Starhawks

And because of the 1 point attack, I like using them for scouting and commerce raiding.

Starhawk? 2Att,1Def,60HP,0Maint, right? (Thats from the latest encyclopedia) Only 200 to build.

I see the use as a great raider/scout (esp since free maint, high speed and great sensors), but as a defender? Don't they just get chewed up?

For comparison, BattleAxe is Def 5, 30HP, Maint 3 - which is expensive, but at least can defend against something. - Before you look, everything with a maint of 0 has a def of 1.

Has anyone tried this strategy:
Build massive amounts of starhawks. Build purely defensive starbases around your planets, i.e. fill up the military and defense piece of the starbase.
That has got to bring the defense of the starhawks up to a point where they won't be chewed up until dreadnoughts and co. arrive, or not?

#3 Wonka,

I tried that, and it works only other certain conditions. The basic problem is, each Constructor is 200iu's. To obtain the maximum ship bonuses takes 11 of them (presuming you leave off the repair bay). Plus you have to build the SB itself (a 12th Constructor). That's 2400 iu's...the equivalent worth of over 4 DN's or 2 Avatars!

The difficulty is, even beefed, low-HP ships like the Frigate, Phoenix, BC & Corvette get "exchanged" off by the AI. Then, it starts attacking the SB. Even though it loses the majority of the battles, it will (eventually) reduce the SB to where it cannot repair enough hit points to survive the next attack. At which point, that investment is toast, too.

Many wars (especially with the Drengin or Torians) come down to resource expenditure. The key to winning is to kill more IU's than the AI is destroying in return. When the loss-ratio gets high enough (assisted by the destruction of their trade routes) they will sue for peace.

However, if there is a SB worth 2400iu's somewhere hanging on with less than 50hp's, the AI will reject peace offers until it is destroyed. Then they'll talk.

~SDC~