Marauders

[Kjara]

In the latest patch(actually 3.011 i think), they are a bit slower(they were getting the player's 40% speed boost), so they will be slightly easier to chase down.  Honestly though, I agree that the range on the daggers is a bit high(I'd advocate for about 21k or so max personally or them being much slower). 

What I found worked rather well for defense against up to about 10 or so daggers was a single spire(though with the speed nerf, zeniths would work as well).  It would usually get knocked down to about 85% or so after killing 10.  Of course this was a game where I was planning on using the fleet starships anyhow, so I already had them unlocked.  Other good response types are any of the really fast ships(autocannons, space planes, etc), to get in there and kill them fast.

Don't worry about complaining about them, I think they still need a bit of polish as well, they are pretty new and haven't had as much feedback as most of the other features .

[snrub_guy]

Anyone got any early game solutions? A Spire is a pretty hefty investment early on. I saw it lists fighters in "weak against", but they still got chewed up pretty bad. Maybe need to go up to MKIII against them? What sort of MK level are they aimed at?

[eRe4s3r]

A single fortress 

When i see marauders, i put one of em in range of my command station and let it do its thing..

Alternatively, tractor turrets together with viral shredders work well too, and so do MK2 fighters

[snrub_guy]

Interesting. Never really experimented much with fortresses. That would free up my ships again. Turrets did not last long against the daggers, but they may not have been upgraded much.
I will try the Fortress thing! Thanks!

[eRe4s3r]

Most of the time marauders will beeline to the wormholes anyway - so thats where to put tractors.. obviously this is more a luck* defense, a fortress can handle them though, just be sure to actually put it beneath a forcefield until the autobombs are gone... if you have forcefield above your command station then marauders can do nothing, if they'd actually start bombarding it you could simply build turrets next to them, and kill them off with that.

Also, its a good idea to actually scrap fortresses you don't need again, because they are more a "spearhead" assault device (repair and storage = great for transporting viral shredders) not a defense one...

[raptor331]

They do make a pretty good defence in early games.

[MaxAstro]

I find unit cap fleets of tech III fighters are the best way to deal with groups of 40-ish Dagger Frigates - they are really scarily strong.  One group of over 100 took me ~two~ unit cap fleets of fighters.  It also doesn't help that they spawn so far out that it takes forever for your forces to engage them - although this does mean more time to deal with them and I do realize that their spawn distance was fixed in the latest patch.

Ironically for how dangerous the Dagger Frigates are, Buzz Bombs are a seemingly laughable threat.  Maybe it's just because my ally's Tech III Grenade Launchers mop them up so fast, but I've barely ever lost anything to Buzz Bombs.