Superheavy dreadnoughts like Ocelot, Cyclops, Megalodon are often overkill because their weapon energy is so strong, that they can't drain it even with the heaviest of weapons. Astraeus a bit less, but can equip photon artillery array (heavy weapon which almost always scores hits on fighters too). M1 is all about shielding and hangar size. The AI can only handle turrets well (Raven or Kvasir are good).Д«est Missle M7 is Skirnir because it uses swarm missles which are harder to shoot down.Д«omber M8 best used for chaff defense, so highest shields (i believe Hades and the Boron one) Try to get M7 with forward mounted turrets instead of main guns. Setanta can equip forward SSC flak turrets though. Because they have to align to fire and the AI is crap at this. Many people like those, but they are expensive as hell for what they offer (when controlled by AI). Most ships are very fast to run out of shield energy first.ДЇalcon Sentinel is the a cost effective M3 which has the best shielding. You will get so many different opinions on this -)ДЄppollox is my favourite playership for it's speed and weapon power, paired with decent shielding.ДЇor AI controlled ships high shielding offers the best adavantage. M4/M5: useless other than as missile boats. M3: Fenrir is probably the most well-rounded ship for the fleet. M6: Appallox for player ship, Setanta or Quasar for AI. Don't ever take Auster despite the great stats - it's ugly as hell.

Krait just looks dope (and is not too bad in combat). Hayabusa is a good choice if you want to pilot an M7 personally. Coelacanth is also strong on paper, but it's huge, which makes them more clumsy en masse. Tobosaku is too clunky to kill anything, but I like having a few of them in the fleet to soak incoming damage. I also like Boreas, since it's small and agile, while still packing considerable firepower. M2: Pteranodon is the king in terms of raw power. M1: Tokyo or Emeus since we only really care about the hangar size and shielding. Don't take Valhalla since it can't carry M6s - it's effectively an oversized M1. I suggest picking the biggest hangar - it's Megalodon IIRC. M0 (M2s with hangar for M6s)- they're basically the same, their role in combat is mostly being a carrier for M6s. The other responses so far are for vanilla, but in LU the stats are quite different. It was the only ship that I could get to survive on the other side of the jumpgate with a bunch of Qs sitting there waiting. I likely would have been better off with a fast fleet of M7s to be honest. It gave the game plenty of time to keep spamming reinforcements. Honestly taking my titan through the territory caused more battles than anything just due to its slow speed. It wiped the sector mostly, but then reinforcements started regularly showing up. It just kind of blew its wad and went home. It did peter out pretty quickly flying to the hub. Dunno about the other ones, but if I need more missile capacity, I can just buy 3 or 4 more if I want. I used the Aquilos as an M7m and thought it was fine. I just started using one and it seems to hold its own well. It eats fighters for breakfast lunch and dinner. I started all argon so now I have a nice mix of Split and Argon M7s. That said, the split panther is amazing is would definitely be my first choice. It's small size and speed allow it to avoid a lot of fire. The griffon though weak on paper offensively is a pretty decent choice too. I tend to keep a mixture of anti-fighter and anti-cap capital ships in my fleet. But then when a Heavy Centaur runs into a cap its game over pretty much, so there's that. I really like the Split ships but I also tend to lose more of them because of their weak shielding. I just can't bring myself to send out unarmed ships if I can help it haha. I think the person that said leaving them weaponless is better may be on to something. I went with all mistral SFs for my traders this last play through and I'm already back to buying Mercury SF XLs because they just work and the extra turret doesn't seem to buy much suitability OOS. I would agree with much of this but I really like the Argon freighters and the proximity to Terracorp kinda seals the deal.

X3 albion prelude ships