Deviding your fleet can be handy IF all your fleets can cope with the enemy. If not, the biggest will win...
1.8.1 - The State of Combat Balance
- Thread starter Larknok1
- Start date
-
We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
So not to be too big of a Necromancer, but these kinds of Stat Heavy threads are very hard to filter through for particularly useful information.
So I'm wondering what you would are the best General Use Fleets ratio wise for the different builds. I can understand why all the different builds are useful but I'm having a hard time figuring out how to make a cohesive build out of it. Or better, what tends to best 'punching outside its weight class' — as I'm currently stuck in a game where my early pacifism hemmed me in hard.
So I'm wondering what you would are the best General Use Fleets ratio wise for the different builds. I can understand why all the different builds are useful but I'm having a hard time figuring out how to make a cohesive build out of it. Or better, what tends to best 'punching outside its weight class' — as I'm currently stuck in a game where my early pacifism hemmed me in hard.
I'd say monofleets of battleships. Or rather, when you can build battleships, don't disband your non-battleships, but don't replace them either. Just build a single battleship design when you need to build new ships. Tachyon + 2 KA + 2 Plasma is a good design as is Arc Emitter + 2 Bomber Hangars.
EDIT: This guide by @Fa1nan summarizes the findings in this and few other, similar threads quite well.
All designs listed in my guide linked by Torakka are currently more or less viable. If you want a generalist fleet the AB-2B2M2W is probably your best bet, but a fleet of TB-2KA2P will faceroll most things either.
Having actually played a bit I found that you want to get to at least cruiser tech asap and then build either Plasma cruisers or some variant of the C-1B1ET3P "Swiss Army Knife". The important bit is to not bother with corvettes and destroyer anymore and depending on how many ships your economy can support you may even want to disband corvettes and destroyers for more cruisers.
As soon as you have battleships build only these with some loadout of your preference. Refit to max armor TB-2KA2P for fighting FEs.
I am really, really glad to see such diverse Battleships are of so much use and especially that Hangars are now useful. The last Meta I played was Giga Cannon & 4 KA on Battleships, 50/50 6 Plasma 6 Flak Cruisers and a field of Picket Destroyers. I hope the next patch brings back mixed fleets though
I think 1.9 will add support for the new "Humanoids" DLC -- Picture & Ship pack. I think we have to wait for 2.0 to get all of the new goodies that have been discussed for a while. I don't think there's a target date for 2.0 but I'm hoping March - April/???
I really would like to see all hull types be viable and esp. for multiple hull types in single fleets to be a good way to go so I think we're in agreement.
Last edited:
The main reason we can get away with battleship monofleets is that BBs with all L weapons can still hit corvettes with enough regularity that they wipe them out with minimal losses.
Agreed. I was goofing around last night and saw exactly that ... Corvettes flying circles around BBs [that didn't have Arc Emitters, Missles, medium weapons, etc.] but once in a while getting pinged allowing the BBs to eventually take them down.
Balancing hull vs. hull in larger engagements, FEs, AEs, Crisis fleets, etc. has got to be a crap ton of work.
And corvettes can do nothing meaningful in return because the AI always saddles them with energy torpedoes with their no AP, meaning they do only 10% of their nominal damage.
S plasma is 40% armor ignore, so... 46% effective? But, gotta take down the shields somehow. My design is usually 1 S kinetic, 2 S plasma. Still does not work.
Best thing to do for an anti-armour corvette swarm is 3x Small Plasma on 5/6 corvettes, and Neutron Torpedo/1x Small Plasma on one in six.
Or use real torpedoes and hope the enemy didn't bring PD.
Try mining laser +100% armor pen
And disruptor +200% shield damage
If anything I'm surprised corvettes fare so bad with you guys.
Because TB-2KA2P will still have 20% accuracy against corvettes and more or less one-hit them. The damage output of any corvette design is pathetic compared to that. It gets even worse for the corvettes if you outfit the BBs with high tracking weapons. It's a mineral efficiency thing and corvettes are utterly worthless currently.
So we have a Battleship (1.6k minerals) with 70-90 dps which only actually deals 20% damage (so effective dps ~16) vs 5 corvettes (1.6k minerals) with 5.7-6.7 dps which deals either 20 dps (disruptor +200% vs shields) or 5.7 dps (100% armor ignore).
Well 16 dps vs 25-100 dps for each Battleship you field. I think I know which one wins.
IF you give those BBs Arc Emitters then yes, it's not a one sided win for corvettes but a major advantage for BBs. But generally people roll with Tachyon Lances.
So your 40 BBs vs my 200 Corvettes, you lose 40 BBs and I lose 60-70 corvettes.
Which as a rule BB's don't have. Because those high tracking weapons usually have bad secondary performance (little armor ignore compared to L weapons)
So your statement is ultimately "they fare even worse if you build a fleet to counter them" ... well duh!
Last edited:
Mostly people were talking about the AI and slapping its corvettes around.
The AI will always switch to pure ETorp corvettes as soon as it unlocks them, even if it otherwise has kinetic or missile preference.
Really? Because I needed to know how much each side can take in damage and still fight to even consider answering that question!
The 16 dps side can take 4000+ damage and still operate at full efficiency.
The 25-100 dps (the 100 dps high end only applies to shields and falls to 3 dps once they are down when you lose the +200% bonus damage AND get hit by the battleship damage reduction) side loses 20% of its damage output every time one of its 5 units takes 300 points of damage and dies.
If we assume the battleship sticks to attacking a single corvette until it is destroyed, the first corvette falls after ~20 rounds of fire. The battleship has taken ~1,200 points of damage (mostly shield). 20 rounds later, the battleship has taken another 600 points of damage and another corvette falls. The battleship can keep going longer than the corvettes it seems from this simplistic model.
Other thing is that by the time I can build battleships, I am also doing everything I can to alleviate late game performance lag. This includes building only BBs to minimize the number of ships. In my last game with 600 stars, 1x planets, I faced down the Unbidden with a doomstack of 500 BBs. I had to zoom out from battles and just mouse over the fleet icons in galaxy view to keep track of how things were going.
If this wasn't Stellaris I'd recommend looking over your PC to see if you can modernize or squeeze more power out of it
It's too bad that you don't just have to worry about the enemy you also have to worry about enjoyable performance when it comes to fleet building.
Except tests say otherwise, as others have explained in the posts above mine. Theory is worthless if you omit or forget important variables. I'll tell you what happens:
If the fight starts at range the BBs get to alpha strike your corvettes, so let's assume that the corvettes jump right on top of the BBs. The BBs will stand still and actually focus fire. As a result, they'll hit sufficiently often and pretty quickly decimate the corvettes. Meanwhile, the corvette's combat AI is being stupid and lets them fly around aimlessly, causing them to be unable to focues fire BBs due to short weapon ranges. Because corvettes are so squishy, their fire power will diminish continuously while only occasionally a BB explodes.
Also, if we're talking AI opponents, then their crappy corvette designs are an additional factor making BBs even better. Also, BBs are best against FE and crises, so you want them around to fight these.
Also, this. I've done corvette swarms lategame. I will never do that again.