Specialisation of starships

Here are some ship types I have or have at least tried out in the simulator.

Multi-Purpose Escort/Fleet Support
A Cruiser hull (max level) with a mixture of different unit deploying systems (4 fighter, 2 mine, 2 sat, 2 drone + 2 cargo). Classified as Troop Transport, it is part combat ship, part unit deployer. Often used to act as an escort carrier, and to accompany space yard ships. It includes long range and tachyon scanners, mine sweeper, medical bay. A Jack of all trades type ship. Can truely do almost anything, but is not good at any particular thing (except recon/scouting)

Repair/Resupply Ship
Cruiser or bigger.
Useful for fleet support.
Repair bay(s), plenty of supply/ordnance storage, a few solar collectors/quantum reactors, basic offense/defense.
A variant replaces the repair bays, slightly better offense/defense, much more supply/ordnance storage, more solar collectors/quantum reactors.

Super Colony Ship
Later tech ship.
Large freighter (max level), 1 of each colony type, extr 100kt for cargo (usually 2 cargo bays and 2 sat bays for me), basic weapons, moderate defense. Carries sats to help defend new colony, if in trouble, can use sat bays to drop sats and help it get away or to take out weaker enemies.
Has a nice bit of spare space for more, mine has a cloaking device, 40kt scanner and a solar sail, plus 40kt for guns, has a quantum reactor to improve effective range.

Torpedo Ship.
few guns, many quantum torpedoes, which have some advantages over CSMs (such as cheaper cost and better rate of fire, makes up for slightly weaker power). Cruisers are good, good speed and a nice amount of space, can run away from bigger ships if things go bad.

Gunship
More for fun, many Meson Blasters (or Electric Discharge/Lightning Ray) as I can fit. Usually has basic PD weapons, basic armor and shields also, but mainly lots of 'small' guns... more for a 'shoot like crazy' effect in simulator than anything else.
Variant uses biggest weapon mount possible for the weapons, to get more bang for the buck, actually more practical for actual use.

Attack/Battle/Assault Carrier.
Basically a bigger ship (Light Cruiser or bigger) that sacrifices some guns for fighter bays. (say 4 on a light cruiser/cruiser, 4-8 on a battleship or 8-12 on a dreadnought)
Use fighters with few guns and with mainly rocket pods or small anti-matter torpedoes, main purpose is to rapidly chase down ships and damage them if the enemy is trying to escape, or to soften up the target before the big ships get in weapons range.

The "Annoying thing that won't die" ship.
A ship such as a Cruiser with less weapons than it could have, with a focus on armor and shields, ECM, a few PD weapons and anything else that helps it survive or avoid damage.
ECM + Stealth Armor + Scatterin Armor gives some nice defense bonuses. Emmissive Armor, Organic Armor, Stealth Totem and Shield Regenerator also helps in this role.

Battle/Attack/Assault Carrier
A ship, usually a Cruiser or larger, that has some fighter bays. Not a full blown carrier, but not a full blown attack ship either. Excellent for the big ships because fighters can easily chase down smaller/faster ships. Fighters with many small rocket pods or small anti-matter torpeedoes can deliver serious short term firepower, and not have to worry about emissive armor shrugging off other fighter based weapons (but with stock, lots of basic small guns works just as well...)

AAA Ship.
A ship with few guns, heavy on PD weapons.
Based off of a useful ship I used in SE IV.
Due to SE V stock at present, next to useless against swarms of fighters unless you somehow get a major tech advantage, otherwise a few fighters die in the initial salvo and then the AAA ship goes boom.
The best I have seen is attacking up to 5 different fighters at once with a ship packing multiple/many PD weapons.

Cheap Ship.
Use stuff like regular armor, shield generators, anti-matter torpedoes, meson blasters, ion engines, etc.
Meant more for building as fast as possible than anything else, like if you just got your butt handed to you and need to worry more about building ships as fast as possible than trying to live long enough to build more good ships when you have next to nothing left.

Example, Frigate (max level), max armor, max engines, 2 shield generators, basic sensor, combat sensor, ecm, 175kt for weapons, such as 2 anti-matter torpedoes, 2 large mount meson guns, 1 ordnance storage and a a PD weapon, such as a bomblet missile, or else just a PD beam or PD cannon, or a PD blaster for a tiny bit more and better rate of fire. If enemy uses ship capture, then tossing in a self destruct might also be useful.
It's not going to win any wars (unless you have a lot of them), but it could win your survival in a worse case scenerio.

Every system has at least one supply & ordnance ship - this is frigate hull with emergency supply and ordnance pods. Has just enough engines to hold the supplies regenerated and just enough ordnance storage to match the pod. At max pod level this can generate 8000 of each every turn. Costs about 5000 minerals plus a bit in the organics and radioactives. This relies on the planets shipyard to "repair" the pods.

On a new colony, one of these can charge up the supplies and ordnance a lot quicker than the resuply facilities. When one planet is full, move it on to the next.

For planet specialising in upgrading fleet , I keep a bunch of them to quickly charge up an upgraded fleet. It can be a major pain to lose all the supplies when the engines get upgraded, and even the 80,000 a huge planet can hold doesn't go far.

---------------------------------------

Other speciality ships are the Warp Assault Ships. e.g. the Warp Assault Carrier. This has minimum everything (e.g. only 4 engines) to make room for shields and armour and a few fast firing point defence blasters. It's only job is to get ONE wave of fighters off before it dies (if the PD actually shot at multiple targets it might even survive). It carries specialist fighters with an emphasis on armament rather than defence - the idea being to go for one shot, one kill against enemy fighters and satelites. This will be accompanied by Warp Assault MineSweepers and WarpAssault Escorts which carry lots of point defence. The AI tends to concentrate on the big carrier so the escorts tend to survive.

A fleet like this crashed a Xiati warp point and the 22 DUC fighters went through 250 Xiati fighters in nothing flat with a bit of help from the escorts (DUC's work best, APBeams are particularly bad in this role). I lost the carrier but everything else survived. I didn't have that much of a tech advantage over the Xiati.

I like to reverse your beam attack and missle ships. Use cruiser or lt cruiser for the missle ships. Keep them at maxium weapons range with max speed. Then use a big hull for beam attack, it'll be slower(but nothing faster really wants to catch it alone). Put alot of shields/armor on it. They'll focus on the big ship getting close while you're pouring in the missles. Of course your beam ship is also giving its share of damage to the enemy. I'll also give a missle to the beam ship just in case they try to out range it.

In a BM game I started just yesterday I've tried a new strategy that involves fast moving ships with engine-destroying weapons.

The ships are given primarily long ranged weapons with a maximum weapons range strategy, then equipped with an engine-destroying weapon. If the standard max-range strategy is successful there is no need for the weapon. If it fails, the weapon fires and makes it easier for the ship to maintain max range.

My first draft destroyers failed miserably, but I think some improvements will make them a force to be reckoned with.

-----
Space for rent - please contact owner

I've found a fleet of cloaked carriers work really well for "warp point sitter" busting. cloak (send in a test ship cloaked to see if it makes it through). If your cloak level is high enough send in your cloaked carriers. Move one space off the warp point and unload your fighters, then let the fighters mop up the system.

This trick is needed because ships only warp in one at a time, and are easily picked off.

Another use of a cloaked ship would be to slip a stellar converter ship to destroy their systems star. I haven't gotten high enough in tech to get that yet... Man that stellar manipulation tech tree is overpriced!

SEV, more than a feeling.

Of course, a few dozen mines will eliminate your cloaked fleet nicely.

SpaceEmpires.net | Space Empires Wiki

We really need area-effect weapons. Would be very neat to send a drone equipped with lots of explosives through a warp point to 'loosen up' the defenders if they were packed around it.

To prevent that, and force the mines, simply build your own network of 10 WPs per system, and build system gravity shields in those you can't reasonably protect with 10 WPs.

SpaceEmpires.net | Space Empires Wiki

You've got a counter for everything don't you Fyron?

See, Drone Bombs > Turtle-Fyron

As Ophanim said, "there is a counter for virtually everything in the game."

Area effect weapons would have been very neat... sigh.

SpaceEmpires.net | Space Empires Wiki