Cargo hulls for combat?

They are doing balance passes on Carriers at the moment. I believe cargo hulls were intended as it designates them as 'support'. I get the same designation when using regular large/huge hulls and load them up with Carrier modules. 

Did you notice the two different Carrier modules now? One is offensive the other is defensive. I put two offensive and one defensive on a Large hull and added some armor and it works find. For the Support modules I loaded one hull up with Jammers, Targeting, and missile assists and it works out pretty well. Put one of each of those into a fleet with some Battle ships and some escorts and now you have a very effective fleet even against stronger tech (as long as the AI does not have opposing support ships in his fleet). 

If they get combat not sucking(you can actually do something to attack support ships) then a cargo hull is very risky as it has nill hitpoints.

It's also a terrible use of resources, if the AI is building cargo carriers, it's stupid.  A medium hull costs 26 instead of 20, has 6 times the hitpoints, and 15 extra mass.  It's a far more powerful use of the same 5 logistics a cargo hull will take.  The extremely slight economic advantage is more than defeated by the 25% extra mass allocation and 500% extra hitpoints.  No matter how you're going to utilize them as a combat ship, even if the intent is for them to never take a single point of damage, a medium is still going to be superior.

Cargo hulls are for ships you don't want to see combat, and wont survive combat regardless.  They're for the consumables, transports, freighters, constructors and colonizers.  Even using one for a survey ship is a bad idea.

I don't disagree at all, it seems odd that the AI is being given support cargo ships like "Tactical Support" and "Beam Support" on cargo hulls. They even bothered to give them defenses.

Well like I said, the non cargo versions have more  hit points and  you can squeeze more into them. 

The cargo-hull-turned-combat ship allows for creativity.  Games that allow for use of imagination attract a certain customer who enjoys opportunities to be clever.  

This isn't really a question of people being clever with an unusual and bad design decision, the AI is the one being creative with it's resources...

Well, I guess it doesn't make sense once you have large hulls but you have cargo hulls from turn one so they might come in handy as a support ship if you start a war early.

(shrugs):)

It also may be a balance issue with the AI's template. I know when they were showing off the system in one of the latest dev streams Paul mentioned that they have them on cargo ships just for place holders.