Suggest that you equip at least minimal defense and at least an offensive weapon type that the AI you are planning to attack has a weakness in.

Then build a handful of these ships, form fleets with them and take out the AI. Fleets allow you to pool ships that you think might not stand a chance as individuals, but as a fleet... they pack a deadly punch.

BBBBBBOOOOOOOO!!!!

In my last game I was smashing the brains out of the Dreadlord battleships. The trick is WEAPONS! Defensive technology is just plain to expensive. For just 1 armour I can equip 2 phasors. Those 2 phasors means my enemy dies 6x faster than if I had used the armour. And to be fair when you can generally fit 2 weapons to each one defensive slot why bother?

I tend to use the following tactic, arm up, fly fast, strike first. Basically beef your ships killing power, speed up with abilities, and make damn sure you hit first everytime, hence the speed! A single alpha strike can wipe out a DL Battleship without them ever getting a shot off and thats with phasors and medium hulls.

J.

If defences were actually worth anything I'd use them, but in my opinion they are a waste of code. Especially in the early game.

I like to make a heavy fighter with weapons only. Needs to be cheap. The whole point of it is, I can rush-build one quick if I see a transport coming. I try to get one in orbit around all worlds ASAP. Generally at this point I have no real enemies, and it may not be clear yet which armor to focus on b/c I won't know yet what the opposing AI is using for weapons.

As time goes on, I'll get better weapons and make a better weapons-only heavy fighter which I'll use as a true defender (in fleets of 3 or 4). By now I know what the AI's weapon strategy is so I'll start down a defense tech path.

Once I have the economy going I'll get bigger hulls and some more miniturization and build a corvette with a little bit of defense abilty.

From there, I just try to stay a step or two ahead of the competition. I don't go the conqueror route very often, but I am a strong proponent of being able to kick A if needed. Generally it makes the bad guys go pick on someone else, while I woo their teens into watching our lascivious music videos and lure thier adults into a state of complacency by nibbling away at their cultural values under the pretense of being 'socially tolerant'. Haha.

Interesting...I'm curious to hear more from people who are in favor of using armor

also, forget I said "early game" lets talk about small, medium, and large hulls...what are y'alls strategies for arming them?

I'd say defenses are crucial as soon as you're dealing with enemy hulls large enough that you can't one-shot them, or when you're dealing with fleets of smaller ships. (This assumes approximate technological parity between the sides, or an advantage on your side. The Dread Lords and similar situations of overwhelming firepower are a special case.)

The reason is, if you can't wipe out their ships almost immediately, they're going to get to shoot back. If you have no armor, even if they're using low-end weapons they're going to do a significant amount of damage to you.

On the other hand if you've got a bit of defense you can substantially reduce the damage taken on the return volley.

Also, unless you know your enemy is using nothing but one weapon type, multiple defensive types of moderate strength seem to be more effective than a single powerful defense of one type.

Here's the math and assumptions: Assume you can only mount three defensive things, and all three trees are up to, say, rating 3.

Option 1: Specialization.
If you're specialized, you'll have defense of 9 against one type of attack. Cool, right? Not if they're using some other attack. In that case, your defense is only sqrt(9) = 3. That kinda sucks.

Option 2: Total Diversification.
Now you have rating 3 defense in all three weapon categories. That means against any attack, your total defense is 3 + sqrt(3) + sqrt(3) = 6.46. That's defense either 6 or 7 across the board, depending on how the game rounds. Granted, that a third less than you'd get in one category if you specialized, but it's one third *more* in both the other categories, making it clearly superior if your enemy or enemies make any significant use of multiple weapon systems.

Option 3: Partial Diversification.
You could put two defensive items into one category and one into another. Against your "good" attack, that would give you a defense of 6 + sqrt(3) = 7.73. So, 7 or 8, depending on how the numbers are rounded. One or two more than option 2. Against an average attack, your defense would be 3 + sqrt(6) = 5.45. So, either 5 or 6, depending on how the game rounds. That's 1 less than option 3. Your worst category would be sqrt(6) + sqrt(3) = 4.18. Either 4 or 5, which would be two lower than option 2. This is a good option if your enemies focus primarily on one weapon, with some of another. It is slightly inferior to option 2, though, if your enemies are evenly balanced between two, or use all three weapons systems.

Option 2 is the safe strategy. It requires more research effort, but you end up fairly well prepared for anything. Option 3 is also fairly safe if you don't want to fool with too many research paths, or your enemies are somewhat (but not completely) focused in their weapon usage. Option 1 is only particularly good if you're fighting enemies focusing almost monomaniacally on one weapon type.