Cost vs Quality
by Xen Xander

As I’ve seen, many strategies posted will inform you to choose “Leviathan” class and only the two classes below this (some say “Battlecruiser and above”). However in practical terms, this isn’t possible all the time. During turn 270, playing the Eoladi, my highest planets only had 2300 production points, and it would cost 5,000 or more PP to produce some of the ships mentioned.

What I find works the very best, is to create ships that cost no more than twice what your highest planets’ averages are. Sort your planets by “within boarders – owned planets – production”, and view the top ten. Try to fit in the most recent weapons/armor/shields into your vessels but don’t exceed the average production values of the top ten planets in your design (or at most don’t exceed double). If it means making sub-par ships, that’s fine. If you can have ten planets pumping out ships every turn or every other turn, then your armadas will be built swift enough (some races, like Klackon, require swift ships, no matter how average).

If your budget is only 2000 AU, it can weigh heavily on your heart that you’re not filling the ship’s space up with as many weapons as it can fit, but after a lot of trial and error, I have realized that “cost over quality” is sometimes the best course. Sometimes you must have those 20 units of space unoccupied to fit it into your production budgets. You may consider building the smaller designs (Frigate and Light Crusier), but the larger ships have the HP – sometimes it’s better to have space left over in a heavily defended Battleship than to have all space filled in a Destroyer or Frigate if their cost and firepower is identical.

Sometimes to get around this, move the slider bars up in military spending on those planets, and ensure your government spending policy is set to at minimum “Limited War”. “Total War” is usually reserved for the end of the tech tree when you have nothing else to spend your AU’s on, other than planet defense (which are usually Orbitals anyway and fall into this spending), so your planets will have more production assigned and you may build more expensive designs…NEVER GO BANKRUPT. Your game is over if you dip into the red.