Are you playing the original game, Dread Lords, or do you have the Gold version that includes Dark Avatar? And have you downloaded the updates? What version you're playing makes a difference, but I'll give some advice that should be useful for all versions.

For scout ships, there's no reason to use small or tiny hulls, use cargo hulls because they have much more space. A cargo hull is more expensive, but it will be much faster or have a much bigger sensor range. I have a variety of designs. At the beginning, I like to make a scout ship that has all engines plus a few life supports, so it can quickly fly to stars and see the planets. Also, consider building a fast, long-range ship with a survey module to harvest more anomalies. Later, I prefer a sensor ship with lots of sensors and just enough engines to outrun my enemies. This ship is good for exploring empty space and watching enemy ships, and I might make a similar design with life support. Also, consider an assassin ship with lots of engines and one small weapon. The assassin is good for taking out unarmed enemies, like freighters and asteroid mines.

Your heavy fighter design sounds good. Putting defense on any of the smaller hulls is fairly useless, so go very heavy on attack. Also, using even a single engine will take up a large portion of your hull space. If you want a fast ship, a larger hull is a better choice.

I don't like your light fighter design. You simply can't fit enough engines plus sensors on a small ship along with a weapon for it to be effective. For killing unarmed enemies, I'd prefer a sensor ship and an assassin ship working together. Both of those ships use cargo hulls. An effective design of a light fighter is a tiny hull with one attack point, and one defense point. Use fleets of these near military star bases with attack-assist modules.

The corvette design sounds good, too. But it is worthwhile to go to the even larger hull sizes. Defense is most effective when your ships are larger than your enemy's ships, and big ships make better use of engines. Once I have an advantage in technology or in defense ability, big ships with heavy defense and some engines are a good way to quickly wipe out an enemy with few losses.

Putting as many troops as possible on a transport might not be the best idea. If a troop transport removes so many people from your own planet that the population drops below 2.5 billion, then the population grows back at a slower rate. Also, since a planetary invasion always uses up at least one transport, you want to keep the cost of the ship low. Ideally you want just enough troops to conquer a planet with one ship, plus some more people to get the population growing on the new planet. If the population on the planet is too low, you can bring in people on another transport or a colony ship. That does not use up the ship. I don't put life support on troop transports because I don't put life support on my warships, and having troop transports with longer range than warships is fairly pointless. If I need more range, I'll research a life support tech (which immediately gives a small range bonus to all ships), or I'll build a starbase.

Pending an answer on whether it's vanilla or DA, a couple tips that are true to both versions:


1) Speed is life. Being faster than the enemy is a HUGE tactical advantage, even in DA where it's a lot more expensive.

2) Put enough troop capacity on transports to capture a planet with one transport, then put as many engines as you can afford on it. For me, that's 1000 troops per transport since I tend to wind up with absurdly high levels of Soldiering, but if you aren't interested in those techs, you might need more troops. Regardless, once the transport has enough capacity to subjugate a planet single-handed, the biggest problem becomes replacing them after you use them up in an assault. That's why speed is important for transports even if you don't use some of the sneak-attack cheese that can be pulled off in vanilla GC2.

3) Like nullspace said, you don't need life support modules. If you need to get your ships farther out, just build a starbase or conquer/colonize a planet or three between you and the target.

Oh, thats all you have to do! What if you want to strike a strategic blow to the enemy as soon as possible at a planet deep within their territory? Maybe those 3 planets in between are POS class 1-3 planets, and the planet you want to take is class 19 in "deep space". But if you don't take it soon, the AI will destory you with ships comming off the assembly line on the class 19 world while you are busy taking the weak planets in between.

I think bottom line is it depends on the situation. I disagree that life support modules are necessarily useless.

That being said, I have never added anything but basic support. Then again, I normally only play in medium galaxies because I like my games relatively quick.

"Also, consider building a fast, long-range ship with a survey module to harvest more anomalies."
I do not know what a survey module is, or anomolies (unless you mean resources which I send a constructor to build a space station thing), I guess it is something I have not researched yet. Also I thought the cargo hull would take longer to build then the tiny one, and early game that is important.
another point about life support, surely it would depend on which civilsation you are at war with, and the position of that civ.

p.s i have got Vanilla, and still playing my first game, How does the AI decide which civilisation will get it's remaining planet's when it surrender's when it is at war with more then 1 Civ? I found it anoying that I only got 1 of the 3 which have surrendered.

also thanks for the advice thus far.

Is it a Module which needs to be researched, if so, I have not researched it yet.

Hi!

I don't use scouts. All scouting is done by my colonizers. Only they can be fast and with good range, and can actually take the planet for me. The only thing that could be referred as scout are my anomaly explorers: cargo hull, survey module, 3-4 engines, rest life supports, but those are after-colony-rush ships.


I don't build small-hull based ships. I fight with mediums. Only in them I can fit enough equipment to made them usefull. Yes, my early game military is virtualy non-existent. Only after AIs start threatening I build some fake defenders: cargo hull with single cheapest beam, missile and mass weapon. In orbit it shows attack 6, thus increasing my military score considerably for quite low price.


I use a "sensor": cargo-based hull with single Laser5, 3-4 Ion engines, maybe 1 life support, rest sensors. Mid-game item, small number built. Watches my space for unescorted troop transports, accompanies my first warfleets as armed scout/interceptor, kills unarmed ships / SBs / miners of my enemy.


2 best troop modules, 3-5 engines, nothing else. I want their price low, as I'm going to build them in quite large numbers.

I'm NOT using ANY life-supports in my warships and troop transports. I extend the range of my warships with building an economy starbase right in the middle of the planets I intend to take. Once they're mine, I already have a SB there to boost their production.

BR, Iztok