One of the balances that strikes me as peculiar, is the balance between Siege ships and Capital ships. The odd thing is when you strike out all the other abilities of a capital ship, and use them ONLY for siege. They hold up surprisingly well against a siege ship.

Siege ships chew up a whopping 15 fleet capacity, while capital ships require 50. This is not counting the capital ship slots, which a player will eventually pick up. For a siege ship to beat out a capital ship by fleet composition, it has to be able to out do the capital ship's use of fleet cap. This means roughly 3 siege ships match up against one capital ship, counting against ship cap.

The cost of siege ships isn't cheap. They take around 725 Credits, 95 metal, and 75-80 crystal depending on race. A Capital ship costs 3000$, 400M, and 250C across the board. This puts siege ships at roughly a quarter the cost of capital ships, using 1/3 of the crystal. So to be more cost effective, 4 siege ships have to win out over a capital ship.

Okay, so how do the numbers play out? First, is the raw siege damage. Siege ships do 20-23 damage every 10 seconds, vs. a capital ship doing around 50-60/10sec. Capital ships lose out here, matching up to only 2.5-3 siege ships worth of damage. That comes out to roughly 10-25% less up front siege damage per unit of supply. That's a pretty small margain to lose out by.

Second is the ship endurance. Capital ships win out using capital ship type armor, while siege ships use light armor. A capital ship takes less damage up front from every weapon type except for very heavy style weapons, and other capital ship basic weapons. For health, siege ships sit just around 675, for total shields+hull. Capital ships, on the other hand, start off with at least 4000 total! Through levels they can gain at least half more. This puts them at having 6 times the health of a siege ship, plus the armor type bonuses. One high level sieging capital ship can be 10 times as tough as its competitor.

For speed and maneuverability, siege ships are just slightly faster than capital ships at top speed. But this appears to be changing in 1.04, where capital ships seem to be getting a major speed buff. Never mind that.

But wait, there's more! Some capital ships have devastating anti planet powers, on top of their attack. The TEC siege ship has raze planet, which adds an additional 80 damage(+10 population) times 2/4/6 every 40-50 seconds. This adds up to being roughly the same as having an extra 2/4/6 siege ships in the mix! The Vasari colony cruiser has Drain Planet, which can deal the damage equal to 7 siege ships over time (and some of that cooldown is spent prowling the next target). Mass Hysteria can be both excellent on major worlds, or mediocre on simple asteroids. Regardless, these abilities once again put capital ships far ahead of the PRIMARY role of siege ships.

So, my question is:
Why ever use siege ships? Ever? Capital ships do the same thing better, in just about every way imaginable.