Sentinel

A light defensive ship. Slow, heavy, hard to push through.

What it does

Where the Marauder is built to put damage onto someone else, the Sentinel is built to take it. It does almost nothing offensively, but every point of damage it absorbs is damage that didn't land on your other ships or your structures.

It's the slowest hull in the Fleet. Palladium-heavy in construction, so a Sentinel-heavy fleet leans on your Palladium Extractor.

Why it matters

The Sentinel is the heaviest defender in the game. Its defense stat (10) does two jobs at once: when an attacker shoots at it, defense determines how hard it is to kill; when you shoot back, defense is also the Sentinel's strike strength. A wall of Sentinels both refuses to die and fires back hard.

Attackers also see Sentinels in your fleet readout when they send a Probe. A defended system reads differently than an empty one. Sometimes the presence alone is enough to redirect an incoming fleet.

Strategy

Pre-position them. A Sentinel is slow, it doesn't sprint to the front. Park them at the systems you expect to need them, well before the threat arrives.

Stack Sentinels at chokepoints rather than spreading them. The combat formula rewards concentration, every additional Sentinel adds another shooter rolling against every incoming ship, and they all take less damage from a given incoming fleet than they would if you spread them across two systems.

Like the Marauder, the Sentinel is locked until your Shipyard is several levels in.