This. Is. Ridiculous.

[GloatingSwine]

(Tested the second BB design, doesn't lose to the cruisers. 28v50 battleships won with 11 remaining. They do lose if the cruisers are 4plas though.)

 

[Princess Stabbity]

I see nothing strange about this. The corvettes are not equipped properly and the cruisers pretty much hard counter them.

150 torpedo boats with energy torpedoes means that you have 150 torpedoes that will do NOTHING other than alpha-strike enemy shields and go on a long cooldown, and then you'll have 150 small plasma weapons that will deal low damage to cruiser armour, which is sustained DPS but that's not a good thing when equipped on ships that die in a matter of miliseconds. By the time the torps come back online, half the corvettes are gone.

So while it may look good on paper, in reality, each time a corvette dies, you permanently lose a portion of your DPS, which ISN'T that great to begin with! Because already half of it is wasted waiting on the torpedoes to reload. Corvettes' life is on a timer, they need to make the most out of it.

On the other side you have 200 guns constantly firing on corvettes (artillery does nothing so not counting that) one of which is Flak - the corvette hard counter weapon. And because they're mounted on cruisers, they can AFFORD to deal sustained dps, their mounts are guaranteed to get off several salvos per ship before it goes down, if it does.

Sooo... basically you set up the corvette fleet to be hard-countered by the cruiser fleet. 150 low damage guns against high HP WILL lose versus 200 medium damage guns firing on squishy targets. Even with Corvette evasion, the sheer number of guns negates imperfect accuracy.

Here's what I would do to give the corvettes a fighting chance: First of all, diversify! The proton-torpedo ships have a specialist role, they're meant to break through the shields but their hull-busting potential is close to none. They might as well die after firing their payload and it wouldn't impact their overall contribution that much.

So to complement them, you need other corvette classes, built specifically to deal damage to hull. Sadly you can't use kinetic torpedoes because flak intercepts those, so your best bet would be to just mount 3 plasma guns on Interceptor corvettes and have them be the bulk of the fleet. Probably like 100 to 50, maybe even more. Suddenly you have 350 guns dealing reliable damage, which is more than twice what you had before. They probably still wouldn't win decisively but might at least take down some of the cruisers with them.

In order to really accomplish anything, it needs to be established that once all ship classes are available, corvettes and destroyers stop being primary damage dealers and become screens. Their job is to waste enemy fire and soften their defences while the ships behind them do the real work. So ideally you'd mix in a bunch of cruisers of your own with long-range weapons, or full artillery battleships with kinetic weapons to surgically pick off cruisers from outside their range while they're engaging corvettes.


So in short: there is no sane reason why you would send a pure swarm of corvettes against a pure swarm of cruisers. The days of single-class fleets are thankfully gone. Yes, cruisers seem to be the strongest 1v1 class... but a 1v1 scenario should never feasibly occur in actual war. The amount of minerals you spent is a very small factor in combat math and it's the last number you should be obsessing over.

 

[Larknok1]

After much dismay and fumbling about (10+ hours of research and logic), here are my discoveries, and the logical arguments they have brought me down:

1) All large weapons are required to win the Battleship duels (at the cost of worsening performance against Cruiser stacks)
2) Because of how focus-firing works, Tachyon lance is required.
3) From 1 and 2: Ergo, we now know the mandatory ship pieces: Spinal Mount / Artillery Core / Artillery Stern

1) Because of how focus-firing works, an all Kinetics build is not viable: the damage gets too spread around.
2) From 1, 0 Shields / 5 Armor is not an optimal Battleship, because it would be optimized to beat an All Kinetics build, which we already know is bad.
3) From 2, you have to run some shields, so you need 2 Shield Capacitors.
4) 4 Shields / 1 Armor is not an option for shield/armor configs because of power limitations (although 4 Shields / 0 Armor is possible)
5) From 2 and 4, the only shield/armor configs that are viable are: 4 Armor / 1 Shield, 3 Armor / 2 Shield, 2 Armor / 3 Shield, 0 Armor / 4 Shield

Now, for each armor config, notice that here is a corresponding weapon set that optimally defeats it:

1 Shield / 4 Armor: 4 Plasma
2 Shield / 3 Armor: 3 Plasma, 1 KA
3 Shield / 2 Armor: 2 Plasma, 2 KA
4 Shield / 0 Armor: ??? 1 Plasma, 3 KA ???

As the number of KA increases, the focus-fire potential decreases. Hence, let's consider ruling out the 1 Plasma, 3 KA attack rig.

In 10 match-ups of a 1 Shield / 4 Armor build (which defends optimally against 2 Plasma / 2 Kinetic) with 1 Plasma / 3 Kinetic, this build still lost to a 4 Shield / 0 Armor build with 2 Plasma / 2 Kinetic. This leads me to believe that 1 Plasma / 3 Kinetic is not a very viable weapon set, as it should have won here because it's supposed to hard-counter 4 Shield / 0 Armor.

Now, it's possible here that because there's no good counter to it, (we're now ruling out 1 Plasma, 3 KA) that 4 Shield / 0 Armor is the best possible defense build.

Let's see how it performs against a 3 Shield / 2 Armor build when both run 2 Plasma / 2 KA (the best weapon set against 3 Shield, and the next best against 4 Shield).

Aaaand after 10 match-ups, the 4 Shield / 0 Armor build wins ~80% of the time, with far more survivors afterwards as well.

---------------------------------

So what does this mean? It means the 4 Shield / 0 Armor build is simply the best possible shield / armor config.

Why?

A) It almost beats the opposite shield / armor config, even when using the worst weapons against it (2 Plasma 2 KA against the 1 Shield / 4 Armor build)
B) It beats its direct competition config using the same weapons against it (2 Plasma 2 KA against the 3 Shield / 2 Armor build)

Given the 4S / 0A config is the best, what's the best weapons?

Well, that's going to depend on the defense config of your target Battleships. If they run 1 Shield / 4 Armor, it's definitely 4 Plasma.

However, if they're smart and also run the 4S / 0A config, there will be a simple fact about which weapon set is best. 4 Plasma is obviously bad against 4 Shield, but let's try the remaining three options.

Designating the name of the build by the number of shields, and then the number of plasma, we have limited the build options down to:

43
42
41

So there's three match-ups left to empirically check:

43 vs 42 : the 42 CRUSHES the 43. Not even close.
43 vs 41 : the 43 solidly defeats the 41. If 41 gets lucky it can clinch a victory.
42 vs 41 : the 42 solidly defeats the 41. If 41 gets lucky it can clinch a victory.

Thus, the 42 is the best Battleship in the game right now.

Here's what it looks like:

Now, the 12 can beat the 42. However, if the 42 re-outfits to a 44, the 12 will lose every time.

Someone may also run a 22. Re-outfitting to a 43 will win with strong frequency.

Basically:

44 > 12 > 42
43 > 22 > 42

42 > Everything That's not 12, 22


Conclusion: the 42 is overall the best Battleship, because unlike a 0X, 1X, 2X or 3X build, a 4X build has no weapon set that hard-counters it. 2 Plasma / 2 KA works best, but it's not a hard-counter. Among the 4X builds, the 42 is the clear winner.

 

[Zelius]

So you've done it.

.
.
You've found The Ultimate Question to Life, The Universe and Everything.

 

[Larknok1]

So you've done it.

.
.
You've found The Ultimate Question to Life, The Universe and Everything.

Get outta town.