ability is used best with a fleet. Getting an extra 30 seconds of life on a titan is cool, but getting no damage on all of your ships, including from enemy fleet wiping abilities, will be a game changer.

There is a significant cooldown of 4 minutes on Invulnerability Field, so you have to use this ability wisely and cannot spam it. However, even with the cooldown, this is clearly an S tier ability.

Titan Modules (Offense)

We have already talked about 2 offensive modules in the basics section: Ankylon Beams and Missile Batteries. They should be the first modules you install on the titan unless you are in some specific niche situation.

Other modules to consider would be “Rapid Autoloader,” as it boosts your damage output even further; and the “Missile Guidance Computer,“ which also has a nice aura for other missile ships.

Other offensive titan modules fall into the niche category. Want more strikecraft? Go for the “Auxiliary Hangar.” Want more planet damage? Go for the “High Yield Warheads.”

Titan Modules (Defense)

The Ankylon has access to the standard “Extra Armor Plating” upgrades that have 3 levels. Those have decent stats, but it's up to you to make the decision if you want to make your unkillable titan even tougher. Same goes for “Combat Repair System” and “Reactive Armor.” Those are great modules on paper, but the usage will be limited to niche situations where human players would try to kill your titan before killing your fleet.

The Flak Burst item is another story. It is not stronger compared to the capital ships' version, but since Ankylon titan has a very big ship model, it may be simply out-range other abilities when you need it. So, getting Flak Burst may be an interesting idea should your opponent build many missile ships or strikecraft.

The Ankylon titan has access to PD autocannons as an alternative upgrade. Those will do better against early or midgame fleets than Flak Burst. In late game, since Flak Burst is an AOE ability, it just scales better. The Ankylon titan is not very viable in the early game, so this item is more of a niche upgrade.

Finally, the Ankylon has access to “Ankylon Planetary Shield Array,“ which is a lot of fun, since you can now jump between your planets and prevent them from dying, as long as your titan lives. This will definitely frustrate your opponent, as they will struggle to take a single planet from you.

Titan Modules (Utility)

There are 4 utility items available which have no differences to the capital ship versions. However, it is worth noting that “Volatile Accelerants” looks much more interesting on an Ankylon titan than it does on your regular capital ship.

Getting this item on a capital ship often feels bad because capital ships only have 4 slots. But with Ankylon having 8 items, while also being extremely slow, a speed item can shine under a new light. It is still a niche item you should not prioritize, but once you get all the essential modules, you definitely should consider getting Volatile Accelerants.

Strategies

The Ankylon titan requires T4 in both civic and military trees. This makes it rather impossible to rush the titan from the get-go unless some ally provides you with resources. It will also require some exotics, including Quarnium, which takes a lot of time to produce. To speed up the process of construction, you should manually queue a Quarnium exotic without waiting on other tech to finish.

Another optimization you could do is to get the “Industrial Complex” planetary module where you will build your titan. Not only will it speed up the titan construction process, it will also reduce cost of the titan (and any other ship) by 10%. The discount on the titan will be higher than the module price, so it's really a must have, even if you are not planning on mass producing ships on the planet.

In combat, you always want to put your Ankylon into the middle of the fight, as it has it guns evenly distributed across all sides of the titan, but the default ship behavior is to stop at the optimal firing range. Unlike other titans, you shouldn’t be afraid to fly into the midst of enemy, as it will be quite challenging for your opponent to kill the titan even if you expose yourself like that.

As mentioned above, you definitely should get the weapon modules on your titan for an extreme damage buff. Even though the Ankylon is less of a fleet killer than other titans, its offensive capabilities should not be neglected.

Furious Defense will be your core ability, while your second ability can be either Disruption Matrix or Shield Surge, depending on the goals you are trying to achieve. I personally prefer going for Disruption Matrix, as it consistently weakens the enemy fleet, while Shield Surge is more micro intensive, as you would want to use it only after enemy AOE attacks, to maximize its potential.

Finally, your ultimate allows you to charge on your enemies. With it, you can ignore not just 30 seconds worth of damage, but you can deny enemy AOE abilities, including such devastating ones as “Red Button” or “Missile Barrage,” which could have killed your entire fleet in a single cast. There are still limitations to this ability, as it cannot be spammed, but ones your titan reaches level 6, TEC Loyalists become an unstoppable force!

With this guide, you are ready to depart for your galactic conquest. Good luck, Admiral!