Ok...

[Suicide Junkie]

What about maintenance reduction?

Every +1% you put in gives you a 5% discount on your ships.

[douglas]

I haven't play STM, so I can't give you much advice on it. One thing I do know is that it reduces the power of sensors and ECM so they aren't quite so important. For the stock game, though, try this:

Start a new game with high tech start. Design your favorite ship without combat sensors and ECM. Make a copy of that design with combat sensor 3, ECM 3, stealth armor 3, and scattering armor 3, taking off whatever you consider least important to make room. You can also try it without the armors. Go into the simulator and simulate a battle between equal numbers of the two designs. Observe which side wins and by how much. Maybe then you'll see what I mean.

Edit: For maximum effect, set the second design's strategy to Maximum Weapons Range. Leave the sensorless design at Optimal Firing Range, or even change it to Point Blank (max range would be suicidal for such a poorly equipped ship).

Edit2: You're not using missiles, are you? Missiles in the stock game are quite weak past the very early game, and are very easily countered by point defense cannons. They also are unaffected by sensors, so they would render this little experiment meaningless.

[douglas]

Quite sure. Let me put it this way, which would you rather have: you hit with 20% of your shots and 80% of enemy shots hit you; or you hit with 80% of your shots and 20% of enemy shots hit you? Sensors and ECM alone can easily make the difference between those two scenarios, and training on top of that could conceivably make it 99% and 1%, especially if you get stealth and scattering armor 3 for an extra 30% defense bonus.

[Col. Mustard]

Hmm... Well, it can't hurt to try I guess. (I still think your a bit loony... lol) Oh, and can you tell me the best race/advanced traits and stuff to getin the star trek mod?

[douglas]

Combat sensors and ECM are CRITICALLY IMPORTANT techs. NEVER neglect them (unless you have the talisman; then you can ignore sensors, but ECM is still a must-have). Training facilities aren't as important, but they're still very powerful.

[Fyron]

douglas said:
Combat sensors and ECM are CRITICALLY IMPORTANT techs. NEVER neglect them (unless you have the talisman; then you can ignore sensors, but ECM is still a must-have). Training facilities aren't as important, but they're still very powerful.

Wrong. Training facilities are just as critical. You can get a maximum of 60% from CS and ECM. You can get a maximum of 40% bonus to both from training facilities. If both races have CS III and ECM III, and only one race trained their ships and fleets, the fleets with the training will generally decimate the untrained enemy fleets, with nary a scratch (assuming other factors are relatively equal).

You can even use training to fill a gap in CS and ECM techs, assuming the enemy is not more advanced in both CS/ECM and training techs...

[douglas]

That's with neutral AI's and no AI bonus, right?