I downloaded the demo and have been playing with it. I am trying to optimize my ships to get the most point return at the end of the mission. I just completed the tutorial (the very first mission) with 992 credits worth of ships on my side. I have been thinking about it for a while now, but I am not seeing any way of bettering this. Can anyone beat me and send me back to the ship creation screen?
I think i did it with a few thousand free, by plopping down 1 wing of fighters, a single cruiser, and a couple (3?) frigates (all designs being tutorial ones).
Hmm, maybe I wasn’t clear enough. You are allowed up to 20,000 credits worth of ships. I used 992 credits (after quite a few tries), leaving me 19,008 free (hurray for bonus points!). I want to know if anyone can beat that using fewer credits worth of ships.
Ok, that’s just crazy. Mind posting up your design?
I - what!?
A single wing of fighters costs more than that!
I want to see that design! D:
Ditto. This should shake up the status quo.
This.
It’s gotta be a frigate of some kind… off to try this.
It certainly seems like it’d be priced like a frigate… But wow…
Only thing I can thing of is a really fast and well shield frigate that chips away at the enemy.
Has been a couple of days since I posted, I just read the replies today.
Hmm, I don’t really want to give my designs away without allowing others the chance to come up with their own first. If I post first, then others will simply take the easy road and use an iterative solution to beat me, and not come up with something completely original. I will give you all a few hints.
-
The tutorial puts you against 2 cruisers and 3 frigates, so take into account you do not need to battle enemy fighters.
-
This is probably really obvious, but you never know: Placement of your fleet is very important, if you are stupid and place poorly you will be fighting too many enemies at once, and you will lose.
846 credits.
Can be shaved further.
An engineless cruiser sitting in the corner. My design was 826 points. A Panther hull with a Micro Crew Module, Generator II, Reflective Shield, Fusion Beam, Proton Beam and a Guidance Scrambler Beam. It can probably be done even cheaper. Once the frigates are knocked off, the cruisers can’t penetrate the Reflective shield and can be killed at leisure.
Gratz! Although, sucky for me, because the panther hull is not available in the demo. Oh well. I learned the guidance scrambler is FAR more effective than the EMP shield I was using (although it costs more, so might be able to make up the difference in the non-available hull).
After playing a few more times, the guidance scrambler is more effective than 2 emp shields. I suppose the emp shields also give slight protection against cruisers with the emp gun though…
Will play more tomorrow.
Edit: Gah, must go to bed, lol
I need to play more tomorrow. In some games with the guidance scrambler all incoming emp seems to be stopped, in other games I can get hit several times in a row and die. Not sure if there is RNG there or if I am missing something.
Just a hair over 750 credits 
Cheapest Swarm hull, 3 Rocket launchers, 2 reflective shields, a power generator 1 and a crew module. Only thing is that pesky frontline frigate pokes his head in my shields with his guns now and then.
658
Sekhmet with 2 rocket launchers, 1 reflective shield, micro crew, power 1, 1 GSB, shoved it in corner with all order other than Attack Frigates deleted.
Now this is a really cool thread. I can do the 826 of Follick (sitting smack in the middle). Can anybody do this with frigates only? And what is the low for fighters?
OK, four frigates, cost 3637.
Four frigates, cost 3098.