Ship classes in TA?

from GalCiv2 Forums
I'm curious as to how people are constructing their fleets given all the new options in TA, and what names they're using for different roles.

For me, I refer to my ship classes by the following:

Fighter - Tiny hull, without any hull boosts. I rarely use them, as they're fairly ineffective.
Medium Fighter - Tiny hulls, with hull boosts. Surprisingly effective for their size, as a single HP boost can nearly double their HP to heavy fighter level!

Heavy Fighter - Small hulls without hull boosts, mainly produced as a cheap fighting force.
Corvettes - Small hulls with HP boosting

Frigate - Unboosted medium hulls
Cruiser - Medium hulls with HP boosts, typically as expensive as battleships!

Command ship - Any ship with fleet enhancing modules on it that also sports a reasonable array of weapons, defenses, or HP boosts, yet not enough to turn it into a priority target. These are assigned one per fleet. Medium hull or higher.

I don't use any hull sizes past that, surprisingly... my games so far haven't gone long enough!

I've rarely has an opportunity to use the fleet boosting techs, unfortunately. They're too hard to research! I haven't experimented with putting engines on certain ship classes, either. I do like the stellar defense modules, though... on the larger hulls, there's absolutely no excuse not to use one if you have it, as they have no sizemod!

What has everyone else tried?
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Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
If there is an evil nation I am warring with, my favourite ship to make is a small hull with 3 of my highest engines and 1 lowly attack, with some sensors called the spore buster. By far my most important non-regular ship. I strew them around the border of my empire.
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I use a trick similar to the 'command ships' tihng you described, but I call them 'support ships'. The functionality of the two is probably similar, but I tend to use cargo hulls support ships as when it gets to the point where they're being shot at, they'd be dead meat anyway because they don't tend to have guns (why do they have to make Tulon weapon focus so frelling big anyway?). I like to have a ship with an ultimate warp bubble projector and tulon weapon focus in every fleet.
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Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I find myself often... almost exclusively using cargo hulls for early game now. Every race has at least one +hp module that is small but expensive... and some have as many as three (Terran Huge hulls with +800 hp, and that only takes up 1/3 of your slots. Oooooh yeah! Who cares that it costs you an extra 8k bc per ship??)

Given that you can have +HP modules, I sometimes never get around to researching medium fighters. Somewhere between +20 and +25 hp to your cargo hull is just fine... although they are expensive, once they are up you are dominating the game. I tend to call them "Frigates" in general. I also find that if I happen to build freighters they are now getting +hp modules, defense and guns. No need to waste resources guarding my trade routes when my traders themselves are mean.

Not that this strategy is necessarily cheap, its just fast and fairly powerful. 5 +5 hp modules are going to up your cargo hull cost by 250, and you haven't even put anything cool on it yet.

I also find I'm using less engine modules in general... at most one ion drive. There are so many places to find +speed boosts, especially if you turn tech trading on, that engines are just becoming an unnecessary and expensive waste of space.

In short, +hp modules are all the rage, while medium fighters and engine modules are falling out of favor...

~ Wyndstar
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
....Spore Buster.....
End of quote


That's a great idea!

I still stick with the old-school "bigger ship beats fleet of small ships" theory. I have to add some HP modules, but the new fleet techs have not hurt me that bad so far.
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I find myself often... almost exclusively using cargo hulls for early game now. Every race has at least one +hp module that is small but expensive... and some have as many as three (Terran Huge hulls with +800 hp, and that only takes up 1/3 of your slots. Oooooh yeah! Who cares that it costs you an extra 8k bc per ship??)

Given that you can have +HP modules, I sometimes never get around to researching medium fighters. Somewhere between +20 and +25 hp to your cargo hull is just fine... although they are expensive, once they are up you are dominating the game. I tend to call them "Frigates" in general. I also find that if I happen to build freighters they are now getting +hp modules, defense and guns. No need to waste resources guarding my trade routes when my traders themselves are mean.

Not that this strategy is necessarily cheap, its just fast and fairly powerful. 5 +5 hp modules are going to up your cargo hull cost by 250, and you haven't even put anything cool on it yet.

I also find I'm using less engine modules in general... at most one ion drive. There are so many places to find +speed boosts, especially if you turn tech trading on, that engines are just becoming an unnecessary and expensive waste of space.

In short, +hp modules are all the rage, while medium fighters and engine modules are falling out of favor...

~ Wyndstar
End of quote


Interesting. I'd considered seeing the effects of HP modules on cargo hulls, but never got around to it. I'll have to try that sometime!
Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I'm picky about naming things, actually.

I tend to name my ship classes by their purpose, then name.

Tiny=Fighter (FT)
Small=Frigate (FF)
Medium=Destroyer (DD)
Large=Cruiser (BC)
Huge=Battleship (BB)
Cargo=Utility (UV)

So, an attack frigate (has engines, defenses, offense) would be FA (Frigate Attack). A recon Destroyer (like the "flagship you get in the beginning) would be DDR3 Explorer. Or third generation recon destroyer.

I then add a number near the ship name, indicating a rough generation of the ship. I usually only upgrade ships when it is worth doing so, new miniturizatoin technology, new weapons researched, etc.

I tend only to specialize hulls smaller than Large. My Cruiser and Battleship class ships are almost always generalists, meaning they have engines (and are not defenders).

I tend to make a ship for deep recon, usually called the TR Hawkeye, which has all sensors, one cheap, small gun, and my best engine. These sit along hostile borders, and keep an eye on the enemy, especially looking for troop transports or spore ships.

These labels allow me to easily deterimine what a ship is capable of, just by seeing it's name.