How to build a powerful fleet

Personally, before researching weapons, I look around and find the guy I'm most likely to get into a war with first and build a weapon and defense he's weak against. After that, I add a secondary weapon or defense if he adapts. As far as fleet composition goes, I know that some people have some min-max combos of roles but personally, I like to have a balance in my fleet to avoid cheese. Hull size is a personal preference but when you get enough manufacturing points, you'll be building large hulls in no time.

Welcome to Galciv 3 btw!

Split weapon focus, the AI doesn't build even dual defense ships(I consider this a bug, really - SD broke the AI blueprints a while back). A ship with 3 weapon types can inefficiently kill any AI ship.

Larger hulls can be extremely powerful, but if you don't have the manufacturing to produce them or the logistics to make large fleets with them you only waste your time researching them. Get them, but don't rush them.

Support ships are bad unless you field carriers. They provide fleet-wide buffs in a nonsense manner.

Existing units require retrofitting to acquire any upgraded design.

How to make the best fleet: assault carrier modules on your largest ship size, combined with most of the fleet buffs on the carriers(especially the non-thulium jamming one) and stack as many in one fleet as you can.

Are you sure about the dual defenses? I could have sworn they DID build them. Can anyone else confirm what he's saying because if that's true how in the blue hell isn't this addressed in a patch yet?

The ai can build dual defenses, they are building them now in my game. For the most part Exelis is correct. Build a dual attack design. The ai will eventually counter your ships but a tech savy player that slingshots using artifact anomalies will keep far ahead of the tech tree. As I wrote in another post, from now until next year the Ai will strugle to keep up with a player who optimizes his builds. 

Next year, with our expand-alone the game will have more scripts dictating how the ai does combat and ship builds. This was how it was in GCII and it worked very well. This information is purely speculation on my part but I infer from comments made by Frogboy about how things will change. 

The AI use "Best Defense" for equiping defenses, now that usualy means 1 type as 90% of the time they are ahead in one branch of the tech tree. BUT, it can so happen that they are equal in tech and on the odd, and its very very rare you may see an AI ship with more than one defense and even if you do you will notice that it is not equaled out very well, you would see 200 shields and 16 armor for example.

I am also experimenting with substituting early defenses with jamming entirely. But this might be less viable depending on the race you play.

What I am getting at is, that it might be a strategical problem, not a tactical one. Are your weapons on the same tech level the enemies? You can select enemy fleets and hover over the ships in there. You can for example investigate the damage, hit points and defenses on an enemy medium ship and then compare this to you medium ship designs. If your ships don't measure up you might simply be behind on tech.

Maybe I will take a look at the default blueprints later.

Hmmm, another technique for stronger ships is to only build ships with strategic resources (Elerium, antimatter, etc) for their weapons. A ship with 2 antimatter missles for 32 missile attack can be very potent early in the game. A fleet of such ships can be deadly. You need only research the basic weapon techs in order to have access to these.

If you choose this path, you will need to mine, and mine and mine some more. Plus, you will need to research any advanced mining techniques in order to increase the number of resources (more resources = more fleets).  If you research at least the basic defenses, you can design ships to resist the enemy's preferred attacks- with sufficient fleet strength, you can build fleets that will survive battles with minimal loses.

Late in the game, your ships will start to lag in potency, so you need to finish the game early, before turn 200 at least.

People talk about "tall" versus "wide" empires- where you decide to have fewer awesome planets versus many average ones. Using strategic resource equipped ships is the "tall" strategy for your fleets.  As you will have fewer, more powerful fleets, you will need to research enough movement tech so that they can cover more ground to counter the numerous, but less powerful enemies.

Worth a try.

I use a tech lead and mass production to dominate the enemy.  I monofocus on one weapon type, usually beam or missile.  When they start building defenses, I start building bigger weapons.  It's all very simplistic.  I do adapt defenses to the primary weapon of the current enemy at war.  With a bit of logistics I start throwing fleets at them, multiple fleets as necessary.  A couple of times that has not been enough and I used resource-based fleet augment support ships to very good effect.  I boosted my beams and lowered enemy shields and did fleet wide tactical repair.  That and some targeting made a big difference. Targeting and big weapons is a good combination.  Spending all your resources on one ship per fleet is also helpful if resource availability is an issue.

Still, my answer to achieving a stronger military is achieving a stronger economy.  I don't know how well it adapts to the tutorial, but it works for me and my sandbox.

Starting out I try to research hulls up to medium and provide them with a single weapon system I research beyond the base level. (one or two additional levels if possible). Which ever one I choose -- and it changes game to game -- is my primary weapon type and make up the Big guns of the fleet. I research advances in the other two as opportunity permits and use them as secondaries. I rarely have all three types on the same ship until I get huge. A Battleship needs a lot of variety.

In fleet construction I go for combined arms, weighted heavily toward my primary weapon type. Medium destroyer classes or the large Cruiser class all mount a main system and a secondary. Small ships have specialized missions and usually have a single system. By using a little of everything, I have the all range categories covered, wear down all their defenses, and usually have something they haven't covered with defenses. While I do select my secondary system load outs based on the weapons and defenses my opponent chooses, the primary system is not; that one usually gets picked before I meet anything armed except pirates. Instead of designing ships to go against a specific enemy, I organize fleets using ships that give advantageous match-ups.

All defenses are researched evenly as much as possible until I find out one isn't needed. Then I don't research that one until I get ahead in other techs. Right now I'm in a very peaceful galaxy where the second and third rated civs are using the same weapons. This is mostly Energy, but both have the occasional slug thrower on large ships. (I'm the only one with huge right now.) All my ships (except tiny) have shields and at least token levels of armor -- as do both opponents. My main weapon this game was missels, and neither of them have much in defense against them.

For the most part your asking the erong question. This game is about infastructure. I recommend building all factories with a duranthium refinery on your home world and every world.around your shipyards. I find it takes to long to specialise planets. I think it is important to have multiple shipyards as soon as possible. One gor colony ships constructors and a back up for later on warships. I don't build scouts instead i explore with colony ships. Don't auto survey your survey your survey ship instead explore stars untill you find anomolies. Don't auto explore your scouts untill you have explored every possible star. Use your ships you get from anomolies to explore. Buy mercenaries their worth the effort for surveying and exploring. 

Now when it says upgrading blueprints its not talking about your.current ships but it is talking about the default ship designs you get from researching instead make your ships that is what the game was made for. I recommend starting off with colony ships and constructors with one module and one life support untill they start grabbing what you want. 

Now as far as combat goes everybody like lasers. In the beginning defend with shields and dont use lasers. This will work untill you go to war. When you go to war you need to figure out the other's armament like shields to counter laser... It's in the rules and counter with defenses and weapons. As far as fleet roles assault attacks everything so if you don't make the right ships i would use it untill you have tje right stuff. Otherwise someone else will have to advise you on this.

There's a wiki page on ship roles.  You can't just use assault, that will get you murdered.  To really have a powerful fleet, you need to utilize those roles to hide high power, low defense ships behind high defense ones, optimizing your damage output without reducing your durability.

Im not sure that is a valid arguement. I use whole Fleets of Assault ships quite regular, 3 attack/3 defence builds and I dont get Murdered. I do same with Escorts & Guardians too. Its not untill Large hulls that I start to mix and match.

I'm not argueing support roles i just don't put enough thought into it. If you don't have medium ships yet. You wouldn't want a fleet full of suport ships. Assault is better than that. Once you have medium or better ships like i said I'm sure someone else would be better for advice. What my point is a lot of colonies and good infastructure is as good if not better advice for combat. Someone needs to talk about infastructure.

Since you mentioned the tutorial, what makes the tutorial a little awkward is that you only have your homeworld until you conquer the one which is far away and near the drengin. It is hard to build infrastructure there.

Ok thanks everyone for the info.  It also sounds like everyone is making custom ships, I was using the default ones until I understood the game better, but I'll start using it.  I'll try the tutorial again this time I'll also skip the support ships, and use the mining materials for prototype ships instead of saving them for planetary improvements.