Help with ship design

[Resardiv]

So I need some help with my ship designs as I'm a noob to Stellaris
1. Could you give me suggestions for how I could improve my designs with my current tech.
2. If I should focus on a certain kind of weaponry and new technology to improve my current and future designs.

Thanks in advance

My corvette design

My destroyer design

 

[Qilue]

Corvette - Change to all lasers and all armour. Corvettes are cheap and easy to produce, so all armour will increase survivability and they can't equip sufficient shields to make much of a difference at low tech. Use a hull regeneration module if you don't have living metal.
Destroyer - You don't need an afterburner if you going to use large weapons. Also, missiles are too easily countered, so lasers are better here too.

For future games, I would suggest mass drivers and auto-cannon for destroyers as they are better weapons for the two smaller ships classes.

 

[xMer]

Qilue: Pretty bad advice.

Corvette
Corvettes are unable to reach meaningful amount of armor.
And actually it's better to build another corvette instead of adding armor to it.
Shields could be considered as extra health as corvette won't have much time to regenerate them. and lack of armor make them as valuable as health.
engines, special modules and other similar stuff actually decrease corvette efficiency per minerals spent.
As general rule try to keep them very cheap but with maximum amount of combat value. They will die in masses no matter what you do.
Try to design corvette with no shields, no armor, reactor I, sub-FTL engine I(FTL drive 2 is worth it's price), scanner I, no boosters and up to date weapons and compare it's real firepower and total health per spent minerals to current design.
also note that excessive energy increase firepower and evasion(only survivability of corvettes)

Destroyer
Destroyers have actually only one meaningful role: destroying starports before you get cruisers (cruiser is superior to destroyer in any possible role including fighting corvettes)
Unfortunately missiles are still very weak and get weaker as fleet size increase(there is a lot of threads on forum that cover that),
is you have available kinetic weapons then use them on Large/Medium slot. if you don't then use lasers with armor piercing.


As a general advice next time try to reach Cruisers faster as cruisers are capable of stacking either armor(to 75%) or shields and they are worth to spent minerals on combat computer/scanner/everything else.

 

[LordMagus]

Shields are always better than armour on anything below a cruiser. While armour is cheaper, it makes you lose significantly more ships and might cost you more in the long run.

 

[Drakonn]

The AI that I've seen (though you should always check) tends to stack shields before Battleships make a scene and even then they still keep a good amount and pretty much the entire laser main line has a penalty (-20% I believe it was) against shields so you have to watch out for that.

 

[Chapter Serf]

Also, IIRC, armor reduces evasion, and Destroyers and especially Corvettes rely on Evasion to survive.

 

[Resardiv]

So if I got this correct I should only focus on shields on destroyers, correct?

 

[LordMagus]

Correct. Has made a significant difference in battle performance in my experiments.

 

[Alblaka]

Shields until you get large ships that can stack up armor (and even then that will fall flat against armour-piercing weapons).
Kinetic > Energy >>>> Missiles (except against armor-stacked lategame fleets, where a combination of kinetic artillery and plasma thrower beats pure kinetic)

The very fact you can summarize the 'best build' as simple as that is the reason we need a Weapon Rebalance.

 

[LordMagus]

(and even then that will fall flat against armour-piercing weapons).

Not necessarily, repeated techs allow for equivalent amount of armour with more shields. Testing to ascertain the amount of shields required to beat plasma build is yet to be completed.

 

[Technotopia]

So if I got this correct I should only focus on shields on destroyers, correct?

Shields are useful for corvettes too - they act as extra hp, especially good if enemy specializes on lasers. Missiles on destroyers are probably bad idea. At least the big mount. It can work if enemy has absolutely no PD but usually missiles are suboptimal. If you have nothing else, use them for now, but try to research either lasers or railguns.

Abovementioned strategy of having as many as possilbe shieldless corvettes is ok, when you are below fleet cap and in a war against superior enemy. Otherwise having less corvettes with some shields will reduce your losses in small battles.

 

[Resardiv]

Because one thing i noticed was that an enemy empire completely rekt my shields on my destroyers. But did absolutely nothing to my armor, what kind of weapons did they use? It it kinetic weapons that have an advantage over shields?

 

[Technotopia]

Because one thing i noticed was that an enemy empire completely rekt my shields on my destroyers. But did absolutely nothing to my armor, what kind of weapons did they use? It it kinetic weapons that have an advantage over shields?

Scan their ships (an icon with magnifying glass near ship). Probably they have kinetic weapon.
Probably they died before they could start scratching your armor, so shield did its job of soaking all the damage.

 

[Resardiv]

Scan their ships (an icon with magnifying glass near ship). Probably they have kinetic weapon.
Probably they died before they could start scratching your armor, so shield did its job of soaking all the damage.

Thanks I'll try it out.

 

[Alblaka]

Not necessarily, repeated techs allow for equivalent amount of armour with more shields. Testing to ascertain the amount of shields required to beat plasma build is yet to be completed.

I had assumed that the repeated increases for shield, armor and weapons are all 'balanced' in this regard.

Albeit, let's be honest, even if it isn't, no game ever will reach a stage where this comes actually into play (Aka, at the point where you can reliable start stacking repeatable techs, you could design the worst ship ever and still out-mass your enemy).

 

[LordMagus]

I had assumed that the repeated increases for shield, armor and weapons are all 'balanced' in this regard.

Well, they aren't balanced.
Ship design can still be important late game if you've got the unbidden or scourge to deal with.

 

[Alblaka]

Well, they aren't balanced.
Ship design can still be important late game if you've got the unbidden or scourge to deal with.

Well, usually my end-game crisis spawn before the 'stage' I mentioned where repeatable techs would become a thing.
That said, I'm only speaking for minmax SP, not RP-SP or MP.

 

[LordMagus]

Well hopefully I'll get a crisis, as im in that stage where I'll only need 2-3 armour to get 90% armour instead of 5.

 

[Drakonn]

Because one thing i noticed was that an enemy empire completely rekt my shields on my destroyers. But did absolutely nothing to my armor, what kind of weapons did they use? It it kinetic weapons that have an advantage over shields?

AI also really loves to stack Disruptors which can chew through shields quick so watch out.