Post your in game Ship Design ideas, ill start with mine.

This is brilliant idea. why use satilite bay instead of cargo bays??

A sat bay is always useful on a cargo ship if you don't mind the 10 kT lost... but why 2 sat bays?

it may not have been lost storage space, if the tech for bays was higher than for cargo it may have been more efficient

You can also but population in mine layers, just so you know.
Is this for Balance Mod, IRM, stock, or either as long as we put which mod we're using?

One of my SE-IV favorites is a design I call the "Surreptitious" or sometimes the "Surveilant". Its a deep stealth recon ship that looks like this:
o medium-sized hull; I usually use a light cruiser
o long-range sensor to give good visibility
o ranged scanner to let me peek into the designs/cargo of nearby enemy ships
o cloaking device - to keep me sneaky
o solar collectors - to keep it going and cloaked
o satellite bay
o a bit of cargo space for more satellites
o a small collection of "Eye" satellites
o some basic weaponry for suprise attackes on defenceless ships

"Eye" Satellite:
o sat core
o sensors
o scanners
o cloaking device

They can run and stay cloaked indefinetly because of the solar collectors. This allows them to go invisible, go deep and basically never return home. I use them to slip into enemy territory and explore around and plant cloaked "Eye" satellites wherever ship movements lanes appear to be. Well-placed scanner sats can pick up a lot of enemy ship designs, numbers and movement intel really quickly. The Surreptitious is also wonderful for harrassment by attacking defenceless ships (cago, colony, mine layers, etc), or even wiping out undefended colonies. There was a game in which I did extrordinary strategic damage to an adversary with a single one of these ships.
The drawbacks of the design were only that it was rather expensive to build them, and they were vulnerable to being blown up by minefields. Never had a chance to try this design in SE-V yet, but I definately will (not sure if cloaking the "Eyes" will work with the new SE-V supplies model). Hope you find this design as useful and fun as I had!

I can't give too much away, but here is a page from the creator of the Longship mod (AI by Unnamed)
FLEETS
Up in front, cheap fast frigates armed with 'cripplers', i.e. weapon destroyers, engine destroyers, shield disruptors. Escorts are regular attack ships, perhaps some boarders and missile ships mixed in. Core of the fleet is heavy weapons ships, carriers, troop transports, and fleet supply and repair.

First wave is cripplers and fighters which keep em' busy while the attack ships get closer, then if there's anything left, the heavy weapons knock em' dead. Literally. To mix it up, long range weapons can be placed anywhere in the fleet.

Lnog range recon is cloaked, with all sensors and supply generation. Usually carries a couple drones in case it is discovered.

If a storm is found in enemy territory, a space yard is sent by any means necessary to that obscured sector. A base is built and a strike fleet is constructed. Said fleet may then strike with impunity and much amusement (unless of course they get wiped out) the drawback to this tactic is that the crew does not get trained at an academy before battle, and so must rely on sensors and ecm to kick butt. Higher than usual number of drones and fighters will be built. And if the fleet manages to survive the battle over an enemy planet, I like to leave as many mines as possible as a farewell gift before I take my fleet back for repair.

Mix up fighters, you will want rocket pods and regular weapons. Same with satellites, get a mix going on with all your designs. Remember, small ships go faster, so they should be first strike, big ships make a dent in other big ships and put holes in smaller ships.

"Genius is Simplicity" chris connors
"To win without fighting is best" sun tsu
those who think they know everything are annoying to those of us who do
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Longship mod to be released after 1.4x patch and when Unnamed is finished the AI

In SE:IV i used the submarine warfare to some extent, as behind enemy lines cloaked recon ships and to destroy defenceless cargo ships, colonyships etc. And i look forward to do so in SE:V when i develop the required techs.

Currently my battlefleet doctrine is around the use of carriers and fighters, with point defence equipped frigates as escorts.
Small fast cheap easy replacable fighters that can be easily built on any planet carried around Empire Space by "Microcarriers®"(cruisers with figherbays) which have replaced the big carriers in my fleet.
In each fleet i also have ships with repair module and lots of supply and ordinance for resupply. This way i can replace the "used" supply ship with another fully loaded for those long missions.
With more ships around i can defend more space at the same cost of having a few big carriers.

Space yard ships are the key in my strategies. I usually beeline for medium freighter right away, then use them to deposit satellites and mines all over. I just get tired micromanaging support ships that can't produce their own units, especially with low cargo tech.

The main drawback of these ships is they cost quite a bit and (if you're not careful) get killed all the time, at least until you get cloaking. Then they become very useful in all sorts of ways. Cloak up and hang around enemy systems - spot an undefended planet, just build a few troops and take it over. If the aliens breath a different atmosphere than you, pick them all up and seed planets in your own empire. If you need to decloak to build something or save supplies, there's usually a storm or asteroid field to hide in. Why not build a space yard station while you're there? The possibilities are endless.

On (slightly cheap) trick I use - prefabs for different types of station which are as simple and cheap as possible which can then be retrofitted for various purposes. Using a base stuffed with repair bays, you can get things built much faster this way. Mind that you can't retrofit a design without a space yard to one that does, so I use two different prefabs - one with a space yard and one with armor/supply storage/solar panals. Then I upgrade them to various weapons platforms/fighter factories etc. I usually end up building a few stealthed mine layers and playing pranks on the locals until I can get a real fleet in.

So there you have it. Space yard ships. Win.

(this is on Hard/High Bonus using BM1.08. Enemy has a big numerical bonus early game, so I usually go the stealthy route)

I really like lvl 10 frigates with beam weapons. they are cheap to make; can take out anything. I also like cruisers eithers with beam weapons or missles.

Am I the only one who doesn't like Battleships / dreadknots??

In my current game I ran in to Ai Frigates Of Doom, ( From my mod ) -

Suicide Raider (Ramming Frigate )
Improved Frigate Lv 6 ( 525kt )
1 Heavy Fusion - Warhead Lv 5 ( 8K+ damage) (50Kt)
1 Combat Engine Augmenter Lv 2 +7 Combat movement (50Kt)
14 Jacketed - Photon Engines Lv 5 (140Kt) * note this is right after Ion Engines in my mod
6 Armor Plates Lv 10 ( 60Kt)
1 Bridge
1 Life-support
1 Crew Bay
1 ECM Lv 3
1 Combat sensor Lv 5
1 Shield Generator LV 9
14 Close Assault Fusion Rockets LV 5 (10Kt each) 140kt Range 20ls Damage ( 1250 each ) Firerate.5
1 Pulse PDC (5Kt)

Just three of these destroyed one of my Advanced Battleships ( 3700 Kt) During a warp point assault , and the Ai had lots of them!

There still a threat in open space but at warp points the damn things are deadly. The Ai usually has groups of 5-15 of them.