[Phoenix-D]

Thing is, even aggressiveness and defensiveness bonuses have their limits. Defensiveness won't help you if your opponent comes charging in with Organic Armor III ramming ships! Nor against a talisman. It's a big advantage, but not insurmountable. If you can put enough ships into space (by way of increased happyness and shipyard production) that advantage can be negated. Far side Warp-point defenses are also useful in that regard, since it's much easier to hit at close range.

Beserkers gives you power, but you pay for it. -5 production. -5 research. -5 intel. -5 trade. -2 shipyard (ow).

Research is important; always will be. And since PD is so extremely accurate and powerful in the umodded game, you need combat sensors. That's a given.

Ditto for agressiveness/defensiveness. Useful and probably a bit overpowered for the cost, but not essential.

Scenerio: down to two empires now, both reasonably high tech. You've dumped large amounts of points into Defensiveness, and mount stealth/scattering/ECM. Your opponent has the Religious Talisman. Poof, no advantage.

Scenerio: All the tech is equal, your ships have a to-hit advantage because you went for defensiveness. Your opponent counters by researching Wave Motion Guns (they get a + to hit). You could do the same, but you're already hitting him reliably anyway..

Phoenix-D