Have to disagree with Ian. Eyehawk is trash, any of the other scouts is better...Shyarie, Vaarl, Vaarka....They all have some form of survivability over the tiny hull four eyehawk and can at least defend themselves from a flight of fighters.
by PL
Patrol (ignoring fighters right now)
Plasmahawk is very strong contender here. The 'redundancy' save on 6 for crew and damage makes this big enough to survive a hit, or at least unlikely to explode, and it has a front arc long range weapon.
Vaarl, bar none the best buy scout in the game.
Tiraca/Brisaria are always tempting but usually just give points away.
Everything else is too slow, too weak or too short ranged for general use.
Skirmish
Warbird is a tough little cookie that has a decent punch. Must be used in groups to really be effective and must have initiative sinks.
Strikehawk, see above but has a heavy fighter that will likely never get a chance to shoot...but is scary.
Brikorta. an ap dd beam at relatively long range...and it has interecptors and fighters too...buy them.
Plasma Ikorta variant from Pak, another great ship. This forms the core of many Pak fleets...good long range punch in packs and good side guns.
Milani prior to Arm one of the best now outclassed by the Brikorta (better beam/fighters) and the Plasma Ikorta (tougher/better range) if taken as packs. No carrier trait and the short range of the guns let it down, but really its the fact that the Kotha is virtually useless.
Xixx, another formerly good ship that is really being outclassed by the Plasma Ikorta/Brikorta. Still it is your only range 30 bombardment ships that can back away as it shoots.
Raid
Supermerchant, it doesn't get any better. Great forward punch, no boresight issues, hull six with redundancy...
Solarhawk...do you like roman candles...great one shot weapon, handle with care as its very fragile.
Haltona is okay in pairs or more...good enough beam, fair number of all round dice. Depends on opponent.
Battlewagon, again...hull six with interceptors, a pack of fighters, a decent beam. Good in smaller fights or really big ones...leave out of fighters where you will get flanked.
bimith has never worked for me...too short ranged...but folks tell me she's a wonderful boat.
Xill is a great ship if you aren't facing any of the beam teams...the 30 damage tends to be just enough to make them feel they got good use out of those 3 and 4 die beams.
Battle
Xaak, great guns, command, manuever and just enough staying power.
Kaliva, paired or with another ship that can soak intercpetors, this is the core of most league fleets.
Brokadoes, in any game big enough or dedicated to fighters, a must have.
Stormfalcon, looks great, but rarely lives up to it, same issue as the solarhawk. Great out of the gate but no staying power, largely due to movement issues with the boresight. Nightfalcon is a better buy but the eh...the Xaak is a better command ship and the Kaliva a better hitter and the Brokadoes a better carrier.
Lakara is just too slow/short ranged for a mixed fleet.
War
Brakiri only if you want the mines...fun those.
the Pak War ship is otherwise the absulute beast...long range punch, survivable and noone wants to get anywhere near it.
Z'takk now has a nice model, but with only 50 crew i'd avoid it as a war ship.
Arm.
well choices are limited...
Brivioki...it is a beast....but so sooooo ugly...
There are other ships but not that I would generally take in mixed fleet. The core of any mixed fleet is to decide if expected opponents are going to have interceptors or not. If they do, either go all beam or all plasma/grav. Don't mix, you'll just lose too much firepower to the pretty interceptor lightshow.
Initiative is usually a lost cause, only the drazi have a bonus, and many of your best ships have a penalty in the abbai and pak lines. You have several good choices for command bonuses...use them to offset the penalty and hope you opponent didn't buy any. but mostly prepare to lose.
Fighters....again....be prepared to just lose here...you can have better numbers and better bombers....but they generally will choose the fights and your dodge scores on your bombers suck. You also have to pay for you better fighters as they don't appear on carriers, and that means you gave up initiative sinks, a much bigger deal given you likely to lose initiative most times.
Fleets I have seen work...
Brokadoes with six brikorta (5 pt raid) - lots of beams, lots of figters that the carrier can regen.
Battlewagon, 2 Warbird, 2 Vaarl (5pt skirmish) - all tough, beam...vaarls for initiative sinking to avoid have a third or more of your firepower have no targets.
2 kaliva (or Kaliva/Xaak) and anything else at battle level - I have tried all kinds of mixes here...and the key is to have some for of interceptable weapons on the smaller ships to make an opening.
Ripple
).
