but stardestroyers (and the supers) where catch all ships . . they all had the same strengths and weaknesses . . . rather boring.
This is a RTS / 4x game (explore, expand, exploit, exterminate ) there should be fleets not 20x of the best single ship you can produce. again booring and will make the longevity of this game very short.


Also what IS the time span (in game time span) we are talking about? Surely nothing like the turn based 4x there 100s / 1000s of years could go by (an entire age of a space going civilization) This game feels like one big war possibly years possibly 10s of years . . not 100s of years.
And if so, you just don’t come up with a war fleet over night . . you must have had the ability before hand. With the back story of this game like history each civilization making new war ships could build civilian ships of the same size before hand, the integration of weapons and armor was the big next step.

So you START with a battleship why do you need to research how to make one?? This is not a game starting at beginning of spaceflight but far into it . . Research should be kept for enhancements, weapons, utilities, etc to be added to known designs. War ships evolve over time refit after refit but the basic design changes very slowly.

So building capital ships or any of the other ships (in general) should not tied to the tech tree, but the enhancements and extras that make the powerful yes. (though I am fine with a few “extra” optional ships to be unlocked to add spice – but not the core ships) for example the robot ship would make a good optional, possibly one of the support capital ships . . but that’s all.

The limiting factor should be resources and support. You can’t make a fleet with out the initial resources, and you can’t make a fleet if you do not have the support points. . . this should force expansion for more support points and the accumulation of a large amount of resources for the initial build (the cap ship factory should be $$$ to make also, a big liability) . . also any loss cap ship is a equally big $$ loss . .since you put all of that in ONE ship, you really need to keep them alive. (the reason it is a “hero” ship)
The other ships (non “hero”) should be more efficient in both resources and support cost then a capital ship but lack the punch to crack a heavily defended system. This should make them useful and cheap to make a good number of them (and sill not compete too bad with support with the cap ships) while allowing you to expand for resources and support points to build the battle group to crack the other players planets.

I have a couple of suggestions:

1) If you increase the overall speed/turning speed of the smallest ships (i.e., give fighters a big speed boost, frigates a slightly smaller speed boost, and cruisers and bombers smaller still, but leave cap ship speed alone) you can increase the tactical value of the less often used ships. The goal being that in a scenario of all cap ships, the frigates could run circles around them continually attacking from behind. The fighter speed increase would help mitigate the use of bombers since if two fleets started at any appreciable distance, the fighters could intercept the bombers before they could release their payloads. In non-combat situations, the increased speed is also quite useful for exploration and getting reinforcements to systems under siege. It also makes guerrilla warfare a possible tactical option as frigate fleets could do hit-and-runs.

2) IMO, there's no real reason why all ships shouldn't have experience. The smaller ships may not get level-up abilities, but they should benefit from the increases to damage, shield and hulls, which would keep them useful even in end-game scenarios.

3) Grant cap ships a small upkeep, anywhere from -.1 -> -.5 credits per second and possibly another -.1 metal and crystal per second. If you want to go all cap ships, then you'll have to have an economy of scale to support them. Right now, you can turtle with 5 systems build 8+ cap ships, and then destroy everything with little consequence.

I will also cross post to the gameplay feedback thread.