Hi there. While I'm sort of a veteran from Vicky, EU4, and CK2, I'm nevertheless struggling a bit with this game, mainly regarding military technology and ship design.
After getting my ass handed to me a couple of times due to an (allegedly) equivalent fleet shredding through my admittedly ill-designed ships, I decided no amount of practical experience could replace good ol' stats research. As such, I've come to better understand how most weapons work and how they interact with different armor/shields.
The main issue, of course, is that, since I have really no way to obtain any information about the particular composition of a potential enemy's fleet, I have no way to plan in advance my designs so as to better counteract them. As such, I'm basically forced to do reconnaisance by fire and then, after gathering the necessary intel, completely rework my designs. This is not only awfully expensive, but a very dangerous approach, actually, so my basic question is: how do you guys manage to do that? Or do you just spam plasma cruisers, which apparently is today's big thing?
After getting my ass handed to me a couple of times due to an (allegedly) equivalent fleet shredding through my admittedly ill-designed ships, I decided no amount of practical experience could replace good ol' stats research. As such, I've come to better understand how most weapons work and how they interact with different armor/shields.
The main issue, of course, is that, since I have really no way to obtain any information about the particular composition of a potential enemy's fleet, I have no way to plan in advance my designs so as to better counteract them. As such, I'm basically forced to do reconnaisance by fire and then, after gathering the necessary intel, completely rework my designs. This is not only awfully expensive, but a very dangerous approach, actually, so my basic question is: how do you guys manage to do that? Or do you just spam plasma cruisers, which apparently is today's big thing?