A fringe benefit of posting on this forum is the great suggestions from people that DONT relate to your question. Don't get me wrong, I'm delighted with the great answers to my questions, but often the replies also point me to information I wasn't seeking but is very useful indeed.
For example:
One of my discussions about using cloaker starships led to some comments about the uses (and ill-uses) of Raid Starships. I used to include them in my Fleetball when I went on the attack. But someone mentioned that was a waste of their abilities and it made me think about what I was doing.
I stopped using them with the fleet; rather I would leave them behind at my homeworld until I'd see a use for them. And gradually I found what I liked to do with them. For starters, they are my elite strike group. Once I knew where all the AI co-processors were in the whole map, the raid starships were fantastic at going 20+ jumps to reach them and destroy the ones that I would never get to using my fleet. The same for Data Centers. For that alone they impressed the heck out of me and as far as I'm concerned, paid for their cost a thousand-fold.
I still find them a bit fragile to send inside enemy force fields to attack tougher targets, but as a way to get rid of tachyon sentries they are proving outstanding.
The Mk III and IV versions are truly fantastic because they are cloaked. Usually higher marks are more powerful than lower marks, but I didn't expect (or look for) totally new features in the same ship so finding the better ones could not only take and deal more damage but were invisible was quite the delight.
I'm sure that I'm only scratching the surface of their uses but I just wanted to share my enjoyment, and my appreciation for the friendly forum that I think contributes to the overall experience of the game.
Edit: punctuation
