1.8.1 - The State of Combat Balance

[MrGuyPerson]

I did a little quick testing and found that the torpedo/missile cruiser proposed by @Larknok1 absolutely wrecked battleship fleets of equal power with tachyon lances, 2 KA, and 2 Plasma (which I found to be the strongest build in BB vs. BB battles of equal numbers) when I paired them off against each other using fleets of equal power. Despite taking heavy losses while closing the gap, these ships absolutely devastated the BB's at close range. I then paired off the cruiser proposed by @klingonadmiral against an equal-sized fleet of the torpedo/missile cruiser, and found that the torpedo/missile build was beaten handily. I even tried mixing in quite a few x6 whirlwind cruisers and point defense/fighter cruisers, but still could not get the missile build to defeat that of @klingonadmiral. HOWEVER, the latter build was absolutely annihilated by a BB fleet of equal power using the design already mentioned. Although it will need more testing, there appears to be some interesting mixing/matching possible here.

 

[Wolfgang I]

I can confirm this, but it only seems to happen when against large fleets. I have a huge fleet with lot of Amoeba Flagellas (I just love the nimble little buggers), and when I attack, say, a system with a single spaceport and a fortress station, the amoebas fly straight to their targets and do damage. The same fleet deployed instead against an enemy fleet of considerable size sees the amoebas fly to the left and right almost to the edges of the system, but eventually (if the battle lasts long enough) they turn back, fly back to their source ships, and then fly at the enemy and finally do what they should.

It's quite infuriating, really.

It's indeed rather annoying. If bombers work they seem to melt battleship/cruiser & crisis fleets incredible fast but sometimes they just fly off for some sightseeing.

 

[Tobasco da Gama]

While I've found strike craft very effective there seems to be some critical mass number of strike craft in a fight that just...breaks it all. For example a fleet very heavy on bombers (battleships) and fighters (cruisers) against an awakened empire. I had a game where I relied heavily on strike craft and all was fine until that fight. Once I did that all the strike craft (mine and theirs) seemed to break off perpendicular to the fight and just...do nothing.

This would explain some of the weird stuff I've seen fighting against AEs. I had a couple of fights where I was severely outnumbered, and I observed that I would do some damage right at the beginning of the battle but then suddenly all my DPS would just stop before I had even lost very many ships. My fleet design heavily relies on strike craft to distract enemy PD, so if the strike craft were just flying off into the middle of nowhere to do some skywriting instead of flying in front of the flak cannons like they were supposed to...

 

[Larknok1]

I can confirm this, take a look at the following situation:

If you look carefully you can see that an overwhelming part of my bomber contingent is flying straight to the edges of the system.

Not sure if this is a grandiose tactic to get behind the enemy or if the strike craft catapults are two powerful.

Nevertheless, combat balance seems to be a lot better in 1.8.x than before.

It could be a graphical or computational problem that isn't affecting damage, but I don't really know how the AI DPS of Strikecraft is calculated. I do know this, though: graphics for Strikecraft attacks will simply turn off (despite still doing damage) in large battles.

 

[Larknok1]

I am not sure about this one. Both a full PD cruiser and a full PD destroyer give up 50% of their potential offensive slots to point defence, so I'd say they should be equally effective.



This is a range problem. Autocannons switch targets too often because targets drive out of their range and they switch rather than being able to reengage because ships zerg around too much.


(Against anything other than AFEs, I'm liking L Missile/Bomber/2 Flak/Whirlwind on a cruiser. These do beat both direct fire and hangar based battleships. Also, cruisers should now use standard gauss for shieldbusting not KA, firing faster keeps shields down better now).

The logic here is that pound-for-pound Cruisers are more versatile, so a specialized missile / strikecraft / torp killer Destroyer should be more mineral efficient at that job. I agree with your analysis for slots, and that's why I prefer a Hull bonus to Destroyer PD damage.

 

[Larknok1]

I found Energy Torps + Bomber + Medium Plasma cruisers to be incredible effective "Swiss Army Knife" ships. Small Plasma in the slots on the Torp fronts, PD+Flak in the Bomber subsystem:

Also L Gamma Lasers are better than L Plasma 3 in most cases, but sadly KA beats them and thus they see no play at all, for the one case where L Energy beats L Kinetics (the Scourge), Plasma beats Laser.

Bombers in general are really strong this patch. In my last game, I ran my own "swiss-knife" Cruisers [in fact, those are the only Cruisers I ran] consisting of plasma + kinetics + Bombers/Fighters, depending on the Cruiser type [I used two.]

 

[Tobasco da Gama]

It could be a graphical or computational problem that isn't affecting damage, but I don't really know how the AI DPS of Strikecraft is calculated. I do know this, though: graphics for Strikecraft attacks will simply turn off (despite still doing damage) in large battles.

The after-battle report also shows very few strike craft killed by PD in these giant battles, where in smaller fights I have a ton of strike craft killed by PD. Damage from bombers is also extremely low. It's not only cosmetic.

 

[The Shacks]

I'd love systems to be larger.

 

[Larknok1]

I did a little quick testing and found that the torpedo/missile cruiser proposed by @Larknok1 absolutely wrecked battleship fleets of equal power with tachyon lances, 2 KA, and 2 Plasma (which I found to be the strongest build in BB vs. BB battles of equal numbers) when I paired them off against each other using fleets of equal power. Despite taking heavy losses while closing the gap, these ships absolutely devastated the BB's at close range. I then paired off the cruiser proposed by @klingonadmiral against an equal-sized fleet of the torpedo/missile cruiser, and found that the torpedo/missile build was beaten handily. I even tried mixing in quite a few x6 whirlwind cruisers and point defense/fighter cruisers, but still could not get the missile build to defeat that of @klingonadmiral. HOWEVER, the latter build was absolutely annihilated by a BB fleet of equal power using the design already mentioned. Although it will need more testing, there appears to be some interesting mixing/matching possible here.

I ran several (half a dozen or so) tests to confirm your findings.

Surprisingly, Klingon's SwissArmy Cruiser beats out BOTH the Tachyon BB and the Torp Cruiser, and on repeated analysis, actually beats the Tachyon BB more consistently than does the Torp Cruiser.

(!!!) Now here's the surprising bit -- because this has never been true in any patch before this one -- a 20 TorpCruiser + 20 SwissArmy Cruiser fleet fairly consistently beats a 40 stack of SwissArmyCruiser.

In the past, almost no offensive synergy was better than a mono-fleet. This is the first solid evidence of a mixed fleet outperforming a monofleet.

NOTE: I've slightly modified the Torp Cruiser by giving it 1 Swarmer missile.

 

[MrGuyPerson]

(!!!) Now here's the surprising bit -- because this has never been true in any patch before this one -- a 20 TorpCruiser + 20 SwissArmy Cruiser fleet consistently beats a 40 stack of SwissArmyCruiser.

In the past, almost no offensive synergy was better than a mono-fleet. This is the first solid evidence of a mixed fleet outperforming a monofleet.

NOTE: I've slightly modified the Torp Cruiser by giving it 1 Swarmer missile.

Awesome to hear that. I wanted to test a combo of the torp build + swiss army knife to see if that was the case, but didn't have time. I also mulled over swapping out the back medium slot for a swarmer. Glad that you got good results with it! Also cool because this is not only a mixed fleet, but uses such a variety of weapons to be effective. Throw in BB's as artillery, and you've got every weapon type covered.

 

[Matt516]

graphics for Strikecraft attacks will simply turn off (despite still doing damage) in large battles.

This kind of thing seems to be common. I've also noticed that if I exit out of watching a battle and then zoom back in, all of the missiles cosmetically disappear (though they still seem to be doing damage).

 

[Larknok1]

The after-battle report also shows very few strike craft killed by PD in these giant battles, where in smaller fights I have a ton of strike craft killed by PD. Damage from bombers is also extremely low. It's not only cosmetic.

Bomber damage unfortunately resets itself after every single combat kill. If you completely wipe out an enemy fleet, it will always read "Bomber Damage = 0" -- that is: Bomber Damage will only report the damage done to ships that are still alive. It removes all damage to that ship from the Bomber total once that ship is destroyed. Ergo, it's kind of hard to numerically determine how much damage Bombers are doing.

 

[Matt516]

Bomber damage unfortunately resets itself after every single combat kill. If you completely wipe out an enemy fleet, it will always read "Bomber Damage = 0" -- that is: Bomber Damage will only report the damage done to ships that are still alive. It removes all damage to that ship from the Bomber total once that ship is destroyed. Ergo, it's kind of hard to numerically determine how much damage Bombers are doing.

That seems like a pretty serious bug in the combat report.

 

[Tobasco da Gama]

Well, that's annoying.

 

[Larknok1]

That seems like a pretty serious bug in the combat report.

It is.

 

[Riftwalker]

Have you actually tested this:"6) Full Kinetic Artillery + Giga Cannon is a very viable Battleship design now....although still loses to maximum armor builds and missile fleets"?

Or is this a prediction based on your other tests?

I ask this because in corvette v. corvette testing in the other thread, people found very different results depending on the size of fleets for missiles v. kinetic performance. It seems missiles in large numbers (50v50) have some sort of issue with overkill still, as missile corvettes beat kinetic corvettes in numbers small than 50v50, but lose handily in larger numbers, all without any PD.

this is probably due to missile fleets having the edge at the start but start to lose the longer the fight goes on. kinetic has always felt like it's down better when it gets into brawling range, which requires a longer battle.

 

[EntropyAvatar]

this is probably due to missile fleets having the edge at the start but start to lose the longer the fight goes on. kinetic has always felt like it's down better when it gets into brawling range, which requires a longer battle.

Perhaps as the fleets close, the missiles end up spreading their targets more, or the missile salvos are less coordinated (less PD overwhelm effect), or just the configuration of ships means more PD is along the missile flight path?

 

[4o1XOHBV6In4]

O 7) Missiles/Strikecraft should mostly beat non-PD stacks of the same ship class.

[This is true for the entirety of the game. PD is EXTREMELY important to dealing with heavy missile comps. Even in end-game massive Battleship stacks, Missile Battleships outdamage all other weapons.]

Does not replicate for me. Maybe I just don't know how a good lategame missile design looks like so I'll post the designs I used but running three tests of old meta battleships vs missile based battleships the old setup crushes missile battleships in favorable circumstances for the missile designs (no pd, engage at max range, ...).
And it's not close, 100 old meta battleships vs 100 missile battleships the old meta design always wins with 40-60 survivors.

Spoiler: Combat Result of last test run

Spoiler: Battleship design "Old Meta"

Spoiler: Battleship design "Missiles"

Edit: I noticed I matched fleets fleet power vs fleet power not minerals vs minerals, my mistake.
So I reran the tests, I think overall my point still stands but draw your own conclusions:

100 Old Meta Battleships vs 109 Missile Battleships
Test 1: ~20 OM Battleships survived
Test 2: ~20 Missile Battleships survived
Test 3: ~40 OM Battleships survived
Test 4: ~25 OM Battleships survived
Test 5: ~ 30 OM Battleships survived

 

[Pchang]

Your design has 2 shields and 4 armor. The meta they are testing has 4 shields and no armor.

 

[Tobasco da Gama]

IMO, Battleships are bad missile platforms. Cruisers are the best missile ships, since they get the fire rate bonus (more metal in the air).

Also, any missile ship -- at least in a monoculture fleet setup -- must have one M slot devoted to Whirlwind missiles. Not 100% relevant to your example, because the "old meta" ships have no PD anyway, but my missile fleet BBs would usually have a Hangar Core with two Whirlwind slots, two Marauder slots, and Bombers (keep the Artillery Bow and Stern).

(Also, as Pchang suggests, I find it unsurprising that plasma/lance BBs beat missile BBs in an armour fight. This is one of the huge problems with trying to define meaningful tests.)