1.8.1 - The State of Combat Balance

[Larknok1]

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

This. I don't think anyone is contending that anything is going to beat a max armor fleet better than a Tachyon plasma kinetic BB.

By setting up two max armor fleets, all you've shown is Tachyons+plasma hit max armor better than missiles. Change the defense composition of the missile fleet to max shields, and give the missile fleet boosters.

Doing otherwise biases the result. Also, you have level 1 boosters on the missile ships, which will slow them down, letting Tachyons fire more easily, and retaining distance.

What one should test is the classic 422 BB (your Tachyon BB with 4 shields) against a 4 shield all missiles BB.

 

[Riftwalker]

cruisers are better missile fleets due to torps.

 

[Larknok1]

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

View attachment 304443

Spoiler: Battleship design "Old Meta"

View attachment 304444

Spoiler: Battleship design "Missiles"

View attachment 304445

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

Your tests have three major flaws.

1) Your missile ships aren't running at least 1 whirlwind missile (they should be, for realism.)
2) Your missile ships aren't running max shields (they should be.)
3) Your missile ships don't have the max level boosters (they need these to increase dodge against KA + Tachyons + L Plasma, to prevent Tachyon shots from lining up, and also to close the gap faster.)

Testing the max shields missile ship below against two varieties of "old-meta" Tachyon+KA+Plasma BBs:

A) The Missile Ship tested:

B) The Max Shield Tachyon BB tested:

C) The mixed Shields / Armor Tachyon BB you tested:

Results of A vs. B using Mineral:Mineral tests of 100+ BBs:

That's the missile fleet winning against the max shields Tachyon fleet, by the way. Perhaps you're thinking: "that's just because missiles do well against mono-shields, try it against the mixed armor/shields fleet."

Here we go:

Results of A vs. C using Mineral:Mineral tests of 100+ BBs:

The armored variant did a little better, but was still clearly bested.


You can run the same tests with the max shields missile fleet against an all Giga+Kinetic BB and find similar results.

This all backs up my initial claim: missiles are simply the highest DPS things around. Without PD or using your own missiles/torps/strikecraft, you're not going to out-damage a missile fleet.

This is a good thing for the meta. If missiles were outclassed by other weapons without even considering Point Defense, we'd be in a broken meta with only three viable weapon types (old meta.)

Now, any weapon build that's not running missiles/PD/Strikecraft has to run some Point Defense or Fighters, or simply roll the dice and pray not to run into an enemy missile fleet.

 

[elitesix]

Wait, why is maxed shields in general better than near-maxed 90% reduction armor with some shields?

Just from a mathematical perspective before weapon considerations, 90% armor reduction makes the ship 10x more hp, whereas max shields seems at best to 2x the hp, and even with generous regen / no focus fire maybe make the hp 3x as much at best.

 

[Fal Soram]

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.

This is likely because of the strike craft on field, causing point defense to completely ignore missiles until theyve killed all the bombers, and since those respawn there will be gaps in coverage, especially in the opening few volleys, as the torpedos will hit unopposed.

 

[Larknok1]

Wait, why is maxed shields in general better than near-maxed 90% reduction armor with some shields?

Just from a mathematical perspective before weapon considerations, 90% armor reduction makes the ship 10x more hp, whereas max shields seems at best to 2x the hp, and even with generous regen / no focus fire maybe make the hp 3x as much at best.

Because it's not that simple. There's targeting AI and the armor penetration to consider.

Anti armor weapons have famously had better targeting AI than anti-shield weapons. The targeting AI for anti-shield weapons was improved in 1.8, but it still faces fairly serious problems when collaborating with anti-armor weapon AI. Both should target the ships with the most damage already done to them, and agree upon a common target whenever possible. I'm not sure they do this perfectly yet. Mix that in with regening shields to mess with the AI, and you're starting to get the picture.

Anti-armor weapons (L plasma has 80% armor penetration) cut that damage reduction from armor way down. Why in the case of missiles are missiles still doing well against heavy armor builds? Large missiles now have 50% armor reduction as well. So that cuts down Battleship armor reduction by more than half already. Advanced bombers have the same armor penetration as well.

 

[Larknok1]

This is likely because of the strike craft on field, causing point defense to completely ignore missiles until theyve killed all the bombers, and since those respawn there will be gaps in coverage, especially in the opening few volleys, as the torpedos will hit unopposed.

That's largely what I'm thinking. Also, the PD on the SwissArmy ships take down some of the enemy Bombers, preventing them from doing more damage over the long-haul, which was where the Torp Cruisers lost. In all fleet match-ups, the Torp Cruisers do better at the start, but in the mono-Torp fleet, lose that advantage once enemy Bombers get on top of them.

 

[Rolepgeek]

What about Pure Carrier (1 Fighter 2 Bomber, 1 KA, rest Plasma) BB fleet vs the max shields missile BB fleet? I can't really test it myself but if there's been a rework of strike craft as well as missiles, I'd be curious to see how well it would work. Possibly different ratios of Fighters and Bombers, too.

 

[4o1XOHBV6In4]

Just got home and not through all of the messages yet, will edit this post to respond as I get through posts.

Doing otherwise biases the result. Also, you have level 1 boosters on the missile ships, which will slow them down, letting Tachyons fire more easily, and retaining distance.

Missiles outrange lances and kinetic artillery both. As such the slower the fleets the longer the alpha strike window for missiles, the longer until all of the meta design's weapons get into firing range. So reducing the thruster level on the missile fleet is actually to the missile fleet's advantage. Additionally they can use the slot of the removed generator for additional armor, something the meta build can't because it requires more power for it's weapons. So that's not a disadvantage to missile fleets but rather two minor advantages.

More responses to come as I get through more posts.

 

[Larknok1]

Just got home and not through all of the messages yet, will edit this post to respond as I get through posts.



Missiles outrange lances and kinetic artillery both. As such the slower the fleets the longer the alpha strike window for missiles, the longer until all of the meta design's weapons get into firing range. So reducing the thruster level on the missile fleet is actually to the missile fleet's advantage. Additionally they can use the slot of the removed generator for additional armor, something the meta build can't because it requires more power for it's weapons. So that's not a disadvantage to missile fleets but rather two minor advantages.

More responses to come as I get through more posts.

Sure, but you're ignoring the fact that doing so makes you easier to hit by Tachyons, KA, and L Plasma. It's really not worth it, especially if you have any other BB or Cruiser design.

 

[4o1XOHBV6In4]

Sure, but you're ignoring the fact that doing so makes you easier to hit by Tachyons, KA, and L Plasma. It's really not worth it, especially if you have any other BB or Cruiser design.

I'm going through it one at a time. I wasn't sure on tracking vs evasion yet so I didn't speak to it then. I've thought about it since and came to the conclusion that in the designs you're deploying, using better thrusters is 100% handicapping yourself. The reason is that you have at least +14 bonus tracking (9 from sensors, 5 from your combat computer). With max level thrusters you get up to 14% evasion and all of that is ignored by the tracking anyway. So the evasion is worthless and you only pay for being faster, which is bad for you as well.

It might be a valid concern with the designs I used because the sentient combat computer I used doesn't give tracking so using max level thrusters might result in 5% evasion being left over. I say might because I've been testing using the fleet academy module (+3 tracking) as that seemed most realistic. This would reduce evasion to 2% at which point it's probably not worth it if you have to lower your armor to go there. But it's definitely debatable if the fleet academy module should be used in testing. I've used it but I'm not opposed to banning it as well. Maybe it doesn't end up making a difference, so we can conveniently ignore it.
You'll also note that in designs where I can't get more armor for lowering the thruster level I generally don't do it, as upgrading the thrusters is cheap and may be worth 2-5% evasion if you don't have to lower your armor to get there.

All in all I'm still testing things but I'm sure I disagree with your 1) and 3) statement. Why I think trading evasion and speed for armor is good for missiles I've already explained. As for 1, my bias is that the old meta designs are better, as such it's best I try to steelman the other hypothesis. I think using an L-missile instead of an M-missile + whirlwind only makes the design stronger, so if I can beat the L-missile design I also beat the weaker version.

And with all of that out of the way I'm still starting to suspect that heavy shield designs with missiles might actually take the crown, like you said. That is, your 2) reason might be the one that proves you right.

 

[Dr_Gentech]

I've been following this whole thread and I'm still confused about which model is being referred to in which way. Makes sense because we don't have a standard nomenclature like we used to, I'll try re-reading again.

 

[4o1XOHBV6In4]

Alright, more testing here we go.

100 "Old Meta #0" battleships vs 103 "Missiles #1" battleships (designs see below):
Test 1: 20-40 Meta Battleships survived (forgot to write it down)
Test 2: 35 Meta Battleships survived
Test 3: 29 Meta Battleships survived
Test 4 32 Meta Battleships survived
Test 5: 29 Meta Battleships survived
Test 6: 32 Meta Battleships survived

Spoiler: Design "Old Meta #0"

Spoiler: Design "Missiles #1"

Spoiler: Last test result

So for what I call the (old) meta-designs I'm using what I used last time in my tests and something very close to what you used. For missiles my design is almost identical with yours again, for the differences see the paragraph below.

At this point I'm suspecting that the main difference might be the combat computer we're using (sapient vs precog). The other two differences I've noticed is that you're using psi jump drives while I use wormhole and you might not be using a fleet academy module. Otherwise, my species is not militaristic and neither is my leader, so that are all the confounders I can think of off the top of my head. And I didn't expect any of these to make (much of) a difference but clearly something has to give, our results are just too different.

I'll shortly be running the same tests with adjusting my builds to mirror yours step by step. Hopefully I'll find out what component makes such a drastic difference in outcomes.

Edit: Changing the combat computer to precog, all else being equal to above, only made the meta builds win harder.

Edit2: Alright, tried to the best of my ability to replicate exactly the conditions of @Larknok1 in their last post, yet in my tests the meta build always wins. Surely there has to be a difference somewhere that leads to them getting totally different results then I am getting, however I can't find it.
So I've decided to upload my testing savegame. To replicate what I've been doing you'll simply have to load it, activate the console (couple of shortcuts, I'm usually using ^), use the commands "instant_build" and "attackallfleets". And then just let it run (maybe speed up to fastest).

If anyone wants to try and isn't familiar with console commands you can look them up here http://www.stellariswiki.com/Console_commands

 

[Dr_Gentech]

Alright, more testing here we go.

100 "Old Meta #0" battleships vs 103 "Missiles #1" battleships (designs see below):
Test 1: 20-40 Meta Battleships survived (forgot to write it down)
Test 2: 35 Meta Battleships survived
Test 3: 29 Meta Battleships survived
Test 4 32 Meta Battleships survived
Test 5: 29 Meta Battleships survived
Test 6: 32 Meta Battleships survived

Spoiler: Design "Old Meta #0"

View attachment 304493

Spoiler: Design "Missiles #1"

View attachment 304494

Spoiler: Last test result

View attachment 304495

So for what I call the (old) meta-designs I'm using what I used last time in my tests and something very close to what you used. For missiles my design is almost identical with yours again, for the differences see the paragraph below.

At this point I'm suspecting that the main difference might be the combat computer we're using (sapient vs precog). The other two differences I've noticed is that you're using psi jump drives while I use wormhole and you might not be using a fleet academy module. Otherwise, my species is not militaristic and neither is my leader, so that are all the confounders I can think of off the top of my head. And I didn't expect any of these to make (much of) a difference but clearly something has to give, our results are just too different.

I'll shortly be running the same tests with adjusting my builds to mirror yours step by step. Hopefully I'll find out what component makes such a drastic difference in outcomes.

Edit: Changing the combat computer to precog, all else being equal to above, only made the meta builds win harder.

Edit2: Alright, tried to the best of my ability to replicate exactly the conditions of @Larknok1 in their last post, yet in my tests the meta build always wins. Surely there has to be a difference somewhere that leads to them getting totally different results then I am getting, however I can't find it.
So I've decided to upload my testing savegame. To replicate what I've been doing you'll simply have to load it, activate the console (couple of shortcuts, I'm usually using ^), use the commands "instant_build" and "attackallfleets". And then just let it run (maybe speed up to fastest).

If anyone wants to try and isn't familiar with console commands you can look them up here http://www.stellariswiki.com/Console_commands

Thanks for the testing, could you test what you call old meta battleships against the Torpedo Cruisers (the ones that were missiles, torpedoes, and swarmers), and Swiss Army Knife cruisers? Could you also re-run the tests with everything having maxed shields, the 422BB that used to beat everything, rather than mixed with armour, like other poster pointed out? If those are returning different results to what were reported earlier in the thread then you're probably right that there's some confound, but until then I'm pretty sure it's just because you're using different ship templates to the other testers, specifically that you're including armour.

Edit: also I totally get if you're trying to make a point that the actual old meta, the full shield 422BB, is inferior to your variant with mixed armour now, that's just not what everyone else is testing. If you doubt that the full shield 422BB can beat what you're calling the old meta, load up 1.7 and test it out. I'd also be really interested in whether the targeting changes mean that your version can beat the old meta on 1.8.x.

 

[4o1XOHBV6In4]

Thanks for the testing, could you test what you call old meta battleships against the Torpedo Cruisers (the ones that were missiles, torpedoes, and swarmers), and Swiss Army Knife cruisers? Could you also re-run the tests with everything having maxed shields, the 422BB that used to beat everything, rather than mixed with armour, like other poster pointed out? If those are returning different results to what were reported earlier in the thread then you're probably right that there's some confound, but until then I'm pretty sure it's just because you're using different ship templates to the other testers, specifically that you're including armour.

Edit: also I totally get if you're trying to make a point that the actual old meta, the full shield 422BB, is inferior to your variant with mixed armour now, that's just not what everyone else is testing. If you doubt that the full shield 422BB can beat what you're calling the old meta, load up 1.7 and test it out. I'd also be really interested in whether the targeting changes mean that your version can beat the old meta on 1.8.x.

Maybe this is a good point to take a break for a sec and talk naming.

What I'm familiar with is mostly 1.6 builds, those should be identical to builds from 1.7. The meta as I know it from back then for cruisers and battleships was mostly defined by the weapons used and defensive modules where left unspecified. So from my point of view everything that's using 1 KA 4 M-plasma for cruisers is a variant of the 1.6 meta cruiser, everything that uses 1 lance 2 KA and 2 L-plasma is a variant of the 1.6 meta battleship. This is possibly due to defensive modules being bad anyway but who really knows.

Now it seems that some people are floating a design called 422BB as what I would call a 1.6 meta battleship design that is using defensive modules - 4 shields and no armor. Tell me if I got that wrong. Cause I intend to run those tests.
Next the Swiss Army Knife cruiser design seems to be a fresh 1.8 design that uses some combination of plasma, kinetic and bombers - defensive loadout unspecified. Apparently those lose to torpedo cruisers and I dunno how the design looks exactly so for now I'm not going to test it for now.
Lastly we have torpedo cruisers, there's a image of them somewhere that I'll consult before testing them but I remember them running all possible torpedoes for cruisers + marauder missiles for every other weapon slot. Those sound interesting as well and I'll eventually get to them I think.

Now that that's settled I want to clarify what my goal is: Finding out if missile fleets beat all fleets that don't have pd (minerals:minerals). This is the claim made in the OP that I'm sceptical about. I'm not out to prove the total supremacy of this or that design, I might run those tests if they interest me - and some certainly do - but running all the tests is exhausting so when I lose interest I'll move on.
Also: I don't know and don't claim to know what the best designs are yet for 1.8, I'm trying to find that out as much as anyone I guess. For 1.6 I am confident I hold good and true opinions on the strength of ship designs, for 1.8 I wish to get there.

Anyway, I'll get to testing missile BBs with 4 shields vs 1.6 meta BBs with 4 shields and possibly other set ups. I will consider OPs claim of "missiles reign supreme in the absence of pd" to be true if I can't find a reasonably likely design that kills it consistently. What I mean by that is if the only way to beat the missiles + 4 shields BB is by using some weird counter-build that sucks against everything else I'll concede the point, as I'm more interested in the question of "are missiles best amongst builds that are generally good and reasonable?" than in whether or not some wacky counter-designs exist that nobody would want to use in reality.

 

[Dr_Gentech]

Maybe this is a good point to take a break for a sec and talk naming.

What I'm familiar with is mostly 1.6 builds, those should be identical to builds from 1.7. The meta as I know it from back then for cruisers and battleships was mostly defined by the weapons used and defensive modules where left unspecified. So from my point of view everything that's using 1 KA 4 M-plasma for cruisers is a variant of the 1.6 meta cruiser, everything that uses 1 lance 2 KA and 2 L-plasma is a variant of the 1.6 meta battleship. This is possibly due to defensive modules being bad anyway but who really knows.

Now it seems that some people are floating a design called 422BB as what I would call a 1.6 meta battleship design that is using defensive modules - 4 shields and no armor. Tell me if I got that wrong. Cause I intend to run those tests.
Next the Swiss Army Knife cruiser design seems to be a fresh 1.8 design that uses some combination of plasma, kinetic and bombers - defensive loadout unspecified. Apparently those lose to torpedo cruisers and I dunno how the design looks exactly so for now I'm not going to test it for now.
Lastly we have torpedo cruisers, there's a image of them somewhere that I'll consult before testing them but I remember them running all possible torpedoes for cruisers + marauder missiles for every other weapon slot. Those sound interesting as well and I'll eventually get to them I think.

Now that that's settled I want to clarify what my goal is: Finding out if missile fleets beat all fleets that don't have pd (minerals:minerals). This is the claim made in the OP that I'm sceptical about. I'm not out to prove the total supremacy of this or that design, I might run those tests if they interest me - and some certainly do - but running all the tests is exhausting so when I lose interest I'll move on.
Also: I don't know and don't claim to know what the best designs are yet for 1.8, I'm trying to find that out as much as anyone I guess. For 1.6 I am confident I hold good and true opinions on the strength of ship designs, for 1.8 I wish to get there.

Anyway, I'll get to testing missile BBs with 4 shields vs 1.6 meta BBs with 4 shields and possibly other set ups. I will consider OPs claim of "missiles reign supreme in the absence of pd" to be true if I can't find a reasonably likely design that kills it consistently. What I mean by that is if the only way to beat the missiles + 4 shields BB is by using some weird counter-build that sucks against everything else I'll concede the point, as I'm more interested in the question of "are missiles best amongst builds that are generally good and reasonable?" than in whether or not some wacky counter-designs exist that nobody would want to use in reality.

Yep, the 422BB that has all shields and double shield capacitors was the battleship meta when I started playing (1.7), because adding any amount of armour made them lose to 422BB and 422BB could still beat any other loadout (like all kinetic, all armour, etc), mostly because of the targeting for kinetics being bad and specific timing synergies between KA, lances, plasma and shield regeneration. That's the one everyone here is referring to as the meta and comparing missiles against, and everyone's excited because missiles are winning. Now there's an obvious flaw in this: the assumption is that whatever can beat 422BB, as the old meta, will de-facto be the new meta, but that assumption may not be correct because 422BB may not be optimal with the new targeting changes, and your battleships (with the two armour modules) may beat them, and if they also beat missiles then they're the new meta, not missiles (although I'd wanna see how an all kinetic BB did against your one). This is all very complex.

The Swiss army cruiser is detailed here: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...tate-of-combat-balance.1048858/#post-23364836

And just above it is the missile/torp cruiser, which is apparently devastating with the Devastator torps.

If you're going to run either of those against your battleships, you should run them with whirlwind missiles in at least one of the medium slots because realistically they will have those in the game to deal with point defence, even though it lowers their DPS against a ship without point defence. If you run the Swiss army knife cruiser and the torp/missile cruiser in a 1:1 ratio (as the other commenter said they're apparently more effective synergized, a first for Stellaris), you only need to put whirlwind missiles in a medium slot on one of the loadouts because that's all that would be needed for the fleets to be realistic.

Edit: also I'm really sorry, I spent a stupidly long time searching and I couldn't find the thread where they tested and found all shields were strictly superior to any armour, but I promise I saw it and it looked convincing.

 

[Blodo]

Can anyone confirm if mixing in destroyers with pd+disruptors and an adv. afterburner into a fleet of plasma/bomber/torp cruisers and giga/arty battleships is worth it in late game engagements? Since destroyers now charge forward, it stands to reason they'd be effective as screening and early deshield to keep your more expensive ships from getting targeted first?

 

[4o1XOHBV6In4]

Yep, the 422BB that has all shields and double shield capacitors was the battleship meta when I started playing (1.7), because adding any amount of armour made them lose to 422BB and 422BB could still beat any other loadout (like all kinetic, all armour, etc), mostly because of the targeting for kinetics being bad and specific timing synergies between KA, lances, plasma and shield regeneration. That's the one everyone here is referring to as the meta and comparing missiles against, and everyone's excited because missiles are winning. Now there's an obvious flaw in this: the assumption is that whatever can beat 422BB, as the old meta, will de-facto be the new meta, but that assumption may not be correct because 422BB may not be optimal with the new targeting changes, and your battleships (with the two armour modules) may beat them, and if they also beat missiles then they're the new meta, not missiles (although I'd wanna see how an all kinetic BB did against your one). This is all very complex.

The Swiss army cruiser is detailed here: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...tate-of-combat-balance.1048858/#post-23364836

And just above it is the missile/torp cruiser, which is apparently devastating with the Devastator torps.

If you're going to run either of those against your battleships, you should run them with whirlwind missiles in at least one of the medium slots because realistically they will have those in the game to deal with point defence, even though it lowers their DPS against a ship without point defence. If you run the Swiss army knife cruiser and the torp/missile cruiser in a 1:1 ratio (as the other commenter said they're apparently more effective synergized, a first for Stellaris), you only need to put whirlwind missiles in a medium slot on one of the loadouts because that's all that would be needed for the fleets to be realistic.

Edit: also I'm really sorry, I spent a stupidly long time searching and I couldn't find the thread where they tested and found all shields were strictly superior to any armour, but I promise I saw it and it looked convincing.

Thanks for the detailed answer. I see why it's confusing now, apparently our idea of what the old meta used to be isn't quite the same. I wasn't aware people considered any specific defense module configuration meta, seeing how they all lose to naked designs anyway. It actually made my patch back to 1.6.2 (equivalent to 1.7.4) just to confirm again that in fact 422BB lose to naked battleships and they do. Do or did people really consider 422BB the unbeatable meta ship design in 1.6/1.7?

In any case it's getting kind of late here, I'm wrapping up for the night. I've ran a lot of test cases against the missile steelman (4 shield, 6 L-marauder, no whirlwind) and didn't find anything that could beat it, 422BB came the closest but still didn't win a single time. Depending on how much time I have tomorrow I might consider further testing but for now I'm convinced.

And kinetic weapons against shields are still a mess. They kill their first target cause that they all focus on still. From then on it's clown fiesta, every time they accidently starting dealing hull damage they quickly switch away to another shielded target.

Edit: At long last. One last test. I'll declare this half a success but 6 L-missile 4 shield has been beaten. The trick is ignoring missiles, they're a distraction. The real problem is that most weapons just suck dealing with regenerating shields, especially anti shield weapons. Missiles just end up being the weapons least affected by this is why they're otherwise dominant. It's not cause missiles are so good (well they are really good), it's that 4 shields is the superior defensive option and they happen to be the best response. Well. Second best response.

Spoiler: Unshield

Spoiler: Battle result

I freely admit that this design is not my idea, rather someone else posted the idea on this forums a while ago. I thought it was interesting and now just remembered when thinking about how shield regen was the real problem.
The next step would be testing if that design was good at beating other designs as well, but seeing how it's protected by the almighty regeneration bubble I actually think it can.

 

[Dr_Gentech]

Thanks for the detailed answer. I see why it's confusing now, apparently our idea of what the old meta used to be isn't quite the same. I wasn't aware people considered any specific defense module configuration meta, seeing how they all lose to naked designs anyway. It actually made my patch back to 1.6.2 (equivalent to 1.7.4) just to confirm again that in fact 422BB lose to naked battleships and they do. Do or did people really consider 422BB the unbeatable meta ship design in 1.6/1.7?

In any case it's getting kind of late here, I'm wrapping up for the night. I've ran a lot of test cases against the missile steelman (4 shield, 6 L-marauder, no whirlwind) and didn't find anything that could beat it, 422BB came the closest but still didn't win a single time. Depending on how much time I have tomorrow I might consider further testing but for now I'm convinced.

And kinetic weapons against shields are still a mess. They kill their first target cause that they all focus on still. From then on it's clown fiesta, every time they accidently starting dealing hull damage they quickly switch away to another shielded target.

Edit: At long last. One last test. I'll declare this half a success but 6 L-missile 4 shield has been beaten. The trick is ignoring missiles, they're a distraction. The real problem is that most weapons just suck dealing with regenerating shields, especially anti shield weapons. Missiles just end up being the weapons least affected by this is why they're otherwise dominant. It's not cause missiles are so good (well they are really good), it's that 4 shields is the superior defensive option and they happen to be the best response. Well. Second best response.

Spoiler: Unshield

View attachment 304518

Spoiler: Battle result

View attachment 304519

I freely admit that this design is not my idea, rather someone else posted the idea on this forums a while ago. I thought it was interesting and now just remembered when thinking about how shield regen was the real problem.
The next step would be testing if that design was good at beating other designs as well, but seeing how it's protected by the almighty regeneration bubble I actually think it can.

That's really interesting, full shield piercing is an interesting touch! I've been testing for the last few hours and came to similar conclusions that you already stated, but I'm really happy to learn about that battleship design. That's actually quite close to what I used to fight the Contingency, except I filled out the weapon slots with I think kinetic as well as point defence and bombers, which left me with less shields (but the major source of contingency damage is arc emitters, not their escorts gamma lasers). You seem to have enough energy to employ point defence - is the reason you don't have it to lower the battleship cost? I feel like you could add it and it would end up better, I'll test now against 6L missile

Edit 1: the point defence adds a whopping ten minerals to the ship cost, and takes twenty power out of the ~70-80, I think it will do better, time to see!

Edit 2: the results were unshield 23/50 dead (27 surviving), all steelman dead. According to the AAR, my point defence killed 1555 missiles, and one of the more amusing things about this battle was that the steelman total damage output (216370) was higher than unshield (206752). I did it with 50 each because my computer sucks and I'm impatient, but I'll now try it with 102 vs 100

Edit 3: the results were confusing to my simple brain. 100 (unshield) vs 102 (steelman) still had unshield winning, but they only had 50 ships survive (exactly 50%, obviously), lower proportion than before and old mate got, despite the fact that AAR says the point defence killed 2885 missiles. Still, definitive win for unshield. I shall now test unshield against other types of battleship.

Edit 4: Unshield vs 422BB had me thinking the entire fight that Unshield would lose, because it was losing ships fast and heavy early on, and even when bombers arrived at the 422BB ball 422BBs didn't start dropping. It was a very close fight, but Unshield won, with 35/100 ships surviving (and 422BB losing all 100 ships). Will now test against the different missile cruisers/Swiss army cruisers.

Edit 4: (I'm using equal fleet power btw, because I can't be assed calculating costs and I'm terrible at math. I know it's not a good way to calculate it). 100 Unshield battleships against 200 torpedo/missile cruisers, the Unshield battleships have 1 Guardian 1 Flak PD, the torpedo cruisers have one swarmer missile and otherwise all marauder/devastator. Side note about this battle, the "fleet power" ingame calculators thinks these fleets are nearly exactly matched. The results are that the torpedo cruisers win, with 97 out of 200 surviving.

Next I tested the Swiss army cruisers (once again, equivalent naval cap, and the back plasma swapped out for swarmers). The results are that the Swiss army cruisers win, with 156 out of 200 surviving.

Next, obviously, half torp cruisers and half Swiss army cruisers, vs Unshield. Same as prior tests. The results are that the cruisers win, with 124 survivors out of 200 (68 torp and 56 Swiss, not that it matters).

It looks like the best setup to beat the Unshield is probably the Swiss army cruisers, who are incredibly powerful. I'll just quickly test them against some 422BBs and some all-kinetic battleships.

Edit 5: The Swiss army cruisers won against the 422BBs, with 134 survivors. They won against the kinetic battleships too (giga, all kinetic, exact same defence as 422BBs), with (not kidding) 134 survivors.

So, it looks like the Swiss Army knife is a damn good model, although its ability to be enhanced by not being in a monofleet is situational. All around this has been pretty fun and I've learned how to use the console, and how much time it takes to do stuff like this, so I have a lot of respect for the people who've been doing it for ages and do it much more thoroughly.

 

[Evaris]

Disclaimer: I'm new to stellaris, only having purchased the game due to seeing a Synthetic Dawn advert. As such, i'm only ~100 hours in. With that said:

I've been using a design quite close to the unshielded design for most of my BB's since settling on it, though with the small slots filled with marauders, flak in the point defense slots, and whirlwinds in twin medium slots with a broadside aft, with T1 engines to maintain distance and save on power.

Anyhow, it's been able to chew up most of what's come at me, the missiles make quick work of corvettes, while arc emitters and bombers target BB's at first. It got me through both the contingency and unbidden, though monofleets of such did rather poorly versus F/AE fleets in my games. Still, they suffer very little in waltzing through the majority of standard AI fleets, regardless of their loadout. Also, fitting a jump drive means dropping down to swarmers or marauders instead of whilrlwinds, and reducing the sensors to gravitic, but the design still is effective enough for me.

Spoiler

with wormhole drive:

With Jumpdrive:

With that said, missile+torp cruisers have done well for me too, though I include a single E-torp in mine, while they have high losses they chew through a lot in return. Against BB heavy AI I had a bit more success with small mining lasers instead of small marauders on such a loadout though. But the attrition losses are high regardless until they close the distance, unlike the shield ignoring BB's, so they're not really that practical, but I'm willing to bet on them winning in synthetic testing here.

Also of a thought, 6 large missile may be better versus the unbidden due to their lack of PD, and the damage output of the missiles. thoughts? Even with the unbidden's evasion, this brings down the miss ratio to 10% or so, and between missile's damage output, partial shield pen, and 110 range, I'd think they may be a contender for such a consideration.