Colony or Outpost?

[catswift]

You've just made his point for him. If someone can rush dreads in just 4.5 days (with a substantial fleet in less than 10), then building anything less than dreads is worthless. Building anything else is incredibly detrimental as well since the "object cost" of building a sufficient force of smaller ships is exponentially out of whack (one destroyer == one dread, so you then have to waste serious research and/or production in building colonies to get sufficient ship yards).

I for one would definitely like to see the smaller ships play a larger role in the game.

[edit] The only exception I see to this is building cruisers; sadly not for their intended purpose of offense, but because they can be converted into orbitals for defense [/edit]