Anybody else played with these yet? We almost finished one game with them yesterday(ran out of time so will finish it later). I think I found new fleet to play with 
So far noted that apart from explorers the vau seem to move with speed and grace of a tortoise. Unless of course you use the quantum sphere in which case they are at least insanely manouverable and explorer can get nice speed burst with it too.
Obviously their main strength seems to be the ridiculously powerful gun. Especially when boosted but the frigate and destroyer are pretty darn nasty even without it(it's intentional btw that the explorer doesn't have devastating trait right?). I like how it's not burnout though. Nice interaction where the shields helps against each shot. Certainly less incentive to go for swarm of smaller ships since 6AD from destroyer is more potent than 6AD from other sources.
Shield benefit seems mostly useful for the destroyer. Dunno how helpful the 3 shields would be for frigate nevermind explorer. 3 one use soaks aren't that hot but destroyer's hull 6 helps.
These buggers do seem to have trouble with fighter swarms though as the fighters main guns are mostly one shots they might not be that bad. Shielded fighters however are virtually invulnerable unless you use the meson guns against them...Kinda overkill and drains your firepower elsewhere.
Also as I said their speed and manouverability without quantum boost is pathetic. Especially destroyer ain't outrunning/chasing anything. Even WITH quantum boost it's average at best. Of course with R24" T gun isn't such an issue but does present problems if ANY fighters are incoming. Destroyer ain't outrunning even the donatello gunboats with their speed 8"...
Also while they look toughish with good hull scores etc the smaller ships don't have that much hull points and the ships are bloody expensive. If enemy can get good salvo's then these things die pretty fast.
Seems against them you really need to ensure you are presenting maximum amount of threats at once. Yesterday's game decados got bit burnt by having lots of points loaded up on fighters(which albeit did take out destroyer in one go after rest of fleet stripped the shields away for meson tubes...) which were crawling toward the vau(and with donatello's that's CRAWLING!). But his non-carriers tried to engage vau rightaway. Not good idea. Mantises were blown out quickly and only some ridiculously bad Vau dice rolling kept Tupok'Ta alive. Vau fleet can blow ship with one or two salvo's pretty easily so you need to be careful you don't LET Vau shoot just like that until you are ready yourself. He should have used some terrain etc to cover his main fleet until the gunboats would have been close to attack.
BTW. The boost shield SA is pretty decent vs Vau since every Vau ship needs to go through the extra shields! Luckily for Vau that's CQ8 test...As it is those shields helped the Tupok'Ta quite a lot.
So far noted that apart from explorers the vau seem to move with speed and grace of a tortoise. Unless of course you use the quantum sphere in which case they are at least insanely manouverable and explorer can get nice speed burst with it too.
Obviously their main strength seems to be the ridiculously powerful gun. Especially when boosted but the frigate and destroyer are pretty darn nasty even without it(it's intentional btw that the explorer doesn't have devastating trait right?). I like how it's not burnout though. Nice interaction where the shields helps against each shot. Certainly less incentive to go for swarm of smaller ships since 6AD from destroyer is more potent than 6AD from other sources.
Shield benefit seems mostly useful for the destroyer. Dunno how helpful the 3 shields would be for frigate nevermind explorer. 3 one use soaks aren't that hot but destroyer's hull 6 helps.
These buggers do seem to have trouble with fighter swarms though as the fighters main guns are mostly one shots they might not be that bad. Shielded fighters however are virtually invulnerable unless you use the meson guns against them...Kinda overkill and drains your firepower elsewhere.
Also as I said their speed and manouverability without quantum boost is pathetic. Especially destroyer ain't outrunning/chasing anything. Even WITH quantum boost it's average at best. Of course with R24" T gun isn't such an issue but does present problems if ANY fighters are incoming. Destroyer ain't outrunning even the donatello gunboats with their speed 8"...
Also while they look toughish with good hull scores etc the smaller ships don't have that much hull points and the ships are bloody expensive. If enemy can get good salvo's then these things die pretty fast.
Seems against them you really need to ensure you are presenting maximum amount of threats at once. Yesterday's game decados got bit burnt by having lots of points loaded up on fighters(which albeit did take out destroyer in one go after rest of fleet stripped the shields away for meson tubes...) which were crawling toward the vau(and with donatello's that's CRAWLING!). But his non-carriers tried to engage vau rightaway. Not good idea. Mantises were blown out quickly and only some ridiculously bad Vau dice rolling kept Tupok'Ta alive. Vau fleet can blow ship with one or two salvo's pretty easily so you need to be careful you don't LET Vau shoot just like that until you are ready yourself. He should have used some terrain etc to cover his main fleet until the gunboats would have been close to attack.
BTW. The boost shield SA is pretty decent vs Vau since every Vau ship needs to go through the extra shields! Luckily for Vau that's CQ8 test...As it is those shields helped the Tupok'Ta quite a lot.
