[Jtownsend]

Not to egregiously self-bump, but does anyone have early-ship design ideas for a medium tech start on 3 good planets? Or perhaps advice on which of the weapons lines to research or avoid. I'm not planning on developing missles, I'm unconvinced on drones (but am willing to be wrong on that) and I can't decide what to splurge on in the first turn with a 100k bonus. I could pick up Adv. Military Science and get training facilities, but then I'd be researching all the other early techs without my turn 1 bonus.

I'm also a touch unclear - why bother with ship training facilities if I could train "ghost" stacks with single ships in orbit, then merge these with my frontline fleets? Are there potential perils or drawbacks to this method?

As well, in a fairly amateur-level game with 3 starting systems and 8-10 players crammed in a medium galaxy, might it not be a good idea to turtle in my three systems if they are loaded with planets and have relatively defensible warp geography?

I don't really want to waste early fleets getting blown to smithereens when I'm not even sure of basic ship design principles. Meson blasters, or energy stream weapons, or DUC? I can see on the tree that, for example, energy stream weapons have a longer tech tree, but in the meantime are they adequate weapons?

Also, in trying to simulate a drone-ship vs. direct-fire ship battle with the simulator (we're playing simultaneous turns, obviously) I made a red and blue simulation with a fleet of ships with drone launchers, a fleet of weaponized (rather than suicidal) drones and an opposing fleet of beam-and-PDC vessels. The beam vessels one, but I couldn't get the opposing, putatively drone launching vessels to close along with their drones - whatever orders I gave their fleet, they fled into a corner of the battlefield and waited for certain death.

Now, I don't really want to bother fiddling with drones in my fleet, so I was just as glad to see the drone side lose. But it's hardly a fair test when the drone-launching ships didn't close to add their direct-fire firepower. Is this an oddity of orders, or was I simply putting orders in wrong?

My first turn is (presuming no laggards) due tommorow. At the moment I am planning to do standard (non-emergency) builds of the best colony ship I can make with 3x3350 production over two turns.