Ship Type Question

[MelkorDarkstar]

It's not so much that NLs have high accuracy, it's that the tracking and evasion system completely fails to discriminate what they can hit. NLs should be good at hitting a big target like a battleship but bad at hitting small ships.
For whatever reason tracking seems to stack additively but evasion, as far as my experience slotting afterburners, is multiplicative- 10% more evasion is 10% of the base hull value, not +10 points. First of all, this is not good because tracking and evasion are supposed to be mirrors of each other. Second, base hull evasion should be some linear fall off like 60/40/20/0 but instead it's 60/35/10/5. When it drops so fast, there's no room for destroyers and cruisers to breathe.

This little detail is what breaks a lot of efforts to change the combat meta.


At that point, why not just make defense platforms which are way cheaper? Artillery cruisers are 2L/2M for 4 cap, battleships give you 6L for 8 cap. Even discounting X slot weapons, battleships are just better.

defense platforms have 0 evasion and fewer armaments while, iirc, costing more than cruisers and taking longer to build. Cruisers have better survivability and can deal more damage before being nuked. Using BBs in the same manner just seems like a waste of BBs to me but I see your point.

 

[Zoolimar]

This is probably necessary to prevent 100% Evasion Corvettes from being a thing, but combined with the way base Evasion scaling works it's really bad for everything that isn't a Corvette, yeah.

Considering that Evasion is capped at 90% before reduction by tracking it's not really a problem. Whole accuracy/tracking/evasion mechanic is a horrible mess in its current implementation. Especially with how many bonuses can be stacked on it from all sides.

 

[Dustman]

Ship design is a horrible mess that changes often

 

[Tobasco da Gama]

defense platforms have 0 evasion and fewer armaments while, iirc, costing more than cruisers and taking longer to build.

Base cost and build time of platforms is exactly the same as Destroyers, but they have slightly more Hull. Platform sections have a total of 6M/2A for utility slots, compared to 8M/1A for Cruisers and 6S/1A for Destroyers. Their weapon sections are each basically equivalent to a Destroyer Bow section, except they can mount missiles and strike craft like Cruisers can. So they're pretty much exactly between Destroyers and Cruisers in terms of both capability and cost. (Their total cost will be more than a Destroyer, but that's because they can equip more weapons and defenses.)

If you have Cruisers still around in the end game and don't want to disband them, they're much better used as mobile starbase raiders rather than fixed defenses.

 

[Altruist]

Depends what you are fighting...

Your usual best standard setup will be (as several times mentioned):
1) BB Giga-Neutron: X-Giga with L-Neutron Launchers (against opponents with much armor and some shields)
Adapt a bit to your opponent's armor/shield ratio. If more shields than armor, add to your fleet some pure Giga-Kinetic Artillery BBs (which then will be most likely your point-fleet to smash as much shields as possible before your neutron launcher get going. Unfortunately the Neutron Launcher has a slightly bigger range (130) than the Kinetic Artillery (120). It would be perfect the other way around.

2) Specific opponents (like Fallen Empires) have much more combined shield and armor than hull and at some point the penetrating weapons (disruptors and focused arcs) become more efficient. The standard disruptors lack a L-weapon. If you get your hands on the battle debris of the voidclouds, great, then you get the Cloudlightning weapon which isn't very fantastic in itself but is for L-slots and that solves quite a problem how otherwise to equip your BBs.

a) Penetrating weapon layout with cloudlightning:
BB: X-Focused Arc, L-Cloudlightnings

b) Penetrating weapon layout without cloudlightning:
BB: X-Focused Arc, M-Phased Disruptor, Hangar (the hangar comes with the m-slots if you want it or not)

While the BB with cloudlightnings is superiour in terms of range and firepower, the BB with M-phased disruptors and a hangar makes the BBs actually completly selfsufficient. The strike craft (in 2.6.3) has actually become quite good in fencing off any enemy missiles or strikecraft. So no more need for PD...

Whatever, nevertheless I'd always also have a corvette-fleet at hand. Just too useful for:
# fast sidefleet to take out systems with only an outpost
# rapid strike force whenever the need for fast action arises (pirates, etc.)
# handy to help out your BBs should they need to fight a mainly corvette based opponent's fleet.

 

[SeekingEtermity]

While the BB with cloudlightnings is superiour in terms of range and firepower, the BB with M-phased disruptors and a hangar...

This is actually false under most circumstances. Cloud Lightning straight up deals less damage than 2x Medium Phased Disruptors. It has 10 more range and 5 less tracking, so it's slightly better against big targets in that way, but its DPS is just guaranteed worse. You can get the MPDs up to range 80 by combining artillery computer and a Cautious admiral, and your alpha strike is all going to be in your Focused Arc Emitters anyhow, so the marginal 10 (base) range doesn't mean much.

Of course, you're trading 4 CL for 6 MPDs, and the massed CL does do more damage than the massed MPDs. However, 6x MPDs also come with a H slot, and the strike craft are massively good right now. They do need to chew through armor (though not shield), but they have excellent speed and tracking, very high (several times as much as CL, which nicely makes up for not penetrating armor) expected DPS, and are very effective against every size of target from missiles to citadels and leviathans.

As you say, the FAE + 6x MPD + H design gives you battleships that are fully self-sufficient, and highly effective against pretty much anything except a few atypical enemies that keep all their HP in their hull. It does mean you want to research the strike craft repeatables in addition to the standard 4 (energy weapon damage, energy weapon RoF, shields, and armor), but the strike craft repeatables are twice as efficient as the weapon or armor repeatables and also there are (relatively) a lot of Engineering repeatables and if you only care about Matter Compression (armor), you're not going to draw it every time anyhow... might as well boost the strike craft whenever you don't re-draw matter compression.

 

[KingAlamar]

@SeekingEtermity : Mostly agree with your analysis. At least in testing against CRISIS fleets [huge shields or armor or both] the Cloud Lightning tends to work better than the Disruptors + Hanger against Unbidden & Contingency. A huge HOWEVER comes into play vs. the Swarm where FAE + Disruptors + 1 Hanger is a HARD counter to that fleet.

Overall the FAE + Disruptor + 1 Hanger build is a nice jack-of-all-trades build esp. if most of your "closer" battles will be against FEs / AE / Crisis types of fleets. The fact that you don't NEED Cloud Lightning is even better.

 

[Dustman]

@SeekingEtermity : Mostly agree with your analysis. At least in testing against CRISIS fleets [huge shields or armor or both] the Cloud Lightning tends to work better than the Disruptors + Hanger against Unbidden & Contingency. A huge HOWEVER comes into play vs. the Swarm where FAE + Disruptors + 1 Hanger is a HARD counter to that fleet.

Overall the FAE + Disruptor + 1 Hanger build is a nice jack-of-all-trades build esp. if most of your "closer" battles will be against FEs / AE / Crisis types of fleets. The fact that you don't NEED Cloud Lightning is even better.

Added benefit is that only Engineering repeatables you'd need to focus on is Armor, plus occasional SC, although it's just optional.

Ignoring KA/GK/Autocannon/Lances/N(P)L saves a bit on research as well.

 

[KingAlamar]

Added benefit is that only Engineering repeatables you'd need to focus on is Armor, plus occasional SC, although it's just optional.

Ignoring KA/GK/Autocannon/Lances/N(P)L saves a bit on research as well.

Honestly I like to research those things anyway as they tend to pop-up and block repeatables that I want to research instead.

 

[Altruist]

Ignoring KA/GK/Autocannon/Lances/N(P)L saves a bit on research as well.

I wouldn't.
In terms of Alpha-shot and firepower the Giga-Neutron pair is highly superiour to any penetrating weapons loadout.
So I'd use penetrating weapons only late-game and/or against specific targets.
What you suggest (no KA/GK/N) leaves you quite weak in the mid-game. I agree with the autocannons, while they are good in itself, it is nevertheless better to go afap to Kinetic Artillery which is even better.

But let's try to NOT dive into this old discussion and agree to disagree.

@KingAlamar and @SeekingEtermity, I agree with most, no wonder since I brought up the design but there a few points I want to mention:

b) Penetrating weapon layout without cloudlightning:
BB: X-Focused Arc, M-Phased Disruptor, Hangar (the hangar comes with the m-slots if you want it or not)

While the BB with cloudlightnings is superiour in terms of range and firepower, the BB with M-phased disruptors and a hangar makes the BBs actually completly selfsufficient. The strike craft (in 2.6.3) has actually become quite good in fencing off any enemy missiles or strikecraft. So no more need for PD...

I meant the above literally... strike fencing off any enemy missiles or strike.
But NOT doing anything else against the enemy ships.

I have just fought an Awakened Fallen Empire with this design and 3 things stood out:
1) Focused Arc is great and the by far the best weapon to fight FE... no news but still a delight to see at work.

2) The enemy strike was completly neutralized by my strike. With "completly neutralized" I mean: not a single enemy strike hit on any of my ships for the whole war. No wonder, after all I had usually upto 4x the number of strike on my side... but it's good to see that strike is doing its job now (2.6.3).

3) Sadly there was not a single battle in the whole war when this lot of strike I was using managed to get as far as damaging the hull of enemy ships or star bases. The best what can be said about this is that PD has the same problem: shooting down missiles and strike but never getting to the hull and stuck at shields.
In conclusion: I'd rather go for a dedicated penetrating BB-design plus CV with PD and phased disruptors than with a single BB design with penetrators plus hangars. But sadly that isn't possible without cloudlightnings.

And for the friends of number crunching (I am *grin), here some numbers form my biggest fight against the Awakened Fallen Empire:

Battle vs. Awakened Empire with 11 BC, 26 Escorts, 1 Colossus, 1 Transport (no starbase involved):

weapons	total dm	dm/weapon_number	adjusted by slot_size	hit ratio (not part of the calculation)
69 X-F.Arc	260k dm	/ 69 = 3768dm	/ 8 = 471dm	86%
736 M-Ph.Disr	124k dm	/ 736 = 148dm	/ 2 = 74dm	99%
248 S-Ph.Disr	16.3k dm	/ 248 = 66dm	66dm	100%

As usual numbers are slightly inaccurate to compare due to different admirals (best commanding the BBs) and ships killed during battle but that goes along with a test under "real" battle-conditions.
At first glance one can see how absolutely superiour the Focused Arc is compared to the phased disruptors. And this is not only because the dps of F.Arc is better than M-Ph.Disr than S-Ph.Disr. but also due to the time the different weapon-sizes were involved in the battle. Once again we see the power of range. Battle length:
X: 36 days
M: 24 days
S: 26 days
That's a drastic difference: Due to their range-advantage the X-weapons were able to shoot earlier, much earlier, as a matter of fact the battle lasted for them 50% longer than for the M- and S-weapons. Time in which they were able to make damage while the other weapons were still getting into range.

The results for strike are, sadly, not really usable, since my CVs and some of the DDs were also equipped with PD (a mistake after I realized how efficient strike has become). I also failed to give the CVs a head start which would had made them more efficient in terms of evasion and combatlength.
So, here just the plain results:
130 enemy H3-strike killed
80 Hangar3: 6194 dm to armor
137 PD3 : 5983 dm to shields

PS: Hey, just discovered a great feature of the new forum: tables!

 

[KingAlamar]

@Altruist : If it matters in my last game I was happy going TL+2KA+NL until the game flipped from "mid" to "late" game. At that point the "normal" AI factions weren't an issue and really only AEs & Crisis could do anything.

So I agree with your statements that you likely shouldn't ignore Kinetics & Energy during early & mid game. There are times where it makes sense to flip over though ... which you also said

 

[Altruist]

You can get the MPDs up to range 80 by combining artillery computer and a Cautious admiral, and your alpha strike is all going to be in your Focused Arc Emitters anyhow, so the marginal 10 (base) range doesn't mean much.

Are you sure about this?
The range of a medium phased disruptor is only 50.
Add 20% from artillery computer and you have 60, with another 20% from cautious admiral you get 70... still 10 missing.

It should work for Cloudlightnings: base range 60, so with 2 times 20% range improvements you get it up to 84. But in practice I saw quite often that the Cloudlightning were almost not taking part in the shooting when the BBs stayed at artillery range 80.
Perhaps the explanation is, that eg. the enemy DDs have a picket computer and also stay at a distance of 30 (combined distance 110), the enemy CCs at line and distance 50 (combined distance 130) and the enemy BBs even further out. So the only thing the cloudlightnings hit are the enemy CVs and even those only when their circle they usualy fly comes close to the BBs. This would also explain why Cloudlightning so often underwhelm when one analyzes a battle report.

With penetrating weapons, I fear, one is forced to use line computers in the BBs, best would be picket if that were available.

 

[Willy Waggler]

Are you sure about this?
The range of a medium phased disruptor is only 50.
Add 20% from artillery computer and you have 60, with another 20% from cautious admiral you get 70... still 10 missing.

It should work for Cloudlightnings: base range 60, so with 2 times 20% range improvements you get it up to 84. But in practice I saw quite often that the Cloudlightning were almost not taking part in the shooting when the BBs stayed at artillery range 80.
Perhaps the explanation is, that eg. the enemy DDs have a picket computer and also stay at a distance of 30 (combined distance 110), the enemy CCs at line and distance 50 (combined distance 130) and the enemy BBs even further out. So the only thing the cloudlightnings hit are the enemy CVs and even those only when their circle they usualy fly comes close to the BBs. This would also explain why Cloudlightning so often underwhelm when one analyzes a battle report.

With penetrating weapons, I fear, one is forced to use line computers in the BBs, best would be picket if that were available.

Juggernaut has aura that gives 40% weapon range. How much it sucks to use this ship is another whole topic though.
Titans should have some kind of weapon range bonus.

 

[SeekingEtermity]

The range of a medium phased disruptor is only 50.
Add 20% from artillery computer and you have 60, with another 20% from cautious admiral you get 70... still 10 missing.

Ah hell, yeah. You *can* do it if you stack enough modifiers, but I forgot you'd need +60% total, and that's a lot. Rapid Deployment's range bonus is only 10% when I keep thinking it's 20% (still very good though, makes your fleets better both strategically and tactically) so you need a Synth admiral as well to get the full 60%, or else you need some rare and special modifier from an event of something (or a juggernaut).

 

[Pugmak]

I think I'd like to see some ship type techs added to allow different hull sizes to have specialized rolls in a fleet or other use.

Corvettes: Something that makes them useful as commerce raiders (attacking enemy trade lanes) and interior anti-piracy specialization. Limited "endurance" meaning shorter unsupported flight range.

Destroyers: Support for corvettes in their roles. A module that allows a destroyer to serve as fueling station for corvettes when in the same fleet, extending that fleets flight range.

Cruisers: Elint and counter elint - options to add electronic intel modules that give an "aura" that increases the fleet's targeting and reduces the enemy's evasion. Counter elint module that creates an aura defending the fleet from enemy elint. One or the other. Not both on same ship. And make cruisers the only ship hull capable of flight hangers and fighter/bomber use.

Battleships: Keep them as the brawlers they are.

And in addition, more behavior modules that allow smaller ship types to hang father back from the battleships, "hide" behind the battleship hulls for protection and otherwise extend the life of the cruisers in battle with in a fleet with battleships.