Early game counter to corvettespam

[Grubsnik]

If you wait by the time you have the cruisers tech you already lost the game.

You guys must be finding destroyer tech in your tech choices alot earlier than me. From my experience, if your opponent wants to swarm you with corvettes, he's gonna do it long before you field many (if any) destroyers.

The corvette spam is actually one of the most annoying things in the game right now. Most RTS games allow you to have quick progression towards the 2nd type of unit. In Stellaris, this is not the case. Getting destroyers can sometimes take 30-40 years in game if you don't get good engineering systems nearby.

It doesn't really matter when you get destroyers, since from a pure financial standpoint, you can get the upper hand on destroyers simply by going slightly over you fleet cap with corvettes. Those corvettes will have the same initial buildcost, the same total monthly upkeep and still win every time.

@Grubsnik , Well done!

Something to note, though. Currently mass driver series have about 27% more damage per day than their intended value (that is, dpd of laser / missile of the same level). Autocannons may have about 25% more, too. Would you mind to test when those weapons don't have such advantage? I expect most conclusions are un-changed, though cloud lightning may shine more than in your previous test.

It was massively simpler to just repeat some of the tests with laser corvettes vs. laser destroyers, and then upgrade the destroyers with cloud lightning.

Pure laser:

Cloud lightning upgrade:

So the balance is still off, but cloud lightning is definately an upgrade over T1 medium Laser

 

[dying0d]

Why not try the starter vettes vs standard hodgepodge destroyers (Shields 2 and some armor) that normally gets researched at the time.

 

[Grubsnik]

I've seen no evidence that small amounts of shielding or armor should in any way be cost effective, but feel free to compose a build you want me to test against basic corvettes. If you can figure out the formula that works, I will be much relieved for it.

 

[Meneliki]

In my own testing, the most effective setup I've found was pure mass driver + a few lvl 1 armor destroyers. they took out 40+ corvetes (started with 50) before going down(started with 20 destroyers, to match the resource cost). I would've tested mining drone lasers and crystal shard throwers/energy syphons but i dont know how to spawn them with the console.

But to be totally honest, going back to the title of this thread, 'early game counter to mass corvettes'.... this game is NOT asymmetrical. this isn't StarCraft 2 where we're talking ZvT balance. We all have basically the same things at basically the same times. It's effectively a mirror match. So the counter to early corvettes? Corvettes! +hang out near your spaceport and you're laughin. Just sayin.

 

[Grubsnik]

In my own testing, the most effective setup I've found was pure mass driver + a few lvl 1 armor destroyers. they took out 40+ corvetes (started with 50) before going down(started with 20 destroyers, to match the resource cost). I would've tested mining drone lasers and crystal shard throwers/energy syphons but i dont know how to spawn them with the console.

But to be totally honest, going back to the title of this thread, 'early game counter to mass corvettes'.... this game is NOT asymmetrical. this isn't StarCraft 2 where we're talking ZvT balance. We all have basically the same things at basically the same times. It's effectively a mirror match. So the counter to early corvettes? Corvettes! +hang out near your spaceport and you're laughin. Just sayin.

use research_technologies 1, that will unlock everything.

Other than that, I'm mainly interested in seeing when you should stop spamming corvettes. So far it seems like it doesn't happen when destroyers start appearing, since they are worse value for minerals against corvettes. Very high armor (T4+ armor mods) cruisers can stop a corvette swarm, but that has been the earliest I've seen of a corvette counter. Even those are vulnerable to torpedo corvettes and mining drone laser corvettes. Those are in turn both in trouble against basic kinetic corvettes. So there you have a rock/paper/scissors setup

 

[Grimnn]

So here is a "simple" question. In the early game, how do you counter basic corvettespam? From what I can tell, a simple 3xsmall mass driver corvette with no other modules will outperform anything you throw at it from a simple financial perspective.

Same issue recently surfaced on reddit. Thanks for being so diligent in testing this. Hull and/or upgrade costs need to be changed to make technology actually beneficial.

 

[melaw]

Has anyone tried playing around with corvettes which only have two or one massdriver?

 

[Beagá]

Best counter to corvette spam is buying something else on Steam´s offer and return later to this game.

Joking... but seriously. Play something else, too many little issues here and there and patch 1.8 will only come in a month. Might as well spend it in a better game.

 

[The Founder]

In 1.8, Missiles might finally become the earlygame corvette counters I asumed them to be since 1.3 latest:

Missile retargeting and rebalancing is in 1.8. More details in a later DD.

 

[Grimnn]

Play something else, too many little issues here and there and patch 1.8 will only come in a month. Might as well spend it in a better game.

That's probably what I'll do. In the meantime, for those that want a fix, there's this Combat Balancing mod that purportedly fixes the issue:

This badly neccessary mod for the stellaris combat balancing fixes the two major flaws which can be considered rather game breaking:

- Naked Corvette Spam - will not work anymore. Its fixed.
- Technological Progression creates weaker ships rather than stronger ones - will not happen anymore, now you get nice and shiny stronger ships with a noticeable difference.

 

[KiwiNoob]

I've seen no evidence that small amounts of shielding or armor should in any way be cost effective, but feel free to compose a build you want me to test against basic corvettes. If you can figure out the formula that works, I will be much relieved for it.

It's effective because the targeting mechanics have a hard on for shields. It'll keep switching targets until all the shields in the opposing fleet are down before blowing anything up.

 

[The Founder]

It's effective because the targeting mechanics have a hard on for shields. It'll keep switching targets until all the shields in the opposing fleet are down before blowing anything up.

While this is a valid "shield breaker" weapon behavior, the Systems seems to treat anything with a bonus vs shields as "shield breaker".

 

[erthio]

I would love to see a couple of calculations made, no need for combat simulation:

What are the cost comparison of destroyer vs corvette fleets if the module costs were divided by 5?

And if we increase fleet cap use of all ships by 1 (corvettes 2, destroyers 3, cruisers 5, battleships 9)?.

 

[melaw]

That's probably what I'll do. In the meantime, for those that want a fix, there's this Combat Balancing mod that purportedly fixes the issue:

Take only the base change this mod does, keeping the pricetag on modules no matter the tier.
That alone helps alot, especially to keep your upkeep from exploding the second you upgrade your fleet.

Really hoping to see that change in the next patch.