Jeremy's basically right. I made a plug-in with just one system, asteroids at level 2 (fairly low), and had it so that almost always there was 1 Rebel Destroyer and 1 Confederate Frigrate. Not counting times where there wasn't just 1 of each, the results over ten battles were as follows:
Rebel Destroyer wins:
4 times
Confederate Frigrate wins:
3 times
Both manage to knock eachother out:
3 times
As you can see, they are pretty damn close, and the last one (the 4th Rebel one) was very close to being a double knock-out. So stop your bitchin!
But then again, this is for the AI. So for a human pilot, I'd say the Rebel Destroyer is a better buy: it's cheaper, approximatly the same head to head power, and higher speed allows you use more strategy instead of head to head.
If you people want, I'll do the same for Manta-Patrol Ship and/or Rebel Cruiser-Confederate Cruiser.
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-Shade
(url="http://"http://www.crosswinds.net/~shadeofblue/")EV:O Revenge(/url)
(This message has been edited by ShadeOfBlue (edited 02-01-2000).)