How do we make Destroyers and Cruisers more desirable in the late game?

[Jman5]

During yesterday's Q&A someone asked Paradox about predominance of Battleship fleets in the late game. Here was their response:

I don't really have very strong opinions on how to fix this, so I thought I would just leave this as an open questions to you guys. What would you do to make Destroyers and Cruisers more useful in the late game without just making them "must have" meta?

It seems to me that some of the problems could be related to:

1. They lack a strong identity or role. If you want speed, you go corvette fleet. If you want firepower, you go battleship fleet. What should necessitate a Destroyer or Cruiser fleet?
2. Battleship spam is just easy. Build big ships, and they'll usually get the job done with minimal fuss.
3. Survivability seems to be an issue: Durability/Evasion
4. The speed gap between Destroyers/Cruisers and Battleship/Titans feels too narrow. Especially with Jump Drives.

Here is some reading material on the ship stats if you want to brush up on it.

Ship designer - Stellaris Wiki

stellaris.paradoxwikis.com

Thoughts?

 

[CocoCincinnati]

I've always thought destroyers needed to be the hard counter to corvettes and/or strike craft, making it more difficult for other classes to hit them. I also like the old HOI3 system of needing 2 escorts for 1 capital ship, although I doubt that would be so popular here and might not even make sense with the different mechanics in Stellaris. Lastly I think cruisers should be more focused on the carrier roll and battleships less focused on it.

You could also give destroyers a scouting roll, increasing a fleets sensor range or tracking or something like that.

 

[Ezumiyr]

For me it has always been a different issue. And when I say always, I mean since the game was released.
What we had originally - picking a FTL and an initial weapon tech - looked like a hint that in the future, the diversity of tactics, ships types and weaponry would increase.
But we know that the exact contrary happened: now, everyone basically has access to the same stuff, except for some late game tech like psionic drive, and different flavours of colossi.
Still, ships retained roughly their original designs (so you can customize them to some extent, and they are supposed to fill different roles), and weapons are still supposed to from a sort of strategy triangle with shields and hulls. So we have conflicting designs, which lead to a variety of issues: the meta can't be satisfying, some ships are underused, some weapons are underused, and almost every empire on the map fights in the exact same way.

Imo the real solution here would be to go back to the drawing board in order to do one of two things:
- Either scrapping entirely the parts of the design that let us customize our ships, and replace that we different technology lines for the different ship models, while reinforcing the role of each ship. As a result, you could either try to stay up-to-date with every kind of ship, because corvette would be good against battleships, battleships good against destroyers, destroyers good against cruisers and so on (or another version of this - and when I write "good against" it literally means a combat modifier against specific types of ships) ; or you would invest in one ship type that you would spam, but it would make you vulnerable to ships that counter them naturally. This is essentially a way of rationalizing the wheel of advantages and weaknesses, by getting rid of the parts of the design that let us circumvent them, essentially turning warfare into a game of rock/paper/scissors, but you could also get very good at just rock instead.

- Or going in the opposite direction and open the gates of combat diversity, adding new ship types, ne exclusive military techs that let you customize (once again) your battle tactics. Playing a hivemind would make you more likely to opt for literal hive tactics, spamming hundreds of tiny ships relying on kamikaze tactics ; playing as robots would let you equip hacking units to take countrol of enemy ships ; fragile sniper ships ; cloaking devices that let you bring your fleet through enemy defenses ; AoE weapons to smash fleets with low mobility ; ramming ships efficient against big "star wars empire" ships and so on. Basically, this would eradicate any fixed meta simply by the power of numbers: with so many options, there wouldn't be one strategy superior to all others. That's basically the solution that was used to balance Dungeons&Dragons classes, for example. Give access to many, many different options to do the same things so that all classes are at least somewhat viable, but still different from one another.

 

[slv]

If you want speed, you go corvette fleet. If you want firepower, you go battleship fleet

If you want speed you add a corvette to your battleship fleet . Not sure if that interaction is intended (it's probably not).

 

[Strangedane]

If we needed S weapons to to actually hit corvettes and L weapons struggled (75% missrate or more) to hit anything smaller than battleships we'd have a good start for something that might give other ships an actual combat role.
Yes, I absolutely want an all L battleship to lose an engagement with a single corvette.

In the same vein, cruisers fitted with L and M should softcounter battleships, but lose hard to full M fitted cruisers.
Destroyers should be kinda hard to hit (60% or less) with mediums, and really hard to hit with L, (10% or less) making them the natural counters to corvettes and decent against cruisers / stations.

L and X size weapons should be for stationary targets and battleships or larger.
I'd be totally ok with X weapons not being able to hit anything smaller than BS (and maybe even struggle with that) with the possible exception being the arc emitter.

 

[Tech Noir Synth]

I think all of you should consider watching Montu plays, since he is going extremely in-depth about fleet compositions.

For example, check out this video here, of Destroyers vs Battleships:

From watching his other videos we can learn that while Battleships in some ration between artillery and carrier-type battleships may be the strongest on paper, there are still ways for you to decimate your opponent using destroyers. I believe this video has a perfect example: Camping at hyperlanes and engaging Battleships in close range with your destroyers.

After watching these videos I don't think the fleet meta is as stale as some people think. Yes maybe Battlships are the backbone of your fleets in the lategame, but having a fleet of destroyers camping hyperlanes certainly seems to be a great way to get an advantage. And making a play like this rewards skill and creativity, which is exactly what we want from a strategy game.

About Cruisers, I'm not sure. But we all know that rushing Cruisers is basically the go-to in multiplayer, for Cruisers are a huge powerspike in the midgame. Its fine to have Cruisers be a stepping-stone before the next bigger ship.

 

[Strangedane]

I think all of you should consider watching Montu plays, since he is going extremely in-depth about fleet compositions.

For example, check out this video here, of Destroyers vs Battleships:

From watching his other videos we can learn that while Battleships in some ration between artillery and carrier-type battleships may be the strongest on paper, there are still ways for you to decimate your opponent using destroyers. I believe this video has a perfect example: Camping at hyperlanes and engaging Battleships in close range with your destroyers.

After watching these videos I don't think the fleet meta is as stale as some people think. Yes maybe Battlships are the backbone of your fleets in the lategame, but having a fleet of destroyers camping hyperlanes certainly seems to be a great way to get an advantage. And making a play like this rewards skill and creativity, which is exactly what we want from a strategy game.

About Cruisers, I'm not sure. But we all know that rushing Cruisers is basically the go-to in multiplayer, for Cruisers are a huge powerspike in the midgame. Its fine to have Cruisers be a stepping-stone before the next bigger ship.

This is only relevant if you're playing against the AI though. And only because the AI is flat-out horrible at the game.
It can theoretically be done against bad players in a nebula, so there is that.

Against any sort of skilled opposition, placing destroyers in short range is effectively suiciding them.

 

[Aurelius789]

To be honest, I dont mind those lategame BB/titan monofleets in the lategame. They are easier to design, manage and reinforce.

 

[Kolath]

I've been playing the NSC2 mod of late and it adds several more ship classes and roles (makes carriers a special ship class, adds several sizes between cruiser and BB with different roles like FTL interdiction, support auras, etc.). I just got Battleships for the first time in the mod, so don't know enough to say if the changes shake the meta up, but so far at least it seems to add a lot more variety.

It also seemed odd that in the dev Q&A they were like "we won't add ship types or change segments because too much graphics work"... when NSC2 already did all the graphics work to make models for like 20 new things for each shipset and also made Machine shipsets... they should really just adopt some of the mod work that's already done.

 

[Tobasco da Gama]

If we needed S weapons to to actually hit corvettes and L weapons struggled (75% missrate or more) to hit anything smaller than battleships we'd have a good start for something that might give other ships an actual combat role.

This would be a step in the right direction from the perspective of in-universe logic, but the actual counter would be Strike Craft (launched from carrier Battleships), not Destroyers or Cruisers. And that's kind of already the case. A monofleet of GC+NL Battleships can potentially defeat a Corvette swarm, but a fleet of mostly GC+NL Battleships with a few GC+Hangar Battleships will definitely defeat the Corvettes reliably and with fewer losses.

To be honest, I dont mind those lategame BB/titan monofleets in the lategame. They are easier to design, manage and reinforce.

Yeah, as much as I would like it if there was a purpose to having mixed fleets, I feel like Battleship monofleets are a largely inoffensive meta. Unlike "naked corvettes", building a good BB fleet requires fully engaging with the tech tree and putting at least a little thought into ship design. (There are two or three roughly competitive "meta" builds for Battleships, which vary somewhat in their effectiveness versus standard AIs, Awakened Empires, and various crises.)

At the same time, while Destroyers and Cruisers fall off in the late game, they're very important at the point when you attain the ability to build them. So they do see use during a game, even though that use ends once Battleships (and specifically Neutron Launchers) become available.

So it would be really nice to have a "fix" for the BB monofleet meta, but I don't think it's anything like the most pressing issue with Stellaris. If we had to live with it forever, I think that would be fine, since it's more of an aesthetic problem than a game balance one.

 

[Ryika]

If you want speed you add a corvette to your battleship fleet . Not sure if that interaction is intended (it's probably not).

Wasn't that fixed a while ago?

From watching his other videos we can learn that while Battleships in some ration between artillery and carrier-type battleships may be the strongest on paper, there are still ways for you to decimate your opponent using destroyers. I believe this video has a perfect example: Camping at hyperlanes and engaging Battleships in close range with your destroyers.

After watching these videos I don't think the fleet meta is as stale as some people think. Yes maybe Battlships are the backbone of your fleets in the lategame, but having a fleet of destroyers camping hyperlanes certainly seems to be a great way to get an advantage. And making a play like this rewards skill and creativity, which is exactly what we want from a strategy game.

I see quite a few potential problems with this strategy:

a.) You turn your fleet into static defense. You essentially cannot move it anymore, and the moment you react too late to some in-system fleet movement, you've got a big problem
b.) The opponent can do the same thing to you, camp the middle of a system, and now your destroyers cannot jump in without being decimated.
c.) If your opponent manages to get higher numbers and decides to jump on top of you, you will take an immense amount of losses, compared to the opponent because it's X slot + neutron launchers vs relative low health ships.
d.) If it ever comes down to it, a fleet of battleships will alphastrike a mixed fleet of battleships + destroyers into the ground

Now, all of these are pure assumptions since I don't play Multiplayer, and all of it is rather irrelevant in Singleplayer... but it seems like, at best, a pretty niche strategy to me.

@ Topic:
I think one of the main problems is the weakness of the M weapon slot. They just don't really counter anything particularly well. A fleet of large ships will alphastrike destroyers into the ground, and a fleet of Corvettes will move in so fast that the extra range barely does anything - and then most of their dps advantage is lost due to the lower amount of tracking.

Another problem is how easy it is for Battleships to gain decent tracking in the later parts of the game. As long as Battleships can go toe to toe with Corvettes, there's simply no need for smaller ships to counter them. And hangar modules also deal extremely well with them.

Maybe this is a step too far, but personally I think that Hangar Bays should probably be exclusive to Cruisers. That way, Battleships by themselves would have a much harder time countering small ships, and Cruisers would retain their niche as the ship that you bring to cost-efficiently defeat fleets that consist mostly of smaller ships throughout the game.

 

[Bitzo]

I only have a somewhat limited understanding of the ship meta (I lost track after all the Tachyon Destroyers, Plasma Cruisers, naked Corvettes and "Swiss Army" Battleships of past versions and am only vaguely aware of the current meta being: Strike Craft no longer suck, rush Cruisers, once you get Battleships, build only those, current tech tree makes energy weapon repeatables more likely to show up than kinetics/explosives; go all-Neutron because of that), so I don't know the intricacies of in which edge-cases designs that deviate from that may or may not be viable (even in MP)), but two points that seem to be brought up during these "how to make cruisers good?" discussions are that Medium weapons seem to have no clear role because everything they do, L and X weapons do better, in no small part because Accuracy and Tracking get way too many stacking bonuses over the course of the game to still be bad at reliably destroying evasive targets, so there's no point in using slightly bigger guns with slightly less hit chances if much bigger, longer range guns do the job well, if not better.

 

[slv]

Wasn't that fixed a while ago?

No, it's still there.

 

[FinellyTrained]

Corvette speed bug has been around forever. In fact it is the only reason my typical fleet is 20bs+50corvettes. That many corvettes are only to make sure that even after clearing 20 unbidden systems in a row all fleets still have corvettes to retain speed and stay in formation.

Stellaris - [v3.0.3 (d281)] Fleets are moving at the speed of the fastest ship; similar problem with windup and ftl speed modifiers

Description [v3.0.3 (d281)] Fleets are moving at the speed of the fastest ship; similar problem with windup and ftl speed modifiers Game Version 3.0.3 What version do you use? Steam What expansions do you have installed? Synthetic Dawn...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

Should it get abrubtly fixed, the meta will probably be indeed all bs fleets with maybe 4:1 ratio between FAE-NL and FAE-hangars.

 

[FinellyTrained]

Easiest approach to make all ships great again should be something like bigger ship one size above is absolute win, two sizes -- stalemate, three sizes -- loss (if fleet are equal in size). And all AIs should have variety of fleets starting mid difficulty and actively try to counter on high difficulty. Carrier role should probably be restricted to titans for strike craft if properly implemented should be the best weapon.

 

[Foxosaur]

As a player that doesn't really care for the meta and ignores the rock-paper-scissors side of weapon armaments, I think smaller vessels should simply get a multiplier to damage on ships larger than themselves and the magnitude of the multiplier scales on the ship difference.

From my perspective one of the main virtues of having Battleship only fleets is that it takes a lot more HP loss to incur any degree of resource cost to the Empire losing the ship and I'm sure you can take advantage further with optimal/customised ships as they are able to "rig" most fights with longer range weapons in combination too and get in that lethal alpha strike first.

So simply put, apply a damage multiplier for attack bonus's to larger ships. Or just try making Evasion a lot more effective instead so that alpha strikes are not so "awesome" / accurate on small vessels.


Frigates vs Titan / Dreadnaught / - 120%
E.g. Frigates vs Battleship - 115%
E.g. Frigates vs Cruiser - 110%
E.g. Frigates vs Destroyer - 105%

Destroyer vs Titan / Dreadnaught - 115%
Destroyer vs Battleship - 110%
Destroyer vs Cruiser - 105%
Destroyer vs Destroyer - 100%

Cruiser vs Titan - 110%
Cruiser vs Battleship - 105%

Battleships vs Titan/Dreadnaught - 105%

( Of course someone could just put it in a nice spreadsheet instead )


I'd personally like to also see Colossus ships being a lot harder to destroy - making any empire really have to concentrate or weigh up military tactics on dealing with one or deciding to accept a potential planet loss - at least in single player anyway.

 

[FinellyTrained]

Main virtue of bs is x weapon. King in Stellaris is alpha strike, so anything related to your defence does not matter as much as your offense. Damage to hull for 4mil hp unbidden anchor attacked by something like 400 battleships and 1200 corvettes would be like 3.5 mil by FAE, 490k by NL, 10k by small weapons (corvettes). Does not really matter if corvettes get a bonus of 10 or 100%.

 

[FinellyTrained]

Usual way in GD is to lift ideas from real world. If destroyers are able to place minefields at the hyperlane entrance, that would make jumping in with corvettes only first a good idea. For smaller ships have better chance of dodging mines and shooting them, for example. If cruisers are the only ship having enough space to fit in some holographic projectors (whatever, some mambo-jumbo equivalent of smoke screen in space), that would make sense to have them to hide your fleet from enemy fleet making them fire their x weapons in the general direction, because they don't see you until some of their ships come close enough. That would also make sense to use corvettes to close in faster and have your cruisers which would be able to supress that mambo-jumbo with their mambo-jambo. And battleships can't fit that mambo-jumbo unless they sacrifice their x weapon or something. Problem is this all needs to remain understandable and entertaining, it would consume a lot of devs resources and worst of all it will introduce a whole new world of bugs.

 

[klingonadmiral]

To be honest, I dont mind those lategame BB/titan monofleets in the lategame. They are easier to design, manage and reinforce.

Titans are actually a [EXPLETIVE] to reinforce.

 

[Meebleborp]

If we needed S weapons to to actually hit corvettes and L weapons struggled (75% missrate or more) to hit anything smaller than battleships we'd have a good start for something that might give other ships an actual combat role.
Yes, I absolutely want an all L battleship to lose an engagement with a single corvette.

Exactly. Battleship weapons should have a very hard time tracking the smallest ships. The way it works right now is extremely counterproductive.

In the same vein, cruisers fitted with L and M should softcounter battleships, but lose hard to full M fitted cruisers.

This doesn't make much sense, though. If L (and XL) weapons struggle against Cruisers, Cruisers effectively beat everything. You'd just substitute Battleship spam for Cruiser spam.

Destroyers should be kinda hard to hit (60% or less) with mediums, and really hard to hit with L, (10% or less) making them the natural counters to corvettes and decent against cruisers / stations.

This makes it even worse, because if Destroyers are decent against Cruisers and Stations, and great against both Corvettes and Battleships, why would anyone ever go higher than Destroyers? Just have some with a mix of M/S against other small to medium ships, and some with L/M for Battleships and Stations, and you're good for the entire game. Destroyers need to be weak vs Cruisers, just as Cruisers need to be weak vs Battleships.


I think the best way to approach this is to have simple classifications for each size of weapons and what they are 'designed' to fire at:

XL - Structures and slow moving large ships (Battleships)
L - Medium-to-large ships at long range, "line" weapons
M - Small-to-medium ships at medium range, trading some accuracy for range
S - Small ships at close range, accuracy over all
P - Strikecraft, missiles, etc.

With this setup, it makes sense for M to struggle to hit Corvettes and anything smaller, L to struggle to hit Destroyers and down, and XL to struggle to hit Cruisers and down. Each ship class below Battleship would be improved, and would generally be best at countering the size class below them.

There are still a couple potential issues though:

- Due to their myriad of section options, mixed Battleship fleets could still potentially counter every other class of ship. It would be a bit more difficult than with the current system, but the overall hp increase of Battleships over other classes is still a huge boon with the way combat in Stellaris works.

- Destroyers with L slots could potentially not just hard counter Battleships, but end up in a battle against each other that lasts for ages. They should probably either lose the L slot or take a large penalty to evasion when using that section.