AI Designs battleships with no weapons

The AI doesn't build weaponless battleships but it will build ships to defend planets that have no weapons early on to prevent rush transports.

I understand the idea of weaponless defenders in the early game, but what I think the OP was wondering about is why the AI would put defenses on those ships. I have frequently wondered at that myself. I see it especially from the Drath (who always seem to research a few levels of armor and/or shields before they develop any weapons tech).

A 0/1 defender is just as dead as a 0/0 defender if an enemy ship shows up and starts shooting. It's more expensive too.

On a similar note, why in the world do all of the troop transports get one free defense in each category? Again, if there is any ship alive to shoot at an unarmed transport, it is eventually going to die, regardless of any defense it has. I suppose it might help for armed transports based off hulls other than the 1 HP cargo hull, but by the time I have tech enough to consider that, the ships I would likely run into would not be bothered by a measly 3 defense.

Anyway, I'm really happy with the game, and always impressed to see the developers out herding cats in the forums.

There are two problems here.

First, why is cheese tactic made official, by making AI adopt it?
Why should unarmed anythign prevent transports from doing invasion?

Second, AI doesn't really do this properly.

If you wanna use unarmed defender to prevent invasions, you build only ONE per planet, not a dozen, how some AI do.
Also you don't put shields or armor, like some AI do too.
That's just wasted mony.

Also, this behaviour is very common in early missions in DL campaign, making AI from time to time braindead and easy to conquer.
In the sandbox this "speciallity" is thing of theTerrans.

all you have to do to get around the 0 weapon defenders is put a weapon or two on transports and then armor them as high as you can

First, why is cheese tactic made official, by making AI adopt it? Why should unarmed anythign prevent transports from doing invasion?

That's how the game works. And, for the gameplay, it's good to be able to build cheap ships to keep people from rushing invasion.

If you wanna use unarmed defender to prevent invasions, you build only ONE per planet, not a dozen, how some AI do. Also you don't put shields or armor, like some AI do too. That's just wasted mony.

ok people read this it explains it.
There is a stragegy, its very easy to see if you open your eyes.
1) Why are there defences?
well... the computor likes to upgrade ships... cheaper to upgrade a ship with exsisting shields on it, and in most cases the computor can still build those ships in 1-3 turns.

2)Why do the build these ships / more then one?
they build them so they dont get invaded. They have more then one to use more of your turns when you attack, therefor the planet would still have some defenders at the end of your turn.

If there is just single attacker near AI planet, having 1 or 12 unarmed defenders has no difference. They will all die in turn or two, twice quickly if you have two ships. And for that cost AI could've made ship with the weapon and actually win.

Also, for the cost of putting 4 points of armor, AI could've put a weapon and have real defense. If it has industry to build ship easily with a defendese, then there is no single reason to have no weapon, weapons are cheaper then defenses.

Unarmed ships only make sense if you really need something cheap.
But if you have industry to make dozen of them, or to put defenses on them, then something is serisoult wrong.

Try campaign sometimes, when AI usese this too often, it really hurts gameplay and challenge.

all you have to do to get around the 0 weapon defenders is put a weapon or two on transports and then armor them as high as you can

Why armor them at all, one laser is enough to kill anything that has no weapons, regardless of its other statistics?
And it surely won't help against armed opponents due to that 1 hit point they have.

1. i think the AI did have weapons tech when it built those ships.
2. Upgrade costs arent that cheaper, and weapons are smaller then defenses, you get alot more "milage" from extra weapons then from extra defenses.
3. Those ships were NOT tiny ships... If the AI wanted to prevent invasion it should have used that kind of ship
4. An unarmed ship should not automatically prevent invasion, however, attempting to invade a planet with an unarmed ship when the planet has an unarmed ship in orbit should end with the ship in orbit ramming into the other ship, destroying them both. (thus saving billions of lives on the planet... heck the crew should be able to abandon ship anyways as they smash it into the other ship).
5. When I say battleships i mean that the AI is calling them battleships (or another name indicating combat)