Favourite start ship?

[Jokus]

Hey,

I went through the last few hundred thread titles and didn't find something like this. The search gives a thread from january 2010, but some ships seemed to have pretty different properties then.

And yes, the default answer is probably: "Try something new, everything can be the right tool at the right time. There is no best ship." But still some ships feel just plain cooler. So please tell, which you prefer to get as your personal starter boat. Here's my list for now (though I'm still lacking a lot of experience, since I just recently started to get into this game).

Raider: Yay! Deep strikes! These little thingies are great for neutering planets. And they totally wipe out frigates. And they are fast. And you get hordes of them.

Autocannon: Speedy and hordes, too. Though they pack a lower punch than raiders as far as I gathered experience with them.

Parasites: You got some funny ships? Cool, I'll get a few of those, too Though they seem to become less useful in later stages. Maybe I just stopped using them, when my blob reached a size, where a few reclaimed ships don't really change anything.

Honorable mentioning:
Viral Shredder: Ok, these thingies have some mean abilities. And you get more and more and more of them. I haven't chosen them as a starter ship yet, but got a few from a level 5 cache at one time. I had hundreds of them on most key planets, before I switched to a new game. Besides, I liked to pair them up with Parasites, when there were Acid Sprayers or other fusion cutter-immune ships around The two things that frighten me away are their horrible speed and the large number of fusion cutter-immune foes.

[RogueThunder]

Hmmm... Lets see.

Teleport Battlestation: Whats that? You need a defense where? Oh, sorry, already dealt with.
Guard...posts...? Oh, you mean those things in force-field guarded reserves that throw poo? Yeah, they're cute.
What do you mean my Battlestations died... They're right there. (Right after they've died and been rebuilt/returned to battle for the third time... taking hundreds to thousands of ships with them...)

Nanoswarms: Ahem, this is a mouthful so... you have just been paralyzed, engine damaged, parasite marked, armor damaged... oh and took a lil damage to boot. Yeah. ALL of you. (Admittedly, not really all. But my field deployment of enclave starships makes it damn close at times! And this additional LARGE knowledge cost is really necessary to use them well...)
Can you say "support role" ? XD...

Forcefield Bearers: Hello. This is my fleet. It is not leaving. Get used to it. No I don't care if you are Mk.IV. (Admittedly, I tend to rush Mk.III triangle and FF bearers when I have them... with some flagships thrown in.)

My Honorable Mention: Joo. Owned Doomgates---I mean Z. Beam Frigates...
I'm honestly not sure how anything is to survive these buggers firepower short of MASSIVELY overwhelming firepower and health. Admittedly, they deal poorly in smaller conflicts... particularly against higher mark ships... But on defense against waves? Jeeze. And in not-so-small conflicts? Hahahahaha... And really, your triangles can handle the cleanup... Build 10 Merc Z Beam Frigates sometime when yer resources are capped. (Costs about 1 mil crystal to do so. Ill admit these guys ain't cheap)... Put em on free roam on a planet that doesn't get overrun but needs a little help being kept safe... Stop worrying about said planet. Not kidding. Incredibly good at dealing with other ships, and tend to not get in trouble themselves. Don't even ask what happens if you turn on auto-kite... That's where things just get wrong.

;P I love parasites too BTW, but these strike my fancy a lot too. More often, even.

[Shrugging Khan]

Bombards used to be my one and only for a long time, for no other reason that every shot of theirs deals 180.000 units of damage. 180! K! DAMAGE!

Nanoswarms are an odd lot, but definitely fun. Also, their mushroom icon is way cute. Unfortunately, their actual effectiveness is limited unless you micromanage them meticulously...or you have the economy to build a gatling mushroom cannon.

[Sir t]

Well, I've only played a few games and lost but...

SPIRE MAW. It swallows whole fleets whole cutting down on your ship losses. Even if something is powered down inside a force field it will suck them in, leaving an undefended guard post. Yeah you only get a few of them but that's 200 AI ships that are not there anymore.

SPIRE STEALTH BATTLESHIP Cloaked and hits like a hammer.

SPIRE BLADE SPAWNER Sit these in a force field and watch enemy waves get pounded to death. Also works in attack by blasting guard posts on the other side of the map. Through a force field.

Yeah I like glowy Spire ships.

Of the Standard Ships I would go for a LASER GATLING. Fairly cheap and does a lot of damage in swarms. Teleport Raiders are good too especially as they are cheap. Yuu need a mass of them though so getting level 2 is well advised. That said 450 of them blitzing around is tremendous fun to use. And they are so cheap who cares about losses.

[Orelius]

Teleport Raiders: not too great when left on FRD or attack move, but when microed, are able to snipe off guard posts like a branding iron through butter.  Though the teleportation placement tends to get them screwed when facing heavy beam guardians (Losing full caps in half a second, ugh), they can be rebuilt in full within a minute at the most.

Autobombs:  Just... Yeah.  I often use these to snipe guard posts and in general, kill stuff.  I like to leave these unbuilt when not in use, and start mass-producing them on a planet that is under attack.

Spire Rams: Excellent for destroying guard posts.

Shredders: Everyone seems to like shredders; I tend to get around 1500 shredders in the early game before I get crushed by being too aggressive with them.  The brownouts hurt, too.

Neinzul commandos/tigers:  Great for guard post raiding, and cheap, too.  The commando scout intel is awesome, too.  I like to pump these out on attacked worlds so I don't have to move my fleet.

[BobTheJanitor]

Shredders are great, but I would never start with them. You could have 10 of them and it would be enough to replicate thousands. Just pop a zenith cache. No point in actually building them!

[Sunshine!]

I was always a fan of Raiders, Gatlings, and particularly Z Chameleons.  Z Chameleons have higher base DPS than fighters, longer range(7000!), more hitpoints, same armor, and are (relatively) not too expensive compared to bombers.  Also, close combat armor type means they're not good against fortresses, and are still vulnerable against fighters, but are protected against various other bomber-eaters.  They have an excellent selection of armor type bonuses.  I pretty much cannot say enough good things about these, they're way more than just Bomber+.  If I send out units on a deep strike, I can usually expect to get these babies back home, even if I've lost all my fighters and bombers.

[Commiesalami]

Munitions boosters  Its actually quite fun to have most of my ships dealing 2.7x or more damage, handling high mark worlds early on becomes a lot easier.

Grenade Launchers Excellent on defense when a wave pops in, i find these as a safe choice when I don't know the types of AI I'm going to face.

Zenith Beam Frigates For reasons already said above by RogueThunder

Shredders are great, but I would never start with them. You could have 10 of them and it would be enough to replicate thousands. Just pop a zenith cache. No point in actually building them!

I remember finding a Mark V cache and bouncing with glee about having level 5 shredders to use and abuse.  The lack of shredders left very disappointed and sad.

[Ozymandiaz]

Force Field Bearer, best fleet defender there is and if used right can make your fleet live for a long long time. In essece is makes your fleet more cost effective as it dies less often, and that is a good thing .

Zenith Beam Frigate, gotta love beams and range.

Blade Spanwer, lets me just sit at the WH and send out wave after wave of ships slamming into the enemy

[Tharrick]

Sentinal frigates! Get yourself a full cap of these fellas, and move them into hostile territory after your main fleet has cleared the wormhole. Reasonable damage support fire, infinite range, and lets not forget tachyons and warp sensors!

[NickAragua]

Bulletproof Fighters: Recently, I've started subscribing to the school of thought that ignores missile frigates on offense. They take too long to get there. However, that creates a numeric gap in my fleet. In come the bulletproofs. They can go wherever the normal fighters go, effectively double my fighter cap and don't die nearly as easily.

Teleport Battlestations: Same as the guy after OP, I love them on defense. On offense, they're not so hot any more now that guard posts are no longer wimps with like 20 HP. But when your empire gets huge, you need to get a large group of ships somewhere FAST sometimes. Teleport Battlestations will fill that niche just fine.

[Jokus]

Wow, that's a pretty diverse ship list. It says a lot about the game that there is obviously not flavor of the month. I think I'll try to abuse a few more ship types.

[Malibu Stacey]

Forcefield Bearers: Hello. This is my fleet. It is not leaving. Get used to it. No I don't care if you are Mk.IV. (Admittedly, I tend to rush Mk.III triangle and FF bearers when I have them... with some flagships thrown in.)

Ditto all of that. Twice.

Of the other non-expansion ships I find Raiders are pretty amazingly good too as others have said.

Parasites used to be pretty amazingly good in v4.0 when you could abuse MRS in your fleets as you'd essentially have mobile manufacturing wherever you needed it but I haven't used them much in v5.0.

[superking]

its all about the armour boosters baby.. enemies doing 20% damage and focusing their fire on the (easily rebuilt and staggeringly tough) boosters

[zoutzakje]

my fav gotta be sentinal frigates. Like Tharrick said, clear out wormhole and then move them in. They can cuddly hug  pretty much anything from long distance except guard posts (range dampening). Combine them with those sniper units and they'll cuddly hug  even more. Also good for killing command stations quick. Sometimes the command station is so far away from the wormhole that it takes my fleet a while to reach it, giving it more time to reinforce with a lot of ships. But with frigates and snipers you can avoid this a lot more often (assuming there is no external invincibility)