XL and L only meta

[Tobasco da Gama]

So glad we've reinvented the Corvette Swarm meta while trying to "solve" the current one.

 

[Jarolleon]

Good tests, but I gotta say, running 2:1 shields:armor when your enemy is using missiles+ disruptors is a "braindead AI can't design ships" level mistake. Ripping every shield off those battleships in the first test would make them stronger just because of the excess power bonus.

Your point about the problem with converting tracking bonuses to be percentage-based makes sense, although I'd be tempted to normalize the bonus to a bit higher than it is now (perhaps twice as much; +30% if it used to be +15) since the median weapon in the game has way less than 50 or even 45 base tracking (among normally-researchable weapons, only autocannons, small disruptors, flak, and strike craft ever get above 50% tracking). In other words, your current approach not only removes the tracking bonus from big guns, it nerfs tracking across the board - even for small guns that are supposed to be good at it - because nothing starts with 100 tracking so +15% will always be much, much less than +15. By normalizing it upward, tracking bonuses would still be meaningful on smaller guns though not on big guns, the way that evasion bonuses are currently meaningful on small ships though not on big ones. Even at +30% though, the best researchable medium weapon for tracking - the disruptors - would still only gain +10.5 (70% as much as it would under flat +15), which seems like about the most you'd want to nerf medium-weapon tracking.

You don't usually build your fleet specifically to deal with one type of enemy though.

 

[SeekingEtermity]

You don't usually build your fleet specifically to deal with one type of enemy though.

You don't? I sure do! Harder now with it being so tricky to get military intel high enough (before mid-game) for reports on their ships, but I have absolutely always been a proponent of knowing what I'm fighting and countering it. It's not like refitting takes *that* long.

Besides, there's "I don't bother countering enemy builds" and then there's "I build trivially counterable builds and go all surprised pikachu when the enemy tears me a new one using one of the only ~3 viable late-game fleet compositions". Like, at a minimum, run balanced shields and armor if you don't know what you're facing, and seriously consider either running a hangar (for PD and anti-corvette) or running armor-heavy / adding plating (if you've got the good stuff) unless you're deep into repeatables. In this specific situation, even if you don't know that the enemy has missiles and disruptors in particular, you should have known they have a corvette-heavy fleet - by this point in the game your starbases should have a sensor range of at least 5, even if you have no intel at all - and corvettes (with their ability to mass autocannons) are hell on shields even when they aren't skipping them outright. To run a shield-heavy, no-cloud-lightning, no-hangar fleet against a corvette swarm is... well, Stellaris-AI-level design thinking. Actually, even the AI is sometimes better at counter-building than that.

 

[Jarolleon]

You don't? I sure do! Harder now with it being so tricky to get military intel high enough (before mid-game) for reports on their ships, but I have absolutely always been a proponent of knowing what I'm fighting and countering it. It's not like refitting takes *that* long.

Besides, there's "I don't bother countering enemy builds" and then there's "I build trivially counterable builds and go all surprised pikachu when the enemy tears me a new one using one of the only ~3 viable late-game fleet compositions". Like, at a minimum, run balanced shields and armor if you don't know what you're facing, and seriously consider either running a hangar (for PD and anti-corvette) or running armor-heavy / adding plating (if you've got the good stuff) unless you're deep into repeatables. In this specific situation, even if you don't know that the enemy has missiles and disruptors in particular, you should have known they have a corvette-heavy fleet - by this point in the game your starbases should have a sensor range of at least 5, even if you have no intel at all - and corvettes (with their ability to mass autocannons) are hell on shields even when they aren't skipping them outright. To run a shield-heavy, no-cloud-lightning, no-hangar fleet against a corvette swarm is... well, Stellaris-AI-level design thinking. Actually, even the AI is sometimes better at counter-building than that.

Well this thread title says to do exactly that, that XL and L only will crush everything else. Of course I'd build a more rounded fleet with some hangar ships and torpvettes (because PD prioritises strike craft, so they synergise well) accompanying the artillery, but I'd still put 1/3rd to 1/2 shields on them because most enemies are not torpvettes. The point of those tests is to show that "XL and L only" has a glaring weakness, even if you give them free tracking with a Titan.

 

[DC E1G]

Well this thread title says to do exactly that, that XL and L only will crush everything else. Of course I'd build a more rounded fleet with some hangar ships and torpvettes (because PD prioritises strike craft, so they synergise well) accompanying the artillery, but I'd still put 1/3rd to 1/2 shields on them because most enemies are not torpvettes. The point of those tests is to show that "XL and L only" has a glaring weakness, even if you give them free tracking with a Titan.

What percentage of fleet cap do you think should be carriers or torpedo corvettes?

I've been running some fleet testing to try changes to tracking and in my baseline testing the artillery battleships straight up annihilated a traditional combined fleet (25% fleet cap per hull type). It performed several times worse than any of the mono fleets did individually, including the terribly performing mono cruiser fleet.

 

[Nevars]

The easiest way to limit XL weapons I think is to make them have strategic resources as maintenance.

0.5/1 volatile mote upkeep per Mega Cannon/Giga Cannon.

0.5/1 rare crystal upkeep per Particle Lance/Tachyon Lance.

0.5/1 exotic gas upkeep per Arc Emitter/Focus Arc Emitter.

 

[Jarolleon]

What percentage of fleet cap do you think should be carriers or torpedo corvettes?

I've been running some fleet testing to try changes to tracking and in my baseline testing the artillery battleships straight up annihilated a traditional combined fleet (25% fleet cap per hull type). It performed several times worse than any of the mono fleets did individually, including the terribly performing mono cruiser fleet.

Lately it's been all carrier battleships with spinal mount bows & arty sterns, plus torpvettes, and then artillery battleships with the tracking Titans. Used to do arty battleships plus carrier cruisers with picket computers & short range weapons to screen missiles & shred corvettes, but that was more for the high tracking weapons because strike craft were bugged at the time AFAIK. But the AI is so bad at tech this patch that I only really care about how it performs against FEs and the Crisis at that point. Never played MP.

 

[drawar]

Perhaps two simple changes could make the game more interesting. The general idea would be to make shields more effective against large weapons. And to make armor more effective against small weapons. This independent of weapon bonuses, but directly by the functioning of shields and armor.

This would make it easier for ships and structures to resist powerful long-range attacks, allowing time for ships to close in and shorter-range weapons to fire.
I had already posted an idea about this.

In summary, shields would have a saturation value. All damage from an attack exceeding the shield saturation value is negated.
Ex:
- Damage of 100
- Saturation of 60
- Shields only take 60 damage.

However, if the damage exceeding the shield saturation value is too great, the shield generator overheats and the ship loses its shields and takes full damage from the attack.
The small ships therefore remain vulnerable to very powerful weapons, if they do not dodge the attack.
To add a little more resistance to the shield, when a shield is destroyed (except while overheating) it goes into a state of afterglow where it is indestructible for a short time (except against an attack that causes overheating). When a shield is destroyed, it does not regenerate during combat.

For armor, the idea would be to add a fixed reduction value for damage taken.
Ex:
- Armor resistance 50
- Attack damage 70
- Armor takes 20 damage.
The shield saturation and armor resistance value would be an average based on the various ship components and other modifiers, not the sum of the value of each shield or armor components on the ship.

So firepower from a single large weapon is less affected by the armor resistance value, since it only suffers this effect once, while the same firepower from 4 smaller weapons will suffer 4. times this damage reduction.
On the other hand, firepower from a single large weapon is more likely to exceed the shield's saturation value and therefore have a large portion of its damage negated, unless it causes overheating.
While this same firepower spread over 4 smaller weapons will have less chance of exceeding the shield saturation value.

One more thing that might help ships survive a bit and distinguish weapon sizes would be that a damaged hull could "dodge" damage. Basically, an attack hit an area that was already damaged, or even hit a hole in the ship ... The “dodging” could be only partial to total. The more damaged a hull, the more it can “dodge”. Weapon accuracy would also be a factor in play, so small guns would be less affected by this dodge.

 

[foamyesque]

What about simply boosting evasion more-or-less across the board? The amount of tracking that can be added is pretty tightly limited -- you can only reliably get +25, and that requires a Titan. Give all ships more evasion, so that L and XL weapons have significantly worse DPS even against battleships than the 'equivalent' in medium weaponry. In exchange, they still have the monster alpha.

 

[Nevars]

What about simply boosting evasion more-or-less across the board? The amount of tracking that can be added is pretty tightly limited -- you can only reliably get +25, and that requires a Titan. Give all ships more evasion, so that L and XL weapons have significantly worse DPS even against battleships than the 'equivalent' in medium weaponry. In exchange, they still have the monster alpha.

Evasion still got cap at 90% and iirc even 90% evasion corvette still got reliable hit by BB.

 

[Cordane]

A few things:

Tracking bonuses for the different sizes of weapons probably do not work either as flat values across the board or as percentile modifiers. I would probably say making them stepped flat values (like the Evasion bonuses given for advanced thrusters, e.g., Ion Thrusters give +5 Evasion for Corvettes, +4 for Destroyers, etc.) is probably a decent compromise.

XL weapons exist the way they do because of two reasons: Rule of Cool (Space Battleship Yamato FTW), and to try to get Battleship back to 6x the damage of a Destroyer. Because weapons increase in damage (and utilities in damage capacity) by a factor of ~2.45 (square root of 6) each time you go up in slot size, the general idea is that an increase in size for a ship should also have a multiplier to damage of 2.45. It's hard to see from Corvette to Destroyer, because Corvettes don't get an actual M-slot as an option (why not?), but their M-slot equivalent is a G-slot, which is paired with an S-slot. A Destroyer can go as high as an L-slot in the bow and an M-slot in the stern, each of which would be 2.45x the damage of the M-slot equivalent and S-slot, respectively. While the Destroyer shifts to a 2-section format, its bow section is still 2/3 of the whole capacity of the ship, allowing for the L-slot.

The Cruiser totally hoses the opportunity for a clean advancement along that line, because it should be able to handle an X-slot (if simply viewed as a larger L-slot turret) and a single L-slot aft, but instead the 3-section format keeps the bow section (1/3rd of the whole hull) from handling anything larger than a single L-slot and the core section (half of the whole hull) is kept to one L-slot with an M-slot to spare (and then only an M-slot in the 1/6th stern). This keeps Cruisers from multiplying their damage output by 2.45 by a slot-size increase, but instead only by 2 due to a quantity doubling over the Destroyer. Sure they get more utilities, but that pigeon-holes them as a beefy-but-weak step-up from the Destroyer rather than a straight progression in both outgoing and incoming capacity.

Battleships try to get that 6x jump from the Destroyer, but they are limited by carrying four L-slots in addition to an X-slot. OK, so <math> if a Destroyer has an L-slot at 6 damage and an M-slot at 2.45 damage, multiplying that by 6 (two jumps in size) would be 50.7. If we factor out the 4 L-slots (4 x 6 = 24 damage) already on the Battleship, that leaves 26.7 damage for one X-slot, when what we might otherwise expect the X-slot to do (if it were a straight size increase) is 14.7 damage. This would require the multiple from L-slot to X-slot to be 4.45 - the increase in damage from Tier-4 L-slot X-ray Laser to T4 X-Slot Particle Lance is 3.96 in base damage per day and a jump in the versus-Armor and versus-Hull damage, so either dead-on or outperforming the estimate </math>.

Because there is an additional desire for Battleship dominance (and Space Battleship Yamato equivalence), X-slot weapons are set up not as larger turrets but cannons, which should limit them in Tracking by a factor of not 1-below L-slots, but probably at least 3. This hasn't been done even at the base level before any other system upgrades, and would be completely undone by the upgrades. The limiting factors tacked on either don't limit worth anything (forward-fire with limited arc) or actually help it in alpha strikes (longer cooldowns for even more per-hit damage). There really isn't enough done to play up the FF-only aspect of cannons, either in acceleration facing or in flanking opponents. And 50% less Tracking compared to something that had virtually nothing (on a 100-point scale) is basically no progressive penalty.

I'd prefer a system that has:
1) all ships either have a single hull section or the same number of sections (perhaps 3) all the way up
2) weapons and utilities progress evenly with size upgrades all the way up (including Cruisers getting X-slot turrets and Battleships getting a larger size of turret as its top gun)
3) ship classes that have higher ratios of weapons to utilities or vice versa, and that expand over the course of technological progress (e.g., Corvette goes from 3 S-slot weapons to 4)
4) cannons that act like spinal cannons actually would (abysmal tracking, only suited for anti-station/giant space monster work)
I actually have a suggestion thread I made a while back that actually covers a fair amount of that (specifically using the 3-equal-sections format).

 

[foamyesque]

Evasion still got cap at 90% and iirc even 90% evasion corvette still got reliable hit by BB.

Yes and no; corvettes can still evasion tank pretty well, though you will take some losses. They just don't have the ability to resolve a fight decisively the way a battlewagon line can and (for a variety of reasons) will take more outright losses in combat than a battleship fleet does.

With 75% effective evasion against top-level sensors, if I understand things correctly, kinetics have a zero chance to hit without some kind of targeting boost. Energy weapons, with a baseline accuracy of 90%, do much better with a 15% hit rate. And penetrators have 100% accuracy, so that's 25%. So evasion taking rides a real knife edge and depends a great deal on exactly what the opfor is carrying; even a single AFC or a precog computer can chop a corvettes EHP in half or more.

But corvettes aren't the thing at issue here: the goal is to make Ms more competitive with Ls, and the way to do that while retaining the general structure of weapon sizes and tracking is to shift that balance point for destroyers, cruisers, and battleships, such that an M weapon can hit for full accuracy but an L one only at a substantial penalty. As a bonus, destroyer evasion going higher might address their tendency to die like flies as soon as cruisers and battleships come online.

 

[DC E1G]

Yes and no; corvettes can still evasion tank pretty well, though you will take some losses. They just don't have the ability to resolve a fight decisively the way a battlewagon line can and (for a variety of reasons) will take more outright losses in combat than a battleship fleet does.

With 75% effective evasion against top-level sensors, if I understand things correctly, kinetics have a zero chance to hit without some kind of targeting boost. Energy weapons, with a baseline accuracy of 90%, do much better with a 15% hit rate. And penetrators have 100% accuracy, so that's 25%. So evasion taking rides a real knife edge and depends a great deal on exactly what the opfor is carrying; even a single AFC or a precog computer can chop a corvettes EHP in half or more.

But corvettes aren't the thing at issue here: the goal is to make Ms more competitive with Ls, and the way to do that while retaining the general structure of weapon sizes and tracking is to shift that balance point for destroyers, cruisers, and battleships, such that an M weapon can hit for full accuracy but an L one only at a substantial penalty. As a bonus, destroyer evasion going higher might address their tendency to die like flies as soon as cruisers and battleships come online.

Auxillary fire control and the titan tracking aura are other ways of making battleships more effective at hitting corvettes. In my testing, even without a titan, the artillery battleships running giga cannon/neutron launchers can kill autocannon/plasma corvettes at about a 1:1 alloys ratio. Torpedo corvettes fare a bit better, but they get slaughtered by any fleet running point defense or strike craft.

I would be careful about increasing destroyer evasion too much, because they would probably be very strong if they could regularly hit the evasion cap (they already can under rare circumstances).

I entirely agree that M slots need some sort of reason to exist, I'm just not sure what an elegant solution would be.

 

[Dragatus]

The simplest thing that could be done to rehabilitate M slots would be in Proton/Neutron Launchers were converted to M sized weapons and re-classified as Explosive. This would of course also include reducing their damage by half and their range could be reduced to say 80 or 90. I would also suggest tagging them in the files as an anti-hull weapon instead of as an artillery weapon.

This would have a series of effects:
1) M slots would become good.
2) There would be more viable battleship designs.
3) Destroyers and especially Cruisers would become stronger.
4) Starbases would become stronger too.
5) Every weapon class would excel in different weapon sizes. Energy weapons would excel at X and T weapons, Kinetic would excel at S and L, and Explosive would excel at M and G. This would make it less obvious what to focus on in terms of repeatables.
6) Neutron Launchers would fire after Kinetic Artillery, improving their synergy.
7) If particle launchers got flagged as anti-hull weapons the AI designer would use them instead of disruptors in its designs, avoiding many terrible AI designs.

 

[foamyesque]

Auxillary fire control and the titan tracking aura are other ways of making battleships more effective at hitting corvettes. In my testing, even without a titan, the artillery battleships running giga cannon/neutron launchers can kill autocannon/plasma corvettes at about a 1:1 alloys ratio. Torpedo corvettes fare a bit better, but they get slaughtered by any fleet running point defense or strike craft.

I would be careful about increasing destroyer evasion too much, because they would probably be very strong if they could regularly hit the evasion cap (they already can under rare circumstances).

I entirely agree that M slots need some sort of reason to exist, I'm just not sure what an elegant solution would be.

I *did* specifically mention the AFC, although that's a bonus that works for everybody (except penetrators) against everything, not just corvettes. But otherwise, yeah. I'm not saying it's necessarily the best option or even one that would fix everything, I just think it's the most trivial to try out and I think it would help. Another option would be to reduce the range disparities between Ms and Ls, probably by scaling down the advanced components increased range. Kinetic Arty and Etorps double up or more the range of any medium weapon with the sole exception of Matter Disintegrators. And MDs happen to be basically the only medium weapon I'd consider running if I had a choice, because they give you baseline L weapon ranges (better than, even) coupled with M slot tracking and huge bonuses to effective DPS against hull and armour, where it matters most.

They're still not as good as KA/ETorps IMO but they are, unlike your other options, not outright terrible in comparison.

 

[Valanoir]

Can someone link or explain why a horde of corvettes doesn't overwhelm battleships? Corvettes have ridiculous levels of evasion, no? Shouldn't that allow them to dodge a lot of the attacks the battleships make on the first attack wave?

 

[Mealya]

Can someone link or explain why a horde of corvettes doesn't overwhelm battleships? Corvettes have ridiculous levels of evasion, no? Shouldn't that allow them to dodge a lot of the attacks the battleships make on the first attack wave?

Because of how works evasion versus the rest of the stats which increase the chance to hit.

Spoiler: How chance to hit works

Three parameters determine the chance of a weapon to hit its target: the accuracy and tracking of the attacker, and the evasion of the defender.

Accuracy comes primarily from the weapon stats. Accuracy is the percentage chance to hit a target with no evasion. Weapons with high accuracy tend to have comparatively low damage or other weaknesses. Accuracy is capped at 100.

Tracking comes primarily from the weapon stats as well. Tracking will cancel out some or all of the defender's evasion, and the actual chance to hit is the attacker's accuracy minus the defender's remaining evasion, if any. Smaller weapon sizes usually have significantly higher tracking, with some exceptions.

Evasion is primarily based on hull type and is a defining feature of the Corvette, Destroyer, Transport and similar small ships. It can be increased by thrusters, by the combat computer for some hull sizes, and by Auxiliary modules like the Enigmatic Encoder and by having surplus power in the ship design. The evasion rate is capped at 90%.

The formula to calculate the chance of a specific attack to hit the target is (remember that evasion is capped at 90 and accuracy is capped at 100):

Chance to hit = max(0, accuracy - max(0, evasion - tracking))

To be simple : even with 90% evasion the enemy can have a crazy high chance to hit your Corvettes. Since battleships X slot has at least 150 range it can easily fire few times before your Corvettes are in range.

 

[Valanoir]

Because of how works evasion versus the rest of the stats which increase the chance to hit.

To be simple : even with 90% evasion the enemy can have a crazy high chance to hit your Corvettes. Since battleships X slot has at least 150 range it can easily fire few times before your Corvettes are in range.

Ah thats unfortunate, corvettes should be the default counter to battleships. I think the easiest fix to battleship spam would be adding a special module to Titans that works like:


Radar Cloak, until a ship fires it is cloaked and cannot be attacked *or* if an enemy ship moves within the cloaking field it reveals all the ships inside of it. The number and type of ships would also be cloaked out of combat.

This would effectively allow corvettes, destroyers and even carrier cruisers/battleships to compete with X/L battleship spam while also opening gameplay for things like bluffing / concealing where your forces are. Sure you see 6 fleets cloaked by titans in the enemy territory, but maybe only one of them have actual ships. Right? And lets say you call that bluff and dec war, you move into a station occupied by a cloaked fleet and the fleet retreats, so you push further and further and then all of a sudden its revealed that not only was that fleet not a bluff but it now has 2 other fleets nearby that all converge onto your location. IDK I think it would shake up the meta quite a lot.

 

[DC E1G]

I *did* specifically mention the AFC, although that's a bonus that works for everybody (except penetrators) against everything, not just corvettes. But otherwise, yeah. I'm not saying it's necessarily the best option or even one that would fix everything, I just think it's the most trivial to try out and I think it would help. Another option would be to reduce the range disparities between Ms and Ls, probably by scaling down the advanced components increased range. Kinetic Arty and Etorps double up or more the range of any medium weapon with the sole exception of Matter Disintegrators. And MDs happen to be basically the only medium weapon I'd consider running if I had a choice, because they give you baseline L weapon ranges (better than, even) coupled with M slot tracking and huge bonuses to effective DPS against hull and armour, where it matters most.

They're still not as good as KA/ETorps IMO but they are, unlike your other options, not outright terrible in comparison.

Oops, that's what I get for posting on the forum not fully awake. You can definitely put the AFC on anything, but I can't imagine regularly putting it on anything smaller than a cruiser, so it ends up being a straight up free hit chance for bigger ships.

Decreasing the range of the late-game L slot weapons a bit is an interesting idea, it would definitely weaken alpha strikes a bit. If we went that route I think even XL slots could have their range cut bit too.

Can someone link or explain why a horde of corvettes doesn't overwhelm battleships? Corvettes have ridiculous levels of evasion, no? Shouldn't that allow them to dodge a lot of the attacks the battleships make on the first attack wave?

You got a good explanation already on why (evasion cap, tracking and auxiliary fire control) but I want to emphasize just how big the alpha strike can be. The first wave of shots from a fleet of artillery battleships will still manage to kill as much as 10-15% of a mono corvette fleet before the corvettes are even close to being in range. Two auxillary fire control modules guarantees a minimum 10% hit rate and the more accurate L slot weapons can get up to about 25% hit rate on max evasion targets.