Just thought I'd put a little something somewhere about how my methods...

The Goat is a little expensive to build outright when you begin a campaign. I usually scrap the starting rib, shave some of the extra bits off the fortress, build up the engine, and build more resource gatherers.

With that done, you can start building a Goat. It might not finish completely depending on how many resources you could scrape together, but with some patience and some time warp, you'll be fine. You can easily finish building one of these before the first DWG fleet attacks you, and one is more than enough to hold them off.

My recommendation is to pirate the riverhome and marauder, destroy the drake, and scrap your winnings to build a second Goat and upgrade your first one to the Metal Goat (also in my workshop). From there, those two boats will have enough firepower to take your next resource point (depending on the difficulty you chose).

Lather, rinse, repeat.

I get a cycle going of building Goats, upgrading them to Metal Goats, then to Marlins. Mix in harvester frigates (WIP) and supply frigates (WIP), and you have yourself a pretty functional fleet.