Has anyone tried the strategy where you don't buy engines for your ships and just use all of the various Ship Speed bonuses available in the game (bonuses from Drive Speed technology, Ship Speed boosts from Military Starbase modules, Gravity Accelerators).

Basically, just making ships by taking advantage of the various boosts just having the technology or trade goods, special projects and Galactic Achievements? You can get lots of dirt cheap ships that way, but you have to make a speed boost path with military bases going to the places you want to travel to; that also partly compensates for the lesser range from not buying life support modules for ships, just the technologies. With just a little miniaturization, you can make cheap colony and constructor ships using Tiny hulls, which I like.

There is one downside I've found: apparently, speed boosts from multiple starbases with overlapping areas of effect don't stack. Oh, and you have to remember not to trade any of your high speed technology to your rivals, because they'll "cheat" and actually put engines in their ships. heh.