by AndySzy
There's good discussion on the various types of ship builds, but I would like to start some discussion on the best type of ship to build as a general rule of thumb.I recently played a 4 player game (session report later maybe) as the Hydrans. My main rival was the Mechanema, who had tricked out their dreadnoughts. I had tricked out my cruisers and was legitimately curious who was going to win in the seemingly inevitable confrontation for the center of the galaxy. The battle never came to be though, so I never got my answer.
So what is the correct answer? In a vacuum, which ship is better?
I did some quick spreadsheet mathing just to see which ship gets more bang for their buck in terms of part slots. This math is just for the basic terran price and blueprint.
Interceptors pay .75 material for each slot; cruisers pay .83, and dreads pay 1. So on the surface the cheaper ships seem to have more bang for the buck.
But if we look a bit deeper, we'll see something else. In the previous math, I was valuing all slots as equal. If we remove the two basic slots that are (just about) required for Drive and Power, we come up with this:
Interceptors pay 1.5 material for each extra slot, cruisers pay 1.25, dreadnoughts pay 1.33.
So if the drive and power source is equal across all ships (as is the default), Cruisers are a better buy (per upgrade slot).
Any other thoughts? I was trying to figure out how to account for the availability of ships (8 interceptors versus 2 dreadnaughts, for example) but my brain apparently isn't working.