Interceptor vs torpedo boat corvette

[AaronArx]

Alright, my empire utilizes mostly energy weapons, which means that i have access to lasers, disruptors and energy torpedos.

Which configuration should I go for?

I usually place a lot of torpedoes on my cruisers also.

 

[LordMagus]

Cruisers should be using plasma cannons and kinetic artillery. Energy torpedoes are only useful for corvettes. Destroyers either use the auto-cannon and gauss cannon set up to destroy corvettes, or fit them with kinetic artillery. Disruptors are quite useless, as it's not hard to strip shields anyway, and they do low dmg, use kinetic artillery instead.

 

[Adamsrealm]

Basically weapons are not currently balanced and most only hold their usefulness until the next tier is researched.

 

[GloatingSwine]

If you want to know specifically what to use on corvettes, then one in six should be a neutron torpedo and one plasma cannon, the other five in six should be 3x plasma cannon.

This won't be the best at killing other corvettes, but the AI doesn't build corvettes well or in enough volume either.

 

[jazzglands]

It depends on the rest of your fleet. I like interceptors though. I pair lots of interceptors with a small number of afterburner-equipped destroyers. This makes all my small ships rush ahead of my cruisers and fight the enemy's small ships. I spec my cruisers and battleships for range and (um) big-gun-ness, so they'll stay back where it's relatively safe, mostly fire at the enemy large ships, and let the corvettes take the brunt of the losses.

This also lets you focus down their small ships very quickly, and I've noticed that *my* losses drop considerably once the enemy is down to just their cruisers and battleships. I assume that's because of enemy medium-mount weapons trying (and frequently failing) to hit my destroyers and corvettes.

 

[LizardCommander]

Once you research Battleships, they should make up the bulk of your armada (kinetic artillery/giga cannons), and the other ships should primarily be used to screen incoming fire. I personally use torpedo corvettes, with point defense covered destroyers, and torpedo cruisers. Why do I use cruisers with torpedoes? Because the simple fact is that they won't get off more than a few shots before being completely eradicated, best to get off most damage as possible as quickly as possible. Versus heavy shield focused compositions the energy-based torpedoes are not interceptable (to my knowledge) and deal massive shield damage. Against no-fighter, no-point defense compositions the regular torpedoes can be very efficient against shield comps.

 

[LordMagus]

Once you research Battleships, they should make up the bulk of your armada (kinetic artillery/giga cannons), and the other ships should primarily be used to screen incoming fire. I personally use torpedo corvettes, with point defense covered destroyers, and torpedo cruisers. Why do I use cruisers with torpedoes? Because the simple fact is that they won't get off more than a few shots before being completely eradicated, best to get off most damage as possible as quickly as possible. Versus heavy shield focused compositions the energy-based torpedoes are not interceptable (to my knowledge) and deal massive shield damage. Against no-fighter, no-point defense compositions the regular torpedoes can be very efficient against shield comps.

I'll have to disagree with you there. First about battleships making up the bulk of your armada, and second about using giga cannons. Due to focus firing, tachyon lances are better than giga cannons, and synergise perfectly with kinetic artillery.

Third, cruisers are the most cost efficient tanks, and putting torpedoes all over them is wasting them. Like seriously, you don't need anything but cruisers to win battles. Cruisers last longer if you fit them with more alpha damage in the form of kinetic artillery, and some plasma cannons. This is due to them reducing the enemy fleet's DPS by destroying their ships quickly, instead of waiting ages for the torpedoes to hit. So your use of torpedoes over alternatives is directly opposed to your reasoning of why you use them, using torpedoes doesn't do the most damage as quickly as possible. When I observe my fleet battles, cruisers can last ages, due to my heavy armour setup of them (armour is always the answer). To take down heavy shields, all you need is kinetic artillery, no need to weaken your cruisers by fitting them with torps.

 

[Shoobs]

You can also just ignore all their advice and use Mining Lasers. This making them good at pretty much everything. Not great, but good.

 

[wergy]

It's rather stupid that you have to build each and every fleet exactly the same. Why even are there different weapons then?

 

[GloatingSwine]

You can also just ignore all their advice and use Mining Lasers. This making them good at pretty much everything. Not great, but good.

Yeah, but there are things you just don't need to be that good at. If you build a fleet that's good for killing fallen empires it will steamroll everything else.

 

[Mad King James]

Having played through a couple games now I don't really understand the point of building smaller ships, seems like the big ships can do everything anyways, so what's the point of building anything that isn't a battleship?

 

[masteriw]

They should really learn from HOI4, that game is probably not perfect but its naval warfare feels a little more tactical than this.

 

[GloatingSwine]

Having played through a couple games now I don't really understand the point of building smaller ships, seems like the big ships can do everything anyways, so what's the point of building anything that isn't a battleship?

If you really want to build only one ship type, cruisers are better than battleships. They break the HP curve without breaking the cost or fleet cap curve*, and their orbit behaviour denies enemy XL weapons their attacks a decent percentage of the time.

* Corvettes have 300 HP, destroyers and battleships 2x and 8x that respectively, but Cruisers are 1600 not 1200.

 

[Mad King James]

If you really want to build only one ship type, cruisers are better than battleships. They break the HP curve without breaking the cost or fleet cap curve*, and their orbit behaviour denies enemy XL weapons their attacks a decent percentage of the time.

* Corvettes have 300 HP, destroyers and battleships 2x and 8x that respectively, but Cruisers are 1600 not 1200.

Yeah but Cruisers can't build XL weapons, tachyon lances ftw

If small ships could dodge really big weapons like lances or batteries then it would be kind of worth it but they can't so what's the point.

 

[LordMagus]

Yeah but Cruisers can't build XL weapons, tachyon lances ftw

If small ships could dodge really big weapons like lances or batteries then it would be kind of worth it but they can't so what's the point.

If you test battleships against cruisers, the BBs initially get some good alpha dmg due to lances. This drops right down to nothing as soon as the cruisers are on top of them with plasma cannons, but funnily enough this is still better than using all medium slots on BBs, as can be seen in my thread https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/the-use-of-bbs.996836/

 

[Mad King James]

Your side to side comparison is kinda nuts though because you're heavily using armor piercing weapons (lances and plasma cannons) but also heavily using armor. Shields is where it's at.

 

[LordMagus]

Your side to side comparison is kinda nuts though because you're heavily using armor piercing weapons (lances and plasma cannons) but also heavily using armor. Shields is where it's at.

This is due to the fact that heavy armour tends to out perform heavy shield build. Weapon types are currently the meta best in slot. So it's basically like best cruiser build vs best battleship build, and cruisers take the cake.

 

[Summin Cool]

The thing is that Battleships have a armour preference, that is they gain most of their Effective Hit Points or EHP from armour rather than shields. So cruisers using armour Piercing weapons will wipe the floor with them. That Cruiser fit will lose out to a corvette swarm however, sort of.

but to answer OP's question, if you have point defences on your destroyers, use a portion of your corvettes as interceptors, the rest Torps.
If you don't, just go for torp corvettes. Destroyers are more cost efficient in screening against incoming corvettes. Not to mention you can use your corvettes to quickly remove mining stations in the form of a vanguard.

 

[LordMagus]

Haven't had issues against corvettes with cruisers. While battleships gain the most from armour, due to repeatable tech they can start fitting more shields and still keep the armour bonus, and armour piercing starts doing less well against them.

 

[Summin Cool]

Haven't had issues against corvettes with cruisers. While battleships gain the most from armour, due to repeatable tech they can start fitting more shields and still keep the armour bonus, and armour piercing starts doing less well against them.

Fair enough, I haven't played much of vanilla 1.4 due to playing my terrible mod. Didn't think medium plasma cannons had that much accuracy and tracking, in Blades of Stellaris they currently have 0.75/0.15 accuracy/tracking compared to 0.8/0.2 in vanilla along with the small slot being removed.

If small weapons did exist in BOS for reference it would be 0.8/0.35 compared to vanilla's 0.85/0.6.