[Mordante]

Regarding;

"crystalline armour and massive guns" - the problem is that the armour doesn't pump the shields until it is damaged (assuming it survives the damage) and since the massive phased polarons are doing 250+ the armour belt is mostly destroyed at the first volley rendering later shield augmentation mimimal. I have seen crystalline armour clad ships work well against low damage organic cannons but not against massive endgame damage.

"hit and runs with starbase smart bombs and plague warheads" - is there any way to effectively program a ship to hit the planet in combat-mode once and then withdraw for a continued strategic move? Since the ship only needs one pass it's survival chances would be greatly enhanced by getting out of close proximity fast once it's paylaod strikes.