[jimbob]

By about the midpoint of the game I'm using the smaller ships mainly in special roles. Mine sweeper, sneaky mine layer, scout, PD ships occasionally (especially if they're older ships from the beginning of the game and have a lot of experience... keep em), rapid-deployment repair & supply ships, etc.

The medium sized ships are still useful in 'encounter' fleets. In Quasi Newtonian games the faster larger ships are just soooo expensive. So a relatively inexpensive fleet of very fast Cruisers and even Light Cruisers can be used to move to trouble spots quickly and tie up an opponent. This buys my big/slow ships some time to go and plug up points of entry/weak spots. My general philosophy is that you can get by with half as many ships (tonnage actually), if the ships are capable of getting to any location in your realm in 3 turns or less.

I'd imagine that with human players, a quick response force is often enough to convince them that you're just not a soft target, and should be left alone (the AI is simply not smart enough to read such warning signs).

[ August 09, 2002, 23:14: Message edited by: jimbob ]