Frigate

The frigate is a type of medium hull escort ship. It comes in four variants. The standard Frigate, the Frigate-L, the Frigate-P, the Prototype Frigate and the AI Defense Frigate. All use the same hull template.

To unlock the Frigate the player needs to research, which will unlock medium hulls and have at least the basic weapons technology researched making Railguns available. The Frigate-L and Frigate-P uses augments and require the specific technologies researched that would unlock these augments. The Prototype Frigate, as with other prototype designs, uses components that require galactic resources, specifically to build.

There is also a blueprint for the AI to build a defense frigate that removes drives and life support from its component lists.

The text for the Frigate-L can be misleading as it states it uses "armor-piercing rounds" even though it does use the armor piercing augment. It suggests the Frigate-L might do increased damage per hit, however its augment is a firing rate one so while it has the potential to do more damage over time than the standard frigate it does not do increased damage per hit. To be pedantic one could also question the accuracy that the augmented frigates would be necessarily slower or shorter ranged than the standard frigate.