- Do you focus on defense, or mostly on offense?

In terms of points, my fighter designs carry about half the offense in defense.

- Does it matter whether it's early in the game or late game?

Yes, you should be designing your own ships first thing. As soon as I have Ion drive and sensors (which I research right away), I design a colonizer, a constructor, and a survey ship. Not long after comes a fighter, then a transport. Of course, these designs get upgraded as I perfect new techs.

- Do you mix fleets with big dreadnoughts and little fighters?

I don't use fighter fleets at all in DA. I use fleets of similar hull fighters in DL and I don't mix them. My fighters are always built from the largest hull I have available. The smaller hulls get destroyed in battle, or traded, or just deleted.

- What's your ideal hull size?

Huge for fighters and cargo for everything else.

BTW, although I don't play that way, I believe a lot of people do well with larger numbers of smaller hull fighters. The main reason I like huge hull fighters is they carry the most firepower in a single package. For the gig/abun games I play, it makes managing the big numbers of ships easier. Also, in the big games, you often have to face down opponents with huge hulls. I've had to look down the barrels at ships with two or three hundred attack points before.

Early game you kinda have to focus on offense because the components are so large relative to your space available. That said, I still prefer 1 attack and 1 defense to 2 attack. As I begin ticking through the tech tree, I initially keep about a 2 to 1 offense to defense ratio until mid-game, when offense and defense on my ships tends to be more of a 1 to 1 ratio. Late game I have the luxury of tailoring my military to suit each opponent more so than in the earlier stages of the game (more ships + more money = "specialization, ho!"), so it depends entirely on which arc of my empire you look at. Some ships will be more defensively-minded, sometimes having up to 50% more defense than offense, while at other times I'll have only a token defense coupled with an enormous offense...something like ten times as much offense as defense...but that's pretty rare. I really do love defense, and my personal design motto has always been "never create a weapon that you couldn't survive if it were turned against you."



The instant the game loads I begin designing my own craft, and I never stop; designing a new hull whenever the need arises and upgrading when I can afford it. As for my design tendencies based on the era of the game...well, just keep reading.



Early on, yes. It's quite common to find small and medium sized hulls mixed in my fleets in the early parts of the game...when my logistics is limited. I never, ever, ever, for any reason or under any circumstance, design tiny-hulled ships. They are worthless in my eyes, though I'm sure somebody out there loves them. Mid- to late game my fleets become increasingly homogenous as I have the necessary logistics to mass larger numbers of bigger ships, though occasionally you'll still see a small- or medium-sized hull mixed in with the larger ships late game. Whatever it takes to get the maximum use out of each fleet (most efficient use of logistics points). Almost never, however, do I purposefully surround one or two large or huge ships with a swarm of lighter ones. Nothing wrong with the tactic, just not my style.



I prefer medium and large hulls. Tiny hulls, as I've mentioned, I find worthless, even for scouts. Small hulls are great early-on, but don't pack enough of a punch. I keep 'em around the entire game, upgrading them as I go along or building new ones, but relegate them to hunting down troop transports, freighters, constructors, and other weak ships. Huge hulls usually don't see much use from me. I build a few to serve as flagships in fleets of large-hulled ships, but they are generally outnumbered by my large hulls as much as 8 to 1, even as end-game approaches. With all that space, they just get too expensive and I only have the patience to wait so long for a ship to be built, meaning usually only one or maybe two of my planets meets my criteria for building them. Medium hulls I find perfect for the majority of the heavy fighting early- and mid-game, and as late-game dawns a quick redesign generally sees them re-purposed as fast-attack craft with a healthy number of engines, a decent defense, and good attack, making them perfect for hunting down pirates (on the rare occasion they show up) or enemy raiding parties, or for making hit-and-run attacks against enemy planets, getting in and out before the computer can bring its big fleets in to stop them. Large hulls, once I get them, are my main fighting force, even in end game. For my personal design style, they have the perfect amount of space available to be truly potent without breaking my bank.

Since we're not talking about TA ship design, there is really no good reason to mess around with smaller ship designs if you have better hull technology, except in rare exceptions. Specifically, the only place where a tiny hulled warship is any good is when they are combined with starbases, since the bonuses are applied individually to ships. The results in the most gain from starbase modules. This is obviously limited in utility, though.

For the most part, there are two big reasons to avoid smaller hulls:
1) Cost effectiveness. Larger hulls are ALWAYS most cost effective than their smaller counterparts, resulting in more weapons, defense, sensor/range bonuses, and HP for your dollar. You get proportionally more powerful ships out of the larger hulls.
2) Attrition. Smaller hulls get whittled down between and during battles. Even in the situation where a fleet with smaller vessels has more firepower combined than a fleet of larger ships, the advantage is quickly lost by the fact that your ships get blasted apart easier.

This is especially true in Dark Avatar, since a powerful warship can rip apart multiple targets in one shot. You might have more guns in the first round of combat, but by the second round you're extremely short handed! Even if you win, your fleet is smaller and will incur even greater losses in the next battle unless reinforced. Meanwhile, larger ships might not lose any ships in a victorious fight, meaning that they need to be replaced less often (or can be sent back for repairs to keep them going).

There might be a place for LARGE fleets of tiny fighters if you're playing as the Arceans with the super warrior ability, but only if you have enough firepower to win in the first round.

Hi!

Bigger hull is better. No hull's big enough.
Missiles.
No warship without at least one engine.
Defense-heavy ships, single or in small fleets until late game, when defenses can't match opponent's fleet attack. Then (but rare) all-attack huge hull.

Wiki has some articles there: Ship design strategies. Also check Ship combat there.

BR, Iztok

In my experience miniaturization is the key. With good miniaturization I build ships that have far more attack and defense than anything the AI can put out. I don't play on the highest difficulty but I find that with good miniaturization my medium hulls more than hold their own against large hulls. when I do get around to building large hulls then it's lights out. Also I tend to try and focus my weapons/defenses to take advantage of what the AI is using. Most of my ships have 2 types of weaponry.

Build smaller sizes because if you combine them into fleet there powerful. Plus dreadnought toke more logistics.

I have a use for tiny and small hulls. At some point I always design a colonizer and a constructor with a tiny or small hull for planets and resources next door. Why build a cargo hull when you only need to travel a couple moves. I've built tiny hull fighters before. Sometimes I use them to start a war.

I specialize my ships to counter what the AI is doing...and I normally make my ships larger as I go so I can have fewer ships to slow my game down, and so I can destroy AI fleets with one ship that I apropriately call "Star Destroyer" (100 atk, 60 def) that only takes about 4 turns to build on my most productive planet.

I do use tiny hulls...mostly for intercepting cargo hulls...like spore ships or troop transports.

I play mostly larger universes with very slow technology development (no technology victory) in my games, so that will give some insight into my choices.



I either specialise in interceptor groups, two ships with high speed and defence, that can take out multiple smaller or similar sized ships though I tend to lose one ship to larger cruiser fleets if they arrive too early and I haven't built up enough defence technology. With a high defence it's possible to make some ships almost invulnerable early in the game, if you scout your neighbours well and discover what technologies they're churning out!

Like one time, when the Dengrin attacked they had waves and waves of missile fighters but my high quality missile defence systems meant that my medium hull ships could operate stand alone, every one of my ships could take out multiple large fleets and sustain minimal (if any) damage. My ships were able to push back the swarm to their production planets, and wipe out their entire military losing only a single ship to some thirty fleets.

Or I go for swarms of small hulls that favour bite to survival equipment.

The AI Tends to adapt to whichever direction you go so it's not good to specialise too much in either direction. The AI excellent at churning out ships. Plus expensive ships are painful to replace, so always seek a happy medium.



It does, early in the game you'll mostly come across mass produced hulls that swarm you to death by sheer weight of numbers. Where as later you're facing a more balanced force with heavier ships that require some effort to counter... or the swarms get really painful and you're forced to mass produce some hulls to counter the constant waves of enemies and save as many of your expensive high technology ships as you can.



I never really use the Huge hulls... If I have kept up a substantial technology lead I'll stick with fleets of medium ships as they can counter most threats with powerful large hull ships dotted around to counter the enemies dreadnoughts and 'bad ass' fleets that my forces can't engage on their own. If I haven't then I've probably been forced to churn out millions of small hull ships to defend myself from swarmers.



Medium, it's what I end up using the most if you have high technology they really punch above their weight and they're cheaper than most. Large if you really need them but you'll need an economy that can handle them.

Hi!

Those quickly produced small ships still have to come to my planets. Without engines that takes quite some time. And if my latest-design-specially-tailored medium can't destroy them, I probably deserve to be destroyed, because I didn't act proactively by paying my attacker to fight someone else.


Ships can be bought too. If it's a mater of survival, no price's to high. Well, in RL...

BR, Iztok

Always fascinating, the different ways that people play. Most people here (including Iztok) have come out in favour of reasonably strong defense capabilities. I prefer to play with no defense at all - I put in engines to give me 4 parsec speed, sensors if necessary (but I tend to play medium galaxy size, so I don't always need them), and all remaining space into my best weapons. Usually missiles. Love that Psyonic thing.

It may be less efficient, I don't know, but it works for me and it is very satisfying especially when I'm playing as Yor and always go for first strike if I can.

This thread is a perfect illustration of how good this game is - the fact is, ALL of these strategies work for someone!

IIRC the targetting priority is set by attack/(current HP + defense). Whatever ship has the highest ratio will get hit first, leaving unarmed ships until last. Note that this is apparently no longer true for TA, fleet support modules alter the targetting priorities.