Thanks for the thoughts — I guess this has been a case of the nefarious RNG. /furlscloak. Last game was a Spire Hammer & Special Forces Captain. I'll bet if I looked, many of the last games I've played have had Spireling or Stealth Master.
I've always just gotten Military Orbital Command III since without stealth, they can't slowly build up large numbers by hanging at the edge of the gravity well on a player world — Which is what I find makes them rather unbalanced. It's when both AI's have them, and able to put 10 or 20, esp IIs, IIIs & IVs slowly hiding themselves at a world, then popping out at once on a random orbital command force fields in your backfield that is the problem. With 7.7 mil HP per ship just at mk IV (and ONLY 5.7 mil hp at mk III), if you get caps of 8 mk IVs and 8 mkIIIs cold chillin' somewhere around 5 planets deep, there is a really solid chance that the instant you look away, because you've got a wave elsewhere, or your tea is done steeping, or your cat is biting your foot, they'll burn down a force field before your static defenses can churn through that massive HP pool (107.2 mil total for just the mk 3 & 4 units!) Which means always having to keep a real chunk of fleet behind to smack these jerks down.
That said, my question still stands — is the ARCEN wiki article correct that aside from initial bonus ships etc., the further unlocks are purely based on map seed?
