[Saxon]

Balance is nice, specialization is better.

Generally, you know who you are fighting and can refit most of your ships to just the right form to fight them. Then, when you get them to surrender, you choose a new enemy and refit your ships to a new design suited to take them out. Further, you have improved your technology along the way and were going to do a refit anyway.

However, if you are facing a couple of wars with different enemy styles, specialization can get you killed very fast. So, my ship style changes depending on the political situation. One enemy, specialize ships to kill them. Several enemies, balanced ships.

However, I stay away from the swarm as you always lose some ships in each battle. That amounts to a loss of resources and many games boil down to an economic slugfest, so I hate to waste.