The Destroyer Problem [Analysis]

[Larknok1]

Corvettes can swarm and drop Neutron Torpedoes / Disruptors everywhere.

Cruisers can swarm and decimate everything.

Battleships can swarm and decimate everything before that everything can even enter range.

Destroyers can.... well they're not really the best at anything when everybody is flying around with Cruiser and Battleship swarms.

So what's the deal with Destroyers? Why do they seem to be getting the short end of the stick when it comes to their actual use in game?

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It's hard to pin down exactly, but it basically comes down to these two features:

1) Their evasion stat is at a VERY awkward place.
2) Their tracking bonus is usually worthless.

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Let's talk about the first problem: 1) Their evasion stat is at a VERY awkward place.

Weapons in Stellaris are separated into THREE categories: S / M / L, and each carries an increase in stopping power, but with lower accuracy and tracking as you go up in size.

The accuracies average somewhere around 78 / 74 / 70 for the three sizes.

The tracking stats average somewhere around 60 / 30 / 5 for the three sizes.

Now there are FOUR default evasion stats for ships: Corvette (60), Destroyer (25), Cruiser (10), Battleship (5).

As you advance in tech, the evasion bonus provided by thrusters increases at the same rate the tracking bonus provided by sensors increases -- so we can ignore both of their contributions here.

Combat computers will give Corvettes 3 / 6 / 11 extra evasion as tech increases, so let's just average across the tech levels and pretend Corvettes have 66 base evasion.

Now let's look at what each size gun can do to each ship by weapon size (S/M/L) after subtracting tracking from evasion, and remaining evasion from accuracy (unchanged accuracy is in bold):

Weapon Accuracy against Corvettes: 72 / 38 / 9

Weapon Accuracy against Destroyers: 78 / 74 / 50

Weapon Accuracy against Cruisers: 78 / 74 / 65

Weapon Accuracy against Battleships: 78 / 74 / 70

What you really want to pay attention to here is how similar the accuracy profiles against Destroyers and Cruisers are, specifically the medium weapon stat: 74% accuracy of Medium weapons against Destroyers -- the EXACT same against Cruisers and Battleships.

Now, Medium weapons are basically the most prevalent weapon size. So Destroyers have NO marginal advantage evading Medium-sized weapons compared to Cruisers and Battleships.

Provided they cost half as many minerals as Cruisers, but have much less than half Hull Points (Cruisers have 1600 compared to Destroyer 600), and Destroyers have less than half the armor (Cruisers have 30 base, Destroyers have 12 base):

Cruisers are simply twice as survivable per mineral than Destroyers to the most common weapon type (Medium weapons) -- and let's not pretend that 15% accuracy difference that we see between their Large weapon accuracies is going to make up the difference.

Proposition: Increase Base Destroyer Evasion to 40.

This jump in evasion by 15% sounds huge. But here's how it would actually affect destroyers:

Weapon Accuracy against Destroyers: 78 / 64 / 35

Compare these to the stats above. Medium accuracy is 10% lower, and Large accuracy is down 15%. This should make Destroyers much more survivable in the meta dominated by Cruisers / Battleships loaded to the brim with Medium / Large weapons, and actually provide a reason to run Small weapons.

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Now let's talk about the second problem destroyers have: 2) Their tracking bonus is usually worthless.

As you tech up your combat computers, Corvettes get extra evasion (3 / 6 / 11), Cruisers get extra accuracy (2 / 4) AND fire-rate (5 / 10 / 15), Battleships get extra damage (5 / 10) AND fire-rate (0 / 0 / 5) --- and, drumroll please -- Destroyers get extra tracking (10 / 12 / 14) and extra evasion (2 / 4 / 9).

For reasons above, the extra evasion is very much welcomed, but because of where Destroyer evasion currently is (just 25), the extra evasion is statistically insignificant until you pick-up the 9 bonus -- at the very end of the game. Even then, you'll only have a 4% accuracy decrease when fired on by Medium weapons. This is completely canceled by the extra 4% accuracy Cruisers get at the same tech level -- so let's just completely disregard Destroyer computer evasion, and focus on the extra tracking.

So what does 10 / 12 / 14 extra tracking do?

Well, scroll up and look at those weapon accuracy read-outs again. See the non-bold numbers? (There's only one for Cruisers / Destroyers, and three for Corvettes). Increase them by 10 / 12 / 14 until you reach the proper bold number.

This translates to:

6% accuracy increase using small weapons against Corvettes
10 / 12 / 14% accuracy increase using medium weapons against Corvettes
10 / 12 / 14% accuracy increase using large weapons against Corvettes

10 / 12 / 14% accuracy increase using large weapons against Destroyers

5% accuracy increase using large weapons against Cruisers

Seems like a lot. However: If you disregard the paltry 5-6% bonuses on either end of the spectrum, you disregard the bonus against other Destroyers (because nobody is running them right now), and you disregard the bonus of large weapons against Corvettes (because you're not going to hit Corvettes with large wapons either way) you end up with:

10 / 12 / 14% accuracy increase using medium weapons against Corvettes

Now you have to ask yourself: Is this really as good as (3 / 6 / 11) evasion on Corvettes? Or (2 / 4) Accuracy AND (5 / 10 / 15) fire-rate on Cruisers? Or (5 / 10) Damage AND (0 / 0 / 5) fire-rate on Battleships?

Are Corvettes really that much of a threat to you this meta that you need to pack medium-weapons on Destroyers? Really?

At the moment, there is one solution to this problem already available. Just run end-game destroyers that look like this:

Note the Enigmatic Decoder. You get super-accurate Kinetic Artillery, and Medium Gauss Cannons that shred Corvettes from 65 range. (This particular build has 80 accuracy Medium Gauss and 53 tracking, so against max 90 evasion Corvettes, it's STILL 43% accurate.) Still not out-of-this-world good, but it's the best you can have due to what the extra tracking is really giving you: better medium weapons against Corvettes and slightly better large weapons against Cruisers.

If you don't want to run this build however, here's my fix:

Proposition: Further Increase Base Evasion of All Ship Types by 5 (or decrease Tracking of all Weapon Types by 5).

Both actions achieve the same thing.

This would effectively give the extra Destroyer tracking something to mitigate -- because at the moment, there's really nothing for it to do against most targets.

What this change really accomplishes is keeping Destroyer accuracy the same as it is right now (at weapon accuracy max, most of the time) while decreasing the accuracy of weapons on every other ship type (basically). It would also buff Enigmatic Decoders a little bit.

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Thank you guys for indulging me, and making it through my block of text! Let me know what you guys think below.


EDIT: I_am_Nemo suggested that in a mineral : mineral fight between Destroyers / Cruisers, the Destroyers were somehow winning, against all the stats that point otherwise.

Well I ran the match-ups a couple ways.

Here are my results: (I ran 10 Destroyers with 2 M and 2 S Gauss weapons, and 5 Cruisers with 6 M Gauss Weapons)

Shield Duels:

Test #1: All 10 Destroyers killed. 0 Cruisers killed:

Test #2: All 10 Destroyers killed. 0 Cruisers killed.

That's enough of that. I'll step the numbers up five-fold (50 Destroyers, 25 Cruisers).

Here's that:

Test #1: All 50 Destroyers killed. 4 Cruisers killed.

Test #2: All 50 Destroyers killed. 3 Cruisers killed.

Doesn't look like it's going to get better for the Destroyers here. Now for armor tests.

Test #1: All 50 Destroyers killed. 1 Cruiser killed.

I think that's enough. Cruisers >> Destroyers in the 1v1.

 

[Azmodael]

Destroyers are the dedicated PD platform, but since missiles are terrible they are not really needed for anything. Destroyers were supposed to counter corvette but they don't carry enough S weapons to fulfill their role.

 

[newatomicturist]

Agree. I've been having problems in battles with my fleets that had destroyers. I scrapped all DDs and replaced with corvettes in 1:1 ratio and all the problems wanished. DDs were taking unusual amount of fire on them and were contributing next to nothing to the damege dealt. They weren't even a distraction ad corvrttes since they were quickly being dealt with. So right now I build DDs only in very early game as a pocket BBs and then scrap in favor of cruisers.

 

[kineticspartan]

I don't really understand the need for destroyers. If they're meant to be a "bridge" between corvettes and cruisers, then what is the purpose of corvettes at all?
And if they are supposed to bridge the corvette-cruiser gap, why is there no bridge between cruisers and battleships? (battle cruisers, for example).

 

[I_am_Nemo]

I'm a little confused as to what role you're envisioning for destroyers. In my understanding, they were intended to be corvette killers; something to keep the high evasion swarmers away from the big, beautiful battleships. The problem with that is not that corvettes aren't dangerous to battleships (or maybe it is, I've gotta run some tests) but that there are currently not one but two ships that do a good job killing corvettes: cruisers and. . . other corvettes.

First: cruisers. They carry up to six M slot weapons compared to destroyer's two. Even if the cruisers get evaded more often than the destroyers do, you're still looking at over 2x the firepower as well as over 2x the survivability. Here's where I think you're on to something; the effective evasion buff would make the destroyers tracking on M slots more valuable, as a cruiser's M slots would probably miss like crazy when firing on corvettes.

On the other hand, you still have the problem where corvettes can bring six S-slot weapons for roughly the price of a destroyer's 2 M 2 S. If I followed your numbers correctly, with your evasion buff/tracking nerf, a base accuracy against corvettes would be 67/33/4. Ignoring the large weapons, you still have corvettes mounting 6 S slots @ 67 effective accuracy, while destroyers run two S slots @ 78 accuracy and 2 M slots @ 43 accuracy. I'm not convinced that destroyers become ideal corvette killers over just running corvettes of your own.

It's possible that with your evasion boost to destroyers, they'd become something of a secondary corvette - a small ship with a big punch. That's not a bad thing per se, but I see that as somewhat messing with the "ideal" pattern: corvettes < destroyers < cruisers < battleships < corvettes (in a swarm). If cruisers start to have trouble killing destroyers with M slots and destroyers aren't totally destroying (heh) corvettes on a per mineral/per fleetcap basis, you run into a situation where corvettes essentially counter everything. (Other corvettes & destroyers b/c small weapons), cruisers and BBs b/c of high evasion).

So while I have no problem with the tracking/effective evasion change, I'm a bit hesitant on the DD specific evasion buff. I don't object to increasing survivability for DDs, but need to still be countered by something other than corvettes or themselves. That could be strike craft/missiles I guess, if those were less vulnerable to flack + overkill.

In addition to the effective evasion change, I'd propose adding weapons slots to DDs in some fasion. 1 - 2 S slots, or maybe another M slot. I'd definitely favor the S slots if destroyers evasion is buffed; if not, the M slot might be a good choice (as CCs would still have a substantial hull point + armor advantage). Either slot addition would make them better and cutting down corvette swarms, which would become even more threatening to CCs and BBs due to the increased effective evasion on corvettes.


Tl; DR - Effective evasion yes, destroyer evasion maybe, needs more cowbell weapons slots.

 

[Space Chicken]

My DDs work just well as support ships to BBs. With their extra tracking, they are the best corvette (and strike craft) killers and enemy corvettes often fly past my cruisers to attack BBs. If I have 10-20 DDs with 30-40 BBs, I don't really lose many DDs so I don't see any need for extra evasion. DDs only get seriously shot if I lose my cruisers, so DDs aren't really meant to take hits.

Just remember that 10% increase of hit chance from 50% to 60% doesn't increase DPS by 10%, but 20%.

 

[I_am_Nemo]

I just ran a few tests on DDs vs. CVs and was pleasantly surprised by the fact that the DDs consistantly won - both at early (L 1 everything, shields on the corvettes, shields + 1 armor on DD, no aux) and late (max l everything, shield heavy, both using capacitors) spec outs (kinetcs for weapons). However, they won with relatively few remaining (20 CV vs. 10 DD, early spec, 4 DD remaining. 10 v. 5, early and late spec, I think both times 2 DD remaining). In the early spec 20v10, the destroyers M slots did 1200 shield damge, 5000 total vs. 600 shield, 3000 total for the S slots.

With that, I'm still concerned that boosting effective evasion, which would affect DDs M slots (unless I'm reading your numbers wrong) would lead to a situation where the 6 S slots on two CVs would be just as effective against other CVs as 2M, 2S DDs. (I do admit that I was probably overly down on DDs as CV killers initially).

 

[Schatten51]

i use the DD´s as Flak Cover..2x Flak Batteries in Mediums and 2 s-weapons, something with high shield damage mostly.
But not so much of them, like 4 Corvettes, 3 Cruiser and 1 DD.....since AI insists on using Missles and Strike Craft someones has to kill it.....

 

[Larknok1]

I'm a little confused as to what role you're envisioning for destroyers. In my understanding, they were intended to be corvette killers; something to keep the high evasion swarmers away from the big, beautiful battleships. The problem with that is not that corvettes aren't dangerous to battleships (or maybe it is, I've gotta run some tests) but that there are currently not one but two ships that do a good job killing corvettes: cruisers and. . . other corvettes.

I agree with your analysis. I differ slightly in that my view for Destroyers is very much still to hit Corvettes well. I simply want them to slightly better survive normal Cruiser / Battleship fleet compositions that weren't designed to deal with them, but still shred them.

I want this because I get the very strong impression that Destroyers get wiped from your end-game fleets just as rapidly as Corvettes, but unlike Corvettes, are very expensive to replace. This makes them an investment I rather wouldn't want to make most of the time.

First: cruisers. They carry up to six M slot weapons compared to destroyer's two. Even if the cruisers get evaded more often than the destroyers do, you're still looking at over 2x the firepower as well as over 2x the survivability. Here's where I think you're on to something; the effective evasion buff would make the destroyers tracking on M slots more valuable, as a cruiser's M slots would probably miss like crazy when firing on corvettes.

Right now, Cruisers shoot at Destroyers with identical accuracy with Medium weapons. With 40% Evasion Destroyers and a 5% less tracking on all weapons, the general stats would look like:

Weapon Accuracy: 78 / 74 / 70
Tracking Stats: 55 / 25 / 0
Ship Evasion: Corvette (66) / Destroyer (40) / Cruiser (10) / Battleship (5)

Weapon Accuracy against Corvettes: 67 / 33 / 4

Weapon Accuracy against Destroyers: 78 / 59 / 30

Weapon Accuracy against Cruisers: 78 / 74 / 60

Weapon Accuracy against Battleships: 78 / 74 / 65

Now the extra (let's assume 12 extra) Destroyer tracking would kick in, and (on destroyers) these are the correct accuracy stats:

Tracking Stats: 67 / 37 / 12

Weapon Accuracy against Corvettes: 78 / 45 / 16

Weapon Accuracy against Destroyers: 78 / 71 / 42

Weapon Accuracy against Cruisers: 78 / 74 / 70

Weapon Accuracy against Battleships: 78 / 74 / 70

The differences are:

11 extra Small Accuracy @ Corvettes
12 extra Medium Accuracy @ Corvettes
12 extra Large Accuracy @ Corvettes
12 extra Medium Accuracy @ Destroyers
12 extra Large Accuracy @ Destroyers
10 extra Large Accuracy @ Cruisers
5 extra Large Accuracy @ Battleships

This is probably closer to on par with the other Ship Computer bonuses than the game allows right now.

On the other hand, you still have the problem where corvettes can bring six S-slot weapons for roughly the price of a destroyer's 2 M 2 S. If I followed your numbers correctly, with your evasion buff/tracking nerf, a base accuracy against corvettes would be 67/33/4.

Correct.

Ignoring the large weapons, you still have corvettes mounting 6 S slots @ 67 effective accuracy, while destroyers run two S slots @ 78 accuracy and 2 M slots @ 43 accuracy.

Not quite. 74 (Medium Acc) - [ 66 (Corvette Evasion) - 37 (Destroyer Medium Tracking w/ 12 bonus) ] = 45 accuracy. Unless you were assuming only 10 tracking on DDs, in which case (at that tech level) you should assume only 63 Corvette Evasion, and you get 46 accuracy. Either way, your calculation was approximately right, but not quite precise.

I'm not convinced that destroyers become ideal corvette killers over just running corvettes of your own.

Most Corvettes would have to close to 45 range (on Gauss) before firing. Destroyers would start at 65 range, blasting away with 45 accuracy and slugs that deal a whopping 35 (Gauss) damage to Corvette hulls.

Alternatively, you could opt for Medium Stormfire Autocannons, which only start at 40 range (so at aprox. Corvette range on each other), but would hit with an insane accuracy of 58 on Corvettes. Those are Medium Autocannon slugs firing rapidly and doing a whopping 22 (Autocannon) damage to Corvette hulls.

Destroyers would certainly win the match-up. As for ideal? Well, there's no disputing their stats against each other is superior. The question is whether or not the Destroyers will even stick around, or just melt against Cruiser / Battleship fleets.

It's possible that with your evasion boost to destroyers, they'd become something of a secondary corvette - a small ship with a big punch. That's not a bad thing per se, but I see that as somewhat messing with the "ideal" pattern: corvettes < destroyers < cruisers < battleships < corvettes (in a swarm).

No, my intention was to perfect that ideal pattern. The issue is that Destroyers seem to disappear from large fleets because their suvivability is such trash -- and unlike Corvettes, they're not easily replaceable.

If cruisers start to have trouble killing destroyers with M slots and destroyers aren't totally destroying (heh) corvettes on a per mineral/per fleetcap basis, you run into a situation where corvettes essentially counter everything. (Other corvettes & destroyers b/c small weapons), cruisers and BBs b/c of high evasion).

I don't particularly see a problem with a small power shift towards Corvettes / Destroyers, because the power dynamic is skewed towards Cruisers / Battleships right now.

So while I have no problem with the tracking/effective evasion change, I'm a bit hesitant on the DD specific evasion buff. I don't object to increasing survivability for DDs, but need to still be countered by something other than corvettes or themselves. That could be strike craft/missiles I guess, if those were less vulnerable to flack + overkill.

Their counter will always be their lack of armor, hull points, and nowhere near enough evasion for it to help much -- even after my propositions. Large weapons STILL hit Destroyers with 30% frequency on my propositions. Right now Large weapons hit Destroyers with 50% effective accuracy and absolutely shred them.

And yes, as you pointed out, missiles (and anything else with slightly higher than average tracking/accuracy) will make up the difference the new Destroyer evasion provides, and effectively be a counter.

Medium Autocannons in particular would be particularly good against Destroyers.

In addition to the effective evasion change, I'd propose adding weapons slots to DDs in some fasion. 1 - 2 S slots, or maybe another M slot. I'd definitely favor the S slots if destroyers evasion is buffed; if not, the M slot might be a good choice (as CCs would still have a substantial hull point + armor advantage). Either slot addition would make them better and cutting down corvette swarms, which would become even more threatening to CCs and BBs due to the increased effective evasion on corvettes.

I just want a Destroyer bow piece with 2 Medium weapon slots.

Tl; DR - Effective evasion yes, destroyer evasion maybe, needs more cowbell weapons slots.

Let's re-cap:

A) Effective Evasion increase (or tracking decrease) by 5 does three things:

1) It decreases the effectiveness of Large weapons slightly (5% less accurate against everything)
2) It decreases the effectiveness of Small / Medium weapons against Corvettes (5%)
3) 1 and 2 do not effect Destroyers, effectively buffing their accuracy in those situations by 5%.

This generally shifts power ever-so-slightly towards Corvettes / Destroyers. I personally think this is a good thing because power is overwhelmingly skewed towards Cruisers / Battleships right now.

B) Increase of Destroyer Evasion by 15 does two things:

1) Medium weapons hit Destroyers 10% less often (unless fired by other Destroyers)
2) Large weapons hit Destroyers 15% less often (unless fired by other Destroyers)

This allows Destroyers to better survive against basic Cruiser / Battleship spam that's intended merely to combat other Cruiser / Battleship heavy builds, but happens to deal with Destroyers without any other thought necessary.

Now players will feel incentivized to run Small weapons on Cruisers, or high accuracy lower stopping power Medium weapons (like Autocannons) on Cruisers, or just run their own Medium weapon Destroyers to deal with Destroyer heavy fleets.

The focus will simply shift from "Kinetic Artillery on EVERYTHING and let's completely ignore Small Weapons" to: "I have to run weapons of all sizes, and ship types of all types to counter everything. So now I have to pay attention to what enemy fleets comprise and plan accordingly to beat them."

 

[Elfwind]

I use destroyers as flak battery platforms, and load up some smalls for helping with corvettes. Missiles don't need the extra tracking and since corvettes favor shields for defense it's usually more kinetics that work well. But I'm sure you all already know that!

 

[Larknok1]

I use destroyers as flak battery platforms, and load up some smalls for helping with corvettes. Missiles don't need the extra tracking and since corvettes favor shields for defense it's usually more kinetics that work well. But I'm sure you all already know that!

Running Small weapons on Destroyers is not very ideal, because you only get a very tiny accuracy increase over Cruisers loaded up with the same small weapons. Check the numbers in the original post to see why (all small weapons are only 6 accuracy off from max against Corvettes anyways, and don't need the extra Destroyer tracking to hit well) -- whereas Medium weapons on Destroyers can still hit Corvettes with fair frequency.

 

[Larknok1]

I just ran a few tests on DDs vs. CVs and was pleasantly surprised by the fact that the DDs consistantly won - both at early (L 1 everything, shields on the corvettes, shields + 1 armor on DD, no aux) and late (max l everything, shield heavy, both using capacitors) spec outs (kinetcs for weapons). However, they won with relatively few remaining (20 CV vs. 10 DD, early spec, 4 DD remaining. 10 v. 5, early and late spec, I think both times 2 DD remaining). In the early spec 20v10, the destroyers M slots did 1200 shield damge, 5000 total vs. 600 shield, 3000 total for the S slots.

With that, I'm still concerned that boosting effective evasion, which would affect DDs M slots (unless I'm reading your numbers wrong) would lead to a situation where the 6 S slots on two CVs would be just as effective against other CVs as 2M, 2S DDs. (I do admit that I was probably overly down on DDs as CV killers initially).

Could you post about this? This outcome seems statistically unlikely on several considerations:

Medium Gauss weapons hit both craft with the same accuracy.
Small Gauss weapons hit the Cruiser with just a 4% accuracy increase.
Cruisers have more than twice the health and more than twice the armor.
Cruiser Combat Computer +4 Accuracy / +15 Fire-Rate exists, and the tracking bonus on Destroyers isn't doing anything.

It just seems very unlikely that the DDs would win, unless DD combat AI is focusing fire much better than Cruiser combat AI.

 

[Larknok1]

Destroyers are the dedicated PD platform, but since missiles are terrible they are not really needed for anything. Destroyers were supposed to counter corvette but they don't carry enough S weapons to fulfill their role.

Actually, S weapons hit Corvettes near maximum accuracy already, and most don't need the extra Destroyer tracking.

Destroyers are best loaded out with high-accuracy Medium weapons, or low-accuracy Small weapons against enemy Corvette swarms.

The point is to let the large tracking bonus actually do something for you.

 

[I_am_Nemo]

Could you post about this? This outcome seems statistically unlikely on several considerations:

Medium Gauss weapons hit both craft with the same accuracy.
Small Gauss weapons hit the Cruiser with just a 4% accuracy increase.
Cruisers have more than twice the health and more than twice the armor.
Cruiser Combat Computer +4 Accuracy / +15 Fire-Rate exists, and the tracking bonus on Destroyers isn't doing anything.

It just seems very unlikely that the DDs would win, unless DD combat AI is focusing fire much better than Cruiser combat AI.

That's easily explained; I didn't define my abbreviations. Was using CV as CorVette, rather than Cruiser. It's sometimes/usually used for cruisers, hence your confusion, but there's no other two-letter that fits corvettes (or rather, it's a natural fit), where cruisers can become CCs by the same logic that leads destroyers to be DDs, or Battleships to be BBs (well, other than not wanting to call them BS). Calling Corvettes CCs and cruisers CVs just seemed counter-intuitive and inevitably confusing.

Will get to your other post later; probably tomorrow.

 

[GloatingSwine]

Okay, so I put this to the test.

Obviously it had to be done with only guaranteed tech (ie what you get from the console research_technologies command) so no enigmatic decoder, but I was testing against 19% evasion cruisers so the +6 evasion would have done nothing anyway.

The destroyers ended up looking like this:

50 Destroyers built as close as you can get to the OP's design with guaranteed tech (so down tier all the power and shields) vs. 25 cruisers that looked like this:

The cruisers defeated the destroyer fleet with only 7 losses.

I then tested them against Corvettes in a 50v100. Obviously here the +6 tracking would have done something, so I down tiered the corvettes' engines to tier 2 to reduce their evasion by 6. This gives the destroyers an extra advantage as the corvettes have lost 40% combat speed.

The corvettes also defeated the destroyer fleet but suffered 51 losses doing it.

The Destroyers' best result came against a mixed fleet of 11 Cruisers and 42 Corvettes (equal mineral cost to 50 destroyers) where they focused down the cruisers first, getting more kills against them due to having less return fire until the ranges closed and went on to kill 14 of the Corvettes. This is not unexpected, single focused fleet designs tend to overperform against mixed fleets due to focus fire.

But what about if we didn't think Enigmatic Decoders were worth worrying about?

Switching the armour for another shield and a shield capacitor they were able to take 35 corvettes down (the corvettes have their tier 4 engine back now). I suspect the reduced combat speed contributed as many extra casualties in the first test as the reduced evasion because it allowed extra volleys before the corvettes got in range though, so the 51 casualties first time might not be exactly representative of how ED destroyers would perform, they would have less time to shoot before the corvettes reached range. These ships' extra survivability killed one more cruiser (with a plasma cannon they killed 10).

Running them 100v25 against Battleships they only killed 5.

Switching the whole shebang for 2x Med Plas/2x Small Gauss got murdered even harder by the cruisers, killing only three, and killed 52 corvettes (again, the corvettes are faster now, but now everything is shorter range that matters less).

Switching to 2x Medium Autocannon + 2x Small Plasma for a relatively hard counter to corvettes they managed to defeat 74, but I didn't even bother trying them against Cruisers because they now have no AP at all.


So, whilst that endgame destroyer design looks like it is indeed the best all rounder (though I'd still take the regenerating shield version over the Enigmatic Decoder which you might not even get in a strategically relevant timeframe), it's still a bag of nails.

The answer to the destroyer problem is not to build destroyers right now. They don't do the thing they're supposed to do well enough and they don't punch up effectively either.

 

[Larknok1]

Okay, so I put this to the test.

While I'm reading this, check out the Cruiser vs. Destroyer match-up I did in the edit of the main body of this post.

Cruisers *crushed* Destroyers in the 1v1 running 6M Gauss Cruisers and 2M 2S Gauss Destroyers.

Note: Why are you running Plasma on anything in these match-ups? Plasma only shines in combined arms fleets. Run Gauss on everything (or Kinetic Artillery where you want to) for 1v1 match-ups.

 

[I_am_Nemo]

Switching to 2x Medium Autocannon + 2x Small Plasma for a relatively hard counter to corvettes they managed to defeat 74, but I didn't even bother trying them against Cruisers because they now have no AP at all.

You're saying 50 destroyers lost to 100 corvettes with that build? Or that you only tested them against 74 corvettes?

And as far as whether they're good at what they're supposed to do, I'm inclined to agree with you, but OP's main point was, I think, to fix that.

 

[I_am_Nemo]

While I'm reading this, check out the Cruiser vs. Destroyer match-up I did in the edit of the main body of this post.

Cruisers *crushed* Destroyers in the 1v1 running 6M Gauss Cruisers and 2M 2S Gauss Destroyers.

Yeah, I should have defined my acronyms. That was a destroyer vs. /corvette/ test (see post upthread). Also, it's /Nemo/, dammit! It's a Latin pun, not a Roman emperor.

 

[Larknok1]

Yeah, I should have defined my acronyms. That was a destroyer vs. /corvette/ test (see post upthread). Also, it's /Nemo/, dammit! It's a Latin pun, not a Roman emperor.

So your finding was that Destroyers beat Corvettes in a mineral:mineral match-up?

I'll run my own tests to check your result.

 

[Larknok1]

Corvettes cost ~320, and Destroyers ~510, so I opted for a 32 Destroyer vs. 51 Corvette battle to have approximately equal mineral fleet costs.

Destroyers were 2M 2S Gauss w/ Max Shields / Shield Capacitor

Corvettes were 3S Gauss w/ Max Shields / Shield Capacitor

Here are my tests:

Test #1: 51 Corvettes killed. 9 Destroyers killed.

Test #2: 51 Corvettes killed. 10 Destroyers killed.

I could try Armor builds as well, but I don't think Corvettes / Destroyers should be outfitted with armor anyways -- so it looks like Destroyers do perform fairly well against Corvettes even in this build.

Increasing Destroyer evasion (as I proposed) wouldn't make Corvette shots start to become any less accurate, and decreased tracking on all weapon types would decrease Destroyer medium weapon accuracy on Corvettes.

This match-up would stay the same, or, on a rough estimate, kill 13 or 14 Destroyers (~50%) for all the Cruisers killed (100%).

Meanwhile, the Destroyer vs. Cruiser/Battleship match-ups would still be won by Cruiser/Battleships, but not be utter mow-downs of the Destroyers.