Advanced Weapon and Utility technologies are just an inefficient way to increase naval capacity

[krios41]

Forcing yourself over fleet cap is the only real way to "punch up" against larger or more militant empires, though.

and that's why i think there should be more way's to trick people into attacking you, so you get some use out of those defensive pacts :3

 

[Sopbucket]

Interesting! Thanks for doing all this. I just have a few thoughts:

1. I read this as another symptom of the doomstack problem. That is, the fact that there is no real logistics game in Stellaris because there's no disincentive to keeping all of your ships together, all of the time. Matoro already said it, but it's a good point and bears repeating.

2. I assume you aren't including the additional costs from going over naval capacity in your calculations. I'd be interested in seeing at what point, at say 100 naval capacity and equal energy maintenance on both sides, the more advanced ships start winning. I'd like to see how that changes as the naval capacity rises. I assume higher naval capacities benefit the cheap swarm method more, but it would be interesting to see how much.

 

[Sossen]

Could you skip the tachyon lances and go full plasma vs the "cheap" design? I think the issue here stems from the design flaws of X-weapons.

 

[Waar]

Could you skip the tachyon lances and go full plasma vs the "cheap" design? I think the issue here stems from the design flaws of X-weapons.

You could, but if you analyze the scale test (the update part) the tachyon lance seems to be operating at about 3/4 of what you would expect from plasma when using many ships, while if you use fewer it seems to be opertating at around 1.1-1.15 of what you could expect from the plasma.

If you then account for the fact that the tachyon beams deal their damage earlier than the plasma (on average) you shouldn't gain as much as you might expect.

I might still try someting of the sort later, but if you desperately want to know I urge you to try it yourself.

Edit: apparently I made a minor test with some Plasma+armor design vs the mass driver+plasma, it went about as well as the main expensive design in the OP.

 

[maxirage]

From what I can tell the most efficient fleet composition is the basic unupgraded corvettes. I did a test with base corvettes against cheap cruisers of the same mineral cost, and the corvettes win.

Notice the corvettes won against cruisers despite them having 68% armor and the corvettes having no armor penetration whatsoever. I did some tests on corvettes vs corvettes and cruisers vs cruisers, and the cheaper variants always win as well. Tech is a meme.

 

[Sibericus]

and that's why i think there should be more way's to trick people into attacking you, so you get some use out of those defensive pacts :3

Have you tried insulting them?

 

[AvalancheZ250]

You can get 50% more naval capacity from tech, but a wide empire will have no trouble picking up at least the first 20% as well, since those bonuses are additive, that means tall is only getting a 25% advantage over wide. So unless you think the difference between wide and tall is a matter of 25% more systems under your command, then tall will have substantially less naval capacity. From a science perspective, the spaceport techs are heavily regulated, so until a certain number of years have passed they get a heavily suppressed chance of spawning (90% reduced), and once one of your neighbours have them, you get a massive boost to getting them (10x base chance).

If nothing changes in the fleet combat side of things, you will still have that getting higher tech tiers only allow you to turn minerals into fleet power with less starport build-time, which is definately a good point if you have an excess of minerals but lack enough starports to build with. For every other scenario, it's hurtful to field high tech fleets. At least until you get to the repeatable techs. Even then, you are only gaining something from your science investment, but you are still left better off building the cheap low tech ships in abundance for your fleet

Finally, an empire going tall, is essentially prioritizing express-maturing existing colonies over founding new ones, possibly with a much higher focus on getting science buildings online over more mineral and energy. This can give a higher initial effective science. That advantage doesn't last, the wide empire can just as well mature it's colonies and while they will pay a higher total science penalty, that is an additive bonus. So having 5 planets and 70 pop will cause your techs to double in base science price, Next time it doubles again, you can have 13 planets with a total of 190 pop working. 2½ times the number of planets will produce 2½ times the science, 2½ the minerals and 2½ times the energy, which leaves science 25% ahead, while getting everything else massively in the lead. This is of course assuming a balanced planetary focus. A tall empire is pretty much forced to have that. A wide empire can have all the big planets going pure science with just enough food to go around, a science governor and a research assist, while leaving the smaller systems to produce the energy and minerals needed. On top of that, they can simply devote more systems to producing science, since mineral and energy production scales linearly with no deductions for size.


True, but the naval cap will always just be a penalty on maintenance costs, which is based on your initial fleet maintenance, having cheaper fleets will allow you to field more firepower by going over the cap, and getting the same maintenance.

Fair enough. I see that more balancing is needed. Hopefully Banks will do that, I mean it is giving tall empires some much needed stuff like orbital habitats.

 

[Waar]

From what I can tell the most efficient fleet composition is the basic unupgraded corvettes. I did a test with base corvettes against cheap cruisers of the same mineral cost, and the corvettes win.



Notice the corvettes won against cruisers despite them having 68% armor and the corvettes having no armor penetration whatsoever. I did some tests on corvettes vs corvettes and cruisers vs cruisers, and the cheaper variants always win as well. Tech is a meme.

While I do not question you tests, I did a pair of tests myself and medium mount, bomber and armor speced battelships crush an eqivalent mineral/maintenence cost worth of starting corvettes, and this is despite me being wastefull with the battleships resources (putting in jump drives and advanced engines which do nothing against corvettes)


A 2 bomber rest flak won a 10vs225 with 7/10 surviving.
And a 1 bomber, 2 small gauss, rest stormfire (?) cannons won 10 vs 225 with 8/10 surviving.

And this is despite the corvettes needing almost 3 times as much naval capacity (which at that point starts to matter)

Now, i have no doubt that a major part of the reason why this worked is that they had 90% damage reduction from armor, but still.

 

[Grubsnik]

While I do not question you tests, I did a pair of tests myself and medium mount, bomber and armor speced battelships crush an eqivalent mineral/maintenence cost worth of starting corvettes, and this is despite me being wastefull with the battleships resources (putting in jump drives and advanced engines which do nothing against corvettes)


A 2 bomber rest flak won a 10vs225 with 7/10 surviving.
And a 1 bomber, 2 small gauss, rest stormfire (?) cannons won 10 vs 225 with 8/10 surviving.

And this is despite the corvettes needing almost 3 times as much naval capacity (which at that point starts to matter)

Now, i have no doubt that a major part of the reason why this worked is that they had 90% damage reduction from armor, but still.

There is a targetting bug that causes fleets to them to randomly change targets, this is very obvious with small weapons against high hp/armor targets, causing them to chop of more than 50% of the total amount of hp an opposing fleet of cruisers or battleships have before getting their first kill. High end battleships can be configured as very effective corvette-counters, I haven't seen much before that in the game that can. Those battleships are in turn quite vulnerable to cheap artillery specced battleships

 

[Drowe]

This result isn't the least bit surprising to me. In fact it is about what I'd expect. The most cost effective ship is a corvette with exactly one mass driver and just enough power to run the ship. The reason is, HP per mineral cost. On a corvette it's 10 HP per mineral, on a battleship it's 3.33 HP per mineral, you could put on 2 lvl 6 shields and 3 lvl 1 generators without lowering your mineral to HP ratio, someone might want to check out if that makes a difference in pure battleship fleets. Also interesting may be starting corvettes against the cheaper version with only one weapon slot filled, I predict if two fleets have the same value in minerals, the one with more individual ships wins almost always, at least if the fleets are sufficiently big.

Edit:
I agree that specific builds to counter a corvette swarm are possible, with the drawback of performing worse in most other cases.

 

[Waar]

There is a targetting bug that causes fleets to them to randomly change targets, this is very obvious with small weapons against high hp/armor targets, causing them to chop of more than 50% of the total amount of hp an opposing fleet of cruisers or battleships have before getting their first kill. High end battleships can be configured as very effective corvette-counters, I haven't seen much before that in the game that can. Those battleships are in turn quite vulnerable to cheap artillery specced battleships

I noticed, but the main disadvantage with corvettes is that the relative cost of ftl drives, engines and battle computers are all much higher than for the larger ships. And yes anti corvette speced larger ships are usually weak not anti-large large ships, even if not to artillery as such.

This result isn't the least bit surprising to me. In fact it is about what I'd expect. The most cost effective ship is a corvette with exactly one mass driver and just enough power to run the ship. The reason is, HP per mineral cost. On a corvette it's 10 HP per mineral, on a battleship it's 3.33 HP per mineral, you could put on 2 lvl 6 shields and 3 lvl 1 generators without lowering your mineral to HP ratio, someone might want to check out if that makes a difference in pure battleship fleets. Also interesting may be starting corvettes against the cheaper version with only one weapon slot filled, I predict if two fleets have the same value in minerals, the one with more individual ships wins almost always, at least if the fleets are sufficiently big.

Edit:
I agree that specific builds to counter a corvette swarm are possible, with the drawback of performing worse in most other cases.

Listen, removing guns from the basic corvette is too far man, you sacrifice too much offensive power to be worth it in comparison to the basic corvette, and it isn't 10 hp per mineral since level 1 sensors and engines (and sometimes flt drive) are mandatory.

 

[maxirage]

Now, i have no doubt that a major part of the reason why this worked is that they had 90% damage reduction from armor, but still.

You are correct, it is possible to spec cruisers/BBs to defeat base corvette swarm per mineral cost. It does require 90% armor + high end targetting/computers, though, from what I've seen. And when I tested it, plasma corvettes win against anti-corvette big ships. It's only me hypothesizing here, but it does seem like Stellaris has a weapon triangle:

Base corvette > base battleship
Spec battleship > base corvette
base battleship > spec battleship

With cruisers/plasma corvettes subbed in instead of BBs earlier on.

 

[Grubsnik]

The

This result isn't the least bit surprising to me. In fact it is about what I'd expect. The most cost effective ship is a corvette with exactly one mass driver and just enough power to run the ship. The reason is, HP per mineral cost. On a corvette it's 10 HP per mineral, on a battleship it's 3.33 HP per mineral, you could put on 2 lvl 6 shields and 3 lvl 1 generators without lowering your mineral to HP ratio, someone might want to check out if that makes a difference in pure battleship fleets. Also interesting may be starting corvettes against the cheaper version with only one weapon slot filled, I predict if two fleets have the same value in minerals, the one with more individual ships wins almost always, at least if the fleets are sufficiently big.

Edit:
I agree that specific builds to counter a corvette swarm are possible, with the drawback of performing worse in most other cases.

Well, the goal is always to deal the most damage in your lifetime. The gain from no gun to T1 gun is huge compared to T1->T2 gun. You may get more HP per mineral by dropping the guns, but you don't get more total damage over lifetime / mineral

You are correct, it is possible to spec cruisers/BBs to defeat base corvette swarm per mineral cost. It does require 90% armor + high end targetting/computers, though, from what I've seen. And when I tested it, plasma corvettes win against anti-corvette big ships. It's only me hypothesizing here, but it does seem like Stellaris has a weapon triangle:

Base corvette > base battleship
Spec battleship > base corvette
base battleship > spec battleship

With cruisers/plasma corvettes subbed in instead of BBs earlier on.

I think you need to reach T4+ armor / shields before cruisers and battleships can stand up to corvettes. A possible role for destroyers in that setup could be to counter the strikecrafts that an anti-corvette battleship or cruiser needs to field with Point defenses.

 

[Drowe]

Listen, removing guns from the basic corvette is too far man, you sacrifice too much offensive power to be worth it in comparison to the basic corvette, and it isn't 10 hp per mineral since level 1 sensors and engines (and sometimes flt drive) are mandatory.

I didn't consider the base cost of the mandatory systems, so there's that. I'll figure that out tomorrow. The thought of going with minimising cost is just idle curiosity. After looking at the cost of one mass driver, I'd say you're probably right, reducing offensive power by 66.6% and saving at best 25%, more likely even less, in minerals is not a good tradeoff.

 

[Waar]

You are correct, it is possible to spec cruisers/BBs to defeat base corvette swarm per mineral cost. It does require 90% armor + high end targetting/computers, though, from what I've seen. And when I tested it, plasma corvettes win against anti-corvette big ships. It's only me hypothesizing here, but it does seem like Stellaris has a weapon triangle:

Base corvette > base battleship
Spec battleship > base corvette
base battleship > spec battleship

With cruisers/plasma corvettes subbed in instead of BBs earlier on.

I get the feeling that a mixed mass driver+plasma corvette might be a solid choice no matter the oppostion.
There are a few redeeming features though, it is quite easy to hit fleet cap with basic corvettes and after that the cost benefit analysis changes, and you have a hard time installing jump drives on corvettes, since this significantly increases the cost of them.

Still, I wouldn't mind corvettes and mass drivers being a fair bit weaker.

 

[Risa]

About the corvette vs cruiser test: two problems exist. First, L-size mass drivers on cruisers has little chance to hit corvettes, so it cuts cruiser's combat power hugely. You should use all M-size configuration. Second, testing fleets are too small, that covers up issues of target selection. You should use at least 20 cruisers, preferably 40.

 

[krios41]

Have you tried insulting them?

Yes. Insulting, purging, getting as much border friction as i can.
got up around -500. you'd think that at this point they'd hate my guts and declare war, but NO

 

[Waar]

Update 2: Something is very very wrong with combat and singular tests of the same setup are not are not representative of what can be expected.

It seems that the reliance on tachyon lances and defensive utilities may have been a larger part of the reason for the poor performance of the test. In addtion repeat battles of the same situation (at different speed?) gave wildly different results.

(I did some more tests, and uppdated the OP with the same information)

I tried a fleet of cheap plasma vs the mixed mass driver+plasma fleet in the OP:

View attachment 244990

83 Plasma vs 92 mass driver + plasma

The plasma won (unsurprising, since the other fleet had a lot of cheap armor), with 22/83 ships remaining.

Then I tried the same with a equvalent cost fleet with first more expensive reactors and plasma and then also more armor and a bit of shields.

View attachment 244991

71 offensive plasma vs 92 mass driver + plasma:
The more expensive plasma won with 21/71! ships remaining, actually performing a bit better than the cheaper plasma.

Then I tried the more expensive plasma:

View attachment 244992

59 Expensive plasma vs 92 mass driver+plasma:
Here the cheaper design wins with 39/92! ships remaining.
Troubling.



At this point i decided to do some more test with the offensive plasma above:
1 test (iirc mostly at fast) the offensive plasma only won by 6/71.
And in another test (also mostly at fast) the cheaper plasma won with 61/92 ships remaining!
At this point i did another test at normal speed and got another 21/71 result.

This is not an acceptable variance for combat analysis, you can't have a ship desing performing so much better or worse depending on chance and/or game speed, that isn't right.

 

[Drowe]

Interesting, chance can have a big impact on battles, I'm not worried about that. You can mitigate that factor by running the test multiple times and taking the average. Different speeds however should have no impact on the result. It may just be a fluke, I would suggest running two sets of tests at different speeds and compare only the average. If there is a significant discrepancy then report it as a bug.

 

[Matoro_TBS]

Well, one thing for certain, at least: Size X weapons suck, even against battleships. Not surprising, actually.