Higher mineral cost but better surivability can also be cost effective.
Mineral cost is not the main point, it's the counter to the corvette spam.
Early game counter to corvettespam
- Thread starter Grubsnik
- Start date
-
We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
Mineral cost is not the main point, it's the counter to the corvette spam.
Fine, will get rid of even more. Seems it's the ultimate ship made out of cardboard, pea shooters and tape. Cheap to build, expensive to maintain.
Last edited:
Hmm, I must be doing something drastically different than you. My steps were:
- Make new game, not militarist for ethics
- use console to unlock all techs
- construct the cheapest corvette with just mass drivers (price-tag 57 minerals)
- construct a destroyer as close to your specifications as possible (price-tag 170 minerals)
- Go to a vacant system
- spawn 30 destroyers and group them(5100 minerals in total)
- spawn 89 corvettes and group them (5073 minerals in total)
- set both fleets to aggressive
- set attackallfleets in the console
- unpause and observe
The results were very clearly in favour of the corvettes. From a fleet cap perspective, if both players had a fleet cap of 60, the destroyers would be costing 20,4 minerals and energy to field while the corvettes, being roughly 50% over the cap would be draining 30,1 minerals and energy per month.
So what am I missing or doing wrong in my testing?
I didn't change the power supply on the corvettes, so it made it even cheaper when I fixed that. The numbers that corvette gets will destroy the destroyers. Even knowing how 'cost effective' corvettes are, I still don't build them in those numbers. I prioritise income over cost, so I won't be going over fleet cap for carboard corvettes.
Which means in a truly competitive environment, you will get shredded by someone who is willing to do so. Also not noted here, you can get corvette assembly yards online very early, which means you could save 500 minerals on the cardboard swarm, which means you can run the much bigger fleet for roughly 5 years before destroyers start being advantageous in pure minerals (but will still get obliterated if you try to use them against your opponent).
If you wanted to go for parity in upkeep costs, you would limit yourself to 74 cardboard corvettes. That gives you 20.8 as your upkeep cost(undocked). It's also ~900 minerals cheaper to build (not counting the assembly yards).
74 cardboard corvettes vs. 30 destroyers is still a win for the swarm
I feel as if you're giving the destoyers a disadvantage by giving them stormfire cannons.
give'm massdrivers and see how that plays out
give'm massdrivers and see how that plays out
I gave em mass drivers and autocannons, cheapest I could put on them. That's pretty much the best you can fit on them against corvettes.
Did a fleet cap 40 simulation for it. At upkeep parity, meaning 20 frigates vs. 47 corvettes
If people have any suggestions on how to beat this, please let me know.
The "rules" are as follows:
You post the setup you want me to test, it can be anything that is buildable within the standard tech tree. Doesn't have to be a single ship-type, you can post any combination of ships, and you may exceed the fleet cap(40) within a reasonable manner if you feel like it.
I will setup the fleet according to your specifications, and then:
- Try to fight it with a number of cardboard corvettes costing the same amount of upkeep
- If your setup wins that contest, I will then try again with a fleet costing the same amount of raw minerals
- If your setup wins, I will try the two previous steps but against cardboard torpedo corvettes
How about giving the destroyers sentient combat computer and tachyon sensors.
Then try Cursers with 6 medium autocannons + 3 large and 4 medium level 5 armor + sentient combat computer + tachyon sensors.
Then try Cursers with 6 medium autocannons + 3 large and 4 medium level 5 armor + sentient combat computer + tachyon sensors.
We are talking about starter tech level. Anything like that is useless, as it will not be in time to counter early game corvette spam.
What about a pure Autocanon Destroyer?
Autocannons should peform better against Corvettes then just about any other weapon in the game.
I doubt I could have 60 corvettes in my fleet in early game before getting destroyers. Wouldn't the experiment be more "realistic" with smaller fleets? Like, 20 corvettes vs. the same amount in minerals of destroyers?
But it's rather rare to build destroyers-only fleets anyway. Wouldn't it be even better with a full-corvette fleet on one side (the "corvette spam" fleet) and a mixed fleet on the other (both destroyers and corvettes as we tend to do naturally)?
I don't think that the question is : which is better for the same amount of minerals, full corvette or full destroyer? But rather, at this point in the discussion : if I want to counter a corvette spam fleet, is it better for me to build some destroyers in my fleet, and how many of them?
My guess is that corvettes will be used as shields, while the destroyers (who should have a better tracking when you can build them, it doesn't really make sense if you decide to let them "blank") succesfully destroy a huge part of the corvette spam. When the corvette spam is finished with your corvettes (that should have a more defensive build), they shouldn't be in position to destroy your remaining destroyers. At least that's how I used my destroyers and corvettes in multiplayer. Maybe my fleet is a bit more costly, but I think it's a valid tactical choice to invest less in buildings/spaceports and more in your fleet at some key stages in the game. I've seen players building a lot of spaceports to push their fleet limit and spam corvettes, while I had two/three spaceports and a mixed fleet, then lose against my fleet - especially when they are the attackers and I manage to force them to engage next to my spaceport. Since my destroyers generally survive, I just need to rebuild cheap corvettes to replenish my fleet. And if I lose, it's generally because they have superior weapons, but I still hurt them badly enough so that they look like a delicious prey for their other neighbours.
In short, I'd say that the counter against corvette spam is situational, and if we just want to look at it from a build cost perspective it will always to better to counter corvette spam with corvette spam.
But it's rather rare to build destroyers-only fleets anyway. Wouldn't it be even better with a full-corvette fleet on one side (the "corvette spam" fleet) and a mixed fleet on the other (both destroyers and corvettes as we tend to do naturally)?
I don't think that the question is : which is better for the same amount of minerals, full corvette or full destroyer? But rather, at this point in the discussion : if I want to counter a corvette spam fleet, is it better for me to build some destroyers in my fleet, and how many of them?
My guess is that corvettes will be used as shields, while the destroyers (who should have a better tracking when you can build them, it doesn't really make sense if you decide to let them "blank") succesfully destroy a huge part of the corvette spam. When the corvette spam is finished with your corvettes (that should have a more defensive build), they shouldn't be in position to destroy your remaining destroyers. At least that's how I used my destroyers and corvettes in multiplayer. Maybe my fleet is a bit more costly, but I think it's a valid tactical choice to invest less in buildings/spaceports and more in your fleet at some key stages in the game. I've seen players building a lot of spaceports to push their fleet limit and spam corvettes, while I had two/three spaceports and a mixed fleet, then lose against my fleet - especially when they are the attackers and I manage to force them to engage next to my spaceport. Since my destroyers generally survive, I just need to rebuild cheap corvettes to replenish my fleet. And if I lose, it's generally because they have superior weapons, but I still hurt them badly enough so that they look like a delicious prey for their other neighbours.
In short, I'd say that the counter against corvette spam is situational, and if we just want to look at it from a build cost perspective it will always to better to counter corvette spam with corvette spam.
Didn't turn out very well
Much better! Killed the regular corvettes at both upkeep and build cost parity, and won against upkeep parity torpedo corvettes, still lost before reaching build cost parity, but 90 torp corvettes means you can only run this much "overdraft" for ~5 years before the cruisers start coming out ahead.
So now the real research question becomes, how far back in the tech-tree can you go. Tier V armor seems a tad deep
Early game the only counter to corvettes is even more corvettes, the actual question I'm trying to answer is probably more like "when should you stop making cardboard corvettes and start building something else"
Can you give me more details for the destroyer you want me to try out? What level of combat computer? sensors? armor? shields?
We can do a fleetcap 20 sim just as well as 40, tell me the fleet you want to bring and I'll give it a spin, mixing destroyers and corvettes is perfectly fine by me. I'm just trying to nail down viable paths to overcoming it (other than tricking them into engaging with your starport and fleet at the same time, which definately works for a while).
Hey guys! I wonder if cloud lightning would improve the destroyers performance vs corvettes.
I tried that and discovered a bug with corvette targetting in general. All corvettes seem to target the same ship, which is fine. However, they will also change targets randomly over time, which means that when going up against 10 cruisers with 90% armor, the corvettes will remove about 50% of their total hitpoints before actually scoring the first kill. I'm not sure what is causing this random retargetting, but it seems like a bug since they should keep their focus. That is also why torpedo corvettes are more successful, they do enough damage to kill a single cruiser each time, so it's just a matter of having enough corvettes to fire 10 salvos.
If the torpedo targetting was smarter (and missiles in general), or you manually split them into groups of ~20 corvettes each they would rip the cruisers apart. Sadly I cannot test that. It's not an option with the testing tools I have available. In the console, everything goes hostile with everything, so sending in 3 fleets of corvettes against the cruisers just turns into a slugfest between the corvettes.
Potentially, but cloud lightning isn't part of the regular tech tree, so can't test it in any simple way.
Have to use research_technologies 1
Will you give you all tech, including salvaged tech, as well as DLC tech.
