THE PERFECT SHIP

That's nothing. I once had a baseship in SE IV that could take on 6 enemy dreadnoughts and survive.

Personally, I prefer specializing my ships in SEV. I build a small, fast chase ship (usually a frigate or destroyer) and build a slow and ungainly but crazily powerful dreadnought, battleship, or baseship.

But, that's just my $.02

Meson cannons are the best, except for the Telekinetic Force Projectors. I love those babies

What about a solar sail to give you that extra point of movement? Also you have no point defense and punny range of 9, you will be dog meat for my missile carriers (which are faster because of their solar sail, oh and the extra point of movement from racial traits).

Personnaly I can't be bothered with cloacking, it just seems too much like cheating to me at the moment because the AI doesn't stand a chance against it.
I tend to build my fleets of a mix of light crusiers and crusiers (LCs turn a fair bit quicker which makes them better skirmish ships). The only thing I use larger hulls for at the moment is space docks and portable asteroid miners.

I'm using a starbase that can house multiple warp opening/closing components and a fleet of the fastest available light cruisers to disintegrate stars. With these, I boomed the core systems of my most hated enemies within 1 turn without them noticing a thing or giving them a chance to counterattack.

And the fun it that was....?

Sounds like a good config, but could it stand up to my Quantum torpedo Super Frigates set to Max Range?

Hmmmmmmm.

Anything is good against the AI. You actually can't lose to the AI. (In space battles, at least. they can get you with combined intel, but thats about the only way).

As for players, anyone who sees that ship will just throw missiles at it and run away. You're slower without Solar Sail and have no point defence. Did you consider what happens if you put an equal cost of antiship fighters against it?

or for that matter my Strike frigates with there heavy mount Tachyon weapons which would rip it to shreds as the weapons skip shields and you have no armour so they would be doing damage straight to internals and you don’t want any top level beam weapon in and amongst your internal structure, especially as my ships are faster than yours and out range them. Return fire would have to hit me and I will match your Ecm and then punch its way through my ships shields and armour, which will regenerate whilst your ship is being gutted by my fire, shield regenerators and repair bays being responsible for the regeneration.

Cloaking would be useless as they all have top of the range Tachyon sensors. Indeed my systems are thick with overlapping sensor spheres and any cloaked ship is toast. The AI is not a challenge in stock but that ship is no better than an AI one when its up against a human player it wont do any better than AI ships against it

(understand this is not personal just me getting into character a bit much )

I laugh at your puny ships

I would just build a couple of carriers (heavy if they are available) fill em with heavy fighters armed to the teeth with level 100 weapons, no need to use shields or armour, just a top spec ecm and as many guns as I can squeeze on keeping them above speed 20.

Your whatever ship might be able to take out a couple (maybe a handfull if it has PD as well) but my swarms of around a hundred fighters wouldn't even notice the losses.

Having a space yard on my carriers will allow them to build new fighters as and when required, add in emergancy ord and supply capsules that will be repaired every turn by the yard and nothing will stop me..... Well apart from mine fields, but my carriers could build their own mine sweeper frigates... so haaaa!! again

But my Daddy's Tired of Beatin Up your Daddy!

JosEPh

"Old and slow.....Watch out!"

Personally i dont use just one class of ships, i preffer to work in battle lines with support units (Missile Carriers, Fighter Carrier, Ships of the Line, Escorts, and cloaked scouts)
as i'm playing against the AI at the moment i tend to rip through them with only drone and fighter casualties (there was one time though when they swarmed a lone accidently uncloaked scout... but that was it)
I doubt there are any perfect designs out there what works against one person will probably be beaten by someone else

BTW the Ur-Quan rock (i'd surrender to them) meehee

Yeah the best ship is one loaded up as a missile boat. A PD ship however will be able to bide it's time against it and eventually win out. Said PD ship will be wasted by a vessel focusing on direct fire weapons. What is the moral of the story? As submitted by blackhammer NO ship is truly perfect without a stable, well rounded fleet supporting it.

What is the most humane way to kill a crab? In the fridge or with Michael Bolton music?

Can you clue me in as how to make a PD Ship that can stand up to a Carrier? I thought I had accomplished it once with a Drone carrier loaded with point defense (on drones) and 1 capital missile (on each drone. The idea was the drones ran into the fighters, destroyed the fighters, then the survivors rushed the carrier before it could flee.

Unfortunately, I later could not replicate those results when I messed around with a new game where everyone had all the techs. With the "all tech" option I had 20 cruisers loaded to the gills with PD Meson Blasters and they were all destroyed by one Carrier. Perhaps I just make better carriers then I am PD ships but yeesh 20 to 1 is a joke. This of course is in vanilla 1.2.. Haven't tried PD ships versus carriers in 1.01 Balance Mod as I just started using it.

how about high level drones that kamikazee into capital ships. for small investiment you have the perfect anti ship weapon that can be built on world w/o Space yards.

Yes, a carrier one on one against any other ship is a sure win.

In my experience a well outfitted battle fleet of a dozen ships or more will slaughter just about any group of fighters you can throw at 'em.

I like to use oversized destroyer hulls for speedy ships, and cruisers for my battle fleet.

Of course if your opponent has heavy weapons, you need to upgrade.

Lately, I have been using frigates for repair ships. I used to use bigger ships for that (and with BM many say that freighters are the best tenders).

One of the reasons I got this game was to experiment with spacecraft design and tactics. I learend a bit from SEIV and then with the added slots and radically different structure requirements of SEV and huge tech tress, things changed a bit.

There is no ultimate ship. To design better ships, I'd routinely create what I saw as the ultimate base with emissive armor, shields and ridiculous weapons and accuracy upgrades. Then I'd design a Frigate that could destroy it. I learned that by designing counters to each of the stations abilities that I could create a frigate (to be used in a small group) that could deal with the station.

One of the things you learn is that speed is very important. A dreadnought is at a huge disadvantage to a cruiser in station combat because it takes so long to get into range of the station's guns, and in high tech games, the battle ends without a shot fired.

The best designs are one that were designed with a given purpose in mind. Say you need a ship that can go to one hotspot or another quickly? If cost isn't a problem, making a cruiser with a repair bay and a warp point opener (prefably high level) has the ability to reach nearly anywhere in the galaxy in 1 or 2 turns.

Or how about a fighter that is better at ground combat than space combat? A dreadnought that uses drones to disable faster prey? A defensive as opposed to offensive carrier? A colony ship that can capture unprotected colonies as well as colonize? An anti-point defense frigate?

"Light travels faster than sound, that's why people seem bright until you hear them."

Anti PD? How?

The best ship is the one that doesn't blow up....

heavy armoured ship with lots of seekers, probably torpedoes as even in stock they are less bulky than Misiles set up to use an optimum range tactic. Not sure how well it would work but thats how I would do it if I wanted to

"A colony ship that can capture unprotected colonies as well as colonize?"

Ooh. Nice. Why'd I never think of that?

@Tverdoon Cargo holds don't care what you put them, population or an invasion force, oh and don't forget the anti-population weapons

@Alpedar PD Ships tend to be poorly armed which means you can abuse this by closing on them and getting them in one shot. My favorite trick is to design a ship with a tractor beam. The beam fires and pulls the ship in, then your accuracy bonuses go up huge. You then fire off your anti-engine and weapon weapons. 2 seconds later they have a worthless ship that is now easy pickings for the very ships it was designed to destroy!

Here's a couple other thoughtful designs if you are up for a challenge: A drone that disables ships for the larger (and slower) ships to finish off. A weapon platform that focuses on keeping potential invaders away as opposed to destroying them. A cloaked ship that lays mines as it sweeps enemy mines (think of the players going "oh my mine field" as they ram it")

"Light travels faster than sound, that's why people seem bright until you hear them."

Just using carriers is good enough for a slaughter. I stopped using them as the AI can't defend against it, lol.

I've been using crystaline tech and I find loading up on shard cannons awesome for a good shooting ship.

That and crystaline torpedos for a missile ship.... but I play balance mod so its different.

On my battle ships, since i've been using crystal technology, I usually have lots of shard cannons and those energy beams. Only on the largest cruisers do I put some type of seeker as well. I like having lots of PD on them over more missiles so they can stand on their own. If needed.

One thing I want to use that i havn't is drone carriers.

how good are repluser weapons??

High level repulsors are funny, and are effective at getting rid, for some time, of any ship that you find is too dangerous. But it tend to launch them very far, very fast, so it will take a while to get to them. Before the 1.25, i could easily lauch ennemy ships so far that my computer crashed because the distance was too great. Now im not too sure, didnt play with it often, but i remember seeing a planet fly to the edge of the map...

When i do use repulsors, i place them on my "motherships" and its escorts so any ship that get close to my MS wil get thown away.

Without ammo, nice guns are just sophisticated clubs.

It can throw ships out of combat

That's a cheesy defense strat there! (tactical combat only) Drag the opposing fleet at the edge of the combat map and use even low level repulsors to kick them out! lol!

Another cheesy defense strat for unarmed ships: Before end of turn, place your unarmed ships close to border of combat zone, so even fastest ships cannot catch you.

THAT is cheasy.

I have found that the best and most powerful weapons in the game are drones. Why do I say this because I set 8 base ships built for point defence and they were decimated by my drones and only 30 drone's at that.

DRONES ARE BEST.

"Max range" ordered ships with long range capital ship weapons and high speed are powerful, but foiled by fighters because they can be easily caught by them.

Under the default balance, fighters beat everything except for a ship bristling with meson turrets. Just build a carrier, fill it with powerful fighters, set orders to "don't get hurt", and watch everything fall before you. Fighters benefit from an extreme maintenance cost advantage that make the fighter based empire neigh unbeatable.

You'll note I said "except for a ship bristling with meson turrets". I've found fighters can be foiled by a ship with every spare kT filled with those. Of course, if all they've got are point defense weapons then they're easy fodder for a ship.

It's totally Rock (Fighters) Paper (Point Defenders) Scissors (Ship Combatants).

Drones are powerful, but a waste versus fighters, which cost ten times less. If I lose 30 fighters because 30 drones hit them, it's a significant victory for me. Set at "max range" or "fighter" tactic, the drone may never even catch the fighter, though it might get the carrier.

The perfect ship for me is a large ship with alot of shields protection weapons and a wormhole generator, destroyer for a fast escape. it goes in nothing comes out but the ship

There is no perfect ship. I do think the Cruiser is the best of speed and power, but in large fleet battles a fleet of cruisers is at a disadvantage against a fleet of good dreadnaughts. Some like to go to the base ships as they have the most room to pack goodies in, but then they are rather slow.

I think a good blend of mission specific ships works best. I build dreadnaughts and battlecruisers to supplement my cruisers with more firepower for large fleet battles. I like a recon frigate with cloaking to sneak into systems and then cause mayhem to small unguarded colonies.

I think ship design all depends on what you want a ship to do.
Omnius

You are of course quite correct, good ship design is about having a mission in mind, and balancing that ship to its purpose, then ensuring its only put in harms way when required to meet its design function. The original ballecrusiers of World War One were designed to out run waht could harm them or outgun what could not, a basic flaw and irreconcilable. Only once did battlecruisers ever do what they were designed for at the Falklands in 1914 when Graf Spee's Asia Squadron was destroyed by the Royal Navy's Battlecruisers.

Airraft carriers may be a good design, but they are just a floating cargo ship for weapons and aircraft alone, it takes their support group to make them viable. There is no perfect ship. Only a compromise of functions that meet a purpose whose definition is out of date by the time its built.

Good point

Ever played starlancer? It sumerizes the fighter empire prefectly: the only reason ya got your Carriers is to refuel the little fighters, Because in star lancer figheters are GOD. Sure they cant beat the big ships, but the big ships are all cariers and have no chance of hitting a fighter: Its not that fighters are uber: its just that there arent any Uber Defence used against them. course if you shoot up the enemy carrier then the fighters are screwed

You had baseships that actually worked?

Whenever I made one and pitted it against an enemy ship (even mine in the simulator) that had no missiles and went for an assault the baseship was still destroyed by 3 ships and up.

I like specialising to some extent. In SEIV I the largest combat ship was a dreadnaught which usually had about 20-30% pd and to weapons whith a fleet of about 5 faster ships to every one of those. All combat ships had sails no matter what their task. The faster ships were divided about 35% almost pure pd ships with the rest taking the role as hunter-killer strikes, usually with a lot more armour and shielding compared to the pd ships.

I'd agree with you about the tk projectors. They were/are fearsome things...

That being said I would say the best ship are the warp open/close ships due to them baing able to make each one of your, say, 10 star systems being linked to the other 10, preventing the enemy from reaching your systems and allowing you to choose where and when to strike with impunity and also closing the point as soon as the fleet goes through, stopping the enemy from building a warp close prevention facility from being unheld and built in one turn. Then you get to the problem that would occur if the enemy caused all of the other systems from having warp points opened.

Thats why I would make a point to always use phased shields, preferably with some stealth shielding or emissive shielding.

Now for SEV I am unsure as to whether the shields and weapons use SEIV type figures, e.g: Phased shields end up getting more shield amounts than standard shields and null space weapons use too much space and have too short a range to be considered viable replacements.

I tend to almost always have cloaks on my largest ships, just in case there is an area with no sensors.

Which is why you play to the strength of the fighter: Speed.

You essentially use the fighter squad to evade the pd ships and use them on your slower ship-ship fighter vessels and cargo ships. If the enemy then has to make all of the slower ships travel at the same speed as your cargo ships then you have a better strategic advantage as the fleet can only travel as fast as the slowest

You can also use the fighters as leftovers when the enemy conquers your planets in that system, usually by destroying any pd platforms and then just bombing your planets. Even if you cause the enemy to have to place ships to protect those planets they will have to sacrifice the power of their main attacking fleet to do so and if not then they have placed so little in terms of defense that you can still bomb the planets with little casualties.

Even if they try to attack the fighters the only way to catch you would to use fighter of their own, which would either have the same speed of your own, still allowing retreat or would detract from the anti fighter portions of the main attacking fleet.

This can also be supported by using the carrier merely as a cargo ship in non combat space. You use you spaceyard planets to churn out anti-ship vessels whilst using the non spaceyard planets to produce fighters, launch the fighters to the warp point and let the carrier undeploy, collect then redeploy at the system they are needed.

Base Spaceyards, whilst having horrible production are extremely useful as extra construction. The amount of space saved on planets (usually for resource production) usually outweighs the maintenance cost of the bases themselves. By having, say, 10 SY bases on your primary ship producing planet you can use the planet to churn out larger ship-ship vessels whilst using the spaceyard to produce the cheaper, more numerous, tactical ships. This can quite easily support a major war effort, especially when you can slow down your opponents fleets.

ColonialAdmiral wrote:

Ever played starlancer? It sumerizes the fighter empire prefectly: the only reason ya got your Carriers is to refuel the little fighters, Because in star lancer figheters are GOD. Sure they cant beat the big ships, but the big ships are all cariers and have no chance of hitting a fighter: Its not that fighters are uber: its just that there arent any Uber Defence used against them. course if you shoot up the enemy carrier then the fighters are screwed

I'd prefer a 'shotgun' type of weapon to be made, it would allow the larger ships to have a better chance of hitting them, just via the amount of debris pushed into space. That could be made just by giving it a huge +to hit whilst decreasing the amount of time it takes to refire (to simulate the multiple ships it could hit).

That being said, carriers are a major advantage. There is a reason that major powers here on earth try to have carriers.

I'd have to say the fridge; At least the fridge numbs the crab's senses whilst it kills you.

Phased shields only stop Phased Poleron Beams, they don't stop any other shield-skipping weapon.

Isn't the only other shield skipping weapon the null space weapons?

I seem to still be using my SEIV tech senses.

I just watch Star Trek. I'm serious. All my ships/strategies come from Star Trek.

The actual perfect ship is a lvl 1 frigate full of mountain dew. Thats all i use. For propulsion you can either use ion engines or pull it with horses. personally i prefer the horses, ion engines have a funny smell.

The best ship is a ship which skips the enemies defenses and drops troops on his unguarded planet ... other than that - carriers

Mountain dew? That should be put under a new chemical weapons tech!

Then you and your people are doomed... No, hang on... the Feds'll have a good idea!

I hope you enjoy this link!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKQ7sB35jNc&mode=related&search=

I did enjoy that link.
Its great because it's true. Sorry trekies.....

harsh

Until you feed the horses some beefarino or maybe enhance their fiber diet with chili. Might be a dead heat with that bit of stink to beat.

"Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been and will always long to return." ~Leonardo DaVinci

What can I say?...I like star trek...I spent many hours of my childhood watching it... if you are a si-fi fan you've just got to see it, but don't fall for all the pseudoscience they vomit out...kind of like the song points out in my last post.

"bounce a graviton particle beam off the main deflector dish thats the way we do it lad, we're making s**t up as we wish"

Edit: As for where to start...well try the original series...if not the next gen maybe...I'd avoid deep space nine...

Films...I'd avoid the 1st one(the name is lost to me now)...its a nice idea but slow and boring. The second film was good...as for the rest my memory is failing me...better a real trek fan comments on the rest.

Excuse me? misso ut DS9? thats the best one, with an actual plot that runs through the whole show, from season 1 to season 7 or 9 or whenever they finished. Actual Character development, etc. DS9 is by far the best one!

-------------------------------------------------------------
I'm not suffering from insanity, i'm enjoying every minute of it!

Do no interfere in the affairs of Dragons, because you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup!

Blue temp...there you go another opinion...DS9 is the best(something about being stuck on a spacestation never really got me interested)...I guess you'll have to watch them all then...better get started now!!!...there are hours and hours of them!

Actually, the only one that I ever found worth watching was Enterprise.....

Star Trek is one of those Classics....
My only problem with it is how they all have "God Technology".

How about this for ship design

35515 armor
84785 structure (hull)
20160 shields, phased

12 quantum torpedoes
4 massive mounted meson blasters
6 Massive Ripper Beam

7 Point-Defense Blasters
1 Flak Cannon
1 Point-Defense Beam

Max ECM and Combat sensors
Master Computer, stealth armor

Solar Sail, Quantum Engines

Long Range Scanners, Shield Regenerator
Four Quantum Reactors, Repair Bay

13,300 supply 11,200 Ordnance

8 Fighter Bays, 2000 Cargo Space

One in a million comes up nine times out of ten - Terry Pratchett

...that they didn't know what hit 'em.

I like cruisers too, They are the main warhorse of my fleets and I usually have about 5-6 separate designs in circulation specialising in different areas of attack/defence.

I feel in games such as SEV or GalCiv2, there is no such thing as a single perfect ship. I always thought the perfect ship is the best one for the job at hand.

Well said! This is basically my way of thinking about it. There are so many random factors in games like this and nearly unlimited ship designs.

I for one favour a mix of technologies that allow me do to all kinds of bad things to enemy ships, however because my tech is so spread I am to slow to develop. Where as someone who focuses will be incredibly dangerous when faced on their terms, see the missle storms. One could build a battle cruiser specked out for devouring fighters and have a frigate specked for capital ships, it all comes down to design... hmmm should try that one.

As for weapon choices, I prefer Capital ship missles myself. Good damage, good range, and average accuracy. Overall a good choice, only serious down side is the weapon system size, the amount of munitions used and the lack of special features.

Sorry for the double post

The perfect ship? if you are not playing balance mod then you should select organic and religous as your starting race traits. then build a cruiser include stealth armor, scattering armor, emissive armor, religous talisman, stealth totem, combat sensors, ECM and master computer. that should max out your offensive and defensive bonuses. then load up with Lightning Rays (L10 or higher) 6-8 should do. if you have the tech get a Quantum Reactor and top level shields 3-4 should do. fill out the rest with tachy sensors and organic armor etc etc. set your strategy to max range and watch as your enemies flail around attempting to get past your beams which never miss. by the time anybody gets into range they are a smoking ruin. You can also destroy massive amounts of enemy fighters this way. if you play tactical combat be sure to turn the cruiser away from the incoming fighters this will allow a protracted engagment were you can shoot fighters way outside of their firing range. no computer designed ship or carrier could come close to beating this ship. this ship has the added advantage of being fast to produce, since most of the weapons are organic and the ship cost isn't all minerals but a good balance of minerals and organics. most homeworlds can build it in 3-4 turns. in Balance mod they have taken all the good stuff away from organic empires so they are wimpy. Lightning rays were my fav. small, rapid-fire, and long range. and with the talisman they always hit!

If your ship have no point defence, only Lightning Rays, it will be destroed by any frigate with quantum torpedos and anought ordance.
My favorit ship is cruiser with 3 diferent point defence turrets and Bomblet Missile, 4-5 quantum torpedos(L10 at start could be Capital Ship Missiles), shield regenerator, 1-2 Lightning Rays, a bit armor, shields, solar sail, Ordnance Vat, sensors, esm, etc.

This ship is perfect if you are opponent of any ship without point defense, if enemy ships have point defence? then you just need more torpedos, only one week place - a lot of fighters.

I just build the biggest and best non-specialist ship I can produce faster than I can lose them. The actual class and components vary from game to game. It's usually important to have the highest SY level possible.

So many designs, but where are the NSP (null space projectors)

People say load up with no armor and tonnes of shields....I'll tell you where your shields go when an NSP comes into range. The bin!

Your best bet is a cruiser sized ship loaded with NSP's, some PD weapons and a token shield gen. Put a repair bay on and send em in on mass...
They get damaged a bit but any functioning repair bays in the fleet can get you patched up in no time.

Your lord and master (below Foamy) LordHavoc

A cruiser with a repair bay and PD would be lacking in offensive power. You would have to survive the battle before you can repair. Also, you'd probably be better off with some armour than a token shield. Shields are great if you have lots (at least early in the game) but then again you'd be trading off your offensive capability.

The problem I find with Null Space Projectors is the long reload time. I prefer using a weapon I can fire every turn, or atleast every other turn. Maybe 1-2 "big guns" that have long reload and the rest normal weapons with a sane reload.

It all depends on your style. If you like to kite your opposition from long range, then missiles it is. But the defence against that are PD and heavy shields.

If your into the raw smack, then meson blasters. There rapid fire can crush shields and armor quickly, but you need to get in quite close so heavy defences are good there.

Me personally, like to get in close and messy. My lovely NSP ignore shields and armor and go right for the structure. All your componants are belong to ME!
It's a costly tactic, but a nasty one. It's one of those tactics where even if you win a battle...by the numbers you've lost...big time.

Another sneaky tactic i like to use is 1 fighter bay on each ship and load em up. 1 Bay is 30 tonnes, and can easily hold more than 1 fighter. If you bother to fill your ships up, then you have a nasty little fleet.

Your lord and master (below Foamy) LordHavoc

I've also tried the fighter bay strategy. It don't sound like much but it makes a crushing difference if you have a bunch of such ships in a fleet.

I've actually modified Fighterbays so they carry their own supply and ordinance so that fighters launched would theoretically take from their; but in effect I'm sure it just adds to the overall ship. I thought about modding them so they also generate a bit of supply and ordinance and maybe even offer a small bit of repair capabilities, but I don't know if that will actually repair fighters in cargo or not. My fighterbays also offer "Cargo" storage as well so that you don't have to have extra Cargobays if you don't want them. All easy additions, but I don't know how that affects game balance overall. I've also added Cargo storage capabilities to the Drone Launcher/Mine Layer as well.

That small bit of repair capability, if you mod it in, will repair everything as usual (fighters, ship, and the rest of the fleet). I don't think it can be seperated out to effect only fighters.

I think it can be done
Mod the Bay to repair only unit damage

Remember : Pillage! then burn.
- Cpt. Kaff Tagon

cheap and dirty frigates using drone launchers with suicide drones will beat anything early-middle game
except perhaps fighters but basicly only fighters beat them espesialy if you have decent ecm and or scattering armor
lategame i prefer temporal direct fire or nullspace depending upon if your opponent is into ecms or pds, big ships or small
still mounted on drones give you the speed you need and the high defence bonuses makes for difficult targets ...
while fun large bases are typicaly useless in all game fases execept perhaps as resource gatherers

I use destroyers outfitted with one drone launcher, one fighter bay fasat engines and a few cannons with full armor. My fleets are usually 10 strong, 1 carrier with troops,fighters,extra drones, one warp caability and planet destroyer capabliity. 4 of the escorts are frigates with minor PD and A single super cannon. one is a drone carrier and and the remainder are destroyers each full armor and two super cannons and a few missles. The biggest weakness of this setulp is supply and more importanntly ordanance. would need to capture a planet every few battles, ressuply build a few fighters and then blow up the planet and move on to the next victim. My fleets work in small well trained groups jumping from sys to sys and closing holes as they go , capturing then destroying planets and avoiding large enemy fleets but striking transports with small groups of maybe 5 fighters. we would hide in asteroids or nebulae and send out small task forces capable of taking out specific targets. These pwn all

Why dose everybody insist on using small ships? I understand why people would not want to use a base ship because of the speed but my battle fleets usually consist of a bunch of dreadnoughts armed to the top with long range weapons and shields so if something is dumb enough to come in range it dies and its not like the enemys planets are going to run away is it?

Mostly? Because it angers their human opponents when their dreadnought fleet is whomped by a fleet of Light Cruisers.
Equally important is what happens when their fleet actually does lose? With your Dreadnaught fleet, unless you have a few spare in mothball groups, you're practically screwed out of a fleet.
With the lighter ships, even if you've forgotten to build extras, you can whip up another dozen or so fairly quickly.
Yet another reason. Speed. In several mods, Lighter ships have bonuses to speed. And often, more engines allowed on them. Thus, they can build lightning-fast missile ships, and stay out of range of your Dreadnoughts. (true, each ship has maybe 2 launchers at best, but there's sooo many ship that it evens out.

Allso applied is the maintenance cost. Larger ships actually tend to have higher maintenance than a equal tonnage fleet of lesser ships.

No, but the entire lighter-ships enemy fleet can. Your slower dreadnoughts can't keep up, thus, they need weapons with stupendous ranges that most mods simply don't have.

Another bonus for lighter ships. Variants. IE: you have a frigate with a missile weapon, a group of beam weapons, but no PD.
It gets killed with missiles.
you then make a version of it with PD, likely sacrificing a beam weapon to do so.
It then whomps the missile ship.

It's easier to do that with lighter ships than with the larger ships, simply because you can better deal with such losses with small ships that are easily replaced. And, being smaller, more easily refit to suit new roles or opponents.
(Especially true of my fleets. The larger the ship, the more Multi-purpose it is. Light ships generally have only 1 role.)
____________________
I'll make one later.

Because of the to-hit-Boni .. its harder to hit smaller ships so its less likely to loose them, also they are faster, cheaper to produce and maintain.

But I too build the biggest meanest ships I can .. its just more fun to let the death star look like a childs toy.

Remember : Pillage! then burn.
- Cpt. Kaff Tagon