Would Disruptors counter Corvettes?

[Nakkivene]

I was just thinking, Corvettes have a high evasion, hull around half or 2/5ths the amount of shield/armor they have, while Disruptors have a relatively high accuracy and tracking. I wonder if there's a timing when you could employ destroyers/cruisers with Disruptors to counter corvettes - as it's only three levels of physics research instead of both engineering and physics, therefore possibly allowing you an edge in other engineering tech?

 

[Talanic]

No. Sorry. Disruptors have the same problem Autocannons (the intended anti-corvette weapons) have - too low damage per hit. That means corvettes are way more likely to disengage rather than die outright. You might win some battles but your losses will probably be worse than theirs.

Autocannons need a -disengage chance to targets.

 

[Beyond Disbelief]

Not to mention Auto-cannons have much higher tracking (75%) and slightly higher damage per-hit so if anything on paper disruptor would both miss more and more likely to lose their target on disengage. I haven't played in a while nor looked at 2.x combat stats but IIRC with 75% tracking that means effective evasion of 15% (90-75) for corvettes right? Buffing that is what you really need in countering corvettes. You can already make up for the auto-cannon accuracy with the aux fire-control modules.

Nice idea but shield/armor penetration isn't the main issue with countering corvettes.

 

[Xaos]

Arc emitters and cloud lightning on the other hand do much better than disrupters as they dont miss. If disrupters didn't miss, then they would be functionally anti Corvette weapons.

 

[Blurb]

I was just thinking, Corvettes have a high evasion, hull around half or 2/5ths the amount of shield/armor they have, while Disruptors have a relatively high accuracy and tracking. I wonder if there's a timing when you could employ destroyers/cruisers with Disruptors to counter corvettes - as it's only three levels of physics research instead of both engineering and physics, therefore possibly allowing you an edge in other engineering tech?

I'd like to know what kind of defenses you're using, because I find that corvettes typically have a lot more hull than that.
Even assuming T4 armour or shields (each of which provide 110 HP for a total of 330), you're be looking at a nearly 1:1 ratio of hull to not-hull.
Accounting for the upgrades that increase hull along with some veterancy, maybe the unyielding trait and your corvette hulls could be anywhere between 300 and 575.

Arc emitters and cloud lightning on the other hand do much better than disrupters as they dont miss. If disrupters didn't miss, then they would be functionally anti Corvette weapons.

Not only are you wrong, you've also seemingly missed the context of the OP.
1) Accuracy of 100% does not mean a guaranteed hit at all times, unless tracking is also 90 or more.
With a tracking of 0 and 30, respectively, arc emitters and cloud lightning start missing when the target has more than 0 and 30 evasion, respectively.
Against a target with high evasion (LIKE A CORVETTE), disruptors have a higher effective accuracy than both cloud lightning and arc emitters.
2) OP is clearly asking about early/mid-game solutions, far before XL weapons and battleships become available.

 

[Gyrvendal]

Any weapon with the bonus tracking from picket computers on destroyers should do fine against corvettes. Pick medium and small weapons with decent tracking and it will do fine.

 

[Beyond Disbelief]

So from a quick skim on the weapon components sheet, by the time you have access to Autocannons (mid~semi-late) a destroyer on picket should already solve capped evasion

I think an early-mid solution would be Corvettes or Destroyers armed with *small* Coilgun/Railgun on picket. Even though it doesn't cap tracking neither does enemy corvettes have capped evasion. I'm including Corvettes for the early game since Destroyers would probably drain your economy, but you'd still want to have a design in picket to counter other 'vettes.

 

[Nakkivene]

I'd like to know what kind of defenses you're using, because I find that corvettes typically have a lot more hull than that.
Even assuming T4 armour or shields (each of which provide 110 HP for a total of 330), you're be looking at a nearly 1:1 ratio of hull to not-hull.
Accounting for the upgrades that increase hull along with some veterancy, maybe the unyielding trait and your corvette hulls could be anywhere between 300 and 575.

Hm, either the ship designer shows an incorrect number of hull points or somehow I have managed to hit repeatable techs without ever drawing corvette hull point techs.

Either way, you're correct, I didn't think about the fact that early armor/shields are much weaker.

Do cruisers have a late-game function since they can take picket computer, or are they just too weak vs. Corvette swarms even with that?

 

[Beyond Disbelief]

Hm, either the ship designer shows an incorrect number of hull points or somehow I have managed to hit repeatable techs without ever drawing corvette hull point techs.

Either way, you're correct, I didn't think about the fact that early armor/shields are much weaker.

Do cruisers have a late-game function since they can take picket computer, or are they just too weak vs. Corvette swarms even with that?

I believe Cruiser lacks the small slots per naval capacity to be effective against corvettes since those sections are taken by torpedo slots that are terrible in tracking corvette evasion. They can do it unlike the battleships, but not as well as destroyers.

2 years ago cruiser was the meta because they had much higher hull to naval capacity ratio by a large margin compared to other ship sizes, but since then they specifically reworked it to keep all ship sizes relevant and hitting too far from your size category you start losing efficiency (they did a pretty good job at that)

 

[Tobasco da Gama]

I believe Cruiser lacks the small slots per naval capacity to be effective against corvettes since those sections are taken by torpedo slots that are terrible in tracking corvette evasion. They can do it unlike the battleships, but not as well as destroyers.

They're not Torpedo slots now, they're just Missile slots. Missiles have 25-30% Tracking, unlike Torpedoes which have 0%. They're still going to be evaded by Swarming Corvettes about half the time until you get to Sapient or Precognitive computers, though.

So even though you could conceivably make Picket Cruisers, they'd be less effective at the anti-Corvette role than Destroyers but potentially more effective in an anti-Destroyer role while still being okayish at killing Corvettes? That's something you might conceivably field if you're the first to unlock Cruiser tech and you're playing on the test branch where refitting them later won't be prohibitively expensive.

 

[Badesumofu]

Early on I'd say the best counter to Corvettes is more Corvettes. Late game BBs do better than you might think - Giga Cannons and Neutron Launchers will still hit a quarter of the time and when they do they tend to one-shot the 'vette. On the other hand the Corvettes will consistently hit the BBs but in doing so they will grant the BB 5959309842098095 chances to disengage. You might lose the battle (which counts for nothing much) but your BBs will live to fight again while the dead enemy Corvettes remain dead.

 

[Retry]

They're not Torpedo slots now, they're just Missile slots. Missiles have 25-30% Tracking, unlike Torpedoes which have 0%. They're still going to be evaded by Swarming Corvettes about half the time until you get to Sapient or Precognitive computers, though.

So even though you could conceivably make Picket Cruisers, they'd be less effective at the anti-Corvette role than Destroyers but potentially more effective in an anti-Destroyer role while still being okayish at killing Corvettes? That's something you might conceivably field if you're the first to unlock Cruiser tech and you're playing on the test branch where refitting them later won't be prohibitively expensive.

Torpedos have 10% tracking according to the wiki.

No need for supercomputers to lower corvette evasion to reasonable levels, since the cap for evasion is 90%. A regular old Advanced Picket Computer nets +20 tracking, the T3 Sensor System (Subspace Sensors) nets +10 tracking. With accuracy of regular Missiles at 100% and tracking at 25, the net hit rate is 65% (~2/3rds). Swarm missiles will hit +5% more frequently. Grabbing the T4 Tachyon Sensors increases it by another +5%.

An autocannon+missile/swarmer Cruiser w/ a picket computer might be a fairly effective corvette killer, or at least a way to get them to bugger off. Of course you have to catch the corvettes in the first place, and even then I think proper DD builds are probably more effective at that.