What's Your Favorite Ship Type?

[Antonin]

Which type of ship do you consider to be your workhorse? I notice the AI tends to build *lots* and *lots* of either light cruisers or dreadnoughts.

Me, I rely on destroyers a lot. Relatively cheap to build and maintain in numbers large enough to have a military presence in a number of systems, big enough to do respectable damage, but not so valuable that losing some will cost you the war.

Frigates are also a lot of fun. A small flotilla of 2 destroyers supported by 5 or so frigates can be a fun instrument for long-distance raids.

I tend to have trouble building up a resource base large enough to support lots of huge ships, so the smaller ones tend to carry the load for me.

I like to use the Klingon ship set I downloaded from New Age Shipyards, so even the small ships look incredibly cool.

[Suicide Junkie]

Well, in regluar SE4 and P&N 1, I build BattleShips & Dreadnaughts, optimised for defense. To see what I mean, check out the Ubernaughts and the $100,000 "BlackHole Combat Fortress" (DN) over at my homepage's story reference.

In P&N v2, I haven't gotten too far up in techs, but I currently feel that Frigate is the optimum size for a frontline warship. I also use LCs because of the LargeMount weapons, but they are expensive to operate (2x the engines of a FG).
When I get the tech, I will surely try out a BlackHole style ship, since that type of design makes the increased engine costs pale in comparison to the internal armor costs.

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[Atrocities]

Battleships, and Baseships. I use them extensively. I then rely upon destroyers and light cruisers for the bulk of my fleets.

Cheep, and easily built with sufficant fire power and in greater numbers, these ships can kick arse.

[ZeroAdunn]

It depends:

Regular tech, I stich with battleships, I've got a battleship design that can take down almost any ship design you can throw at it, even a baseship, however if it goes against a missile ship it's pretty much screwed, but it will probably take down the enemy as well.

I also go with light cruisers when I use organic tech, they make great gunboats.

[Baron Munchausen]

Well, as a practical matter your 'favorite' will be the size that tends to win the most often. So, I bet most people will like battleships and dreadnoughts because the current design of SE favors larger ships. Only at the baseship level does size start to become a liability.

Personally, I'm partial to battlcruisers. They are large enough to pack some punch but still relatively maneuverable not too horribly expensive. It usually turns out though, that you have to build the battleships along with everyone else when the time comes.

[Phoenix-D]

Except of course that you can throw a great many small ships for each large ship.

This also has the effect of reducing the damage done when ship insurrections "happen".

Plus if the other race is using large ships with large (WMG, Null-Space) guns, smaller ships may stay alive longer. Take one of SJ's battlemoons. Mount 5 core-mount Null-Space projections and a multiplex tracking. Now, any ship that gets hit with 3k of INTERNAL damage is in serious trouble, yes? But it can only fire on 5 ships per 3 turns, and chances are you can field enough ships to overwhelm and destroy the moon.

Oh, and they make lovely suicide ships. Mount up enough boarding parties to take over a ship (probably max), knock out the target's shields, board. Chances are he'll have a SSD and both ships will blow, BUT if he's using a large, powerful ship the exhange will be more than worth it.

Phoenix-D

[Taqwus]

For me -- late-game, mostly Battleships, since they can attain the top speeds (DNs are 1 lower) due to rounding rules, and they've got enough space for stuff like a space yard or lots of cargo (for invasions), and still be able to be survivable with heavy shielding, QR, PDC et al -- I like having large, amorphous fleets that can split temporarily and still be quite viable. Certain speciality ships may be BC (My biowarfare ships don't need the additional space, for instance).

Standardizing on hull also enables refits between ship classes -- I'll often have a DN combat type, because even if I don't build that many of it (compared to BBs) I may CI-capture enemy DNs. So there'll may be missile ships, PPB ships, APB ships, tractor/NSP/repulsor ships, bombers, invaders... a variety pack, but mostly the same size.



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-- The thing that goes bump in the night

[Hotfoot]

Dreadnaughts and battleships usually make up my warfleets, and my support vessels are often battleships or battlecruisers, or at least whatever my highest ship tech is at the time. I don't usually make Dreadnaught-class support vessels, as I usually re-assign them to other various tasks.

However, I also make use of frigates quite often, in a role I had previously used escorts for (you heard me, escorts), the role of terror weapon. Using a combination of stealth armor, scattering armor, and ECM, the frigate has a total defense bonus of 110%. Add in ship training facilities (and fleet training facilities) and the end result is a ship that is almost impossible to hit for any but the most pious of races.

Now with two solar collectors, a solar sail, a master computer, and 6 quantum engines, there's not much that can be put on this ship, so I just slap on my highest level plague bomb. And it can hardly ever be hit, even by planetary defenses, and it only needs to hit a planet once to be effective, so even if weapons platforms or defensive fleets get in a few lucky shots, it still has a very good chance of infecting the planet below.

I can only imagine the look on an Emperor's face as he gets a report of a small group of frigates destroying his empire, and all those dreadnaughts and starbases can't do anything about it.

-Hotfoot
"Now, unleash the Terrors of the Shaderni."

[Phoenix-D]

"Add in ship training facilities (and fleet training facilities) and the end result is a ship that is almost impossible to hit for any but the most pious of races."

Talk about not having a prayer of hitting a ship..

Phoenix-D

[capnq]

My favorite is probably Cruisers. I usually need to research up to that size anyway, since it's the smallest hull that will hold a Shipyard and still have room for controls and engines.

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Cap'n Q

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the
human mind to correlate all of its contents. We live on a placid
island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was
not meant that we should go far. -- HP Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu"