Thanks for the input. Looks like i'll have to be more critical on my fleet design in the future. So how does the paper,rock,scissor system works on here? what counters/defends against other weapons/armor?
It would go something like this found this on the internet is not mine Blu3_Plac3bo .....
If you are in the mood to read this go ahead I still have to read it myself
If they have high shields, use lasers, high armor use canons, if they have cannons, use shields, lasers, use armor. Bigger ships, use higher range and use ship ai to stay at range while corvettes go nuts in point blank. Edit your tactics and load out on the fly depending on what you're fighting.
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When building your ships, you do have to keep in mind weaknesses and strengths of weapons and defenses. If your enemy primarily uses Kinetic weapons, then you want a lot of hull and Armor on your ships, as kinetic weapons tend to deal more damage to shields. If they use only Energy weapons, then you want to stack shields, as energy weapons tend to deal more damage to armor and hull. If they use a lot of bombers and/or rockets, use a lot of point defense. Also be sure to use ship strengths to your advantage. You battleships are expensive yet very powerful, that does not mean use them as frontline ships and equip them with short range weapons. Battleships are currently the only ship in the game that have access to spinal mount weapons, use these as Artillery.
My personal favorite layout for a fleet is the below. For Battleships I like to use Giga Cannons which are very large, and heavily upgraded versions of Mass Accelerators that have ludicrous range. They deal high damage to both shields and hull, but are slightly ineffective against Armour, only dealing 75% damage to them. An easy solution to their lower armor damage is to use cruisers and Plasma Cannons.
Cruisers are one tier down from battleships, and usually act as a shield for them, absorbing tons of damage while dealing quite a lot back. Plasma Cannons deal massive damage against hull and Armor, while having decent range. The plan here is that while the Battleships use their Artillery to take out shields from long range, the Cruisers move in closer to hit with their plasma weapons, dealing a lot of damage. Next in the fleet is destroyers, which are one tier below Cruisers.
For my destroyers I tend to use as much point defense as possible, as destroyers usually sit in front of cruisers and battleships, which prevent them from getting hit by missiles and bombers, which deal massive damage. Any leftover slots on the destroyers I fill with even more Plasma Cannons, to deal even more damage to hull and Armor. The final ship in my fleet is Corvettes.
While Corvettes are the lowest tier of naval ship and are very weak defense wise, they do have two very big strengths. For one, they are very cheap, only take up one fleet cap, and take just 23 days to produce when being made in a star port with a Corvette Assembly Line. Their second big advantage lies within their swarm mentality, which, when combined with their low maintenance cost, cheap production, high speed/evasion chance, and the ability to make hundreds very quickly, they become terrifying death machines. They act as the front line troop of your navy, charging into battle to deal as much damage as possible before being taken out, they are the embodiment of the idea that a strong offense is the best defense.
For my corvettes I usually put 1 Proton/Neutron torpedo, and 1 Plasma Cannon on them. Normally torpedoes should be avoided because they are easily taken out by Point Defense. But not Proton or Neutron Torpedoes, because while they are torpedoes, they are also energy weapons, and as such are immune to point defense The idea with the Torpedoes on the Corvettes is that they get very close and swarm the enemy ships, and while they do this the Torpedoes have very little travel time, hitting their targets very quickly and dealing massive damage to their shields.
This fleet layout is able to easily handle most situations with minimal losses and maximum effectiveness, but is rather expensive to maintain and is quite late game, and is by no means the only strategy to be used. This is just a general idea of what a balanced fleet would look like and is hopefully able to help anyone who is confused with fleet combat and ship set ups.
Energy weapons Kinetic weapons Missiles and strike craft
Energy weapons are generally anti-armor weapons, with attack bonuses versus armor and attack penalties against shields. Lasers are just this. Plasma are like lasers, but with an even stronger attack bonus versus armor and even an attack bonus vs. hulls as well, but have an even larger attack penalty vs. shields than lasers do. Disruptors are the
EXCEPTION to the above - they just attack the hull directly, skipping past the enemy shields and armor entirely, but doing much lower base damage as the drawback.
Kinetic weapons are anti-shield weapons that are weak against armor. Railguns are your basic version. Note that your standard railgun has a longer range than the equivalent laser or plasma (so you can attack foes from further away), but is also slightly less accurate. Autocannons are basically kinetic's version of plasma weapons - even stronger against shields than railgun, and even gets bonus damage to hulls, but weaker against armor in exchange. But auto cannons are limited to Small weapon slots and are quite short range. They have amazing tracking though, so they hit moving targets very easily.
Missiles and strike craft both bypass enemy shields entirely, and most missiles and strike craft have attack bonuses against either hull (most regular missiles) or armor (torpedoes and strike craft). The drawback is that enemy point defenses can shoot them down, which allows for all damage from the attack to be prevented if the missile or strike craft is shot down, while for other weapons its just a damage penalty instead if you use them against defenses that are strong against them. Of course, the enemy needs to actually have enough point defense to shoot all of it down, or some of your missiles and strike craft will be able to slip through. So these weapons can be devastating if enemies have weak point defenses or completely ineffective if they have strong point defenses. Note that your standard point defense is better against missiles (Missiles have low evasion and standard point defense has higher base damage), while Flak is better against strike craft (strike craft are highly evasive; Flak has better tracking than standard point defense at the cost of slightly lower damage, so it can hit strike craft far more accurately and does better damage against them overall due to missing less shots). Against missiles, both point defense and flak are good enough at tracking them (again, because missiles have lower evasion), so that's why standard Point Defense wins there.
All battleships with kinetic artillery and tachyon Lance's
Before that build guns and plasma until you can get battleships
