You're missing a lot of nifty support abilities. The heavy cruisers aside, the two support cruisers bring a good deal to the table. Check out some of their abilities sometimes! They're not meant to fill up the bulk of your fleet, but support it

Its always good to build balanced fleets. You may not NEED the Celio Cruiser, but they sure do rock when tagged with LRM frigates. You may not NEED the subverter but they sure do rock when using anything with phase missle tech.

They key is efficency. They support cruisers minimize the losses you will take, and will end battles a lot faster had you not had them.

Carrier Cruisers are also over-looked by a lot of people, because they only hold 1 strikecraft squadron. This is a mistake imho. They are normally my first crusiers researched. They appear to suck when you have an insufficent number of them, but if you ever mass them, their impact is much easier to see.

The flexibility strikecraft give you can also not be ignored. They can:
- Move fast enough to bring down ships that have decide to leave the fight.
- They can bolster defenses. 2 = a hanger for no tactical points and can be positioned so they can jump when all has been lost.\
- TEC/Vasari(not sure about advent) use the same weapons as the LRM, which means they become far more effective as you research missle tech.\
- They make for the best Star Defenses, and are always my 3rd fleet. Due to the fact that ships move at a crawl in a star, strike craft can get in far more attacks before the enemy jumps. Can't tell you how many cap ships I've nailed becuase of my Star-Carrier Fleet.\

Heavy cruisers are hard to mass, except as vasari, but are worth their weight in credits. They are almost like little cap ships.

You will have long games. In 1 on 1 games, you can end the game most times before you research the 3rd logistics option. In which case, 2 Cap ships and a bunch of frigates are more than sufficent. This is why I don't enjoy malll games. If you like small 1on1 vs the AI initiate a house rule: You will only defend until you have researched the 5th or 6th logistic option. This will give you andthe AI time to build pip

Yes, because (assuming that they're kept in the back of the fight and not noticed), they have far more survivability than LRFs, simply because they will stay out of the fight entirely.

The trick to using carriers effectively is that you really should keep them in a separate fleet from your main fleet, so they don't keep at range with your capitals and stay tightly in engagement range. Have them sit near the edge of the gravity well or close to your structures, and kite anything that tries to attack them (you won't outrun them but most frigates stop to shoot, so keeping them moving cuts down on the damage you receive). Carrier swarms get very scary when they get considerably large, you can field enough fighters to easily shred LRMs by scores, or enough bombers to nuke static defenses from the edge of the gravity well. Or kick capitals, hard. In some of my end game fleets, i've had enough bombers to one-shot a low level capital per bombing run. This squadron of about 50 carriers was also insanely effective at routing planetary defenses and harassing defensive fleets as it's only a click and a minute to switch between fighters and bombers.