VGAP4 Birdmen

Playing Birdmen in VGAP4

See also: Tim Wisseman's guide to the Birdmen, at http://www.vgaplanets.com/v4guide/birdmen.htm

Overview

The Birdmen are the cloaking, sneaking, backstabbing bastards of V4, second only to the villainous Privateers. They have reasonable ground assault attack capabilities, fairly capable ships; they are potentially VERY powerful when they can do what they do best, Spy and Board. To enable the boarding advantages of the Birdmen their nearly blind ships need a seeing eyed dog. To take full advantage of your spying you need to be a pretty good diplomat to negotiate with potential allies and blackmail known enemies (you can only spy on one race at a time).

Bad points:

The Birdmen have very weak scanners. A HUGE Problem.
Their ships can't tow well and most repair holds are small.
As mentioned elsewhere, the leader looks like Moe.
No Alchemy device ship
No hyperspace capability
no grav-mines to protect against hyperspace capable ships jumping over your defenses
Firepower ships (DW/DWG) are a slow 105 ly max speed.

Good points:

The best cloaking ships and bases in the game.
Great spying ability plus Praetorian High Guard Masters.
High training and growth rates.
Plasmatron replaces mines and smelters, and kicks in major ground assault horsepower.
Similar to Stormers, they have a very high conversion ratio of colonists--> Crew-->Troops-->Highguard. Feds, Peeps, University Alliance, and Borg have good reason to fear ground assault from cloakers.
Their cloaking ships can carry huge numbers of troops (and some can carry assault vehicles in pods too).
Three fast high capacity startup ships (Transwarp Skyfires)

Using special racial abilities

See the section on how to capture ships in combat on the Combat Tips page. Bear in mind the Deth Spec has a Boarding Laser. Leave this switched on all the time, it costs nothing to run. Host changes with boarding (hull or system damage required to attempt boarding) make the Deth Specs more important to use in conjunction with other Bird ships.

The Praetorian High Guard Masters do their thing without your intervention. They become active once your population crosses the 10 million mark. If they succeed in the capture of an enemy universal friendly code, advance with as many cloaked ships as you can muster as the mines and ships arrayed against you will pay no attention. There is a chance that the code will be incorrect...KABOOM!!! Refer to the strategy section for more spying ideas.

The Plasmatron Assault Vehicle decreases the effectiveness of enemy ground and air assault mechs. They also work as low impact mines and smelters. I build them in large units and move them from planet to planet mining each one out. I tried to spread them out a bit as an Ground Assault defense...don't bother...the best defense is to strip the planet and don't worry too much if the stripped rock gets over-run. It is better actually to have enemy take over base in your turf with structures intact. You can take it back later.

You have stealthy bases and ships. Bases have a signature of 20 instead of 800.

You have a number of anti-Borg capabilities: recover a higher number of "killed" Borg in ground combat as colonists, nanovirus device turns Borg into natives, and Borg do not get goodies when they assimilate Birdmen.

Using special ship devices

[See main guide for information on how Cloaking works]

A warning on nano-virus device. Borg gets cash for assimilating natives. If you turn his drones into natives and he assimilates them again he ends up ahead in the deal. Only use the device if you are in a position to GA the base and get the natives off to safety.

Recommended colonization strategy

The various player guides out there present several colonization options.

Pods – slow, inefficient, colonists in pods don't breed. Despite your slightly higher pod speed, I don't think this is a good idea for you. Use your pods for positioning material that is primarily just stockpiled such as minerals, food, repair, and ord. Pods of people should be docked. Your colonists, money and supplies are too valuable to send drifting along at 32 LYPT.
SDSF's – This is a better idea, but is slow with low tech engines. Use this as mop up of stars you passed up as lower priority. Faster speed (50-120), larger guest and cargo capacity make this hull more worthwhile. Consider using two of starting FTL-5 engines on these.
Small Capitol Ships – You need to get your startup Skyfires out and about to scan. As long as there is only one transfer per turn, tow SDSF's with your Skyfires to seed a planet with the SDSF and Colonize with the Skyfire. In the early game establishing 6 new bases a turn will give you a great start. Have colonists loaded into a pod to restock the Skyfires. Use some of your startup equipment (FTL-5 engines) to build White Falcon's. Since your Skyfires are fast, get them out a substantial distance and work back in a spiral. Establish some bases that will have concentrations of training centers. You will have more crew than you will need, so send them off to training center bases to become troops and highguard.

You should try to spread your people out throughout your territory to get a marginally improved overall growth rate. More importantly put significant numbers on planets with contraband. Maximum gathering rate not achieved until 400,000 colonists. Highguard a critical asset for boarding. Take advantage of training center planet and concentrate troops there in the early game until you have enough to spread them around more. With roundoff 100 troops here and there will not train into highguard, but a concentration of the same number will. Also, by spreading out your resources you are not as vulnerable to an assault on one of your bases. The exotic tech Pod Kicker can be used to bump up pod speed. This is most cost effective if you build up the need for a lot of pod activity and do it all at once so you don't have the tech cost. Growth of your population compounds, so boosting your rate with exotic tech may make sense to push some planets over critical 1 million and 5 million thresholds.

Training details:

Establish training planet (80-100 training centers) near HW as early as you can get a pod of most of your HW crew/troop/HG there. Preferably one with some contraband goodies to gather so you can throw 400,000 colonists there as well and have it pay off.
Leave most of your troops and HG there. HG breed troops, troops breed crew, crew breed colonists. Leaving them there increases the size of pool that is trained. This has a compounding interest effect.
Pod food from surrounding area to training center so you can train more than 1000 HG.
As your HW and other large bases accumulate excess crew, drop them off at training world.

Strip sparse areas of planets and don't invest in them. These wasteland buffer zones give a long warning of enemy approach.

Send your Skyfires out at nearly full speed transporting every turn. At farm planets leave a good seed of cash and supplies. Drop larger blocks of colonists if there is contraband. If there is good mineral potential leave a few hundred colonists so you can have a few mines. Don't build smelters. You will pod ore to bases with Plasmatrons or wait until the planet is armed with these fantastic ground units. For a future fort, leave enough colonists and troops to earn some minor income and serve as a hub.

Be very aggressive with how far you push out your borders. It is easier to negotiate a planned withdrawal or make concessions with a neighbor than to expand into already established turf. The Oklahoma land rush comes to mind. If you are in the typical circular arrangement send one ship toward core, one counter clockwise and one clockwise. You don't need fast ships to pick off the interior of your territory. Once you have established your starting border run your ships along these borders to a) make your presence known - although the Skyfires are not that tough, they can still beat most low tech ships b) strip fuel off border planets c) provide patrol to see anyone coming d) colonize three (or 6 if towing SDSF's) bases each turn). Once there are new cheap scouts or tech 3 Bright Hearts making their way out to border lands, send your Skyfires back for refitting and a fresh load of colonists.

Cherry pick the planets you colonize. This is common sense, as there is almost always a good planet within 190 ly, leave the unfarmable rocks for later. Your priorities can depend somewhat on your border. If you have a Borg neighbor, you want to get the natives rounded up quickly. Otherwise contraband is key to getting your economy started while your population is low. You start off with 25,000 colonists on your Skyfires. Drop a big load (as much as 15,000) at the first contraband laden planet. Subsequent contraband planets get a few thousand. But this will only be enough to speed up your farm construction etc. . Farm planets warrant 100 so you can build 1 mine to have emergency fuel on the base. Larger quantities of colonists will come out one White Falcons loaded with assault and life pods.

When your Skyfires get low on supplies, alternate between rocks and farms. On the first turn send down colonists and stuff to farm. On the next rock slurp up most stuff from a rock and drop colonist and a few MC.

Always grab all of the fuel. If you stop by a planet you or an ally own, dump most of your fuel at the base. This will help slow down any enemy incursions, particularly Borg Probes.

Pod Med units from homeworld to nearby farms. You want to get these farm planets up to 1 million population, but don't want to have to build med labs on every one. Five planets with 1 million pop generate 5 victory points, while 5 million on your homeworld only generates 2 victory points.

Spaceport and engine plant are relatively less expensive, so take the risk and build them early in new turf so you can build colonizing craft quickly. If your universe is crowded, you may wish to be more conservative and consolidate your territory. The more expensive ord and weapons plants can follow once the area can support the expense of capital ships.

If there are Chupanoids on a rock, beam up the surface stuff, but don't bother making a base. You can mine it later with a partical beam ship. You don't want to deal with these guys.

Pod natives to your homeworld or Resource Center. The maximum taxes are extracted when you have at least 1 million colonists and your spaceport is where the money is needed anyway. Also, be careful about pod launchers near Borg space. Consider not building many farms until you have podded the natives out as you may want to TNT the base and start over.

Similar to the Stormers, your training centers are efficient, so do not build many training centres on your homeworld. Otherwise all your breeders (colonists) get converted to non tax paying, non breeding crew and troops too quickly. Instead, establish training centers along your primary lanes out from your homeworld. You will probably have excess tax exempt crew, so load some up with your colonization pods to train into troops and highguard where the training rates are the highest.

This table is based on the presumption that you don't care about victory points. If you are playing for victory points, get each resource center planet up to 1 million, then start moving the growing population to a nearby "city" until it is at 1 million...

Base Type	Description	Development Strategy	Defensive Strategy
Cinder	Completely stripped unfarmable rock	It has served its purpose. If you obtain terraforming capability you can upgrade to a farm. Terraformers are not cost effective in my opinion.	Leave a small contingent. If an enemy uses sabotage base spy attack it is more likely to hit these poor sods instead of a base you care about.
Rock	Unfarmable - no natives or contraband	Build minimal structures if any. Beam up goodies to passing ships and drop off where there is a pod launcher or at a resource center. Drop off a few Plasmatrons to mine for you.	No sense in defending beyond your Plasmatrons.
Farm	Farmable with little other value	Build max farms, 12 to 20 factories, and small number of mines to get a head start on Plasmatrons. Start off with about 300 colonists, 10 troops and then you have enough to share and reload another outgoing light colonizing trip such as SDSF.	Cover with periodic patrols and outgoing battle fleets. Depending on how near you are to help and threats, consider a homeguard of fighters to discourage light raiders.
Town	Has some modest levels of contraband.	Get population to 100,000 and then pull off excess population to other planets with patroling ships or White Falcons doing supply runs. Build farms if in range. Consider building one of the production structures to serve the local area.	Have a fair number of Plasmatrons and a homeguard wing. Tow a Bright Heart in with less expensive Tech 8 engines. Lay mines locally if there is a threat.
City	Good contraband	Drop off a full assault pod or if general population is high enough a full life pod.	Town defense + Consider a star base to effectively use income or another large ship to defend.
Resource Center	Native center. Contraband is a bonus. Spaced out 350 - 500 ly from other Resource Centers. I flag planets that have natives with a red flag (Martians). Hit keypad -0- on a prospective planets to select a good location for drawing in natives.	Build public spaceport. Seed with a variety of natives. Once income is coming in consider which income consuming structures (military space ports, ord plants, fighter planets, assault plants) can most effectively use local resources and not require a logistical nightmare.	Protect as you would your homeworld as this planet develops. By turn 30 - 40 it could be more important than your homeworld because it may be: closer to the front fresher (more minerals and contraband) away from where some earlier intelligence located your homeworld By the time you are spending 100,000MC on a DWG you might as well spend a couple 1000 on a spaceport closer to the action.
Homeworld	Same as resource center, but has all of the nifty startup structures.	Get Ghips ASAP. Since ground assault plant and air attack bases are higher tech, use the homeworld for wings and assault vehicles. Ship small wings on ships and boost them other planets that are building fighters, but cannot form wings.	Don't go overboard on defending, but do be careful. Resources parked here are not doing much for you. Consider the cost of your insurance policy versus the risk. Make your neighbor defend HIS planets from your ships.

Strategy suggestions

You have the best spying capability in the game. Be sure to use it!

The addition of spy mana each turn is proportional to the square root of your contribution. You get the most bang for the buck with your initial 100 MC with each additional point coming at a higher price. Until 1000MC is of little consequence do not max out your contribution.
Choose ONE enemy to be your primary focus. As it is seldom smart to fight a war along multiple fronts, you will be most effective against a single target. Consider races that have desirable ship plans to steal or races that may pose a major threat later in the game. Factors that will reduce your spying effectiveness are the targets Leadership, Lawfulness and PSI. Peek at the training rates, since highguard help to protect against some forms of spy attacks.
My favorite targets would be the Peeps, Feds or University. They can fill your holes (scanners, ship devices, towing) and are relatively easier targets. The Lizards with their hisser units can pump their happiness up if necessary. The Stormers are a hard target. The Cyborg is impossible. You can't keep Crystal plans anyway, so what is the point.
Your impact will be on the happiness of the target race and will have a cumulative impact over time since spying is more effective with lower happiness. With lower happiness the economy slows down and a weak economy slows down tech, structures, ships, EVERYTHING. Initially, set your spy mode to sabotage bases. If you hit in the first couple turns it can be very effective because you are likely to whack the target race's homeworld. The impact can be severe (e.g. blow up ord plant killing 15,000 colonists). If you destroy a higher tech initial structure (e.g. assault plant) it may be many turns before they have the planet tech to build a new one. Every couple of turns "Incite Disorder". If you get them heading down enough in happiness their income and growth rate will slow down.
You want your mana to build up to 400 to 500 to try first attempt at stealing ship plans. If you try to steal plans right away you may get the target's good startup capital ship, but you are more likely to get a start-up freighter. Fortunately their highguard cannot stop you from stealing plans.
So that you don't line up everyone against you, good diplomacy is necessary. You want to cultivate a "working" relationship with allies and neutrals. You want to be able to counter any offer your target will make to gain a protector/ally. Share information with the bullies of the game so they go along with you to pound on the weak instead of being their bodyguard. Maybe you can convince others to choose the same spy target. For the timid that will not join in, share your successful "hits" with other players trying to leave them with a sense of "better them than me" relief.
Labour Camps and Mines now generate 10mc each, so are worth building. More to the point, if a camp / mine has enemy prisoners in it, the enemy's happiness goes down - I believe the rate is one point for EVERY full camp / mine. This has a direct result on their tax returns / susceptibility to Spying, so try to catch prisoners and imprison them! The slave trade could work out to mutual benefit if an ally has a fortified base to set up labor camps nearby.
You have lots of High Guard, compared to most races. Put one on each ship, making the ships almost immune to Spying. (It also improves their weapon accuracy.) Put at least one at each valuable Base: 40% of the time a high guard ranger can stop an enemy spy attack on a base that would have otherwise caused damage.
You have the best cloakers and some of the best troop ships in the game. < Be sure to use them for what they were designed for!
Boarding may be your best offense in the game is to use your troops to board enemy vessels. Highguard are the key to very powerful boarding capability. This is critical for slowing down the Borg. Firestorms and Fireclouds (chunnel ships) are extremely vulnerable to boarding. In fact the Quietus and Cubes are the only three Borg ships you can't steal easily. An array of ships specialized for boarding can make entering your space very expensive for anyone traveling in conventional space (non-Hyperdrive races). The power of boarding is not as dramatic as it once was with some of the major rule changes made to give defending crew major modifiers and weakening attacking colonists. The major boarding actions may need to wait until you have major high guard brigades. Also, since you cannot board without hull or system damage, you need to use the Deth Spec to break the ice. The only ships with the guest quarters capable of withstanding yours are the Cyborg Quietus and Cubes and Peeps Offworld Colony. Even the Stormer's Victorious is vulnerable to boarding if you have the initiative, and yes, despite their toughness, none of the Lizard ships stand up to a full Fearless load of Troops. You have the Deth Spec at tech level 6. The boarding laser can come in handy in a number of circumstances. This very versatile ship should be liberally sprinkled throughout the universe. They can board small ships on their own. If you team them up with another one of your ships with large guest quarters, you can give yourself a head start by eliminating many of the target crew and passengers with the boarding laser. If you would rather just blast a ship (e.g. Borg Cubes with more than 1,000,000 passengers) four Deth Spec boarding laser hits will destroy ANY ship, potentially before any regular combat. If you can either steal or blast the heart out of an enemy fleet on the move before combat, the balance could swing in your favor. Don't be afraid of a fight, but make it on your terms. Cloak and scatter if a situation is not to your advantage. Try leaving a light ship vulnerable so you can identify boarding targets for the next turn.
Tax rates: Liberal and Complex give you slightly more cash but you take a big hit on Happiness. Use Conservative or Ultra Conservative for max happiness. Max happiness is best strategy because it gives you more money in the long run (I believe colonist happiness figures in the tax formulae); it means your colonists and natives breed faster; it makes your empire resistant to spying; and happy natives attract more natives.
Technologies: In general I have found upgrading ships to be a bit of a pain, so I plan out my overall tech strategy ahead of time. I don't move my hull tech up past 2 (White Falcon) until I can outfit ships with decent components. You shouldn't be worried about overt aggression until later anyway. Of course if the Ghipsoidals build you engines, get your hull tech up ASAP so you can fling tons of full speed ships out early. Don't bother with Small Weapon Tech past level 2 for a long time (or ever). Raise shield and engine tech every turn. The point defense systems below tech 5 (micro-sand) are poor, so get that tech up and then take your time. Raise your Large Weapon Tech to get Sandcasters if you have a hostile fighter race to deal with. With ord prices going up with a host change don't go nuts with Sandcasters. Then the Disruptor Cannon at Tech 3 when you have the money, but not at the expense of items more on your critical path. I usually am not in much of a hurry to raise planet tech.
Pry your wallet open and upgrade your scanners +100 with exotic tech. The Skyfires outdrive their scanners, and the rest of your fleet is pathetic. SDSF's and Neutronics with 100+100=200 scan range help light things up while doing their light duty.
What to do when the enemy comes a-calling. The odds are the enemy will see less of your ships and bases than you might think. Keep in mind your toughest fleet is the one you haven't built yet. If you have done a good job expanding your empire very aggressively, you can absorb a several turns of any advance with minimal damage. By the time there are big ships involved you likely have the pod speed exotics. Deny your enemy your resources by launching most of your resources off of your planets. Leave a token 100 colonists to keep farms and factories operating in case the enemy skips over the planet. If the enemy mess around with ground assault on those planets there are fewer guests on his ships making them more vulnerable to boarding. As your enemy advances consolidate an attack fleet and anticipate the direction your enemy is coming. Also, work on harassing his supply ships and pick off the odd light ship in his fleet. In a recent game against the Borg it was a very rare time that a chunnel ship made it anywhere near my turf. As scary as Anni's are, when you know there are no surprises and they are all you have to deal with you can buy time until you can take them out. In the recent anti-Borg campaign the Borg lost one cube early and didn't loose another until T50. Then he lost over 20 in three turns. The enemy will come at you so bend, but don't break since it does not pay to enter a battle you will loose, be patient until success is certain. This is a power of cloaking. To support it however you need mobility to move your DW's around. Otherwise more mobile races will go around rather than through them.

Ships

Along the theme of doing what you do well, decide what you are going to do with your ships before you build them. My best advice for arming your ships is to look over the tables and experiment with Diplomat. The weapons you use should be tailored to your opponent. Concentrate on Ord weapons against the Crystals, armor draining against the Lizards, shield drain against the Feds, arcing against the Stormers… you get the idea. At low tech Disrupter Cannon, then Pulsed Phasor Cannon. Other weapons are nice under special circumstances (e.g. Photon Torpedo on Deth Spec). Weapon suggestions may be added to the table below. Anyone out there with suggestions should feel free to comment (nzgrrj@netzero.net).

One observation I have made with many other guides is the love affair with Intercept PD. For expensive ships like the DWG of course they are worth every penny. However, on Deth Spec with Ghip built engines you can build 3 ships with micro-sand casters for what you spend on 1 with intercepts. Consider the likely tech level of your enemy and the number of LW mounts their ships have. For example, until the Borg have Annihilation's they only have 4 LW mounts. In this case it would be rare to encounter volley's going deeper than 2 or 3 slots into your PD.

When your cash flow allows, boost your scan range exotic tech to improve your whole fleet.

Hull	Purpose	Comments
Small Deep Space Freighter	Colonization.	It is a good investment to use two of your start-up engines on these
Neutronic Fuel Tanker	Fuel movement and consolidation. Moving money.	Fuel volume does not seem to be a major factor with Birds. In three games I have built a total of one.
Swift Class Scout	I can't think of one.	Complete lack of a cargo hold make this ship nearly useless. I keep a few cloaked over yards to hold onto foreign hull plans.
White Falcon Class Cruiser	Armed freighter.	Very fuel efficient with two pod bays, 35K colonists, fair cargo. Build them whenever you have a sense that stuff isn't getting where it needs to be. Keep the PD cheap. This is an inexpensive ship that has no business in combat. If you use it in enemy territory so you don't initiate a combat you will loose.
Bright Heart Class Destroyer	Patrol, defense, mine laying/sweeping, anti-fighter (8 PD), battle group fodder.	Mine sweeping does not make any noise so leave "sweep enemy mines" on. This is one of the most cost effective ships in the Bird fleet. You will continue to build this for the whole game. In my recent game I didn't build enough of these early enough. You need to complement your Deth Spec raiders with many of them to bombard planets and sweep mines. When you sweep move just 1ly into minefield to minimize damage. Count on them to have your AA point defense since they have a reasonable evasive bonus.
Fearless Wing Class Cruiser	Ground Assault	This guy has all of the spy gear, cloak, 4 pod bays and a huge guest quarters (75,000). Couple with a Deth Spec to board or drop down assault parties on planets. A bit of a fuel hog, so the White Falcon is better suited for dedicated cargo duty and is 15 ticks faster. I found that this ships speed and fuel consumption make it less appealing. I only built a few. However, one was instrumental in capturing an early cube!
Skyfire Class Cruiser	Patrol	This is the only ship with decent scanning range. You start off with three of them. The have huge cargo and Ord capacities for supply duty. They are best kept out of harms way in the later game as they are not very hard. The initial 3 will do for the first 30-40 turns. The speed and large capacity of this ship make it a good utility ship for keeping fleets flush with ord and troops.
Resolute Class Battlecruiser	Combat	Not nearly as tough as the DW, this is a stopgap until you have the tech and the cash for the big boys. You are so close to building DW don't bother with this guy. May be an attractive trade for a mid range hull of another race looking for cloaking capability.
Deth Specula Class Frigate	Raid and Patrol Boarding Laser!	Fast, cheap, high attack bonus. This Stormer design in is the only cheap ship in the mix. Unless facing Stormers mount with PTT's. As the Borg builds a network of chunnel ships to move their homeworld around and respond with their cubes, a network of Deth Specs with Highguards can take any chunnel ships by boarding. This was hands down the key to success against Borg. If you can keep some of them in packs keep your eyes open for big ships with low levels of guests. Nip a cube and see what that does to your enemies plans. In my latest game in desperation I set 8 DS's to board a Firestorm and an Anni out of a fleet of 3 cubes expecting the other two cubes to knock out the lone cube readily. I ended up with the nearly dead cube! Four Specs with 300HG each will take a new Anni (9000 crew). The stakes are low for you and this ship can extract a disproportionate amount of havoc. Others have bad mouthed them as fodder, but I have a blast with them and build them by the dozen. Couple with the huge guest quarters of many of your ships and you can board large enemy ships. Swarm tactic - in large groups PTT's high blast stuns its target and pushes it back. There is a critical mass factor of about 15 versus an Anni. Make use of Diplomat to find that critical mass number. For giggles look at about 40 of them versus several PPC equipped dreadnoughts. PTT's stink at blowing up bases so only do so if it is a juicy target (King's Palace) and/or you have a wreckage pod or supply pod loaded with ord to reload.
Large Deep Space Freighter	Freight	If you have Ghip engines, you can build these cheap. Otherwise you are better served with White Falcon. Once Autopilot is working again I might build a few for schlepping supplies around, otherwise Bird cargo holds are quite roomy in general, so you might as well use an armed ship.
Red Wing Class Carrier	Hauling supply of wings for battle group. Raid with bombers deep in enemy territory.	Very soft in battle like most carriers. If enemy is low on point defense and you are mineral constrained they are a mineral effective way to get fighters into the field. I struggled having wing formation work properly (the 1 ly bug), so having a few of these around queuing wings up was handy. I could then transfer the wings over to a DW.
Avalor Station	Planetary Defense, Orbital mining, processing and building.	Note, you don't have a hull that can tow this and it is not going to get anywhere in a hurry. If you are up against a fighter intense race, this ship can go along way toward defending against a surprise EE attack. Set to second wave since they are pretty expensive.
Darkwing Class Battleship	Your big heavy.	Interesting super-weapon considerations. The combination of cloaking and World-Crusher make any planet without base shield vulnerable. When you are building PPC and PTT ships build this since it is a bit cheaper than DWG. World Crusher fires a bit earlier than Super Laser in ship combat although it is not as destructive. As a high end raiding ship this is your best way to use it outside of the big fleet.
Darkwing G	Anti-Borg Monster	Not as cost effective as the straight Dark Wing unless the nanovirus bomb is needed. Can mount 1000 more armor. Has a +1000 armor arc against Birdman owned ships. In other words, this is not a hull design to indiscriminately share. By the time you have the cash to put the big weapons (LTLA) on, build this instead of DW. The extra 1000 armor and other goodies are worth the cash.
Alaska Class Refinery Ship	Mineral Processing. Light planetary defense.	Your Plasmatrons will probably be a more effective means of taking care of this business. I frankly never built one of these. With proper use of plasmatrons the Bird's don't end up with ore piled up.

I classify the roles for my fleet in the following way:

Battle – A fleet of ships for a thrust into enemy territory, or mustered against an opponent's fleet. Good ships for this are the Darkwing, DWG against Borg, with Deth Spec and Bright Heart to go after opponent's light ships with evasive bonus. Support the fleet with additional Bright Hearts if enemy mines are a problem or you want to lay your own. Add the Red Wing to throw in some fighters if you have the money. Use the Skyfires to scan and haul cargo.
Patrol – You need to have a spread of ships scanning your borders. The Skyfire is your only ship with decent scanners. You will want to steal, barter, or spy your way into a ship with long range scanners. Tech 1 ships usually have a single engine and are cheap. The Fed Outrider and the Draconian Orville fit the bill. If someone wants to go after these ships they are welcome to burn fuel, run into your mines and position themselves near a cloaked battle fleet. The Deth Spec has a fair amount of firepower, huge attack bonus and is light weight enough to sip fuel at 95LY/turn. For good information on this ship go to the Stormers Guide. The Fearless has Spy Scanner and Bioscanner for when you are patrolling closer to the enemy.
Colonize – The White Falcon is a good armed freighter. Of course your three startup Skyfires will be primarily freighters at first. I like to use SDSF's to seed lower priority targets. Once you have the engines, Speed of Neutronic and SDSF both boosted in summer of 2001.
Board – The White Falcon, Fearless, and Resolute have large guest quarters to lurk around and board unsuspecting ships. The Darkwing has large quarters as well and will board, but that is not its primary mission. The boarding laser from the Deth Spec is important because hull or system damage are required to board.
Planet Defense - The Avalor Station packs some powerful heat and can do some major housekeeping while it is at it. You need to nick some ship plans to tow these around to realize their full benefit. If the Ghipsoidal's have left you a pile of engines, this is a good place to use them. The Swift may fend off very light ships and freighters. Mostly it is just an alarm system (I just blew up over planet X), but what do you expect for Tech 1. If you see them coming your 200 guests can board a lightly manned ship. The Bright Heart packs a load of PD mounts for a tech 3 ships and is quite a fighter. For home turf duty consider making inexpensive versions of these specialized toward anti-fighter. The best defense is your outbound swarm of raiders. There is little sense in leaving anything parked unless a device is doing something useful.

You will want to round out the holes in this fleet. You need some alchemy, refining and terraforming ships. You can't tow, so look to an ally for this trade, since you won't have to give up a great ship plan to get a mediocre ship with decent tow power. How about the Stormer's Saber? It is not their best ship, but paired up to tow an Avalor station it looks a lot better. The Feds have good scanners on most of their ships. The Peeps Anthem Intelligence Probe would light things up quite nicely and would be efficient to tow around with a hull mass of 8 KT. You have the best cloakers in the game, so you could go after the "do everything" University Incident in trade. Since you will be trying to hijack ships instead of blowing them up, a hacker droid will be very valuable. There are only a few in the game, try to get one.

Filling the holes in your fleet is very critical to success. Your major shortcomings:: Mobility - although you start out better than most, your battle fleet is doomed to slog along too slowly to respond effectively. This would be your death without the element of surprise. Before you get your pod speed up, it takes a fair spell to get around. A hyperdrive ship such as a EE Mig (worked great for me) can really make your turf easier to service and accelerate your economic exploits. Your battle ships are slow. You need a transwarp tow ship (Missouri or Anni work). The UEA Pax will really get you to the action in a hurry and if coupled with fast towing ships will enable you to fight when and where YOU choose; Terraforming - If you read this guide you will note that the Bird's really go after a lot of turf. Although they have a broad farm range, you might as well maximize it. A soil reformer would be pretty nice too.
Grav Mines - Many of the races released since the Birdmen have Hyperdrives: Scanning - In early game you need a scout and in the later game a combat worthy vessel that can handle itself in a tight spot. It is fun to occasionally lay a fleet of cloaked ships in with a scout. This can be entertaining when your opponent expects to be up against an outrider scout and meets up with a dozen Deth Specs instead.
Other handy gear - Chunnel, mining and processing gizmo's, lounges and gambling deck cash generators, dust off devices, alchemy (although I believe if a game comes to this it has likely gone on too long. lay claim to more than your share of resources early and exploit them), you have most of what you need, so cut down on the micro-management needed by changing the plans loaded at yards. Hit the high points above and call it good.

Anti - Birdmen Tactics

Keep your happiness up
Share information about their location with others because stealth is their critical strategic advantage.
Try to be unpredictable about ship movements unless you want to see them coming back at you flying the Birdmen Flag. For example, if you are advancing with a Firecloud in tow, count on it being a target, suppose you are advancing with 4 Anni's - drop overlapping mines and a few big ones, chunnel in some more ships (maybe including a Firecloud the next turn, turn tow off and reverse course with the old chunnel ship as you advance with the other ships. That lurking Deth Spec will leave you a nice report the next turn as it blows up. A simple zig or zag every couple of turns can't hurt either. Make a run at a vulnerable planet and then change course toward a different target. The Bird defenses will be drawn off.
Equip your specialized ships (chunnel, terraforming, mining...) with slow engines. The Bird raiders can't tow, so if they capture your Firecloud it might as well be a cheap one they won't be able to get off with. Also, if need be it will be easier for you to blow up if it can't move well.
You need lots of planetary defenses to counter the Birds fairly high ground combat rates. (Watch out for them establishing a base on your planet as well since they are hard to see.)
On offensive, blast their bases from the safety of orbit.
Mines, mines, and more mines. Cloak them, uncloak them, if you get into their space, lay more. Don't just plop them over planets. Put them on the way from point 'a' to point 'b'.
Be a good detective. Look for pods and where they are going. Although a Bird player may be sneaky and send that pod of ord to some useless base...odds are it is headed to a ship yard.
Blind them by taking out any ship you see. The cloaking ships all have poor scanners.
Use Lokis to decloak ships
Ally with Crystals or Lizards. The Birds are most vulnerable to these races.
Hyperjump over their defenses. They don't have Grav mines

Mark Heinrich

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