Wiki Says: Repeatable Weapon Techs

[Cordane]

Thermodynamic Yield Control (+5% Explosive Weapon (i.e., missiles, torpedoes) Damage), base cost 50,000 Engineering research
Miniaturized Pre-Ignitors (+5% Explosive Weapon Attack Rate), base cost 50,000 Engineering research
High-Density Munitions (+5% Kinetic Weapon Damage), base cost 50,000 Engineering research
Loader Efficiency (+5% Kinetic Weapon Attack Rate), base cost 50,000 Engineering research

Synapse Interceptors (+10% Strike Craft Weapon Damage), base cost 50,000 Society research
Heat Recyclers (+10% Strike Craft Weapon Damage), base cost 50,000 Society research
Is this accurate compared to the Explosive/Kinetic? Same number of repeats? Same cost per repeat?

Flash Coolant (+5% Energy Weapon Damage), base cost 20,000 Physics research
Focusing Arrays (+5% Energy Weapon Attack Rate), base cost 20,000 Physics research
Is this accurate compared to the other weapon types?

It also seems like, with all of the changes since the 1.0 release of Stellaris, that Strike Craft are definitely like the L-slot option alongside S- and M-slot-only Explosive Weapons. It's bad enough that Kinetics gets bent over on cost compared to affected weapons when compared to Energy Weapons, but Explosive Weapons & Strike Craft together get it double.

 

[TranscendentalDragon]

have they fixed the bug of strike craft repeatables only applying to the first one in a squad?

 

[Abdulijubjub]

Strikecraft get double repeatables because they can't participate in the alpha strike and can't fill every slot. There's such a thing as a 100% energy battleship layout. There's no such thing as a 100% strikecraft layout.

Eventually, they become obsolete because the battle is over before they get to the other fleet. So they need a bigger boost.

 

[Ryika]

Flash Coolant (+5% Energy Weapon Damage), base cost 20,000 Physics research
Focusing Arrays (+5% Energy Weapon Attack Rate), base cost 20,000 Physics research
Is this accurate compared to the other weapon types?

No, if that's on the wiki, then it's wrong. Like all other repeatables, they cost @repeatableTechBaseCost (which is 50000), plus @repeatableTechLevelCost (which is 5000) multiplied with the number of times you've already researched the technology.

 

[Cordane]

Strikecraft get double repeatables because they can't participate in the alpha strike and can't fill every slot. There's such a thing as a 100% energy battleship layout. There's no such thing as a 100% strikecraft layout.

Eventually, they become obsolete because the battle is over before they get to the other fleet. So they need a bigger boost.

But don't missiles have similar alpha strike issues (not as severe) and not-every-slot issues (again, not as severe)? The more limited slot usefulness would IMO justify a smaller cost for a comparable bonus rather than necessarily the same cost for a bigger bonus. Especially with Explosive weapons and SC needing to dip into other weapon types to fill out a blueprint, making it less expensive to get through all of those repeatables would make more sense for me.

I would also think that it would be better to have Strike Craft at a similar position relative to Kinetics and Energy Weapons before repeatables as they would be after repeatables (i.e., make SC equal to others normally, not after repeatables only).

 

[Abdulijubjub]

Missiles have a similar problem, yes.

Strike craft are on a fairly even basis before repeatables. The opening volley kills a few ships, and the strike craft get to the opponent before they can fire a second volley with the big guns, and damage ends up sorta working out. The problem is that when energy weapon damage goes up by 100%, then 100% more ships die in the first volley (or ~60% more, if both sides are keeping up in defensive component tech). And because the strikecraft in flight explode, that means that twice as many strikecraft don't make it, whereas energy weapons would be firing their own volley, taking out some of the enemy's ships and getting their initial shots off before they die to the late arriving ships. And when attack speeds increase, suddenly the energy weapon ships get 2 volleys in instead of 1 before the strikecraft arrive. Then three. Then four.

So the strikecraft damage had better scale, and scale fast, if it wants to keep up. They're effectively fighting the whole battle with their damage delayed by first one volley, then two, then three, etc.

Alpha strike vs. higher scaling don't cancel out mathematically, but they're close enough to make a rough approximation of competiveness for a while. Abstractly (and very roughly), strikecraft damage scales with time to kill (which would make double scaling nicely cancel), but the initial delay sorta throws a wrench into that. Eventually strikecraft are just obsolete unless the carriers ambush the enemy in melee (exactly the opposite of their original role), because no amount of extra damage will make them teleport to the enemy before the carrier is destroyed.

If defensive repeatables could keep up with offense (instead of scaling linearly vs. the offensive quadratic), carriers could continue to be relevant by pouring all your P/E tech into shields and armor while society went into damage, and you'd win by extending the engagement until your strikecraft built up and became unstoppable. But time to kill shrinks as you go through repeatables, so strikecraft become weaker over time.

There is a caveat: crisis fleets tend to have short range (especially Unbidden), and disproportionately enormous health bars (ex. 200 of all repeatables will gives a player 9x damage and ~2.1x total HP, but a crisis keeps those two modifiers in lock step, so they'd have 37.5x health and 37.5x total hp). That makes strikecraft uniquely suited to taking down crisis fleets, as the engagement can stretch out fairly long if you maintain your range.

 

[Cordane]

Missiles have a similar problem, yes.

Strike craft are on a fairly even basis before repeatables. The opening volley kills a few ships, and the strike craft get to the opponent before they can fire a second volley with the big guns, and damage ends up sorta working out. The problem is that when energy weapon damage goes up by 100%, then 100% more ships die in the first volley (or ~60% more, if both sides are keeping up in defensive component tech). And because the strikecraft in flight explode, that means that twice as many strikecraft don't make it, whereas energy weapons would be firing their own volley, taking out some of the enemy's ships and getting their initial shots off before they die to the late arriving ships. And when attack speeds increase, suddenly the energy weapon ships get 2 volleys in instead of 1 before the strikecraft arrive. Then three. Then four.

So the strikecraft damage had better scale, and scale fast, if it wants to keep up. They're effectively fighting the whole battle with their damage delayed by first one volley, then two, then three, etc.

Alpha strike vs. higher scaling don't cancel out mathematically, but they're close enough to make a rough approximation of competiveness for a while. Abstractly (and very roughly), strikecraft damage scales with time to kill (which would make double scaling nicely cancel), but the initial delay sorta throws a wrench into that. Eventually strikecraft are just obsolete unless the carriers ambush the enemy in melee (exactly the opposite of their original role), because no amount of extra damage will make them teleport to the enemy before the carrier is destroyed.

If defensive repeatables could keep up with offense (instead of scaling linearly vs. the offensive quadratic), carriers could continue to be relevant by pouring all your P/E tech into shields and armor which society went into damage, and you'd win by extending the engagement until your strikecraft built up and became unstoppable. But time to kill shrinks as you go through repeatables, so strikecraft become weaker over time.

There is a caveat: crisis fleets tend to have short range (especially Unbidden), and disproportionately enormous health bars (ex. 200 of all repeatables will gives a player 9x damage and ~2.1x total HP, but a crisis keeps those two modifiers in lock step, so they'd have 37.5x health and 37.5x total hp). That makes strikecraft uniquely suited to taking down crisis fleets, as the engagement can stretch out fairly long if you maintain your range.

That seems to me to be a problem with SC (and Explosive) flight times, both from a starting point and from a progression basis. The whole display of combat in Stellaris is based on the "clock = calendar" Necessary Weasel, so we get gigantic star-system-spanning battles that take weeks to complete, rather than battles that realistically could take place between Earth's atmosphere and the surface of our Moon (or just a few multiples of that). At 300,000 km (one light-second), it's approximately a couple of hours for a missile pulling 8 G's to cross that distance and only a couple more for SC-type vessels with half that acceleration to get up to speed and then decelerate to not just overshoot their targets (they could "joust" and get the first shot off faster but then all subsequent shots take forever between).

I don't think even flight time reductions would totally eliminate the issue (especially without repeatables of their own), and I appreciate your explanation on the effect that increased damage and fire rates have during that alpha strike. But there's also some consideration to be made on how crazy far away direct-fire weapons can act while SC/Explosive are basically forced to wait before they can get started. If the system-map-derived direct-fire ranges were smaller, SC could deploy from relatively further away to arrive either before or at the same time as the direct-fire alpha exchange, without it looking too ridiculous on the system map. Then SC don't require the compensatory higher bonuses in order to stay in line with their direct-fire peers. (Explosive weapons are still a little hurt in this scenario, in that they don't get pre-staged like waves of SC would, but they could be adjusted from this point a little easier than under vanilla.)