Is there something wrong with FE fleet strength calculation?

[Wolfgang I]

Are FE fleet strength numbers inflated?

I just defeated two FE stacks with 121k and 145k fleet strength with a ~105k fleet (tried splitting the fleets and luring one to a fortress flower but did not work ). It's a first for me because usually I start wars against FEs on my terms but I underestimated border growth bonuses of star empire + fanatic xenophobe and after I got the manifest destiny tech I suddenly surrounded the xenophobic FE completely and got some of it's non-colony systems. I refused to accept humiliation and they declared war.

Both stacks jumped my fleet while it was in warp cooldown and fighting started immediately.
I was waiting for the retreat button to start working when I noticed that their fleet strength was falling much faster than mine and decided to stay and they lost their fleets completely. My fleet survived with 32 k strength. I got negative warscore for that battle.... .
I have had much more problems with normal AI fleets before.
Or are long range engagements actually way less effective than I thought? Lance spam is pretty but I tend to lose more ships if I fight big fleets that way.

Screenshots:

Spoiler: The battle is joined.

Spoiler: My ship types at that time.

I tend to avoid researching ship equipment technology myself because of that I usually have very low tech ships until I scan enough debris. At that point I had just jumped from tier one shields and tier two reactors to these technologies.

Only about 20 of those. I have read that that they are not very effective but I just like the look of the amoeba flagella. I got them very early because my first spaceport managed to destroy wandering space amoeba and they served me well on snare stations early on and decided to keep some around for roleplay reasons. Bloodhounds of space.

Spoiler: The last enemy ship.

 

[Alblaka]

The issue isn't the FE fleet strength calculation, but the fleet strength calculation.
It's a mash-up of raw numbers, and doesn't consider 'efficient builds', overkill, positioning, counters, etc.

Therefore, as a general rule of thump, a player's fleet will always end up killing fleets of a higher fleet strength, assuming the player knows what he's doing.

 

[Meathim]

I always thought it was (partly) because they have huge ships, so while they pick off your cruisers/corvettes and very slowly diminish your firepower they loose a big chunk of it when one of theirs go down. I had the same deal with invaders, my 90K fleet destroyed their 110K fleet and when done I had lost about 20K.

 

[Wolfgang I]

I always thought it was (partly) because they have huge ships, so while they pick off your cruisers/corvettes and very slowly diminish your firepower they loose a big chunk of it when one of theirs go down. I had the same deal with invaders, my 90K fleet destroyed their 110K fleet and when done I had lost about 20K.

I know what you mean but in that battle I actually lost my battleships first. They tanked a lot of damage before being destroyed though.
Sadly I forgot to take a screenshot of the battle report.

 

[NicoH]

I played around with numbers a bit and realized that some ship values really blow up the displayed ship strength although the ship doesn't become much stronger. I think it was for example evasion that doubles the ship strength with the addition of small numbers...

 

[LordMagus]

Seems like you engaged them at point blank range with a lot of plasma cannons. You had a lot of cruisers, and two cruisers have more hitpoints than 1 battleship.

 

[General Retreat]

I always thought it was (partly) because they have huge ships, so while they pick off your cruisers/corvettes and very slowly diminish your firepower they loose a big chunk of it when one of theirs go down. I had the same deal with invaders, my 90K fleet destroyed their 110K fleet and when done I had lost about 20K.

It's a combination of this and the fact that a whole bunch of their damage output comes from dual X weapons on their battlecruisers.

Where you got jumped on and the battle stated at knifefight range, their arcs are going to be very limited, pretty much eliminating their damage output.

If you start from max range and let them engage on their terms, you'll take far heavier damage.

 

[Ur-Quan Lord 13]

Also, #s often beats technological superiority, especially once range is out of the equation (or so I understand).

You had lower tech shields and weapons, so presumably, to reach that fleet strength, you must have considerably outnumbered that FE.

Combined with what's mentioned above, that evasion is overvalued because it ignores that every gun has at least some tracking, and armor is overvalued when the enemy always carries plasma, and xl weapons are overvalued when the battle starts in close quarters, and the answer is yes, FE fleet strength is often inflated.

I remember my fleet once got pinned between 2 FE fleets. Should have been a disaster. But then I watched as my flak cannons instantly deleted all their strike craft, and ended up winning.

 

[AvalancheZ250]

Are FE fleet strength numbers inflated?

I just defeated two FE stacks with 121k and 145k fleet strength with a ~105k fleet (tried splitting the fleets and luring one to a fortress flower but did not work ). It's a first for me because usually I start wars against FEs on my terms but I underestimated border growth bonuses of star empire + fanatic xenophobe and after I got the manifest destiny tech I suddenly surrounded the xenophobic FE completely and got some of it's non-colony systems. I refused to accept humiliation and they declared war.

Both stacks jumped my fleet while it was in warp cooldown and fighting started immediately.
I was waiting for the retreat button to start working when I noticed that their fleet strength was falling much faster than mine and decided to stay and they lost their fleets completely. My fleet survived with 32 k strength. I got negative warscore for that battle.... .
I have had much more problems with normal AI fleets before.
Or are long range engagements actually way less effective than I thought? Lance spam is pretty but I tend to lose more ships if I fight big fleets that way.

Screenshots:

Spoiler: The battle is joined.

Spoiler: My ship types at that time.

I tend to avoid researching ship equipment technology myself because of that I usually have very low tech ships until I scan enough debris. At that point I had just jumped from tier one shields and tier two reactors to these technologies.

Only about 20 of those. I have read that that they are not very effective but I just like the look of the amoeba flagella. I got them very early because my first spaceport managed to destroy wandering space amoeba and they served me well on snare stations early on and decided to keep some around for roleplay reasons. Bloodhounds of space.

Spoiler: The last enemy ship.

Fleet strength is linear. For example, a Tachyon lance might always be 100 fleet strength, while it should actually be about 400 at 80 range and 50 at 10 range, which is why it can be deceiving. Militant Isolationist FE's typically have Mega Cannon's and Gauss cannons. Did your fleet have good armour? Mega Cannons have a really poor firing arc and generally do really poorly close up.

 

[terrycloth]

Are FE fleet strength numbers inflated?

I just defeated two FE stacks with 121k and 145k fleet strength with a ~105k fleet (tried splitting the fleets and luring one to a fortress flower but did not work ). It's a first for me because usually I start wars against FEs on my terms but I underestimated border growth bonuses of star empire + fanatic xenophobe and after I got the manifest destiny tech I suddenly surrounded the xenophobic FE completely and got some of it's non-colony systems. I refused to accept humiliation and they declared war.

Both stacks jumped my fleet while it was in warp cooldown and fighting started immediately.
I was waiting for the retreat button to start working when I noticed that their fleet strength was falling much faster than mine and decided to stay and they lost their fleets completely. My fleet survived with 32 k strength. I got negative warscore for that battle.... .
I have had much more problems with normal AI fleets before.
Or are long range engagements actually way less effective than I thought? Lance spam is pretty but I tend to lose more ships if I fight big fleets that way.

Screenshots:

Spoiler: The battle is joined.

Spoiler: My ship types at that time.

I tend to avoid researching ship equipment technology myself because of that I usually have very low tech ships until I scan enough debris. At that point I had just jumped from tier one shields and tier two reactors to these technologies.

Only about 20 of those. I have read that that they are not very effective but I just like the look of the amoeba flagella. I got them very early because my first spaceport managed to destroy wandering space amoeba and they served me well on snare stations early on and decided to keep some around for roleplay reasons. Bloodhounds of space.

Spoiler: The last enemy ship.

A lot of people have already said this, but:
(a) Large ships are overvalued by the fleet strength calculation in general and FE often have Titans which are the most overvalued of all
(b) FE use a lot of strike craft which flak cannons can instantly disable and PD can disable pretty quickly too
(c) FE use a lot of XL weapons which point-blank range can quickly disable (they're spinal mounts so they have to physically turn the ship to fire them)

So in a point-blank engagement, I can see something like that happening.

That said, I usually don't see my fleets doing nearly that well. And if they engage from long range when you don't have kinetic artillery or lances or flak it can go the other way.

 

[macd21]

Yeah, I'd say a lot of their fleet strength comes from range advantage. Tackling them at point blank range seems to give you a big advantage, though I'm surprised you defeated such odds.

 

[Wolfgang I]

Thanks for the feedback. I guess I will always attempt to engage FE fleets at point blank range from now on.
It's not that difficult to get a FE fleet to jump right on top of you after all.

Yeah, I'd say a lot of their fleet strength comes from range advantage. Tackling them at point blank range seems to give you a big advantage, though I'm surprised you defeated such odds.

You and me both.