All early ships useful in 1.04?

Well, I still see zero reason for the battle cruiser as by the time you can build it there are usually battle axes defending and they can't touch them. And while the frigate is fair, I rarely build them unless deep in the middle of a fight or selling arms to those in a fight since the battle ship is so close to it in the research tree.

But, unlike pre-1.04, the defensive ships are worth building as they are contributing to your rating.

Is there a defensive counter to Dreads?

Sure. AMMs

With the research time for battleships and dreadnaughts being apparently lengthened in 1.04, I find it very difficult to survive without building a massive fleet of corvettes early on.

I agree on skipping the battle cruisers. For 50 more credits, you can build a frigate with twice as many hitpoins.

One ship I really find useful since in 1.04 is the battlehammer. Its a great defensive vessel to put on starbases or in system orbits.

Hmm - everyone's game is different. My strat here has changed completely in 1.04. (I play at crippling and maso, so your mileage may vary.)

I take an ATT bonues at the start, so I start with star fighters to get a nice military rating - best impact for the cost, I reckon. Having deterred them via my reputation, I now build frigates for the frigate rush.
(I've usually taken one or two races out before I do battleship, since it takes so long to research.)

So the only ones I build before battleship are: star fighters, frigates, freighters, transports and of course constructors.

And since I wrote that post above they tweaked values a bit more and I rethought my early game strategy a bit more. I've actually been finding that a rush to Turbo Phasers for a bunch of the quick building BCs is enough to take out anyone straggling in the tech tree on the smaller maps where it's reasonable to be sending slowpoke transports.

The longer time to BS, also give BHs a much better role than they've had in the game in long time for short range offensive strikes (I also see they gave it more HPs than a BA increasing its usefulness as a defensive ship).

After having more time with the latest 1.04 builds, the two iffiest ships in terms of cost and usefulness is the Star Fighter and the Frigate. SFs because I can get to Corvette tech by the time it matters if I'm upping my military graph and the vette's higher def makes a significant difference in its military rating value. Secondarily, a couple of vettes can take out defenders for early wars but SFs are extremely iffy for attacking anything other than another SF or transport.
Frigates because at the point that a medium weight attacker is really useful for invasion, the Frigate is still too far away on the tech tree. Still, when in the middle of a war of attrition, its higher HPs do make a difference over the easily popped BCs.

Er, I use battle cruisers quite often, well, the ones
the opponants build, I dont often build any.

I either do a corvette rush or wait to frigates and
sometimes even battleships.

I think the Star Fighters and Battle Hammers pretty darn useless. Battlecruisers are not bad for attack, since they are relatively cheap compared to Battleships, but the BattleAxe is still your main line of defense early on.

Sensor Drones are also pretty lame. A couple placed in a few strategic areas to watch the AI players is certainly warranted, but I never build them; I just use the ones I find in anomalies.

But the Star Hawk is clearly the most useless ship. By the time you could build them you'll have explored most of the anomalies anyway and you'll have plenty of Survey Ships in the field to explore the rest. Rangers are cool in the late game, especially if you find a few, but Star Hawks are just a waste. I've never even seen the AI build one.

Bruce

I build Battle Cruisers all the time. My last game I had an entire fleet of them, skipped Battleships and went to Dreds. The only thing a BC can't touch is a Dred. Might take 2 or three but you can knock out Battleships and Hammers with them along with Starbases that don't have tons of defense upgrades. Very usefull mid-game ship (at least for me). Plus it's very fast compared to a BS.

I usually have Battle Axes on every system with a Hammer only on Sol, maybe one other very key planet (like a PQ 32 or something) and any starbases I cannot afford to lose. Hammers also are good for trade ship defense in war zones.

All this on Large or Huge maps. I think the Hammer would be more usefull on smaller maps where it's offensive power can be used better despite it being slow. Distance isn't as far to the enemy and they make good counterstrike ships.

I usually build a few Star Fighers for a couple reasons:
1) Cheap, fast, and ups your military rating
2) Excellent ship for early game raids. More then once I've gone into a short early war simply to kill all the colony ships of someone so that they don't take key systems I want for myself. They won't do you much good for planetary invasion.

Covettes, rarely build them. Star Hawk, never build one.

Bruce,

I'm actually fooling around with Starhawks in a game. I'm playing tiny/rare and only have 3 planets (one of those formerly owned by the carinoids). My economy is awful so the Starhawks, with their zero cost to maintain might work nicely. I do have a lot of military bonuses, though, which beefs them up.

I haven't played in a couple of days, but if I can get the Torians to work with me, I think we can make short work of the rest of the galaxy.

I actually find frigates to be the most useful precapital ship in 1.04 Partially because I most often play on large or larger maps where distances require greater speed, frigates are pretty darn fast, pack a whollop, and have stats high enough to be influenced by Military Starbases. If you have access to a military starbase, it really magnifies the advantage of the bigger ships over the smaller.

In the game I'm playing now, I conquered two AI completely (about 30 stars total) using a force of frigates and transports, with a few axes for defense. One AI was wiped out and the second was down to its last planet before I built my first battle ship.

The extra delay to get to the capital ships actually make it kind of fun to play around with the lesser ships, rather than just rush to dreadnought.

A defender at a planet with the planet bonus can ward off surprise invasions and fares pretty well against ships smaller than a frigate.

Fighters are very useful, because they are fast and can intercept enemy transports and constructors at a distance. Since the AI rarely ever stacks ships with transports you can infiltrate their fleet and snipe their transports using fighters, and when their warships counter attack...so what fighters are cheap.

Scouts I actually find usefull in the early game as combat vessels. In the late game with dreadnoughts which can do everything well, recon isn't very important. But in the early game the ability to put a good defensive ship where its needed and to detect where the vulnerable enemy ships are to send your attack ships after without wasting movement is pretty important. I try to infiltrate scouts into an enemy fleet as my first move...then I can count squares to determine the ETA till a planet gets invaded or launch attacks to maximize damage. Scouts also make great bait. For whatever reason the AI prioritizes them as a target. I've saved a planet from invasion, by delaying the enemy warships by feeding them scouts which they were willing to reverse course in order to kill.

Corvettes I don't generally build because its a dead end tech path. Shields and phasars and the like have usefullness beyond the ship they produce, but corvette tech doesn't. I'd be tempted to make corvettes a prereq for frigates, but that probably limits the options too mucb.

Battle cruisers are ok, but I never use them unless I get stuck in a war in exactly that point where I need a ship now and frigates are too far away. Otherwise I skip them and go for the frigates. BCs are actually I think the great weakness of the AI. The AI builds FAR too many of these, and then counts them towards its own military ability. Not only does the shear number of them drain the economy (which on the tough levels doesn't matter because they're swimming in money anyway), but it gives the AI a false sense of security. They THINK they have a powerful military but if its mostly BCs its alot more fragile than the numbers suggest.

I don't know what the military formula is, but there should be 2 formulas.

1 for evaluating how secure you are and able to blow off enemy threats.

This formula should be (2xdefense + Attack)* Hitpoints * 1/2 Speed...per ship and then totaled.

The other should be for evaluating how able to project your power on to others you are and kick their ass aggressively.

This formula should be (2xAttack + Defense) * Hitpoints * 1/2 Speed...per ship and totaled.

Additionally, the repair rate should be factored in to the attack formula especially, because it determines how long you can keep pounding away with your main fleet before you have to stop and repair.

I also think that the formula should be calculated seperately for each sector and then the sectors organized into districts. The districts would be named after the enemy players. The anti Drengin district, the anti Yor district etc. A sector would be included in the calculation for a district if it is within 2 sectors (on a large map, scaled accordingly for others) of that enemies star systems.

This would allow the AI to act a little bit more intelligently on who it declares war on and who it pays tribute to. For instance, if the AI has a high military score, it might try to intimidate me into paying tribute. I refuse. The AI declares war...but the majority of its fleet is clear on the other side of the map a year+ away dealing with the Torians. By measuring specifically how much of its offensive capability is just in the sectors within striking distance of me, the AI would be better able to evaluate if its ready to declare war or not.

Similiarly if the Drengin challenged for tribute, the AI might be more willing to pay if the Anti Drengin District score was low, even if over all the strength was high (or vice versa).

Just a way to give the AI some more info to make decisions with.

If StarHawks are 0 maintenance, that might be something Frogboy should change. I noted the change when they made Escorts cost at least 1 mainteance; I assume this was becase people were building gobs of them and taking advantage of that fact. Seems to me the same could be done with StarHawks.

As exploration vessels, however, they are pretty lame.

Bruce