I once was "gifted" two precursor ships in a single game.... guess I was pretty far behind in the arms race :/.

I parked 'em on a world that had just finished the Spin Control Center. It wasn't long before my sabre-rattling neighbors became my best friends. ^^

I got a precursor ranger for the first time yesterday (newbie here) and it had 90 hitpoints. Nice, but better for wiping out mines and planets with one or two small ships circling them than anything else at the time. My drengin enemy was throwing battleships and such at me by that point, and I needed something with ridiculous armor and/or hitpoints by then.

Luckily I have 4 Lucky Rangers, one with over 200 hitpoints from so many kills and a couple almost at 200. They get wiped out by Drengin battleships too, but I just reload and try again. It may not be kosher, but it gives me practice on what combos of stuff work. The ultimate sandbox testing.

Right now I have been designing and building what I call Mules, which are ships just designed to absorb some punishment with a lot of shields (now at Barrier II). I can put 9 shields on them if I put on a warp drive, a ABS battle stations module, and a disruptor III(got this stuff from trades/conquest). So my very precious Rangers have a chance of surviving Drengin fleets because of fire being distracted elsewhere. I've only gotten to medium hulls so far, and large hulls are eons away. Also have logistics to group together up to 25 logistics points worth of ships. Lucky Rangers are 10 each and the medium-hulled "mules" are 5.

Found that with two Lucky Rangers and a mule, I can barely survive a fleet of two battleships with one ranger left but near dead. Two mules and a Lucky Ranger dies completely. The precursor ranger is just an insta-loss so he gets sniper duty behind enemy lines. Now I'm off to see if I can do three mules and a Ranger.

Unfortunately, the trick of combining high defense ships with other ships to completely distract enemy fire isn't working for me yet. Even with an ABS system on the mules, which since it multiples firepower I thought would be hit until finished off. The Ranger(s) come under fire every time, and early.

That's interesting. The ones I've gotten so far have been quite fast, at least by my standards. I'm only up to warp drive though.

I hate it when the AI gets one of those Arnor battleships with like 40 defense in each category and about 200 beam, 50 missile, and 50 mass-driver attack (and 7 speed). That REALLY sucks.

As far as I can tell, they usually come around when your military is lagging behind significantly... and come more often based on luck.

Well, the "creativity" bonus is responsible for the finishing techs ahead of schedual (so if you selected or got that perk somewhere, it'll kick in every so often) but it's dependant on how much research you're doing whether it shows up at all. If you aren't researching, you don't get creativity bonuses.

As for the military/social connection to Rangers, I'm not so sure about that. I've never noticed it, myself... I'll keep an eye out for it, though!

I definitely keep my eye even more keenly on my surveyor now and switch to the research project with the longest build time when I see a spaceship graveyard coming up.

By the way, I got a Lucky Ranger the other day when doing very little military production. But that was in a game I won by doing next to zero military production all game, winning mostly through diplomacy and influence. The other game where I was building military like crazy in a prolonged scramble to fight back the Drengins and Thalans, I started popping out rangers like crazy.

Lotta coincidences look like they mean more than they do, but still ... the difference seemed pretty dramatic. Of course, it was only a couple games, so ...

Odd end to a serious threat. The Sissssssss did well early in thier conquest of planets close to thier home planet.No ship or fleet could stand against the power of the anorian ranger, but the ship became a victim of economics when the evil Sisssssss economy crashed and she was scraped as a cost saving measure. They are now involved in a three way war as former victoms line up to seek revenge. Lucky for me, and I had just found another {mini} ranger.