15-09-2003 08:43									#1
	Transports Got spare money?

A few facts about transports I've got so far:

- one troop pod can stack up to four ground units (of any kind), so if you need a veteran army transport (max 34 units), your transport fleet must have at least 9 troop pods total.

- if you have more than 10 fleets in a system, only 10 fleets do all battles one turn. The order of joining battle is (maybe) same as the order in fleet selection screen. but there is no simple way to manipulate it.

- Only the fleets that joined battle will do the bombardment and ground invasion. Your transport MUST join the fleet combat to land ground troops.

- transports can fire volleys and beams

My thoughts from those facts:

- transports must survive the fleet combat phase

- one battleship size transport is enough for whole army, but then it is almost defenseless and weaken your overall fleet force

- so my design of transport is something like assault carrier.
= 2 or 3 troop pods
= best warp engine(indeed), armor/shield, hull size
= massive defensive fire, stealth
= good amount of missiles or fighters
= 1GM/s system engine(why should it run into enemy fire?)
= no enemy location tools

- form transport flotilla/armada etc around 3 to 6 of those 'assault ship', escorted by LR or SR ships. I also suggest these escorts equip missiles/fighters instead of beams.

- AI ship design autobuild sucks, at least for transports.

	15-09-2003 16:06									#2
	Got spare money?

My Approach resembles yours (but not completely )

Large Transports with 4-5 Troop Pods (so that I need 2 or a whole Army)
Max Shields and Max Armor
Transports are filled with ECM, Stealth (if available) and Point Defense Weapons (sometimes also larger Beam Weapons on Standard Mounts.
Engines:
WEarp Engine Max
and, different from your Aproach
System Engine also on or at least near Max.
Reason is, that I want my Transport Fleet to avoid the enemy, if an enemy Fleet is able to get near them undetected (for example by using massive Stealth).
Most of the Times I build either a Detachment with only th Transport Ships, or I build them with small Escorts, i.e. 1-2 Picket Shps and 2-3 Point Defense Ships (maybe additional an LR-Shp, but this seldom happens).