How large a military?

[Grotius]

I'm really enjoying this game, but I seem to be worthless at it, at least as the humans. I fall behind in both tech and ship production, and I never recover. Sooner or later a nasty AI neighbor declares war on me and pounds me into a pulp. This happens even if I make weapons and defense top priorities for tech. I guess I just don't build enough ships or defenses to fend off the AI. Certainly the graphs screen bears this out: my ships-produced number always seems to be half that of everyone else. (As does my tech score!)

So, how large a military do you all build? I know that's sort of a general question, so (if you're inclined to reply), feel free to quantify it in terms of percentage of upkeep, or ships per colony, or destroyer-to-corvette ratio, or whatever you like.

[BletchleyGeek]

I usually try to build a small - no more than 20-30 ships - combat fleet while at peace, to act as both a deterrant and to allow me to counterattack whenever some neighboring alien race tries to nibble away some frontier outpost (Cryokons and Jellutions tend to do this to Humans in the 12 Races map).

Besides that, I always work hard in order to have dual fully upgraded shipyards in two rich systems, plus another two systems, with high pop, with one single fully upgraded shipyard each. The idea is to be able to mobilize a big fleet - and land army - quickly. As I get involved in more wars - conquering systems opens up contact with other races - or I discover more wormholes - finding backdoors that work both ways - I find it is not really a good idea to demobilize, and I try to find a "central" system, which allows me to deploy in force quickly in any of my "hot frontiers".

[Grotius]

So can planetary defenses hold off a determined enemy, or must one always have a fleet nearby? How many light/heavy missiles do you build on frontier worlds?

[Shawkhan]

I usually build at least two light missile batteries. Some of the races don't build much in the way of fleets except for assault ships and transports and this can handle that type of problem. For serious problems there is no substitute for a fleet.