I think they should be slightly bigger and cheaper. But still, they're useful as orbital defense. Military starbase for +(1,1,1),(1,1,1) turns a couple dinky (1,0,0),(1,0,0) fighters - with no engines, sensors, or life-support - into a powerful fleet. But I can't see them being used effectively otherwise.

There's also the fact that you can't produce more than one per turn, a common (but mystifying) problem in strategy games. Thus, you should never make tiny hulls on industrial planets when in war mode, or you waste your output.

I'd only make them with a starbase nearby, on a planet that had bad production and thus couldn't put out bigger ships any time soon.

At a high enough game level and I am looking for fill in my fleets, the affordably cheap tiny hulls come in handy and are typically the first victim of combat thereby giving my better capital ships a second barrage before an alien that is frequently as good as me can target them.

W/R
Suralle

Suralle is correct, tiny hull ships are really pretty valuable for maximizing your fleets and they can make a pretty good fleet on there own.

Many people don't understand that you don't need to add an engine or sensors to the base ship (it seems that each hull as a builtin travel rate of 1 pc/wk (or 2 squares) and a base sensor range of 2. Because of their hull size, they can be very quickly built on planets with limited manafacturing ability. Fleeted up you can get many of them together where their numbers just overwhelm bigger ships or small fleets.

No one should over look the tiny hull, especially once you get a couple levels of miniaturization.

I had my "Expendable" class. I put a Psychic Cannon (I forget the exact name) on each and went to town.

In mass they work well. They saved me last game when i wasnt prepared for war. Enemy AI opened up on me and wanted my main eco planet. Well right next to that eco planet i had a manufacture planet which pumped these tiny fighter class ships out left and right, while i used my core planets to make medium sized ships and transports.

Believe it or not those tiny ships helped by keeping the enemy off guard and intercepting enemy troop transports.

Needless to say i never lost that planet and took the offensive to the enemy thanks to my "tiny" ships. And if it wasnt for their sacrifice it would have opened up a large area for my enemy to run rampant on my empire.

But normaly i do not make any unless in dire need of protection.

I love tiny hulls in the campaign. A fleet of six tinies, I believe, is the best way to destroy a deadlord ship before it can shoot back. At least until they build that ship with a shield rating of thirteen...

It would be good if they could be carried on a Carrier.