OK, that was a total clickbait title. But I think I'm finally about to win my first 9/9 game, which is amazing I think given it took the better part of 100 hours to beat 7/7 and I've won a couple of 8/8 games since then and now I'm pushing 200 hours and I'm in 9/9 and doing pretty well. So I thought I'd post my comments about some things that I get a lot of use out of that I don't read much about here on the forums or actually go against what seems to be the prevailing wisdom and see what people think.
Let's start with... Mark IV Scout Starships. They're perma-cloaked. They're fast. They don't get killed by counter-spies. They're basically immune to death. They can scout the entire map and then go adventuring with your fleets, giving you scout intel while simultaneously giving your entire fleet tachyon coverage as well as sniper and missile immunity. Oh, and you don't need an Advanced Starship Constructor to build them and their knowledge cost is low enough that you can unlock them before you take a single system, letting you see the entire map before you decide what to do and what research to pursue.
Ancient Shadows Support Ships. If you're playing with alt-champ progress you can build these in your home system (with sufficient research, it's a bit random), or you can do nebula scenarios. These ships all have high DPS, long range, a fairly weak tank, and high speed. If you send them out with one or two Mk. IV scout starships to keep the missiles away (and bring your champion, of course) and don't get caught by gravity drains or other gravity effects trying to move off the wormhole, they can eventually kite any AI fleet to death, then go after the guardposts and the command station and let you take systems with zero casualties. Which means zero reprisals and you don't have to spend tons of metal constantly rebuilding your fleet.
Hive Golems. The Botnet golem (deservedly) gets a lot of press, but I find the Hive Golem to actually be more useful offensively. You jump in, drop the wasps, jump out. 500 wasps will neuter most systems by themselves. If there's 10,000 threat ships in the system or the AI has Gravity Drains (or other slowing ships) they won't do so well, but they still give the AI 500 things other than your main fleet to shoot at, so if you just need to make an opening so you can your main force off the wormhole without it being shot to pieces they're still fantastic even if they do zero damage.
Spirefleet. I see comments saying things like "FS can't fight 10,000 ship waves by themselves" or "FS can't fight the entire Special Forces by themselves". Aside from the later FS exowaves and a few surprises on the AI homeworlds, there is nothing the AI can throw at a 5+ city Spirefleet that will do more than scratch the paint, as long as:
1) All enemy ships are coming from one direction, and
2) You have your super-handy Mark IV Scout Starships providing counter-missile and counter-sniper coverage.
Spirefleet surrounded by 10,000 threat ships dies in a fire. Spirefleet that's kiting in a zig-zag that arranges their massed photon cannon fire into a wall of flaming death kills those same 10,000 threatships with zero casualties. Bring along a few Mk. III Engineers and you can deepstrike forever.
Spirecraft Siege Towers. Nobody ever talks about them, but I love these things. Each one is like a cap of the same mark of plasma siege starships. A Mark I-III cap of them is easy to build and will shred any force under a hostile forcefield in seconds. Defensively, they do AoE damage and have long enough range to not get shot (much) so they're great for defending hostile wormholes.
Things that are powerful that I've already seen discussed: Spider turrets, gravity turrets, beam cannons, modular fortresses, trader goodies, etc.
I think the one thing I've been most disappointed with is Neinzul Railpods. I really, really, really tried to like these. I built space docks 8 at a time right on hostile wormholes with a full compliment of engineers and just bombarded AI systems with them. Occasionally they would eventually clear out the system, but more often they'd just annoy the Special Forces or fail to kill off AI ships faster than the AI reinforced the planet. I felt it wasn't worth the knowledge cost to unlock higher marks, or pick them as my starting special unit.
