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

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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.
Even easier would be to introduce the same limits on other ships, that titans have. Only a certain percentage of navcap can be spent of the ships of the particular class. I will not be thrilled to play vs crisis x25 like that, but it can be done.
 
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This thread got it all wrong, the only reason why battleships stopped being the best since WWI in real life, is because weapons outstripped armors, but in the game armor is on par with weapons, plus there are also shields, and repeatables, so battleships should be the best, and the only reason people don't like it is because they want lopsided technology just like WWII

Actually no. Battleships were replaced by carriers because carriers through the use of fighters, bombers, and torpedo bombers, could deliver their munitions far more accurately. Naval combat never had great accuracy numbers because the technology just wasn't sufficient and the majority of weapons were unguided fire and forget; hence the reason why aircraft were superior as they are guided. The average percentage of shells hitting the ship they are fired at was near ten percent. Later on in the war the larger ships were used for shore bombardment but even then accuracy wasn't their forte and planes were again used to strike very specific targets.

So what does this mean for Stellaris. Not much at all. All of the weapons in this game are backed by computer control and accuracy is near absolute as we don't really have a ECM/ECCM game. So it comes down who can shoot the furthest and the fastest. We do not have a definitive answer on what range numbers actually mean. However it really doesn't matter for some weapon types as I doubt we have sufficient ranges to dodge light speed weaponry, that is nearly 300,000 kilometers crossed in a second - you would not be able to detect it any sooner than when it got to you for the most part. So the idea of evasion is silly unless you are trying to represent that a smaller craft can turn faster than turreted weapon can turn but even then you need to get close enough for that to even matter. Missiles and torpedoes are assumed to be able to alter their trajectory so it becomes a game of shooting them down first; though torpedoes might be represented as light speed missiles :)

So anyway, back to the question at hand. How do we make the smaller ships relevant?

First idea, fleet composition limits. As mentioned by others we had a limit on Titans per fleet but this is wholly an artificial construct and one that isn't even sensible. The problem with fleet management of any size is the number of vessels. What those vessels are really doesn't matter in the end. When you track an enemy fleet you are at most limited by the number of units you can track, not their size. Same goes with managing your fleet in combat, it isn't the individual sizes that matter but how many ships you need to manage. Naval capacity is a whole different issue and you an head cannon it as needing larger more specialized systems to support very large ships; just like in real life.

So fleet composition rules would have to account for some other metric rather than numbers. I suggest we revisit range numbers. Weapons have a maximum range based on their size but they don't have a minimum range. So for medium weapons their minimum range would be ten percent of their maximum range and for large weapons their minimum range is twenty five percent of their maximum range. This would let smaller ships to get inside the minimum ranges that large weapons could fire which means either the ships mounting them devote weapon space to weapons to fight inside this range or they rely on other ships to do it for them.

One other area I would play with is fixing the maximum fleet speed rule which is bugged to where the fastest ship sets fleet speed. Still these are starships so it becomes an odd game to declare one slower than another as if the sizes really matter when the scale of difference isn't that staggering until you get to Titans or Juggernauts.
 
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If you forced limits on fleet composition all compositions would be the same, its a dumb idea.

Rewarding mixing ships is always going to be a better idea than punishing not doing it, or forcing it.

This whole thing could be accomplished by adding more unique segments to ship design on each class of ship.

Add a carrier class on the same tier as battleship, move the hangars and Point defense to that, make battleships about long range big guns and staying power, maybe add a "Support ship" corvette design which can boost the effectiveness of certain weapons, encourage some thought put into an empires unique war doctrines rather than force a single one.

Look at Mass Effect for sci fi, contrast human and turian war doctrine, Turians like to hit it as hard as possible til it stops moving, overwhelming force, direct approach, Humans like mobility, invented the carrier strategy, and skip over heavily defended military bases to hit supply and production.
 
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The concept of mixed fleets might be true here on our planet, but that has more to do with a lack of technology: armor is just not viable anymore and propulsion is lacking. That's the only reason why smaller ships are used (as they punch well above their weight class) and why aircraft carriers are as slow as they are. If we had armor that could only be penetrated by big enough guns, if big ships could move as fast as small ones, I assure you we would see a strong trend towards big ships. Or - in terms of Stellaris - if a Corvette was always ten times faster and always had enough firepower to kill any battleship, I'm confident that everyone would avoid building those in favor of Corvettes.

Again WW1 that was possibble, BB's had enormous amounts of armour, there was still heavy and extensive use of other ship types.

And thats ignoring the physics side stuff thats allways going to make it easier to pack more thrust and weaponry onto a smaller hull, 9it related to the square cube law amongst other things).

Actually no. Battleships were replaced by carriers because carriers through the use of fighters, bombers, and torpedo bombers, could deliver their munitions far more accurately. Naval combat never had great accuracy numbers because the technology just wasn't sufficient and the majority of weapons were unguided fire and forget; hence the reason why aircraft were superior as they are guided. The average percentage of shells hitting the ship they are fired at was near ten percent. Later on in the war the larger ships were used for shore bombardment but even then accuracy wasn't their forte and planes were again used to strike very specific targets.

So what does this mean for Stellaris. Not much at all. All of the weapons in this game are backed by computer control and accuracy is near absolute as we don't really have a ECM/ECCM game. So it comes down who can shoot the furthest and the fastest. We do not have a definitive answer on what range numbers actually mean. However it really doesn't matter for some weapon types as I doubt we have sufficient ranges to dodge light speed weaponry, that is nearly 300,000 kilometers crossed in a second - you would not be able to detect it any sooner than when it got to you for the most part. So the idea of evasion is silly unless you are trying to represent that a smaller craft can turn faster than turreted weapon can turn but even then you need to get close enough for that to even matter. Missiles and torpedoes are assumed to be able to alter their trajectory so it becomes a game of shooting them down first; though torpedoes might be represented as light speed missiles :)

Nah the hit rate in WW2 for aircraft vs ships was pretty awful too. the thing was carriers could apply their firepower, battleships couldn't because they would be sunk before they got close to their targets. Arguably the only thing thats cept CV's around since the end of WW2 though has been the issues land armies have had with developing AAA hardware and the relatively weaker opponents they've been deployed against.

As an aside there's a simple formulae for determing how much acelleration needs to be applied to dodge a shot at a given rnage:

S/(0.5*T^2)=A

Where T is the flight time of the projectile, and S is the distance in meter's the object needs to move, (e.g. for a 50m wide craft, S woudl be 50m).

Thus at a range of 300,000km vs a laser with atarget width of 50m an acceleration of 100m/s or a bit over 10G's is needed. Go to 600,000km and that drops to just 25m/s or a bit over 2.5g's
 
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One interesting side note in this discussion, look at the fallen empire fleets. They basically have 2 ships: a capital ship and an escort. Period. So if they are supposedly the pinnacle of knowledge and technology (which should include strategy, tactics and doctrine), then it's hard to argue that the younger races in the galaxy wouldn't emulate them once they started approaching that level of technology. Even if the game were changed to make cruisers and destroyers more viable against other empires, how do you also make that apply to fallen empires. both as them against the player and the player against them?
Yes, it is basically X weapon carrier plus PD escort. I have never tried to mimic FEs, but I am essentially doing the same. Just with corvettes instead of destroyers.
 
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someone else probably already said this but these are my thoughts on the matter.

destroyers fill the niche role of early game L slots for sieging stations and a late game source of fast moving evasive l-slot ships. for example a full siege destroyer fleet focused on evasion is a surprisingly viable option against a BB fleet with nothing but L and XL weapons and can move much faster, not to mention the large disengagement bonus they get. although against a human they figure out the game quick so it only really works once as they will quickly start using carriers.

Cruisers are great if you can get them early enough that your enemies are still widely using corvettes and destroyers since they can carry strike craft and strike craft butcher corvettes, but they lose most of their use once battleships become available since they can do the same thing but better.

destroyers are honestly mostly fine as they are but cruisers need a boost, maybe making them able to carry more missiles and Pds so they at least have a decent specialized role.
 
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Destroyers: 2x4 utility slot (so they will be similar to Cruiser)
Battleship: Double production time, so getting or loosing BS would be hard.
Cruiser: More interesting modules.
Bow: 1xH so we can proper carriers
Stern 2xP if you need that screan use
Stern 1xG for Torpedo boats

Generally with Cruiser is the problem that every module is like random staff put togeher, so you cant have proper ship with define purpose.

Other option is having like small bonus against ships one step below. So Corvettas<Destroyers<Cruiisers<Battleship. But Battleships cant exacly hit corvetas. Maybe a bonus to weapons of sertain size, like destroyer could be have bonus to small weapons, cruiser to medium, BS to L. Corvettas are fast and evasive so they have a bonus in that.

Generally BS could be loaded with 6xL which makes it simple, effective and intuitive for player. One ship with specific purpose. So giving more modules to Destroyers/Cruisers with specific role in mind would pump their utility. Roles like carriers, torpedo boats, anti corvetas screen.
 
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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.
I really do not like the Rock paper Scissors meta that so many other Games have now a days i one variety or another. Isn't there another way to make multiple Strategies vailable? (I have no idea just throwing my opinion out there)
 
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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 :p )


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.
Maybe a scaling Combat efficiency with remaing HP would be helpfull to prevent the issue that small ship fleets loose combat power quicker? (at least somewhat as there is still the issue with armor and shields)
 
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I would definitely like it if Cruisers had a missile-oriented stern section. But that wouldn't change much unless missiles become good.
Missiles actually are good if you have enough of them. They are much better at killing enemy stations than ships though. Swarm missile corvettes+Missile cruisers do the trick nicely.

the fact that so many ship part combos suck due to the maximum range being crippled every time by some short range weapon requirement is stupid.

I never, ever use the longest range engagement setting for anything but a juggernaut which is practically all lances and strike craft, since its pointless on anything else.
 
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Part of the problem is the inflexible number of utility slots. In most games Artillery are glass cannons, in Stellaris because it's a battleship it is as well protected as any Frontline brawler. If the devs stripped protection from the heavy builds and added utility slots to lighter more close ranged sections on Cruisers and Destroyers we would have a better balance.

NLs are good for their alpha strike in other words they have strong burst DPS, Burst DPS will deal a lot of damage in a short time but usually fails against Sustained DPS. Improving sustain damage weapons should also be a part of the equation. Burst weapons should also boost the chance a ship has to disengage when hitting the threshold to make up for the fact that sustained DPS weapons roll disengagement chances more frequently than Burst.

There should be reasons to use all ship sections, the problem isn't just that BB monos are the meta but also that Brawler BBs are also not used.

Another problem is how ships pick their targets, for the most part it seems like they pick targets at random which is great for Burst DPS, it reduces their overkill, its terrible for sustained DPS, they do light damage across a number of targets while they are picked off reducing their DPS, if they could focus fire on individual ships Sustained DPS would work much better, and smaller fleets would also not be a joke to use.
 
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With the Crisis ascension perk and the menacing designs for corvettes, destroyers and cruisers there are lesson to be learned already.

Menacing Corvettes succeed as inexpensive attrition units with max evasion. They are low dps because of their S slot weapons but they have surprised me by being able to draw out a battle when outnumbered so long they can win anyway due to their evasion.

Menacing destroyers (artillery version) are the cheapest way to get L slots deployed into the line of battle and they get a big tracking bonus on top of the ability to select the picket battle computer. They also get 2 aux slots. Neutron Launchers with 0% intrinsic tracking still are viable against corvettes with all the tracking bonuses. I use menacing destroyer fleets a lot when going Crisis.

Menacing cruisers are crap because they have only 1 L slot, no improvement over the destroyer while being more expensive and less evasive. This just doubled down on the regular non-crisis cruiser weaknesses. Making a cruiser into a mini battleship with at least 3 L slots was a path not taken.

Cruisers are bad, but it is hard to make a design for them that makes them economical replacements for battleships because destroyers and corvettes already do that. An upgunned cruiser might make battleships obsolete so isn't a good solution. They need a specific and unique new role that cannot be done by other ship classes. Something along the lines of support modules for stealth or troop transport or electronic warfare. Otherwise, they are just technology as obsolete as red lasers.

I don't like this nonsense in the thread about making everyone use mixed fleets, but agree that cruisers are a ship class without a role to play.
 
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Maybe a scaling Combat efficiency with remaing HP would be helpfull to prevent the issue that small ship fleets loose combat power quicker? (at least somewhat as there is still the issue with armor and shields)
I thought they already did this??
 
I don't like this nonsense in the thread about making everyone use mixed fleets, but agree that cruisers are a ship class without a role to play.

The reason you hear that is that the reason cruisers, (and several ship sections), suck. And that is that medium weapons are pointless as soon as they become available and small are only really useful till you get enough tracking bonuses to make L and XL best. Each hull type tends to excel at certain combinations of weapon slot types with a degree of ability to move outside that via section options at a cost in efficiency.

Cruisers excel at carrying medium slots, either pure medium, or medium in combination with other stuff. They really aren't efficient at anything if you try to build them for minimum medium mounts.

The thing is the reason that mediums are bad and the L+XL meta dominates is about how the different weapons interact with the different hull types. Fix that meta being predominant and you will be forced into combined arms because the best hull for killing destroyers will instantly become cruisers, destoyers become the best hull to carry the weapons to kill missile corvettes, missile corvettes become the best hull to carry weapons to kill BB's and Titans, And they become the best platforms to carry the weapons to kill cruisers

Thats why you hear so much about combined arms, because the way slots are distributed across hull types and the way the weapon balance in terms of sizes was supposed to work is setup to enforce it by it's very nature, and it's the breakdown of that same weapon balance system that is producing the issues with XL+L BB's dominating, they're dealing well with things BB's aren't really setup to be innately efficient against.

You could only get away from that if you completely did away with the concept of weapon sizes, and that would take a complete redesign of well, everything, to fix.
 
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if arc projectors are so OP, then changes need to be made to say, tachyon lance and giga cannons to make them more useful at killing large ships and bases.
 
if arc projectors are so OP, then changes need to be made to say, tachyon lance and giga cannons to make them more useful at killing large ships and bases.

All 3 XL class weapons are hugely superior, (on a per segment basis), to any of the alternatives.
 
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When you think about it, stellaris's fleet combat mimics WWII naval combat, at least in theory. Battleships and carriers are your heavy hitters, while late game the corvette almost takes on the role of a submarine. They're evasive and can do great damage to enemy capital ships.

The problem is there's no mechanics for encouraging screening and anti-screen ships. I suggest that ships should pick targets based on their largest weapon slot.

- XL, L, Torpedos, and Bombers would target the largest ships first: Cruisers, battleships, and anything larger.

- M and Regular missiles should target "middleweight" ships. Cruisers and destroyers, then others.

- S, PD, Fighters, and Swarm Missiles should target the smallest ships first, Corvettes and destroyers.

With this system each basic ship class is targeted by at least 2 weapon classes, as well as each weapon class targeting 2 ship classes.

This means Artillery battleships would focus on other battleships first, leaving themselves open to Torpedo Corvette attacks. To counter torpedo corvettes you'll need to add a screen, which would either be more corvettes or destroyers. Destroyers should also get a tracking bonus to entrench them in their roles as screens.

Well, now you have your artillery ships and screen ships. But where do carriers and cruisers come into play?

Historically carriers were, and are, extremely effective combat ships, but they're also vulnerable. Naval bombers could easily sink enemy capital ships and screens, while fighters were used to defend the fleet from bombers. I think strikecraft should be resplit into these two classes. Bomber wings would target enemy capital ships, and without AA destroyers and fighters they should take out enemy capital ships. I think they should bypass shields and get a substantial bonus to health damage. This is to simulate a Battleship stripping the other ship's armor then the carrier sending in the bombers to precisely attack weak points.

AA Destroyers should be quite effective at countering bomber wings. Perhaps giving them an AA combat computer, making them stick around the largest ships and target strikecraft?

But now that there's a reason for a screen, you need something to kill it. That's where cruisers' role is. Their medium and small weapon slots would kill screening ships, giving the opening for strikecraft and torpedos to kill enemy capital ships.
 
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Do we need for every ship to be viable the entire game? Maybe the solution should be to give a longer window for each type to be viable before battleships become dominant.
I think they should change roles. Corvettes should go from basically trimeres to submarines. Destroyers from Frigates to screening ships. Cruisers from, well, cruisers to cruisers. (Long range warship to dedicated anti-ship platform), and battleships from dreatnaughts to carriers.
 
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