Battleships are weak (tested)

[Saviour of Galaxy]

first testing energy vs shields was a rapefest. Cruisers lost only 4 ships, XL useless, not even funny, stay tuned for further testing.

edit seems that BS benefit a little with shields, all 10 vs 20 clashes ended with clear victory for cruisers. Will be exciting to see further tests

 

[terrycloth]

So it sounds like the problem is that BB has twice the firepower of a cruiser but less than twice the effective hp, because the armor advantage is negated by plasma and you can't over-armor them to negate the armor penetration anymore.

Also, cruisers can use torpedoes and BBs can't.

 

[I_am_Nemo]

I'm going to repost something that @NoClass tested a while ago from a PM convo:



Personally I think the thing where cruisers focus fire better in a furball is due to the difference between orbit behaviour and the static behaviour of Battleships, and possibly affected by the manhattan distance calculation bug.

Yeah, that adds up well with what I saw. BBs didn't even do a great job of focusing down the cruisers with the initial salvos, which meant all the cruisers got up close, where the BBs did even worse.

 

[Space Chicken]

These are very late game tests, if you combine kinectic artillery with lvl3 plasma and max shields/armor. Most of the important fights are fought with less that optimal weapons, so need to choose either kinetic or energy weapons. BB probably is in better spot between 2250-2350 when cruisers aren't in optimal shape.

Big part of the problem seems to be shields. Cruisers get 3x M, which gives 630 shields and 33.6 regen. BBs get 2xL which is 840 and 30.4 regen. 2x Cruiser has huge advantage here vs 1 BB. In my initial tests full kinetic BBs had very hard time getting the shields down from cruisers after they initially shot many of them in bad shape.

I presume many of you forgot admirals and fleet academy in testing. At least I did from my first tests where BBs always got beaten badly All fire rate, range, tracking and chance to hit bonuses help BB fleet more than BCs as BBs do more damage in early battle. If they do enough here, they win.

I add both fleets academy bonus (5% fire rate, +3 chance to hit, +3 tracking). Also BB fleet to 5* aggressive leader (+8 and +25% % fire rate) so BBs got total of +38% fire rate, +17 tracking and +8 chance to hit. BC fleet got 5* leader with 10% hull points. Fleet sizes are 80 BC (2x kinetic artillery + 2x M gauss) vs 40 BB (giga cannon + 4x kinetic artillery).

I tried this battle quite a few times and BBs kept almost always. It just depends if BBs randomly concentrate enough damage to same ships to kill enough of them before meeting. Here are last 5 tests where I kept these same settings.

1. BBs won. Losses 80/80BC and 30/40 BB.
2. BBs won. Losses 80/80BC and 23/40 BB.
3. BBs won. Losses 80/80BC and 31/40 BB.
4. BBs won. Losses 80/80BC and 28/40 BB.
5. BBs won. Losses 80/80BC and 34/40 BB.

Giga cannon is very good until the fleets meet, but doesn't work well after. Before fleets met, giga cannon that took 33.3% of slots did 41.4% of hull damage and 36.9% shield damage, so it's often worth using.

 

[Space Chicken]

Then I changed those kinetic BCs to full plasma (2L+2M). BC fleet killed BBs easily. Even changing BBs to maximum shields (1680) didn't help too much, but BBs didn't lose that badly.

Problem also is that BBs won't stop on maximum range. They stop, but way too close.

If BBs would concentrate their fire better and stop on maximum distance, they could handle any BC fleet.

 

[Beyond Disbelief]

Yes, I tested kinetics vs armour first to eliminate bias problems. Second time I will test energy vs shields, and only then after i will go balanced, as it will be the most tricky one test.

This energy weapons reported are Techion Lance to see how much XL range profits BS against cruisers in greater numbers.

I want to suggest swapping lance for Giga cannon.

In my BS builds I don't do lance because lance is AP which seems pointless to fire first using its maximum range. I run Giga Cannon + Artillery with large plasmas instead. Drain their shields with longer range first then hit the armor with plasma.

If you're doing all kinetics for the cruisers you may as well do all kinetics for the BB for comparison.

 

[Beyond Disbelief]

I presume many of you forgot admirals and fleet academy in testing. At least I did from my first tests where BBs always got beaten badly All fire rate, range, tracking and chance to hit bonuses help BB fleet more than BCs as BBs do more damage in early battle. If they do enough here, they win.

I add both fleets academy bonus (5% fire rate, +3 chance to hit, +3 tracking). Also BB fleet to 5* aggressive leader (+8 and +25% % fire rate) so BBs got total of +38% fire rate, +17 tracking and +8 chance to hit. BC fleet got 5* leader with 10% hull points. Fleet sizes are 80 BC (2x kinetic artillery + 2x M gauss) vs 40 BB (giga cannon + 4x kinetic artillery).

This is a very good point and a major difference between cruiser and BB computer components. I'd love to hear some tests where both ship types are augmented with the same leader/fleet academy to narrow the accuracy advantage.

 

[GloatingSwine]

I want to suggest swapping lance for Giga cannon.

In my BS builds I don't do lance because lance is AP which seems pointless to fire first using its maximum range. I run Giga Cannon + Artillery with large plasmas instead. Drain their shields with longer range first then hit the armor with plasma.

If you're doing all kinetics for the cruisers you may as well do all kinetics for the BB for comparison.

Kinetic Artillery has the same range as a Tachyon Lance, and has no prefire delay. What that means is that a fleet armed with Lance/Artillery fires all its arty first pulling the enemy shields down and then fires its lances mostly at unprotected hull.

Because they have similar fire rates they keep doing this until the fight degenerates into a furball.

 

[alxgvr]

As I prommised, weapon analysis: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...lasma-laser-gauss-autocannon-analysis.989174/

 

[I_am_Nemo]

I presume many of you forgot admirals and fleet academy in testing. At least I did from my first tests where BBs always got beaten badly All fire rate, range, tracking and chance to hit bonuses help BB fleet more than BCs as BBs do more damage in early battle. If they do enough here, they win.

I add both fleets academy bonus (5% fire rate, +3 chance to hit, +3 tracking). Also BB fleet to 5* aggressive leader (+8 and +25% % fire rate) so BBs got total of +38% fire rate, +17 tracking and +8 chance to hit. BC fleet got 5* leader with 10% hull points. Fleet sizes are 80 BC (2x kinetic artillery + 2x M gauss) vs 40 BB (giga cannon + 4x kinetic artillery).

Problem is you may not always have a fleet academy or level five admiral. I'd argue balance should be based strictly on components, rather than modifiers. If BBs are weaker than cruisers without buffs, you still have a battleship that's fundamentally not a good counter to cruisers, even if fleet academy + admiral makes BBs worth using when they are present. (And if battleships don't counter cruisers, what does?)

Unrelated note:

Something I noticed when running a few mixed tests - the cruisers don't really stop to engage the battleship's screen, instead driving through and swarming the battleships even with screen still alive. I didn't document carefully, but I'm pretty sure when I screened BBs with corvettes against my cruiser design (2 KA, 2 M Plas) the cruisers basically ignored the corvettes and went for the kill on the battleships, then finished off the corvettes. This means screening ships are border-line useless, as they don't really seem to draw fire or keep the enemy at range. I don't know if this has to do with target selection based on range (the manhattan distance thingy?) or with what different weapons types prefer to shoot at, or both. Since battleships are (as I understand it) intended to counter cruisers at range, but be countered by cruisers up close, the lack of any real mechanism to keep the cruisers at range might be a major part of the issue.

Getting back to the op here, I'd say rather than giving bbs more small weapons, they need more large slots and/or combat mechanics need to be tweaked so a screen can hold enemy cruisers/corvettes at range and allow the battleships to continue to pound away. I seem to recall in initial 1.3 that corvettes tended to draw a lot more attention/fire from larger ships, wasting shots and keeping range

 

[GloatingSwine]

Something I noticed when running a few mixed tests - the cruisers don't really stop to engage the battleship's screen, instead driving through and swarming the battleships even with screen still alive. I didn't document carefully, but I'm pretty sure when I screened BBs with corvettes against my cruiser design (2 KA, 2 M Plas) the cruisers basically ignored the corvettes and went for the kill on the battleships, then finished off the corvettes. This means screening ships are border-line useless, as they don't really seem to draw fire or keep the enemy at range. I don't know if this has to do with target selection based on range (the manhattan distance thingy?) or with what different weapons types prefer to shoot at, or both. Since battleships are (as I understand it) intended to counter cruisers at range, but be countered by cruisers up close, the lack of any real mechanism to keep the cruisers at range might be a major part of the issue.

Corvettes only really screen against other corvettes. Which is appropriate because corvettes are a terror to battleships if they get close.

Against enemy cruisers they just add some DPS that focuses fire better and cruisers have a harder time shooting back at.

The manhattan distance bug doesn't hit in a BB/Cruiser fight until the cruisers have closed range and entered orbit behaviour, when the BBs will focus fire worse because they switch target to prefer whatever's currently at the bottom left of the fight misreading it as "nearest", but when each one makes its targeting decision something else has orbited to that position.

If that wasn't happening, you might well find BBs doing a lot better, because ship behaviour and especially focus fire behaviour is a major determinant of what wins a fight (see also: Energy Torpedo corvettes lose at equal fleet power to battleships where gun corvettes shred them with minimal losses because the longer range and high shield damage bonus of neutron torpedoes makes them not focus fire because they see juicy shields to shoot at).

 

[I_am_Nemo]

Corvettes only really screen against other corvettes. Which is appropriate because corvettes are a terror to battleships if they get close.

Against enemy cruisers they just add some DPS that focuses fire better and cruisers have a harder time shooting back at.

The manhattan distance bug doesn't hit in a BB/Cruiser fight until the cruisers have closed range and entered orbit behaviour, when the BBs will focus fire worse because they switch target to prefer whatever's currently at the bottom left of the fight misreading it as "nearest", but when each one makes its targeting decision something else has orbited to that position.

If that wasn't happening, you might well find BBs doing a lot better, because ship behaviour and especially focus fire behaviour is a major determinant of what wins a fight (see also: Energy Torpedo corvettes lose at equal fleet power to battleships where gun corvettes shred them with minimal losses because the longer range and high shield damage bonus of neutron torpedoes makes them not focus fire because they see juicy shields to shoot at).

Ok, that's helpful. But even with better targeting up close, I'm not convinced baseline BBs would really beat out baseline cruisers (CC). They still seem to lack the kill potential early in the fight; small, medium, or large numbers, I'm rarely seeing them get high numbers of kills the range/closing phase of the fight. I've seen my 2x KA cruisers draw first blood, in fact, vs. 1xl 2KA BBs.

Granting that @Space Chicken is correct that they gain the advantage with admiral/Academy buffs, that's less of a problem, but I'm not satisfied that his results show battleships to be sufficiently dominant vs. cruisers, even with admiral/academy. If we assume ideal pattern is BBs > CCs > DDs > CVs > BBs, BBs should probably beat cruisers in range fight even without admiral/academy. CC & CVs get a significant advantage if the fight starts at short distances/point blank, as might happen in a chase or when using a snare station; so to keep things equal, bbs need to be default dominant at range, only becoming more so with all possible buffs.

If BBs are going to be buffed, I'd argue for one of two options, or some combo of both.

1) would be to buff XL weapons further. I thought they were a bit on the weak side from the word go; nowhere near as up-powered as they need to be to account for the fact that we went from 6 lances/BB to 1, and at the cost of two L slots. Increasing some combo of range, damage, and rate of fire would make BB's opening salvos more powerful.

2) Buff BB hitpoints, and/or AUX slots. The downside of this is you risk supplanting cruisers in the brawler role and creating an effective nerf for corvettes. However, at the moment BBs have 2400 base HP to CCs 1600. Shields and armor vary; my testing BB was 1260 shields 76% armor, and the two CCs were 640 shield (~ 1/2) and 53% armor (~ 2/3) or 840 shield (~2/3) and 43% armor (> 1/2, but not by much). I'd say BBs could have survival increased somewhat while still giving cruisers the advantage here.

I'd say buffing XL weapons might be the better option, as they will still be lacking against corvettes and be disadvantaged in an up close fight. That said, I have a hard time saying no to anything that makes ships survive longer; but that's an entirely different discussion.

 

[Space Chicken]

Just did some cruiser testing and kinetic cruisers butcher 2L+2M plasma cruisers. Used shield heavy 2x Kinetic arty and 2x M Gauss.

Also this works with combined fleets. Used 15x BB+40x kinetic BC vs 70x plasma BC. Plasma BC drive full speed towards BBs and kill them before turning again to BCs. BB fleet always wins this one, but usually with 0-1 BBs and 20-22 kinetic BCs will be standing in the end.

Would need to test later the OP cruiser with L kinetic + 4M plasmas with that fleet.