Favorite Special Ships

[Kjara]

Anti-armor is a move 24(~mkII bomber speed) cruiser replacement with high enough range to actually hit mk III and IV bombers--meaning you can have an entire deep raiding force(fighters + bombers + raid starships + anti-armors) thats moving at speed 24(well 22 once you add in mkIII bombers) great for reducing the time you are taking hits from snipers when raiding.  Rather cheap cost wise as well(esp the higher tier ones)-250/250 for mkIII and they out damage cruisers(at mkIII 225 dps rather than 300 but but you have 178 instead of 118).  Only downside is low hp, but most special units have this problem and at least they are high range, meaning you can have your fighters and bombers take the hits.

The only other 2 that can do this are deflectors(which aren't quite as good at killing bombers), and laser gats that slaughter bomber mk 1 and mk 2 but have the same range as mk III has shields, so you have to get them really close to kill them.

Edit: They are great early on for killing special forces posts as well, since you don't have to worry about staggering their attacks like you do cruisers to avoid repairs .

[Haagenti]

OK...you convinced me.

[x4000]

My current short list is:
tier 1: munitions boosters, laser gats, deflectors
tier 2: anti-armor, infiltrators, mlrs, armor

<looks bemused>
What's good about Anti-Armor?

Longish range, reasonable firepower missiles, really crushes certain enemy ships such as armor and tanks, etc.  I'm fond of these, too, though they are not in my top tier.

[Signata]

Least favorite?: Teleport Station. Really only good against a blob that's already been engaged and only when you get huge stacks of them... Compared to the teleport raider I just find them to be inferior (maybe I'm using them wrong?)

I got them randomly for my current game and I've been having excellent luck with them vs. stationary defenses. A modest group of about 20 can take out a sniper turret in about one salvo (I suspect it would take fewer than 20 but I haven't tested thoroughly, and a group of twenty will also knock out all low-level turrets in the next few seconds anyway), and they seem to decimate guard posts as well. My tactical approach to wormhole breach in this game has been to send a group of fighters in to soak up initial fire volley and mines, then warp in the stations and zap around the planet knocking out all of the snipers, low-level turrets, and guard posts. Then I pull them back to the wormhole immediately and and send the rest of the fleet in. The planet has little long-range and minimal reinforcement capability at that point---fifteen seconds tops for a III or less planet---and most of that is UI time. Stations also have a high retention rate because I can telewarp them out to a safe planet in an instant if they fall below 30%.

They do seem to suck against most ships though, and the cap is very low (probably to offset how powerful they are against turrets). They do all right against a few, great against one, but its really taking care of turrets and guard posts where they seem to shine.

[soMe_RandoM]

*the same favouatism

1.electric shuttles
2.spiders*1
3.vampire*1
4.parilizers*2
5.polizrizers*2

electric shuttles still need good micro managment to be realy effective eg 4000% K : D ratio
spiders are good on the run type ship as they basicly destroy ships. i always unlock tier 3 and build them first
vampire send off on defence or to attack all ships that are on the path way through to my home planet if it any more than 1000 then i send them back to tractor turret defence
parilizers work well with spiders or similar but i use them yust for attacking core ships as they do the same parilzing attack. rendering them useless. if the ai is the core then parilzers are the go
polizizers well the are yust good for clearing out the tank + as an 1 off trick you can show you freinds the amazing dissapering devour golm. by spaming polizizers at the golm with all full fleet and but at an huge cost all the units die but golm gone(chris dn change it :|)