Fleet minmaxing/game balance

[Pahvimato]

I posted this on reddit, and am crossposting it here.

The following post is the 'control group' I'm referring to in this post.

Alright, So first I'm going to do some core mechanics, then run through my Current Build right now. Here is my not so complete guide on space combat in Stellaris.

EDIT: THIS IS A BASIC GUIDE. Just meant to introduce people to the concept of fleet composition. Thanks to everyone that contributed! I'll be adding some stuff when I get home this evening!

BASIC MECHANICS OF SHIP TO SHIP COMBAT

alright, now I know there is the temptation to let the computer complete the ship designs for you as they normally seem fairly good. THIS IS WRONG, THE COMPUTER IS AN IDIOT. Basically the computer is going to calculate what will give you the most bang, then it'll put that on a ship. While that might seem like a great idea in a game where hard counters are all over the place it's dumb. just dumb.

Rule 1) Design the ships yourself.

Now that we have that out of the way lets talk about counters

WHAT COUNTERS WHAT

Every weapon and armor type in Stellaris has a direct hard counter.

1) energy weapons are weak to shields, strong against armor.

2) Kinetic weapons are strong against shields, weak against armor

3) Missles are strong against both however can be countered better than any of the others with point defense systems.

so that should make it abundantly clear why you shouldn't just go with the computers brilliant plan of 3 red lasers corvettes as the backbone of your navy. So just take a few of everything and stick them on the biggest baddest ship you can afford right?

WRONG

you see ship classes are more than just a stepping stone to more boom. Each class of ships has a level of evasiveness, as well as strengths against certain sizes of weapons. The most basic tenant to take away from this is that the smaller you are the harder you are to hit. So If you were wondering why you're 500 level navy of destroyers is getting wrecked by a 500 level navy of corvettes you now know why. See it breaks down like this (I think)

Bombers and Fighters are very hard to hit, basically have to be shot at by small weapons

Corvettes are most easily hit by small weapons

Destroyers are most easily hit by medium and small weapons

Cruisers and Battleships are most easily hit by literally everything.

with this in mind it should be important to make your fleet as balanced as possible to assure you'll never be frustrated as your battle ships try and fail to shoot down a single bomber squadron. A good Fleet composition I've found is 1-4-7-12(ish) that is to say for each battleship you should have 4 cruisers 7 destroyers and 12 Corvettes (at least). So now that we know that hard counters exist and that we shouldn't make navies consisting solely of battleships, how should we go about creating the perfect ship.

Well, here's the thing, any ship made to deal with all comers is going to be hilariously bad at dealing with any of them. What I've found is that a generic ship using the most up to date version of you're best weapons saddled with a couple of specialized buddies are the best way to go about assuring you're ready for all comers.

IMO, the best way to do this is to make about half of each class specialized, it doesn't need to be exact, or equally split (if you're running into a lot of one type) but here is and example:

for every 3 regular laser boats I have

1 - torpedo boat

1 - dedicated point defense ship

1 - shield destroying ship (kinetic weapons ship)

This means that anyone who comes at me is going to be fighting at a disadvantage as a good chunk of my fleet will be dedicated to dealing with them. Of special importance are kinetic weapon and point defense ships. Nearly all civs will use deflectors more than armor, so having a quick way to burn through those shields can make all the difference, and missiles, if not properly countered can be among the most dangerous weapons in the game. With that I can now move on to an example fleet, namely the fleet I am currently using in my most recent stellaris game.

The TL/DR is that a few of a wide variety of specialized ships that's backbone is composed of generic heavy hitters seems to work the best. (just like a real navy)

Anyway without Further ado, The Croma Directorate Grand Fleet

I'll move from most numerous type to least numerous.

CORVETTES

I have 81 corvettes in my Navy right now, with several different designs, all to counter specific threats. I'll run through each in detail. first:

11 Torpedo Boat class strike corvettes - These boats are amazing as the torpedoes ignore shields and slam directly into the ship, will tear apart any fleet that doesn't have dedicated point defense. Build: 3 Small torpedo tubes, 3 generators, 2 shields. Very basic, pretty deadly.

13 Predator Class Auto-Gun corvettes- these ships are my dedicated anti-shield ships, they tear through the shields of other corvettes and even destroyers with very little difficulty. These bad boys are 3 Auto-cannons, 3 generator 2 shield.

16 Protector Class point defense screens - as you can probably guess these are my anti-torpedo boats, I've probably only lost a few ships to torpedoes this game, these are mostly the reason why. 3 small point defense cannons 3 generator 2 shield

41 Raven Class Strike Corvettes- The Backbone of my navy, just a basic gunboat for dealing damage 1 medium laser 1 small point defense (I am surrounded by missile wielding civs making this necessary) 2 shields and 3 generators run this bad boy

These ships make up the majority of my fleet, but are hardly the biggest hitters next up

DESTROYERS

I Have 36 destroyers in my navy at them moment Split into 3 classes

13 - Thasher Class Assault Ships - Doubling as both my point defense and kinetic weapon platforms my Thasher class ship is 2 small point defense turrets supplemented by 3 auto cannons - 4 shields and 2 generators

15 - Dax Class Assualt Ships - The mainstay of my destroyer force, consists of a large and medium laser, 4 shields and 2 generators

8 - Torpedo Crawler Assault Boats - My torpedo ship 2 medium torpedo launcher 3 small torpedo launchers 3 shields 1 armor 2 generators.

Next up:

CRUISERS

Now this is where it's gonna get a bit weird because hangers come into play. I'll do my best to explain my rational. I have 6 cruisers currently

2 - Support Carrier Class Carriers - these cruisers are pulling double duty as kinetic weapons and fighter storage. each has a complement of fighters on board which is the best counter to:

1 - Support Carrier (B) Class Carriers - my Bomber Carriers. VERY good at taking out capital ships without point defense or fighter compliments. Basically this cruisers functions as my point defense and torpedo boat.

3 - Grizzly Class Cruisers - These bad boys are the the heaviest hitters yet, a significant step up from there destroyer cousins. They carry a complement of 1 large autocannon 3 medium lasers and 1 medium torpedo launcher. 5 shields and 3 generators.

Last but not least is:

THE BATTLESHIPS

Now I only have 4 in this game at the moment but I generally put them into only 2 categories

2 - Command Class Battle Barge - 6 of the largest lasers you can find please, Simple and deadly to other battleships. Finally:

2 - Fleet Carrier Class Carriers - 2 Carriers stuffed to the gills with fighters and bombers - everything else is point defense of kinetic weapons.

All and All this fleet comes in at around 15K military power.

Well I hope this has at least colored a few of you informed. Please feel free to add your own input. I am by no means sure that this is 100% correct. It's just what has worked the best for me thus far. I'll do my best to answer questions as they pop up.

Short version? Weapon balance is broken. A few days ago /u/Sevsquad posted a well thought out, balanced build. I originally thought writing this as a response, but since this became rather lengthy on it's own, decided to post it like this instead. The problem with that balanced build? Game is nowhere near balanced. I made some tests, using aforementioned build as a control group, since it was pretty well balanced. My fleet? Only Corvettes, with maximum evasion stat. Why? Let's get the basics out of the way first, shall we?

A corvette with an advanced defense computer and the best sublight engines has an evasion rate of 60%. Throw in a evasion commander, and that becomes 69% (This test, however, was made without commanders on either side. Results would still be pretty much the same). This makes them way longer than they should against a combined fleet of small and big ships.

Weapon choice was also obvious. Ballistic weapons and energy weapons have almost the same stats. Ballistic weapons do NOT, unlike many would tell you, have any bonus against shields. None whatsoever. Energy weapons, however, ignore 50% of armor, 100% with Lances. Missiles are not very useful, since point defence is cheap and plentiful in corvette form. A single medium mount does about the same damage as 2 small mounts. Large mount same as 2 medium mounts. Larger one have bigger range, but less accuracy. Therefore, using anything else than energy weapons in 1.0.* is suboptimal, to say the least. Carriers are even worse, with their abysmal 8 range.

So, on to the test itself. I built the control group fleet with all tech researched (apart from repeatable ones) and it came to 44 183 minerals used, fleet power of 29 802.2. I did my best to follow the builds listed in the guide, adding reactors and additional shields when possible (since those supposedly counter lasers). 80 corvettes equipped with max evasion, 3 small point defence. 143 corvettes with 3 small lasers. This brings the 2 fleets to almost the same cost (funds would have been enough for 143.7 corvettes, I rounded it down). Fleet power comes up to 22956, about 23% less than control fleet.

EDIT: This is the first ratio I went with. Likely not optimal. You won't need optimal though, given how OP this is.

So, one would assume a corvette spam would be just silly, and totally wouldn't work, right? You'd be wrong. After the 2 fleets clashed, the evasion fleet emerged victorious with 10k, 11k and 11k power again left after 3 tests to kill the other fleet. The battle, of course, lasted a long, long time, since the corvettes don't do much damage, and the battleships can't hit the corvettes, missing almost all the time. This is made worse by the fact that when they DO hit, they make massive overkill damage, therefore wasting all their damage potential. The small cuts made by the corvettes do just the right amount of damage, making sure no damage is wasted. They are, given that they use small weapons, also more accurate.

But what about that extra range, Pahvimato?! Doesn't matter. The first salvo hits a single ship. A single corvette is a good exchange for that kind of firepower. Often the next one hits 1 or 2 ships as well, meaning the extra range doesn't matter, almost at all.

But what about armor, then? If control had armor, would it help? No, it wouldn't. Armor does NOT give a flat reduction to damage, but rather a percentage. This means that using a medium or large weapon instead of a small one wouldn't be any better against armor. The opposite, since this would, again, result in overkill. In addition, the lasers ignore 50% of armor.

Not to mention logistics and production. Your enemy needs to build up spaceports, which are insanely expensive, take long time to build, and are extremely easy to blow up. You only need level 1 space ports. You also take less time to produce ships, and therefore can replace losses easier.

TL;DR: if you want to be THAT GUY, build only corvettes with maximum evasion. Use energy weapons only as offensive stuff, mix in some PD only ships in case of missiles.

 

[DerGrindelwutz]

Well, I have to say that's pretty disappointing.. unlocking bigger ships should give you the feeling that your fleet is now much more powerful, and not just more impressive-looking.

 

[Pahvimato]

Paradox does have a pretty good track record with patches, and this is their first time doing anything like this. I'd expect this to change in a patch or two.

Possible solutions include some kind of an AoE weapon mountable only on large slots, or giving a slight flat reduction to damage from armor, so you can't just use the smallest lasers to bring down battleships.

As someone pointed out using the crystal armor thing gives you a flat bonus to health. Using those instead of shields is likely even more powerful.

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

Armour should give about 5% of the armour value as a flat reduction in damage and then weapons should be balance around this... this would make small weapon pretty pointless against large battleships with tough armour. Even a small laser with 50% armour reduction would have a hard time damage a well armoured ships.

100% armour penetration weapons should pretty much be banned, they through balance out the window. Torpedoes that go straight through shields are OK since they can be countered by point defense.

 

[Pahvimato]

Agreed. Lower energy weapons ability to penetrate armor. And give some kind of buff to ballistics, while at it, since they are currently pretty much worthless.

The armor thing is really the first thing I thought of as well - another possible solution could, of course, be to make evasion value dependent on the weapons the enemy is using. Small weapons should be able to hit corvettes, no matter their engines. Right now this isn't really the case - they are only slightly better at it due to their slightly higher accuracy values.

 

[DerGrindelwutz]

I think the biggest problem with fleet balance right now is that large and medium weapons have no real advantage over a greater number of small weapons..
mounting larger weapons should be the big advantage that battleships and cruisers have over corvettes and destroyers.

I think there is a relatively obvious balancing solution to this:

Corvettes and Cruisers currently have large evasion bonuses against large and medium weapons, which is why they can apparently beat battleships head on.
What is missing is a bonus that large ships have against small weapons! For example battleships reduce small weapon damage by 75% and medium weapon damage by 50%, and cruisers reduce medium weapon damage by 50% and small weapon damage by 25% (the numbers are just examples, not perfect for balance, of course).
This would mean that to kill a battleship you would need to bring battleships or cruisers as well, in the same way that you need small weapons to kill corvettes. It would totally make sense from a lore perspective as well.


Edit: To go even further, it would also be hugely helpful to have combat computers that say "prioritize weapons on big ships, or small ships" . You would have capital ships shooting at each other, and corvettes chasing each other around the battlefield. This would also avoid "overkill" scenarios were battleships attack corvettes with their giant guns.

 

[Kaldrakos]

Your corvette fleet build is hard countered by battleships/corvette Whirlwind Missiles

 

[Pahvimato]

It isn't though, while it should be. PDS on corvettes is way too cheap and efficient, and whirlwind missiles tend to mass against a single target. Firing so many missiles at a corvette doesn't turn out too good for the ships shooting the missiles.

The other possible counter, Arc weapons, just plain suck.

 

[Number 7]

i just can't give up my battleships armed with lances, they look too cool. my strict fleet doctrine is "rule of cool" and i suffer for it

 

[Gamesguy]

If you have the time OP, can you test if a fleet of destroyers with all small weapons and also setup for evasion can beat the corvette horde?

 

[Pahvimato]

No, no way they can. At a large fleet size evasion can basically be abstracted to mean armor. I already tested this, here's some pictures. Those destroyers on the left? Almost all of them have small weapons. A few mediums mixed in just to see how they'd do. Of course, Building the same number of destroyers as the other guy has corvettes isn't really reasonable in the first place.

 

[Razzlie]

Paradox does have a pretty good track record with patches, and this is their first time doing anything like this. I'd expect this to change in a patch or two.

Possible solutions include some kind of an AoE weapon mountable only on large slots, or giving a slight flat reduction to damage from armor, so you can't just use the smallest lasers to bring down battleships.

As someone pointed out using the crystal armor thing gives you a flat bonus to health. Using those instead of shields is likely even more powerful.

There is a weapon called Arc Emitter I believe it was called, only mounted on L slots, fires a big lightning thing that has a chance to "bounce" to nearby targets, supposedly making it effective against large groups of corvettes.

I use it quite heavily in a somewhat top heavy fleet composition, and while I feel like it's more viable than most heavy weapons against corvettes, it still felt a bit lackluster.

Might just need some tweaking on the values.

 

[Pahvimato]

If the Arc Emitter is to be used as a counter against corvette spam, it's going to need a massive buff. It's better than most guns - but if it's supposed to be the counter it does really bad. If those escorts they have in the first picture are increased in number things go better - seems the more corvettes you have the better you do. The only exception to this is that after you have a large enough fleet no more ships will actually join the battle - the rest just sit and wait. At that point, having large range weapons might be enough to still participate somewhat. Doesn't change the fact that even that build would still be dependent on corvette spam.

 

[Less2]

OP, have you tried the same test with missiles/torpedoes?

In my experience either Point Defense doesn't work well to begin with or it simply can't cope with huge amounts of missile spam from lots of small ships. I've been building 100% corvettes with Torpedoes and destroying AIs pretty hard, would be interesting to see how it rates vs. your lasers. I'd imagine it wins at least in the early game where armor is basically meaningless.

 

[Pahvimato]

OP, have you tried the same test with missiles/torpedoes?

In my experience either Point Defense doesn't work well to begin with or it simply can't cope with huge amounts of missile spam from lots of small ships. I've been building 100% corvettes with Torpedoes and destroying AIs pretty hard, would be interesting to see how it rates vs. your lasers. I'd imagine it wins at least in the early game where armor is basically meaningless.

Early game? Yes, I'd imagine. This is more of a late game thing. You need good enough engines on your corvettes to pull this off. Basically the evasion corvette is the next step up from a battleship. The later PD is also amazing.

 

[Less2]

Early game? Yes, I'd imagine. This is more of a late game thing. You need good enough engines on your corvettes to pull this off. Basically the evasion corvette is the next step up from a battleship. The later PD is also amazing.

You definitely don't need great engines to do it early game. 30% base + 20-25% from leader/facility bonuses works fine.

I'd be interested in seeing how they fare against later PD, I haven't really had occasion to try them out. Could you run a test? How hard are these to set up?

 

[Pahvimato]

You definitely don't need great engines to do it early game. 30% base + 20-25% from leader/facility bonuses works fine.

I'd be interested in seeing how they fare against later PD, I haven't really had occasion to try them out. Could you run a test? How hard are these to set up?

I'm off to sleep, so no. Rather easy to setup though, you can run it yourself if you want. Useful console commands for testing:

AI - turns AI on/off
minerals - gives you minerals
cash - gives you credits
instant_build - building/upgrading is instant (save after fleets are setup - you can then reload that save and upgrade to a different weapon layout if you want)
influence - gives you influence (if you want to roll for the best possible admiral)

Even then, if it does work, it works better if you use corvettes to mount those missiles. My goal was not to find the optimal build, but to show how OP corvettes are right now.

 

[Less2]

Even then, if it does work, it works better if you use corvettes to mount those missiles. My goal was not to find the optimal build, but to show how OP corvettes are right now.

Oh, I didn't mean using normal compositions with missiles vs. Corvettes. I meant using Corvettes with missiles vs. normal ships and comparing their performance with the corvettes using lasers. I feel confident that most regular AI compositions and so-called "well-rounded" compositions aren't mounting enough PD to really offset the much better accuracy torpedoes, the PD simply gets overwhelmed trying to fire at too many things.

 

[Kaldrakos]

I didn't know Whirlwind Missiles was shooting 1 target at a time... What about a range 60 weapon like tachyon or arc emiter + snare ( -50% sublight speed) battleships ?

 

[Shoe New]

This is a common design flaw in systems which let you design your own ships/units: Smallest chassis with the biggest dakka wins.

The issue is usually that the smallest chassis has asymmetric advantages while having no disadvantages when it comes to stuff like weaponry.

Corvettes have evasion as well as a low cost, while their 3 small weapon slots can basically pack the punch of a large weapon (range can more or less be ignored the way targeting works in Stellaris right now). And that's not even getting into the innate benefits of the strategy such as not needing to spend research and resources on upgraded ship designs.

Simply put, either corvettes need to have their asymmetric advantages nerfed (increased cost to make them less effective than other ship types, reduced evasion) or they need to be given other disadvantages (remove medium weapon mount chassis, allowing corvettes to only mount small weapons, then make battleships impervious to small weapon damage and hugely reduce the damage cruisers take from it etc).