Wow, guys, i've seen the bulk of the old thread, and all the ships in this one look great too, but have you noticed something?
MAJOR LACK OF FIGHTERS.
I dont know why, but I am not very good on large-scale design, so I've pretty much fixated on designing fighters. Me and my twin brother share this game, and he is much more skilled than me on the large-scale building, and we both agree:
I MAKE WICKED FIGHTERS.
I've put out some of the most deadly and coolest looking fighters hes ever seen or designed. One noteworthy fighter is my Macer Fighter M-1/5, both for it's cool design, its massive effectiveness in combat(especially in specialized fleets i call "Hell Squads", my most famous being the deadly "Ceberus Brigade"), and extremely fast production rate (especially on Earth when I was forced to amp it's military production past 100). The story behind the M-1/5 goes like this.
My first Dread Lords On Parade game. I was slow to colonize and produce ships at forst, so I was unfortunately stuck with only Earth and Mars. The Dread Lords were currently had the bulk of their military in the top corner fighting forces there, but that didn't keep them from occasionally sending a battlestation or lone fighter over to Earth to wipe out it's starbases and trade ships. My military mainly consisted of an aging design called the Macer Missile Boat, wich was EXTREMELY ineffective in combat, but i made them anyway to keep my economy from crashing, the newer TLC-1200 put into production about 12 weeks eariler thanks to an advance in lazer and armor research thanks to the Altarians, and the ancient Macer Fighter M-1/3 fighter, only slightly more effective than the missile boats, using old mass driver weapons. As the Dread Lord escort ship smashed through my final MASSIVELY upgraded military starbase, I decided it was about time to put out a new class of ship. This led to a trade with the Drengins nabbing me a giant leap in mass driver weapons, the singularity driver mk2, and ultimately, the Macer Fighter M-1/5. I immidiately put these into production, and thanks to it's fast construction rate, and Earth's MASSIVE military production, I had a fleet of 7 of these in about 7 weeks. Then, the Dread Lord escort craft returned. I sent my fighter fleet after it, and my mouth went agape at the effectiveness of my new fighter. 1 fighter lost, dread lord escort destroyed. No other damages. I decided it was time to manufacture these on a larger scale, and soon, I had multiple fleets of these, wich I affectionately called "Hell Squadrons", for their apparent invulnerability to even dread lord ships. The strongest of these was the origional one, affectionately named "Cerberus Brigade". This squadron was tasked as the front line of defense against the dread lord ships, anything that got by Cerberus was engaged by aging M-1/3 Fighters coupled with Missile Boats and TLC-1200 ships. (TLC Stood for Terran Lazer Craft. My brother's to blame for the name, I swear.) Cerberus defeated any ship it took on, but it came out just a little too late. Soon after, i got the pirate mega event, and the pirates eventually came along at the same time as the first dread lord FLEET i'd ever seen. First to be engaged by my forces were the pirates, and I had at least been smart enough to hold Cerberus back for the DLs. The Pirates raged on against my aging fleets, while the DLs held back until a portion of the fighting was over, and wiped out most of the remaining Pirate craft, and all of my aging fleets. I immediately sent all available Fighters, corvettes, TLCs, and Missile boats to engage them, but every match ended in defeat for my fleets. My last ships left were those that hadnt been in combat. This included 1 TLC-1200, 1 Missile Boat,
3 M-1/5 fighters, and a few ships I received from other races. The dread lords proceeded in wiping them out, and took over Mars. The Torians, Altarians, Drengins, the Yor, led (suprisingly) by a massive Iconian force came in close proximity of Earth as one battle group, and engaged the Dread Lords and remaining Pirate ships. Que epic battle. ONE DL troop craft sneaks through, and hits earth. They take over with 1 soldier left, and I lose.

I came away from the computer with a kick ass new fighter class, and one MASSIVE hunger pain.
(Sorry, no pics ATM, mixups during install made the game unplayable once I updated, lost my designs to the reinstaller. I promise to post pics soon.)