[jimbob]

OA is still extremely cheap, costs organics, and also results in faster build times compared to ships with shields. More importantly, they don't have to worry about shield-damaging weapons, which really cut even high-tech phased shields down to size. Also, if you compare the organic regen rate and cost to say, a shield regenerator in the standard game, it is a big advantage. Especially if you pile lots of OA on a large ship, and then give it a movement strategy such as Max Range, which in a fleet action will tend to have it retreat every other turn (or more if you use long-reload weapons), giving it time to heal while other ships fight in the front lines.

PvK, you have a lot of very good points there, but I tend to agree with the Baron on this one. Once you get into battles with more than 5 ships, a targeted ship tends to go Foof! before it ever gets a chance to retreat. If it does survive the round, it will not retreat because it will certainly not have a single engine left. This said, the build up of repair (two turns tops) will at least allow some lucky first round survivors to repair enough to retreat, and perhaps even repair enough to get off one Last shot.

With the new rules, I think I'd only put on organic armor because it isn't made of minerals, which would increase build time (as you've pointed out). Hardly worth picking the Organic trait for this, I'd rather go with Hardy Industrialists.