I'm working on a cost formula to calculate the "fair" price for a ship given its combat factors.

So far my formula is to add up the missile and screen factors on both the normal and damaged/reduced sides of the counter and add one sixth of the counter measures from both sides and two thirds of the beam factors then subtract one less than the the normal maintenance cost and half the repair / reduced maintenance cost.

I have run all the standard ships through this formula and ranked them by their cost effectiveness below.

Even though this formula gives a 50 percent bonus to missiles over beams the Terrans pull considerably ahead of the Imperials.

My suggested builds for the players are easy to see. The terrans should build every TB in the counter pool and then move to carriers and super dreadnoughts.

The Imperial player doesn't have carriers that do as much, but fighters are still very useful for planetary defense. Imperial scouts are useful in a zero maintenance swarm that jumps out from a friendly outpost to pester the barbarians with range three missile fire because it's very difficult to kill a scout without over killing it, but the scout swarm needs to bring along a single CL if it is going to impose hostile contact.

Other than the scouts, anything that's better than 88 percent of average for the Imperials requires permission. (The Emperor is no dummy.) If you haven't got any permissions then build scouts, light cruisers and carriers. The B1 is the real dog here (besides the Destroyers) as it costs more than the Strike Cruiser and has fewer CM factors.

Destroyers and the Terran light cruiser are at the bottom of the pile (just above carriers without fighters) and should never be purchased. If you need a convoy escort then just build ATs (which escort themselves and are harder to kill) and for all other small ship uses the Terrans should build TBs and the Imperials should build CLs.