The Large Fleet Collider - 2.0 Fleet Balance

[Talamare]

I'm thinking of making a Combat Mod that will implement these changes...

Corvettes
- Now only carries 2 Weapons
-- Core = 2 Small, 1 Medium, or 1 Guided
- Slight speed reduced
- Lose Access to Picket PC, Gain Artillery PC

The Corvette is already overpowered, so maybe by losing a Weapon Slot it might become balanced.

Destroyer
- Will now be the Fastest Ship
- Now only carries 5 Weapons
- Will lose Access to Line PC
-- Front = 1 Large, 1 Medium+2 Small, 2 PD+2 Small
-- Rear = 1 PD or 1 Small

By making it the Fastest, it will be the ideal Intercept Ship. Having poor access to Medium Weapons will make it poor at killing other Destroyers tho.

Cruiser
- Higher Evasion
- Will Lose Access to Large Weapons
- Front = 1 Hangar, 1 Guided+2 Small, or 2 Medium
- Core = 1 Hangar+2 PD, 3 Medium, 2 Guided+2 Small, 1 Medium+4 Small
- Rear = 1 Medium, 2 Small
- Lose Access to Artillery PC

Losing Large Weapons should give it some Uniqueness compared to Battleships, Cruisers will specialize in killing Smaller Ships.

Battleship
- Will Lose Access to Small Weapons, All current Small will be changed to Medium

Losing access to Small Weapons, should give it it's role of killing Cruisers and Higher.

Hangars
- Scouts will be improved as a source of Low Tracking PD, Intended to shoot down Torpedoes
- 'Fighters' (Which are actually Bombers in the files) will have Low Tracking
- All Fighters will have 80-90% Evasion

PD
- Kinetic PD will have the Highest Tracking, intended to shoot down Fighters
- Energy PD will have Mid Level Tracking, intended to shoot down Missiles
- Both will have their Cooldown reduced slightly

Guided
- Swarmer Missiles
-- Flight Speed Reduced (This is intended to Buff them, so that they can absorb more PD)
-- Very high Tracking
-- HP Reduced by about 1/3

- Torpedoes
-- will gain Shields, Scouts can Ignore Shields; Kinetic won't have enough DPS, Energy is bad against Shield.
(Edit - Having trouble getting this to work)
-- Speed Reduced (This one is intended to Nerf them)
-- Health Reduced by 5 per level

(Maybe I should start a new Thread?)

=======================
Did some testing using a Mixed Fleet and these new values...
150 Missile OR 150 Torpedo Corvs vs MF... CORVS LOST! *gasp*
100 M or T Corvs + 50 Swarm Missile Corvs vs MF... Corvs Won~!

 

[moonlapse]

do you folks use titans ? i like the wow factor of having BIIIG ships in my fleet but i keep losing them fast and about to give up on them

 

[Jeffry]

do you folks use titans ? i like the wow factor of having BIIIG ships in my fleet but i keep losing them fast and about to give up on them

I like their auras, especially the tracking one, but yeah, thanks to their broken AI they rush in the middle of every engagement and in those that are not complete stomps tend to get killed. Till their AI is fixed I'll probably use them only for those stomps and once they die to for example a crisis fleet, I will replace them with more battleships. I'd be probably better off not using them in the first place, but their 3D model is awesome.

EDIT: New version of 2.0.2 beta is out and with it these changes.

* Adjusted fleet formations so that titans try to position themselves more in the middle of a fleet and avoid face-tanking the enemy
* Increased combat disengage chance for Titans

 

[Raithnor]

I'm thinking of making a Combat Mod that will implement these changes...

Corvettes
- Now only carries 2 Weapons
-- Core = 2 Small, 1 Medium, or 1 Guided
- Slight speed reduced
- Lose Access to Picket PC, Gain Artillery PC

The Corvette is already overpowered, so maybe by losing a Weap

How would this impact the early game? I'm thinking of the small groups of Amoebas and Crystals you run into while exploring, not to mention pirates.

 

[Talamare]

How would this impact the early game? I'm thinking of the small groups of Amoebas and Crystals you run into while exploring, not to mention pirates.

Pirates should use the same ships that you do; so they shouldn't be an issue.
Amoebas and Crystals I suppose do become a little more difficult, but how much of a problem is that really? They aren't aggressive. (In the sense they will come into your Empire)
Late Game Crisis should be fine as well, unless you were cheesing them with pure Corvette Spam. Tho, in my tests Missile Corvette spams can still win, they just need to actually use *some* Swarm Missiles against PD heavy fleet.

I'll definitely test a few games before posting it tho to give you more accurate feedback, my current goal at the moment is to fix Hangars.

I've already fixed most of the terrible behavior in which they launch towards nowhere and take months to actually join the battle. As well as I buffed their survivability a little bit.

Tho even if they are 100% immortal, they are still bugged in some way... Despite having very high DPS stats they seem to deal very low DPS in practice. I've increased their gun range and made their formations tighter, which helped somewhat. However there seems to be some core issue I haven't managed to resolve yet.

 

[skizz]

Nope, I had Tacyon with PD and destroyers and Corvettes. Still lost 50-75% every single battle. My battleships went down first, and hard. I had 120k fleet power vs their 110k fleet power and I had the 50% extra damage perk. They still took out my destroyers and battleships like they were made of butter. Only the high evasion corvettes came out on top every time.

3 fleets consisting each of 1 titan, 10 battleships with arc emitter, neutron launchers, 42 destroyers with neutron launchers and double point defence, no flak. ~60k fleetpower per fleet against 200k scourge. I lose roughly 3 destroyers per engage per fleet. Basically the first missile launch from enemies breaks through my pd, that is the wave that hits me and kills some units. After that launch I don't take anymore damage. Actually, carrier on Battleships would fix that. Or more destroyers. Could probably just have spammed battleships tho.

 

[Pickles12]

The game is working completely fine.
Combat all comes down to what combat computers you use and what weapons you use (emphasis on the combat computers).

Essentially, small and medium weapons have enough tracking to deal with corvettes and destroyers early game, before good combat computers and sensors are researched. However, once sensors and combat computers become good, small and medium weapons become obsolete because the bonuses from combat computers are enough to bring up their tracking to make them effective against corvettes and destroyers.

HOWEVER! THE BIG BUT! There are different combat computers, with different bonuses. For example, artillery computers increase range and fire rate, will picket computers increase tracking, so a cruiser with artillery combat computer will be far worse at dealing with corvettes then a cruiser with a picket computer (and I mean far worse), and an artillery cruiser will be far better at dealing with battleships (I would assume I haven't tested this). Battleships will still suffer against corvette swarms though, since they do not have access to any good combat computers with tracking.

This is where cruisers become excellent, as they can be designed to be very good at any role. For example: Killing corvettes.

Simple setup in this test: 25 cruisers with 100 fleet cap v 100 corvettes

Spoiler: Cruiser Template

Spoiler: Corvette Template

Spoiler: Example Battle

Cruiser:

average losses: 9.8

average mineral losses 13093.8

Corvette:

average losses: 37.6

average mineral losses 12332.8


5 trials, corvette losses were more or less very similar, range between 35-40 lost in a battle
Cruiser losses ranged between 7-13, which is interesting because it means that you can actually do very well or very bad depending on rng

I also tested it with line combat computer, lets just say the cruisers did not do very well.

Spoiler

Conclusion? Yeah, shocker, the combat system isn't broken. Its probably one of the few new features that isn't bugged.

 

[MadDemiurg]

How is this a counter if cruisers lost more in minerals?

You probably should've used M weapons and crystal plating or at least more armor (if you don't have that) instead of shields if thinking about a counter though. Shield capacitors are likewise useless.

I doubt that 55% tracking on L weapons makes them competitive with M (that have 85% tracking and basically completely counter evasion with this setup), 35% evasion is still significant.

Max possible tracking would be 40 precog + 10 double enigmatic decoders + 10 titan + 15 sensors though for a total of 75, this would make L viable vs corvettes I think, but it relies on 2 unique modules that not everyone would have access to, it's 55% without them.

It's not that missile corvettes are completely impossible to counter but they are definitely one of the best all around choices it looks like PD needs a buff.

 

[Pickles12]

How is this a counter if cruisers lost more in minerals?

You probably should've used M weapons and crystal plating or at least more armor (if you don't have that) instead of shields though if thinking about a counter though. Shield capacitors are likewise useless.

I doubt that 55% tracking on L weapons makes them competitive with M (that have 85% tracking and basically completely counter evasion with this setup), 35% evasion is still significant.

Max possible tracking would be 40 precog + 10 double enigmatic decoders + 10 titan + 15 sensors though for a total of 75, this would make L viable vs corvettes I think, but it relies on 2 unique modules that not everyone would have access to, it's 55% without them.

It's not that missile corvettes are completely impossible to counter but they are definitely one of the best all around choices it looks like PD needs a buff.

I only ran 5 tests, and as I mentioned below, so the 700 mineral difference could be to a margin of error, and its also just 700 minerals, the entire test is only to prove the influence of combat computers and how it comes down to designing, not the ships (the system is working and there is no clear broken meta as of yet). Also, a 5 cruiser difference in losses between one trial to another is a significant difference, so you can either do very well or very bad, so when your working with such data the average should be taken with a grain of salt.

I have also tested destroyer designs (vs corvettes) with same good picket computers, one design had large and medium weapons, while the other had medium and small, and the large weapons did better (you can test it also if you want its not that hard but screenshots are a pain). Its the same principle how sure I may only hit half the time, however one hit will do enough to destroy you, and the pesky corvettes have no chance to run when their dead. not to mention large weapons have more dpm than small and medium.

 

[GloatingSwine]

Also, those corvettes aren't the kind you'd actually use.

There's no benefit from having more than 90% evasion, so you would never use the Swarm computer, and with the Dark Matter Thruster you can actually keep 90% evasion by swapping the Afterburner for a Shield Capacitor

 

[Slynx]

but if you'll take 2 shields plus shield cap on a corvette.... Cruisers will just switch to shield penetrating weapons like NL or disruptor.

 

[Jmes Snowscoran]

There's a couple things to mention here.

First off, the corvette setup is inefficient, it has way too much evasion and you're better off using a different computer or even swapping out the afterburner.

Second, the excellent precog picket pc is gated behind a shroud event which makes it a crapshoot whether or when you're going to get it. And without that extra tracking, the kinetic artillery will have a harder time hitting corvettes.

But even taking the tests at face value...all that's been shown is that you can make a cruiser that will trade respectably with the corvettes. So on the one hand you have the cruiser fleet that is easy to counter, and on the other there's the corvette fleet that has no real weaknesses. I know which one I'd pick (hint: It's the one that's 50% faster than the other).

e: From the look of your screenshot the cruiser fleet was also the one that lost the battle and had to emergency jump out. Even if you trade respectably in terms of losses, that's simply not good enough to be considered any kind of counter.

 

[Pickles12]

Also, those corvettes aren't the kind you'd actually use.

There's no benefit from having more than 90% evasion, so you would never use the Swarm computer, and with the Dark Matter Thruster you can actually keep 90% evasion by swapping the Afterburner for a Shield Capacitor

I tested it with shield capacitators and sapient combat computer picket, it does not make a difference. Your evasion gets to 88.5%, same firerate bonuses, and some more tracking which I guess boosts torpedoes, but its not like cruisers are hard to hit.

 

[Pickles12]

There's a couple things to mention here.

First off, the corvette setup is inefficient, it has way too much evasion and you're better off using a different computer or even swapping out the afterburner.

Second, the excellent precog picket pc is gated behind a shroud event which makes it a crapshoot whether or when you're going to get it. And without that extra tracking, the kinetic artillery will have a harder time hitting corvettes.

But even taking the tests at face value...all that's been shown is that you can make a cruiser that will trade respectably with the corvettes. So on the one hand you have the cruiser fleet that is easy to counter, and on the other there's the corvette fleet that has no real weaknesses. I know which one I'd pick (hint: It's the one that's 50% faster than the other).

e: From the look of your screenshot the cruiser fleet was also the one that lost the battle and had to emergency jump out. Even if you trade respectably in terms of losses, that's simply not good enough to be considered any kind of counter.

I never claimed its a direct counter, the only thing that I wanted to prove to a degree is that the game does give you the tools to counter certain strategies, and that combat computers are a significant key to this and should not be overlooked. And also how tracking bonuses make large weapons very good in the late game. The mechanics aren't perfect, but far from broken, and much better than before, and that there is not just one strategy that will make you probably win every time, which is a good aspect of any strategy game. (lol forget countering your opponent, who actually does that? Just win by doing the same thing over and over again)

 

[skizz]

I tested it with shield capacitators and sapient combat computer picket, it does not make a difference. Your evasion gets to 88.5%, same firerate bonuses, and some more tracking which I guess boosts torpedoes, but its not like cruisers are hard to hit.

Cruiser 1400 health, 700 armor, 2400 shields VS 100% shield penetration. That's just the defence part. Your weapon/slot picks are not so decent on Cruisers, I prefer full medium slots mostly on Cruisers - that's for midgame, tho. Would go for one shield, some armor, some crystaline hulls - they are easy to get. Shield capacitors aren't that good in 2.0, get tracking there if needed. I also dislike the idea to run autocanon on corvettes with Torpedos, how about disruptors?

Btw. marauder raiding fleets / pirates over perform my corvettes on equal numbers. If they can counter them, you can, too.

 

[EndlessTest]

So as im reading this thread it seems that corvettes with devastator torpedoes are best late game against most targets except maybe FE but what about early/mid game when you dont have access to devastator torps or 90% evasion?

Should one be using the same design of corvettes but with lower tier torp/missile and less evasion?

 

[Pickles12]

Cruiser 1400 health, 700 armor, 2400 shields VS 100% shield penetration. That's just the defence part. Your weapon/slot picks are not so decent on Cruisers, I prefer full medium slots mostly on Cruisers - that's for midgame, tho. Would go for one shield, some armor, some crystaline hulls - they are easy to get. Shield capacitors aren't that good in 2.0, get tracking there if needed. I also dislike the idea to run autocanon on corvettes with Torpedos, how about disruptors?

Btw. marauder raiding fleets / pirates over perform my corvettes on equal numbers. If they can counter them, you can, too.

Auto cannons are probably the best small weapon slot weapon in the game. Far better DPM than disrupters, 100% shield penetration, bonus to hull damage, and sure they are bad against armor but small weapons aren't meant to fight heavily armoured targets, rather corvettes and destroyers. Also the torpedoes have 100% armour damage. Of course you should mainly use medium weapons on cruisers mid game, but the point is is that late game when you can get very good tracking large weapons become the best against anything.

 

[Jmes Snowscoran]

I never claimed its a direct counter, the only thing that I wanted to prove to a degree is that the game does give you the tools to counter certain strategies, and that combat computers are a significant key to this and should not be overlooked. And also how tracking bonuses make large weapons very good in the late game. The mechanics aren't perfect, but far from broken, and much better than before, and that there is not just one strategy that will make you probably win every time, which is a good aspect of any strategy game. (lol forget countering your opponent, who actually does that? Just win by doing the same thing over and over again)

But you haven't proven this at all because there exists a dominant strategy that will make you probably win every time, and that's torpedo corvette spam.

Auto cannons are probably the best small weapon slot weapon in the game. Far better DPM than disrupters, 100% shield penetration, bonus to hull damage, and sure they are bad against armor but small weapons aren't meant to fight heavily armoured targets, rather corvettes and destroyers. Also the torpedoes have 100% armour damage. Of course you should mainly use medium weapons on cruisers mid game, but the point is is that late game when you can get very good tracking large weapons become the best against anything.

ACs doesn't penetrate shields, unlike disruptors that actually do so of course their DPS will be lower. The reason disruptors provide a good complement for torpedoes in monofleets is that you can ignore shields altogether. Regarding your comment about heavily armoured targets, it doesn't make sense in 2.0 where corvettes can benefit from armour much like other ship classes can.

 

[GloatingSwine]

Torpedo corvettes are pretty much the definition of a degenerate strategy. They win against anything that isn’t a specific counter and even the specific counter only manages a draw.

And frankly this sort of mono design dominance will continue until any given design can be stopped by a fraction of a fleet. That’s why I argue we need suppression mechanics, so that a monofleet can be countered without just making something else the new monofleet because the bonuses it got apply too widely.

For corvettes I think that has to mean a debuff as consequence for evading, so that designs that are good at shooting at corvettes can stop them attacking effectively at much smaller numbers but aren’t any more effective at non-corvette targets.

 

[roman566]

Torpedo corvettes are pretty much the definition of a degenerate strategy. They win against anything that isn’t a specific counter and even the specific counter only manages a draw.

And frankly this sort of mono design dominance will continue until any given design can be stopped by a fraction of a fleet. That’s why I argue we need suppression mechanics, so that a monofleet can be countered without just making something else the new monofleet because the bonuses it got apply too widely.

For corvettes I think that has to mean a debuff as consequence for evading, so that designs that are good at shooting at corvettes can stop them attacking effectively at much smaller numbers but aren’t any more effective at non-corvette targets.

I'm quite sure that adding a new mechanic will create even bigger mess as it won't be applied only against corvettes. Not to mention require lots of manpower on PDX side. They would have to rework the entire combat system. We might see that for 3.0 or another larger DLC/patch, but not for bugfix/balance patches that we will be getting now.