Fleet VS Defence

The age old question that most new players find themselves asking relatively early in their empire...Defence or Ships? Or maybe something in-between? Here's some points on this debate-

• Losses are to be expected no matter what you choose to do.
• No method is better or worse than another, instead one method might be better for a certain style of play than another. The obvious example of this would be lots of ships=offensive and lots of defences=defencive.
• Focusing on defences is cheaper research-wise compared to using primarily ships or both combined.
• Defences don't require fleetsaving (the act of sending ships somewhere at a slower speed to prevent their destruction, due to the fact that ships in transit cannot be attacked) while your away, but at the same time can't be fleetsaved when you are on.
• Defence has no rapid fire rating (all defences fire once per combat round, that's it)
• Some players like to destroy the defences of a Turtle (someone who has a mammoth size of defences) simply because they are a Turtle, even if it would be no resource gain for them. Of course, it would most-likley require a ACS attack from multiple players to completley wipe a good Turtle out.
• A balanced approach would make all of your ships and defences harder to fully destroy since you could fleetsave the fleet half, but would only be at full strength if your fleet was stationed on the planet with your defences.
• Although both require a good understanding of how they function, using defences is generally easier than using ships as they don't require fleetsaving, fuel, or a understanding of rapid fire.

If you are good about spending/hiding your resourses, then in the end it all comes down to your preference. The players stated above who destroy other players simply for fun are rare, and are unlikley to do it to someone who is in an alliance, anyway.

Also, if your real good about logging into your account, then you might want to consider being a Fleeter (someone who capitolizes on ship power rather than defences), and vise-versa. If your not that active, then maybe defences are the way to go.