Federation Commander

[Davec_24]

On the idea of having all fusion ships and no fighters, and thus more ships than you'd get if you bought hellbore-armed ships; the fusion armed cruisers have the same phaser outfit as the hellbore-armed variants, and so you get more phasers for your point value (since you have more ships overall). This could be an advantage in medium to close range fighting, due to the rapid-fire and energy efficient nature of phasers. You might be a bit stuck in a long-range shootout against disruptor armed ships though (i.e. against most of the people the Hydrans would "historically" be fighting)...

[junior]

Except that the phaser suites on Hydran ships tend to be fairly small for their hull sizes. The Hydran heavy cruisers only mount 2 phaser-1s, 4 phaser-2s, and 2 phaser-Gs. The phaser-Gs are useless at anything beyond range 3, so you're not looking at very much in the way of mid-range firepower.