old thread i know but if you ever try again early game roll expansion, smaller ships with the tenders, nebulon b and the healy one, wuasars and mc30s, each one of these are brittle but are hard to hit and can mass fairly easy, wuasars on the same pop as an allegiance can alpha strike them with bombers (5 pop per unit vs 60 ish for the allegiance)


bigger ships may look better since they die less easy but it takes a while to get them rolling and loosing one dauntless early is way more of a set back than a few nebulons

Honestly, fighters. If you don't mind grinding, small carriers as the NR is cheap and you can park them over the map, chews through expensive capitals. Quasars, Liberators, and Nebulons.