luckynick

it's basically a gamble between offfensive and defensive techs, not just armors and weapons. Consider anything that allow to punch more to be offensive tech, this include logistic because weaps add up in fleet, drives, because it allow first strike and obviously weapons techs. Defense is matter of hulls, that give more hit points per ships, and obviuously defense modules. at differents stages of the game, differents situations occ

i agree to stormcaller, first research drives then weapons, use the most efficient damage/size considering the amount of remaining space in your hull after putting some big drives, then last go for defenses tech. When researching defense, get medium hull then, smallest size 1 ratiung defense of each types (superior deflector, ecm3, and titanium3 if i remember correctly) so when you design your first med sized hull ships you can mount 1 modu

as always with dreadlord (same for apocalypse mission as for achille's one), just cheese them ! get good drives, beeline adv transports, let your colonies grow enough people to feed your transport, then design fast constructor with a bit range upgrade to be able to reach your targets, then design ultrafast transports with adv transport pod (1 or 2 depending of available people to launch), build some, colonize a bait world when ready with your por

To the problem regarding genocid planetery bombardment is the same for any straightforward game concept prohibition. You discover a tactic that allow cheesy victory (obviously unbalanced), you forbid it. In my opinion these are artificials game design limitations. And more important they have no justifications, as many pointed before, there are many many possibility that would have been nicely implemented to balance the impact of planet