[Dralasite]

- I don't find myself using all the different ship sizes. It seems like there are so many. Maybe even unnecessary. Any tips on effectively using all the ship sizes?

I'd like to hear this as well. I often do not use all the sizes/types as well. Here is what I mostly do, at least for early games:

Use the "normal" ship sizes like corvette, etc. to try to play with numbers so that I can get a closer match to a multiple of the production rates of my ship yards.

Fast transports, etc. I use extensively, as transports and scouts.

I havn't don't much asteroid mining, the one time I tried to use some of the prospecting ships my defenses weren't as good as I thought and I they all got slaughtered

I do replace my colony ships with ark ships but by then I'm making warships vs. colonizers so the maint. savings doesn't seem all that helpful.