What are good ship designs to hunt down alien ships?

[Lucian]

I always fail in designing them, what should I focus on.

atomic bombs, point defence, armor, mobility?
In numbers my ship can outrun alien ships but they don't win.

[MP]

Missiles and lasers. But you're still gonna be losing until you get some later tech. The point is to survive until you can turn the tables on ayylmaos.

[Ixal]

In the beginning either go full yolo and have escorts or monitors with all missiles or for a bit more survival add 1 PD.

That won't win you a space war against aliens, but is good enough against their single transport or survey fleets to get the "destroy alien ship" objective and will hold their own against other factions.

[shogun00blade]

monitors with missiles and torpedo. dont need to wait send 4 or 5 monitors with these weapons with decent armor and dont need KPS fighting non interplanetary. use advanced pulsar drives for good combat acceleration also send monitor with PD"s incase they have projectiles. Athena torpedoes are best.

[DWI_Suriil]

For the quest to take down alien ships and progress the story - use at min copper head missiles. Better Rattler or Keelback.
Those are only good for an early game quests.

To actually be able to rial aliens you want to look into Coild gun and Arc Laser technologies. Thats your first techs when you can actualy take a fair fight.
Tough you want a Fission drive.

Now coils or lasers? Its like a PS5 or Xbox?
Both schools are ok, its your pick. Im a coil boy.

Speed - armor?
Well , again , up to you.
My fleet is 3 rong range battleships (I used Dreadnaults) , with X2 - X4 big ass coilgun , with 900m reach + 8-10 medium size ships (Mix of Monitor class and a few battleship class).

Noise weapons are devastating , but you need to face an enemy ,so - bad to chaise on small alienships. Thats why I use 8-10 cover ships with Hull type weapons.
But to deal with big alien dreadnaults and motherships - I have my dreadnaults with massive long range coils.

[Zeth]

I think you can kick ass pretty early without much tech. I've done it with the basic missile tech and laser tech at least.

Early game you use monitors.
3xMissiles (copperhead) and 1xLaser PD.
Nearing mid game you just upgrade the missiles to a better version (e.g. lancehead) and I also switched one out for a nuke torpedo.

Mid game battleships are a better option, probably even straight away when you get them.
2xLight Laser Cannon, 2xLaser PD, 3xMissiles, 1xNuke

I put 50+ armour in the nose which means they can survive a couple of hits with railguns/lasers and enough propellant to get 30+ kps which is plenty for planetary defence.

It's important to have several ships, at least 4, in each fleet so you can overcome the aliens PD. I've killed the mothership with 4 battleships decked out like above with no problem, but just 2 battleships get obliterated without scratching it.

Losses happen from time to time, especially with the monitors.

When you're fighting multiple ships you need to spread out your targets so you don't waste all your missiles on the same enemy. If you expect back-to-back engagements you also need to turn off your missile weapons (fortification mode) since you're typically able to empty your magazines before the first missile hits and you might only need 1 or 2 salvos for the kill.

When the aliens start to run away from you or you fight just a single ship you bring in a second fleet or split it respectively. Then you send the first one, unpause for 1 minute, and then send the second one. That means that if the aliens evade the first fleet your second fleet will always be able to force the fight and kill them.

It also works to just have a single cheap ship as the "pincer" ship, but it tend to get different transfer times and you'll always lose it so not as preferable way to approach the problem.

[shogun00blade]

once you start attacking there ships they will go for your orbitals so be ready with defensive fleets