1.8.1 - The State of Combat Balance

[Misguidedworm7]

I like to keep corvettes around because they are still very good at eating missile spam and are cheap as dirt.

AFAIK, missiles still prefer corvettes as targets, and though the re-targeting change means less die when their target dies, a significant number will still self destruct in a large scale battle. Saving the hull points of much more important ships.

 

[Drakonn]

Whoa, thanks for this thread! Interesting to know.

Wait, so torpedo corvettes ARE good to use or aren't anymore versus the larger hulls?

 

[Pchang]

Are NOT good to use.

 

[Drakonn]

Thanks! A shame. I rather liked the idea they were going for with making torpedoes.

 

[GloatingSwine]

Other thing is that by the time I can build battleships, I am also doing everything I can to alleviate late game performance lag.

Also the clicking.

The horrible horrible clicking.

 

[KingAlamar]

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.

I was under the impression that when the Corvettes were buzzing around that they stayed in weapons range .... it occurs to me though that my "testing" wasn't actually very good and was also small scale. I just thought the AI was "stupid" in general and didn't focus fire well as opposed to their being a weapons range issue.

Oh well I've got a game set up specifically for testing so I should probably go back to the drawing board

 

[GloatingSwine]

I was under the impression that when the Corvettes were buzzing around that they stayed in weapons range

In big blobs they'll generally be in weapons range of something, but they'll keep changing target as they drive around.

Over about range 45 it starts mattering less though.

 

[WhiteKyubey]

Is evasion worth anything now?
I tried corvette-fleet with a Chosen One admiral against FE. I though - I'll take disrupters, they'll deal with shields. I'll take mining drone lasers, they'll deal with armor. And evasion will deal with most of their fire. I even checked, that they were not using rockets.
Well, it did not work at all, their big weapons were missing sometimes, but even with 90% evasion they were killed quickly with medium stuff.
Then I tried some destroyers, and that was even worse. Then I tried cruisers and BB with and without 30% evasion - cruisers and BB won both matches, but with very close damage taken.
Looks like adding evasion adds military power way more then it do any good. +30% also don't work for corvettes, as 15% is already enough for a limit and it's the only ship, where evasion does any good!

 

[GloatingSwine]

Is evasion worth anything now?

Nope.

Hasn't been since they nerfed it and introduced Tracking at the same time.

 

[urogard]

Except tests say otherwise, as others have explained in the posts above mine.

Well not sure what mods you're running, but in my vanilla game the results I wrote is what actually happened.

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 time that BBs can shoot at corvettes, even if corvette army is stupid enough to do long-range engagement, is only a fraction of the total duration of a fight.
Did you even run any of those tests?

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.

30-40 weapon range is enough for 200 corvettes to shoot at 1 target.
Mining laser always focuses units with no shields
Disruptor always focuses units with shields.
The fact that you wrote this sentence proves that you haven't done a single test and are just writing what you imagine would happen. Therefore ...

Theory is worthless if you omit or forget important variables. I'll tell you what happens:

#1 Mass corvettes beat BBs without Focused Arc with a mineral loss ratio of approx 1:2-3
#2 Mass corvettes lose to BBs with Focused Arc with a mineral loss ratio of approx 5:2-3

Tests done with 1/5/20 BBs vs 5/25/100 Corvettes. The larger the fleet, the less losses suffered by the corvettes in #1 and battleships in #2.

 

[KingAlamar]

I wonder how much 2.0 is going to shake things up. I know there are big changes. Hopefully it will be enough of a reset button to keep the number of viable fleets high while also allowing multiple hull types to be viable without any of them being broken.

 

[Fa1nan]

Well not sure what mods you're running, but in my vanilla game the results I wrote is what actually happened.

No mods.

The time that BBs can shoot at corvettes, even if corvette army is stupid enough to do long-range engagement, is only a fraction of the total duration of a fight.
Did you even run any of those tests?

I tested various fleets against FE loadouts; I went off of what I observed in those fights, in actual games and on what people that did test regular vs regular empires reported. Nowhere did I state that I specifically tested mining laser corvettes vs BBs.

30-40 weapon range is enough for 200 corvettes to shoot at 1 target.
Mining laser always focuses units with no shields
Disruptor always focuses units with shields.
The fact that you wrote this sentence proves that you haven't done a single test and are just writing what you imagine would happen. Therefore ...

You argued using raw DPS numbers, which leads to knowhere. I tried to argue against that and extrapolated based on previous experience. But as you noticed yourself now, tests are the bread and butter here.

#1 Mass corvettes beat BBs without Focused Arc with a mineral loss ratio of approx 1:2-3
#2 Mass corvettes lose to BBs with Focused Arc with a mineral loss ratio of approx 5:2-3

Tests done with 1/5/20 BBs vs 5/25/100 Corvettes. The larger the fleet, the less losses suffered by the corvettes in #1 and battleships in #2.

This is all that was needed and proves again that trying to come up with what may happen (what we both did before you went and actually tested it) usually leads to wrong predictions. I am curious about the specific loadouts.

Try mining laser +100% armor pen
And disruptor +200% shield damage

If anything I'm surprised corvettes fare so bad with you guys.

BTW, this was your original post on this matter. You just disproved your statement because apparently all that you have to do is bringing Arc Emitters to win with BBs against corvettes. While I now am curious about how mining laser corvettes would fare against FE in a proper test, your test further emphasized that running mono-BB fleets is the most efficient fleet setup currently.

 

[Buddlschlumpf]

I just tried a A-202 (with plasma + disruptor instead of missiles due to high number of repeatables in my OPS) against the unbidden 5x crisis. Really not suited to deal with the crisis. Especially upon engaging the main fleet, all bombers just fly past all fleets and attack the portal instead of the battleships -> zero dps and your fleets dies instantly.

 

[Jorrhast]

Hasn't been since they nerfed it and introduced Tracking at the same time.

And if we're talking (A)FEs, that's not even tracking, that's their ungodly amount of strike craft that'll rip your corvettes to shreds faster than you could say "what the hell is going on".

 

[Wolfgang I]

I just tried a A-202 (with plasma + disruptor instead of missiles due to high number of repeatables in my OPS) against the unbidden 5x crisis. Really not suited to deal with the crisis. Especially upon engaging the main fleet, all bombers just fly past all fleets and attack the portal instead of the battleships -> zero dps and your fleets dies instantly.

Yeah bombers are great if their targeting works but its just too random.

I have played a few no direct weapon research games now and most weapons are viable on insane with 5x crisis in singleplayer unless you economy sucks.

Even battleships with large uv lasers and no Xl mount work against the contingency(I only fought an early defensive war in that game thus I had no better weapons and an AI federation killed all FEs).

From my experience as long as you spam battleships/cruisers and avoid disruptors, autocannons, fighters and bombers you are good. I avoid smaller ships because of the fleet cap and to save clicks.

 

[LittleJP]

So, at no point are destroyers more efficient than cruisers for say, smacking the AI screen around? I had been running a destroyer with 1 KA and 2 PD slots, but I'll probably be better served at taking cruisers and battleships?

Battleships are better than cruisers in almost every way? I thought the fire rate increase on their hull could be useful for cruisers.

 

[Saori]

Battleships are better than cruisers in almost every way? I thought the fire rate increase on their hull could be useful for cruisers.

Battleships all the way. Has to do with their combat behaviour more then their tools/hull. Its buried in this thread somewhere - but thats the gist of it. Battleships and nothing else. Do not bother with destroyers at all. For most of my games I have an early corvet swarm and then I pretty much upgrade to battleships - depending if I am at war and how aggressive the enemy is I might end up useing some cruisers - but thats rather rare.

 

[LittleJP]

Well, I just unlocked Galactic Force Projection so now's as good of a time as any.

 

[Larknok1]

From my experience as long as you spam battleships/cruisers and avoid disruptors, autocannons, fighters and bombers you are good. I avoid smaller ships because of the fleet cap and to save clicks.

Bombers are stupid good against everything short of A/FEs and Crises.

A lot of people say its randomness why they don't work against these foes, but I never really bought that.

My (admittedly untested) theory is that A/FEs just have stupidly good / a million fighters of their own, so they just cancel any bombers of your own.

The appearance of bombers flying way off course is I think just a graphical bug. Unless someone can prove otherwise, I think they still do damage. It's for a related reason bombers / fighters don't create graphics while firing until there's less than a certain number of ships in a system.

 

[Saori]

Bombers are stupid good against everything short of A/FEs and Crises.

A lot of people say its randomness why they don't work against these foes, but I never really bought that.

My (admittedly untested) theory is that A/FEs just have stupidly good / a million fighters of their own, so they just cancel any bombers of your own.

The appearance of bombers flying way off course is I think just a graphical bug. Unless someone can prove otherwise, I think they still do damage. It's for a related reason bombers / fighters don't create graphics while firing until there's less than a certain number of ships in a system.

The reason they do not work is that at a certain processor load (the one of your actual PC) the flight AI of bombers bugs out as you very correctly pointed out. I dont know what exactly it is but their pathing makes them fly away from the fleet to the edge of the system only to return once the fight is almost over. That makes them essentially useless and do almost zero dps. You can check the combat logs on that. Bomber damage drops off significantly when that bug happens iirc.

Otherwise you are correct though! They (or more specifically the Pethroyn swarm bombers) would be the best loadout in the game by far. Especially once repeatable techs kick in - since the bomber/fighter related ones give 10% damage/firerate increase per tech compared to kinetic/explosion/energy repeatable of 5%.