Yeah, I've thought about doing that with colony ships...
Protip: You can put troop modules on colony ships along with your colony modules to hold more colonists. You'll have difficulty filling them every turn, even if you're Breeder, but until this bug gets fixed, it's a way around the 250M pop per module that began in late DA.
I never do cargo hull surveys anymore-all mine are smalls, so they benefit from the hp bonuses and can be turned into weapon ships later. However, TA's hp modules make it a different animal.
At some point I was going to go back and re-examine Roxlimn's stance on defenses vs. attacks, as it pertains to that type of game, but I was sort of waiting for a response to my last post first.
I could easily make the case that good defenses aren't worthwhile by using telepathic defense as an example, but that's almost cheating. On the other hand, Roxlimn could easily make the case that good defenses are for all intents and purposes the only thing one needs just by pointing to arnorian battle armor. The two options remaining are dynamic shields, which is quite good, and subspace rebounder, which is about average with normal defenses, except it's a shield, and shields are quite frankly shitty.
So I'm unsure what would be the best comparison here. I suppose it comes down to good being superior if you face mass drivers, worthwhile if you face beams, and useless if you face missiles, but it's not that simple, either, as we've failed to account for attack values.
If we continue to assume relatively similar tech cost, our medium in the previous post, outlined in a number of different manners, assisted by two attack ships, would probably only run into 3x9 attack small missile ships or 4x6 attack tiny small missile ships (harpoon II by the way), for 27 or 24 attack against 31 defense. (For the record, this is against the sub-par telepathic defense.)
With particle beam IIIs, they can have 3x10 attack smalls or 4x6 attack tinies for 30 or 24 attack against 34 defense.
With mass drivers, there's no threat. Even if we assume pulse cannons II, which is a tech above what I've been taking for granted, we're looking at 3x6 attack smalls or 4x4 attack tinies for 18 or 16 attack versus (ERROR: no appropriate low level good defense tech found) 23 defense if using superior duranthium or an unbelievable 59 defense if using arnorian battle armor.
A problem arises when logistics or miniaturization increases, but Roxlimn has already stated that suiciding all-attack ships becomes the better idea in that instance, so while that is a refutation of defense in general, it does not apply to our original argument.
In a best case scenario (or worst case, if you prefer), having gone all the way to arnorian battle armor, the research spent on defense would only be able to raise us to about plasma weapons I, from laser V. It even leaves us a little bit short of getting to psionic missile, as harpoon III would not quite be complete.
All-attack would seem to be worthwhile in Roxlimn's games only when the following conditions are met:
-Psionic missile is used, rather than beam or shredder.
-All enemy ships can be destroyed first round. While your targets are guaranteed to get a hit in, they're only guaranteed to get one hit in.
-Because of the above, 40% miniaturization is preferred. This is enough to place an hp module on a small with 3 psionic missiles, bringing it to 18 attack and 13 hp. Alternatively, a medium with 5 missiles and 4 modules will sit at 30 attack and 40 hp.
-For DA, mediums are preferred, as they have more hp. Further, they have double the space of a small at 1 2/3 the logistics cost, or 3x the space of a tiny at 2.5x the logistics cost. They're also less susceptible to the, oops, 5 space left, phenomenon. At 25% miniaturization you can fit 5 while at 40% you can fit 6, for 30 and 36 attack respectively. For DA, you're probably going to need to get your logistics to enhanced (this is a good idea for TA as well) so that you can fleet three of them.
Even with most or all of the above conditions met, you're probably going to be looking at marginally stronger AI ships, so you will wind up losing a ship here and there. You can lose less by, obviously, only sending those ships into battle that are at full or close to full hp. Against the average AI ships Roxlimn appears to see, even a fleet of two mediums should be able to handle a full fleet.
But in general you simply don't have enough research done before war breaks out to justify evil weapons, even in TA and even only the missile one, which is not as true for the good defenses, because the vast majority of them are far cheaper. Dynamic shields comes close to psionic missile's TA cost, but that's about it.
