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If you want fast ship, you have to specialize and sacrifice something because you have less crew space which means less dice to range change and defend.
With big ships, you can be dodge and approach everything by mid game. You have more component space to buff the ship and more crew space to add Military officer for command/tactics dice.
Only advantage I think for a for small fast ships is to get to places in less time. And less fuel cost I guess.
Winning at 9000 mass is almost too easy.
Between the 2 choices at 9000 mass, Sword BC is marginally easier to use than Cautela Titan, although both are useable.
The deep trick (that really isn't a trick) is that about 30% of your dice come from your crew.
Hence your crew is studly, regardless of the ship.
If they're on this ship, this ship looks great.
If they switch to that ship in Drydock, that ship looks awesome.
So any fully-maxed ship, with all 32 components at max tier 4-7, will do.
On top of that, you need a maxed crew.
And a huge portion of your crew's total contribution comes organically, as they level up.
There is no substitute for time (which means you go 150-0 in ship fights over decades).
You need the right crew mix, which you could know and pursue starting in Year 1.
You might finally get your crew by Year 12, when they're only L12.
As decades go by, they level up slowly, to L20 each, then L25 each, then L30 each.
And as they level up, their ship-fighting dice gradually go up and up.
Until in year 50, you realize your crew are huge in ship combat.
You can't speed up that process in any way.
You can't upgrade a Crew in Drydock with 1 click.
You can't buy 30 years' worth of level gains from any Contact.
All you can do is to hire them young, keep them alive, live long enough, and win everything in between.
After that, Sword BC or Cautela Titan doesn't matter a bit.
Put them in either one, they're still a good crew.
Swap them to the 8000 mass Broadsword or Warhammer Class, they're still good.
The ship is good because they're on it
ST:F is not won or lost by the ship itself.
There's more to it than swinging Glamdring at a balrog.
Same as what Gilmoy posted, except you're switching out some components for hangers/launch bays and hiring a few different specialists to fly your craft. Plus the craft fill slightly different roles. The advantage still goes to the larger ships, especially since carriers are just built differently.
Mostly though you want a ship with enough hangar space/component slots to field your craft and a big enough fuel tank to keep everything flying. The Sword carrier variant is the big boy, but the other 8-9k mass ships work just fine with some refitting.
If I run a carrier in the 6k mass and below range it is only *ever* for an assault shuttle for extra prisoner/passenger profits. It's just not space efficient to run fighter craft on most smaller* ships.
*Non-custom, purpose built small carriers. I think there are only a handful of superlight carriers.
7000: Leo Battlecruiser, Obsidian Carrier*, Larimar Battlecruiser*
8000: Broadsword, Harbinger Carrier, Warhammer, Skylift Carrier*, Mortifor Carrier
9000: Dreadnought Battlecarrier, Sword Battlecruiser, Cautela Titan
*Achievement Unlocks
20 level 22 Military Officers will get you 300 command dice which basically makes you untouchable in a straight fight. You can pare this number back a bit when you get a better handle on using defensive talents in combat or as they get higher level. Other bonuses with military officers is they have 2 morale healing talents and you can farm rep is almost no time with patrols.
You can hire Military Officers from FDF Commander contacts. This is a starting contact option.
Make sure to pick a few strong talents against small craft:
E-Tech: "ECCM Surge" and "Knock from the Void"
Gunner: "Lightning Lock" and "Close-in Defenses"; "Firing Orders" helps with damage
You'll have a few of these classes anyways to meet your ship dice requirements.
You can reliably one-shot Jyeeta small craft with the medium-class missile weapons when you stack 4 or more "Railtrak Guidance Matrix 4" from Steel Song. Include 1 or 2 Autocannons for the few that do make it close. A 9-point engine lets you fire three of those missile weapons a turn from position 5-4-3.
Any of those ships I mentioned above can achieve this.
You can just bombard things with missiles and be done with the battle.
Honestly, there is no actual advantage with carrier crew vs alternatives. If it's scavenging, you can just hire a scavenger instead of wings. For fighting, they have to waste a turn to deploy when you can just start applying debuffs on turn 1 from missile strikes. They can't be repaired easily like damaged weapons can during battle. They make your ship have tons of jump cost. Your command/tactics dice don't apply to the wing pilots. You need a wing tech or they will die if they get shot down because your life saver talents only apply to ship crew.
But if you want carrier then yes. The best ship for Carrier is Dreadnought.
The best ship for noncombat cargo ship is also the Dreadnought.
But a weapon ship is better with Sword BC.
Without understanding there's risk of frustration.
Yeah, stack Military Officers. Command dice will make you untouchable against ship weaponry. Build your ship to deal with small craft and you'll be untouchable against all ships.
Play with the component filters so you can see All Available (and turn off faction locks) and you'll be able to find anything you need. Weapons, craft, bridges, whatever. At the start of the game you're limited to low level junk.