Impossible arcean ship!

Did you take military bases into account? They boost both attack and defense by up tp 49% per starbase.

it's also possible they took over someone else's hyperion shrinkers (though lately the AI isn't building them as often, it seems to me).

It is difficult to identify how good a ship CAN be. A few things that occur to me are:
a)What did they choose for alignment (maybe if they chose good they have bonus defence techs),
b)Do they have any mining starbases (bonuses to attack and defence),
c)Have they captured any other planets with miniturization bonus buildings on them?
d)Has one of their planets received a ship building quality affecting planartary event?
e)Is it in the area of effect of a military starbase?

You should be able to investigate what the ship has in terms of components by right clicking in diplomacy for instance. This should tell you what components and show you whether they've got lots more component than you thought or whether those components are performing better than they should.

Naturally, you can get a ship to 275 atk (no defense). But once you get up there, battles are decided by who shoots first.
Since starbases MUST have two spaces in between them, it seems that you may be able to have 16 starbases modifying that. Thats about 800% increase ... about 2475 atack (not counting extra attacks from starbase). Then, depending on how many military resources you have, it increases by about 50% per resource. But once attak gets that high, it doesn't really matter much anymore.

i thought military base bonuses didn't stack, only econ and influence. are you talking about military bases or mining bases on military resources? to my knowledge, the only limit on your military bonus due to mining those resources is related to the number of them on the map. and military support SBs, even if they do stack, don't provide a % bonus, only a flat numerical bonus. i'm confused.

I'd go with racial bonuses and planetary events (like the elusive starship quality ATT bonus). Also, don't forget anomalies! And I second the military resouces.

Maybe I'm reading the original post wrong, but I see a statement for a theoretical max on a ship, but not the stats on the ships in question. So I'm just curious, what are the stats for the ships you've come across which are impossible?

[Edit] Opps, now I saw it just as I was closing the window. Well, that answered my question. lol

And don't forget the effects of anomolies found and planetary bonuses from the ethical random events. I have seen 18% starship bonuses several times.

I once had a planet with the starship bonus second to pirates or something at 54%. Makes for big numbers eventually.

Miltary Resource Mines will also cause those numbers to increase.

That's almost certainly what it is - they're fully mining some military resources. Mine just two of them all the way to "resource sector" and it basically doubles your defense and attack strength.

Anomalies giving more bonuses.

Military combat bonuses.

Military resource.

100s of possibilities.