[arthurtuxedo]

The ship hulls are somewhat like GG mod, but also quite different. Their roles are more distinct from each other, whereas in GG mod the bigger ships are pretty much better across the board but take longer to build. The original impetus for the three ship sizes was actually Sword of the Stars, although the DJAS implementation doesn't resemble that too closely, either.

The three tier idea came mostly from Total Annihilation, but it's a fairly common idea. The tiers currently include weapons, armor, shields, engines, shipyards, and stellar manip components. I don't really forsee expanding them further than that, except maybe for racial weapons and armor.