When trying to design a swarm type ship, what are my parameters? Do any ships of a certain size/class when they are amassed in enough numbers constitute a swarm ship?
The answer here is don't bother with swarmers.
Easiest and best answer.
They are just not good period.
As for the second one up there you can swarm any ship.
Depending on the size of the hull it will have a different amount need to max swarm bonus.
For example a 15 space hull takes 21600 ships to max swarm bonus and a 17 space hull takes 20000.
This caps at about 68 space an from then on swarm bonus is maxed at 8000 ships.
Also, I tried to make a ship as powerful as the Alpha Battleship, but I couldn't come close and it cost WAY more than a battleship. Are these special classes of ships that can't be duplicated at a reasonable cost?
The main class of ship you'll want is a supership, also called a main.
It has the majority of the cost of the ship in the hull while the majority of the hull size is in the powercore making all other systems rely on energy for there stats.
You can refer to this
guide for making a supership
Lastly, what does it mean, "There is not restriction to how many modules you can istall on a ship, however for every weapon you install there is a penalty of 1% to global attack of the fleet... " Does this mean that creating a massive dreadnaught with hundreds of weapons that it will degrade the performance of my entire fleet?
That means if you have 1 weapon with 200 attack then you have 198 attack for your fleet or you could use 2 weapons with 100 attack and have 196 attack for the fleet.
See each weapon you add incurs a 1% penalty to the attack so for the first setup above:
200 (total attack of all weapons) * 99% (100% - 1% for only one weapon) = 198
For the second setup:
200 (total attack of all weapons) * 98% (100% - 2% for two weapons) = 196
Hopefully this answers all the questions you have.
