The Large Fleet Collider - 2.0 Fleet Balance

[Kryptic57]

With the introduction of 2.0 we have had thrust onto us an almost totally new combat system with new weapon properties, new targeting, and new emergency jumping mechanics. For us to take this new system and use it to build better fleets™ requires information.

Enter the large fleet collider, a collection of tests using the fleets in the new system and analysis on their results. I hope to continuously add to this and with the help of you, build it into a repository of the best (and maybe worst) options we have when taking our fleets to the stars.

First - for those interested in where these numbers come from:

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When designing these tests I created a new game, unlocked all tech's using a console command, then set about creating fleets. As a baseline I have used the games own "Auto-Best and auto complete" setting in most cases. My thought here was a lot of AI enemies and many players would defer to using these types of setups, and in addition they produce a good test set since they use a mix of defenses and offensive weaponry. For each combat I ran 5 sets of tests and recorded the losses on each side.

And now to the nitty gritty. Each below section represents one test. I provide some info about the test and then some analysis. When discussing results I use two primary statistics

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Fleet loss rate: What percentage of a fleet was destroyed in the combat
Mineral efficiency: This is a measure of how effective the fleet was. It is a percentage of each mineral was killed vs was lost. For example a mineral efficiency of 200% means for every 1 mineral worth of ship that was lost, 2 minerals worth of ship was destroyed on the enemy side

1. Control Testing and the birth of the baseline mixed fleet:

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This test uses a mixed fleet vs an identical one. This was done to establish what level of randomness is in the system. Over the 5 tests I concluded that in general there is much more randomness in the system than expected. The assumption for two identical fleets fighting is a 50/50, but in testing I found that this is not the case. The highest losses for a fleet was 67%, while the lowest was 37%. On average over 5 tests we can see that there can be up to a 10% gap between the winner and looser despite being identical.

Going forward with mono testing, this fleet is used as the control fleet as it's a good representation of a mixed fleet with a mix of weaponry.

Fleet composition: 36.7k combat strength 143 naval capacity 45,667 total mineral cost

Average Losses: 40-50%
Mineral Efficiency: 90-120%

25 Missile Corvettes:

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13 Picket Destroyers:

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9 Torpedo Cruisers:

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7 Main Battleships:

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2. Mono-fleet all Corvette

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This test pits a corvette mono fleet against the mixed control fleet. Initially I had to do a double take as using the 45,667 total minerals equivalent of the mixed fleet creates a swarm of 133 corvettes which somehow have a combat strength of 61.8k. Needless to say this swarm of corvettes absolutely destroys the mixed fleet. When running another test limiting the corvette swarm to an even 36.7k in combat power requires a little more than half the minerals as the mixed fleet. This is mostly do to how much more expensive cruisers and battleships are compared to the small ships. On another note, even the pared down corvette swarm manages to retain a 71% mineral efficiency despite suffering 61% losses.

This leads me to believe that corvette swarms will make excellent hit and run fleets that can punch way above their weight in terms of raw minerals. However, if the combat emergency warp ability is denied to them (such as with an FTL inhibitor) I imagine they would get creamed.

Fleet composition: 61.8k combat strength 133 naval capacity 45,885 total minerals
Victory vs mixed fleet
Average Losses: 22% vs 58%
Mineral Efficiency: 259% vs 39%

Fleet composition: 36.7k combat strength 79 naval capacity 27,255 total minerals
Retreat vs mixed fleet
Average Losses: 60% vs 25%
Mineral Efficiency: 71% vs 239%

133 or 79 Torpedo Corvettes:

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3. Monofleet all destroyer

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This test pits a mono destroyer fleet against the mixed fleet. Unlike with the corvettes the minerals, naval capacity, and power of the fleets is pretty even. Which is why the results are so surprising. with a mineral efficiency of 322% these arty destroyers totally destroyed the mixed fleet with losses for them as high as 84%. Meanwhile the destroyers lost only 20% on average which is a measly 14 destroyers.

I can't really explain why this is the case. It seems that the mixed fleet lost the majority of their own destroyers early on leaving the cruisers/battleships unable to effectively fight the destroyers. Meanwhile there just aren't enough corvettes to down them before they too are taken out. Ultimately, it seems like destroyers carrying oversized weapons will indeed pose a very real threat to cruisers and battleships.

Fleet composition: 36.8k combat strength 140 naval capacity 45,780 total minerals
Victory vs mixed fleet
Average losses: 20% vs 63%
Mineral Efficiency: 322% vs 32%

70 Artillery Destroyers:

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4. Mono fleet all cruiser

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This one was pretty disappointing. Despite using what was previously considered the best meta build, the cruiser had a terrible showing compared to the mixed fleet. This is likely due in part to the removal of bombers from the game. This is one case where I believe the new better cruiser™ is yet to be found. Until then I definitely recommend against using cruisers as a mono fleet.

Fleet composition: 34.2k combat strength 144 naval capacity 45,684 total minerals
Retreat vs mixed fleet
Average losses: 54% vs 15%
Mineral Efficiency: 20% vs 572% (what a wopper, by far the highest in testing done)

36 Line Cruisers:

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5. Mono fleet all battleships

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This was a pretty interesting test. For one, we have the first instance where the fleet retreats, but actually come out ahead in terms of damage done. This is because battleships have a good chance to escape thank to their very large buffer of health during which they can emergency FTL away. As far as the composition, this absolutely smashed everything that was larger than a corvette but then struggled to finish them off. This leads me to believe that you will absolutely need artillery battleships in your fleet even when mixed with smaller ships. Also, just like the corvettes, for some reason an equal amount of minerals get you a far higher combat power.

Fleet composition: 52.1k combat power 136 naval capacity 44,727 total minerals
Retreat vs mixed fleet (but still won...)
Average losses: 48% vs 74%
Mineral efficiency: 157% vs 66%

17 Artillery Battleships:

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6. The (current) King of Battleships - Mono a mono

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Now that the tread has gotten legs we've seen some new builds and one of the most interesting is the Tachyon/Neutron Launcher Battleship. Using the L slot to fit this previously torpedo weapon combined with some auxilary fire controls does a lot for the ship being able to hit smaller targets and gives it much better odds at killing off smaller ships. In mixed testing this build clobbered the mixed composition fleet and also swept a mono a mono test vs the previous mono build ship.

For all testing in this category we will be using the Mono-Battleship

Fleet composition: 52.7k combat power 136 naval capacity 44,387 total minerals
17 Tachyon-Neutron-Artillery Battleships:

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Up first we run this into the torpedo corvette swarm (v2). No surprise running a torpedo corvette into a large battleship with no point defense ends in a W for the corvettes. What is surprising here is despite having an overwhelming counter in the torpedo corvette, this battleship manages to maintain an impressive 66% mineral efficiency against them. This leads me to say without a doubt this is the king of battleships.

Battleships vs Corvette swarm:
Retreat
Average Losses: 53% vs 30%
Mineral Efficiency: 66% vs 171%

133 Torpedo Corvettes (v2)

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Next we vs the Arty Destroyer. As expected, the increased tracking along with the Neutron Launchers allows the Battleships to win out against the destroyers, although not by a significant margin. In fact in all cases the battleships actually fled the field to fight another day, although they won in terms of damage done. I would guess in a fight without retreat the destroyers would win out.

Battleships vs Destroyers:
Retreat (mineral victory)
Average Losses: 38% vs 61%
Mineral Efficiency: 165% vs 62%

70 Artillery Destroyers:

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At current I have no good tests for Mono-Battleship vs Cruiser or Battleships since this design absolutely crushes everything I've thrown at it above destroyers. If you have a build that can beat this BB post it and we'll run it through the gauntlet.

X. This section contains testing which other members have performed

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1. Torakka - Testing a new BB loadout using Tachyon/KA/Neutron Launcher. Great results vs mixed fleet(1.0).

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I tested monofleet of this (17 ships for 44387 minerals) against your mixed fleet

The results were following (five matches, no admirals or other bonuses for either side):

Monofleet losses     Mixed fleet losses                          Mineral ratio
2*2611 = 5222   vs   25*356 + 13*568 + 8*1325 + 5*2494 = 39354   754%
2*2611 = 5222   vs   25*356 + 13*568 + 6*1325 + 4*2494 = 34210   655%
2*2611 = 5222   vs   25*356 + 13*568 + 8*1325 + 2*2494 = 31872   610%
2*2611 = 5222   vs   25*356 + 12*568 + 8*1325 + 5*2494 = 38786   743%
2*2611 = 5222   vs   25*356 + 13*568 + 9*1325 + 7*2494 = 45667   875%

Monofleet of Tachyon+3KA+Neutron Launcher BBs won every time and had on average 727% efficiency when comparing mineral cost of losses.

2. Torakka - Testing Mono-Battleship Arc Weapons vs mixed fleet(1.0). It does work but not as spectacularly as some conventional designs

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QUOTE="Torakka, post: 23860444, member: 231564"]One more test against that mixed fleet, this time with 18 of this (for 39582 minerals):

20 (or 21) would have been closer to an equal mineral cost, but fleet command limit (of 150 points) allowed only 18

The results were following (five matches, no admirals or other bonuses for either side):

Monofleet losses     Mixed fleet losses                          Mineral ratio
3*2199 = 6597   vs   14*356 + 9*568 + 8*1325 + 5*2494 = 33166   503%
2*2199 = 4398   vs   17*356 + 8*568 + 5*1325 + 2*2494 = 22209   505%
2*2199 = 4398   vs   12*356 + 6*568 + 7*1325 + 4*2494 = 26931   612%
2*2199 = 4398   vs   13*356 + 8*568 + 8*1325 + 5*2494 = 32242   733%
3*2199 = 6597   vs   18*356 + 7*568 + 5*1325 + 6*2494 = 31973   485%

They won every time with a decent average mineral loss ratio of 568% and would likely have performed well if the fleet command limit wasn't an issue. Then again, Tachyon + KA + NL was still considerably better...[/QUOTE]

3. Torakka - Mono-BB Tachyon/KA/NL vs 50/50 Neut/Plas Destroyer and Torpedo Corvette. BB's fled the field but killed more overall. Upon retest the Corvettes slaughtered the Battleships, although a modified version of the battleship using only hull points with no shield or armor appears to be a strong counter to torpedos.

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Ok, I tested 74 corvettes and 38 destroyers (for 49100 minerals and 150 fleet command) against 18 battleships (for 46998 minerals and 144 fleet command)

Spoiler: Loadouts

Results were following (again five matches, no admirals and no other bonuses for either fleet):

Monofleet losses       Mixed fleet losses    Mineral ratio (mono|mixed)
7*2611  = 18277   vs   37*340 + 37*630 = 35890   197% | 51%
7*2611  = 18277   vs   31*340 + 34*630 = 31960   175% | 57%
11*2611 = 28721   vs   20*340 + 34*630 = 28220   98%  | 102%
12*2611 = 31332   vs   47*340 + 36*630 = 38660   123% | 81%
13*2611 = 33943   vs   32*340 + 33*630 = 31670   93%  | 107%

The mixed fleet won each match, but sustained on average higher casualties: monofleet's kill/death ratio (miner-wise) was on average 137% and mixed fleet's 80%, but there was quite a lot variance.

Sure thing: the mono corvette fleet pretty much obliterated the mono battleship fleet with those same designs. I then wanted to try the bb design that has this far had best results against the original mixed fleet:

(Well, your corvettes using shield and armour ignoring torpedoes was also quite a big push for that design...)

No recorded results for that original shield and armour bb fight, sorry. I was too lazy to do more than one round after that initial bloodbath, but it was definitely on the corvettes' favour.

Results for hull stacking bb (18 for 48222 minerals and 144 fleet command) against the corvette swarm (144 for 48960 minerals and 144 fleet command) are following :

Monofleet losses       Mixed fleet losses   Mineral ratio (bb|cv)
9*2679  = 24111   vs   115*340 = 39100      162% | 62%   cv won
7*2679  = 18753   vs   111*340 = 37740      201% | 50%   cv won
11*2679 = 29469   vs   107*340 = 36380      123% | 81%   cv won
4*2679  = 10716   vs   144*340 = 48960      457% | 22%   bb won
9*2679  = 24111   vs   88*340  = 29920      124% | 81%   cv won

Battleship fleet won one match and had average 213% efficiency while corvettes won four matches and had on average 59% efficiency.

Thanks for reading. I am by no means a master of this game. If you have suggestions or improvements to the tests or better loadouts for the ships please suggest them and I will try and do more tests till we find the ultimate fleet.

 

[BlockBadger]

Thanks, it's a great start. I'm had a feeling missile spam was good, no idea it was that good... I wonder how good ti would be versus an anti-missile fleet.

 

[Defiler99]

Very helpful, thanks. Could you try a "monocruiser" setup that is all Plasma, no kinetic, no PD, etc? In 1.9 that works ridiculously well, but the changes to the armor system may have made it obsolete.

 

[Kipsta]

Hahaha, I am using Cruiser mix 50/50 plasma and carrier like your build in my game so I am doing the mabye worst fleet setup possible, but then again it's better in the real environment, because smaller ships would die more frequently against my weaker neighbors which would give me more war exhaustion...I think? Then again why are you putting shields on your cruisers? I think one is enough if you go for double armor repair. Also use some crystalline armor.

 

[zizard]

Based on my calculations, the old Lance 2ka 2lplas bs should still work.

 

[Kryptic57]

Very helpful, thanks. Could you try a "monocruiser" setup that is all Plasma, no kinetic, no PD, etc? In 1.9 that works ridiculously well, but the changes to the armor system may have made it obsolete.

Very bad news here. The new ship priority targeting appears to prefer like sized hulls when targeting weapons. This means cruisers will prefer to attack other cruisers leaving them open to being pummeled by battleships when running mono vs mixed fleets. Additionally - this particular mix of all plasma weapons gives a very poor return on pure combat power.

Fleet composition 22.2k combat power 144 naval capacity 45,648 total minerals
Retreat vs Mixed Fleet
Average Losses: 44% vs 8%
Mineral Efficiency: 17% vs 656% (New high)

36 Plasma Cruisers:

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[arc2611]

Based on my calculations, the old Lance 2ka 2lplas bs should still work.

I'm not sure but neutron launchers might be comparable or better now--they're basically plasma kinetic artillery.

More importantly armour is actually useful now because even plasma needs some time to chew through the armour layer.

In terms of balance arc emitters remain strong --at least against the Contingency, where their large ships have way too much in the way of ablative soak and being able to bypass two thirds of their hitpoints is a godsend. Against regular empires they're probably weaker because the armour/shield-to-HP ratios are less ridiculous and it might be better to run with tachyon lances.

On Titans your choices are very limited--basically just kinetic artillery or neutron launchers. I would like more variety on them, TBH.

 

[ManelPatu]

So basically corvettes and destroyers got buffed?

 

[zizard]

I'm not sure but neutron launchers might be comparable or better now--they're basically plasma kinetic artillery.

Not being an instant weapon it can't compete unless numbers are OP.

 

[Peko?]

Not being an instant weapon it can't compete unless numbers are OP.

Have they been changed from being an instant weapon?

 

[arc2611]

Not being an instant weapon it can't compete unless numbers are OP.

...What are you on about? They're still "instant" weapons, if you're referring to projectile flight speeds. The neutron/proton line has always had instant/very fast projectile speeds, even when they were still classed as torpedoes.

 

[Hopit]

Not being an instant weapon it can't compete unless numbers are OP.

They're instant


And have I understood this correctly... destroyer only fleet performed the best in your test? If yes.. that's scary and completely opposite compared to last patch

 

[Promethian]

Missiles and hangars are very good. They can be anti armor or armor neutral and in bypassing shields you dont waste power on shield poor weapons like plasma before the shield is down.

Pair with kinetics for simul weakness exploitation or with disruptors to just bypass shields entirely.

 

[f98alda]

It seems mono fleets (except the cruisers) wins solidly against mixed fleets. It would be very interesting to see how the mono fleets work out against each other. After all, it is possible that there is some rock-paper-scissors action going on.

 

[Promethian]

So i just looked more closely and a big part of why the mixed fleet is getting wasted by the CV and DD is it has no coherent strategy. Disuptors for instance are a super niche weapon that if you arent using in that niche are strictly weaker than anything else and by a lot. The mixed fleet uses disruptors in what I would estimate as the worst possible way. The smaller monos on the other hand use highly effective weapons of both types of defense busting.

The BB mono is way too kinetic heavy so it spends a lot of power going through armor. That is why the DD out performed it so well.

 

[Incompetent]

There's an obvious asymmetry when it comes to small versus big ships: big ships are vulnerable to a larger class of weapon loadouts than small ships are.
1. If you have a weapon mix that lacks armour damage or shield damage, it will work against you regardless of their hull size; even corvettes can wear plenty of armour now relative to the cost of the ship. Damage penalties are much more impactful than damage bonuses; you have to be especially cautious when using weapons that have a -75% penalty to something. So we can assume you use a mix of anti-armour and anti-shield weapons (or you rely on penetration).
2. Subject to 1., all weapons are at least moderately effective against big ships. The big artillery weapons may be a bit more effective, but they're not the only option. Disengagement means that big ships are good at surviving fights, but not especially good at staying in the fight if they get targeted.
3. To kill small ships, especially swarm corvettes, you *need* high-tracking/accuracy weapons. They're basically immune to untracked artillery fire.

I think the reason your artillery destroyers were so effective as a mono-fleet is that they have the big guns that are efficient at taking out capital ships from a good range, but also a massive tracking bonus that means even the large weapons can hit corvettes somewhat effectively (while also considerably outranging any non-missile armament on the corvettes). Destroyers are the most versatile killers in the game, and now that they can use different combat roles, they're even more adaptable. It's hard to see a strong counter.

As for the torpedo corvette fleet, just from the design, you'd expect them to overwhelm any fleet that doesn't have lots of PD. Your mixed fleet had a few picket destroyers but they obviously weren't enough and/or died relatively early in the fight (presumably they would have been targeted ahead of the cruisers and battleships). It'd be interesting to see how a much more PD-heavy fleet fares against them.

Very bad news here. The new ship priority targeting appears to prefer like sized hulls when targeting weapons. This means cruisers will prefer to attack other cruisers leaving them open to being pummeled by battleships when running mono vs mixed fleets. Additionally - this particular mix of all plasma weapons gives a very poor return on pure combat power.

The hull targeting thing is indeed a disaster for many ship builds (shouldn't targeting be based more on combat role and/or weapon size?). Using pure plasma is clearly asking for trouble in 2.0 though, unless you're fighting in a pulsar system: you're effectively making the enemy's shields 4x as effective as they should be. The bonus effectiveness of plasma against armour is moot unless you have something else to strip away the shields.

Conversely, I'd be curious to see how an all-disruptor fleet would fare. If you mix a few disruptors into a general fleet, all they do is soften up the enemy a bit. But in a pure disruptor fleet, you're making the enemy's armour and shields completely irrelevant. Maybe that's enough to make up for the low damage of disruptors? If so, I don't know what you'd do to counter, because it's not like you can use the slots usually taken up by armour and shields for something else.

 

[Less2]

Small ships have the only real defensive ability (evasion), everything else just has a bigger HP pool. So it's no surprise that corvettes/destroyers are a lot better now.

Destroyers have high evasion (80+ with bonuses), carry an L weapon, and have enough tracking/accuracy boosts to not only decently hit everything but also do more damage than bigger ships with the L-weapon. Meanwhile even M-weapons struggle to hit them well. It's a very good niche to occupy.

 

[Dr_Gentech]

Destroyers being good is unusual compared to the entire time I've been playing the game... keen to hear more from people

 

[President Jyrgunkarrd]

Destroyers are the new battleships.


Kay.

:|

 

[Dr_Gentech]

Oh and has anyone tested Titans and their auras yet? I would like to see whether they're a default inclusion if you have them or if an equal mineral purchase of another ship makes more sense. Also interested to know how the auras affect things - should you have all three in the same fleet to give that fleet super bonuses, split them up to give the "best" aura bonus to as many fleets as possible, something else? On that note, is there a single best aura?