About every single time I make ship designs with kinetic weapons, I bump into this same problem over and over again.

Since range limitations of slugs and torpedoes are so extreme, if I put empasis on a single weapon type for my fleet(flotilla), it will make them sitting ducks if they are faced against enemy fleet(flotilla) in a range they are not specialized in. (e.g. torps vs kinetic or laser in short range)

I could make two loadouts, one being the 'ship-of-the-line' with mostly slugs and rails, and another being the 'missile cruiser' with torps and some swarms/EMPs to taste. The problem with this strategy though, is that I cannot decide which flotilla faces which enemy flotilla in actual combat, so if I'm out of luck, my 'missile cruiser' fleet could be facing enemy flaks and my 'ship-of-the-line' fleet facing enemy torps. 

On the other hand, if I mix the weapon types it means I can only get up to ~60% efficiency in any range. Comparing setups with equal number of slugs and torps vs. full beams, the former had ~10% better DPS but only had ~50%-ish efficiency in all ranges. That means it will be dealing only 55~60% of the DPS of the full beams setup. 

I did many experiments with above strategies, to balance out or to specialize, but I am still not sure which way is the best way. If I choose to balance out I get versatility but I lose huge chunks of DPS. If I choose to specialize I get better potential DPS but I risk losing the entire fleet I come across a bad matchup. 

Can anyone advise what is the go-to strategy in designing kinetic-oriented ships? I know they suck in the current meta but I really like recreating those epic battles seen in The Expanse, Battlestar Galactica and such. 

There's no one singular build to getting the best kinetic ships, but I would recommend using a mix of slugs/rails and missiles, the mix is your personal preference though. You also want to try out the BEB module too since it's an AOE module that ignores armor/shields. 

What I normally do whenever I use kinetics is put a few slugs on smaller ships in my fleet, with the rest focused on energy weapons (this is partly b/c I view slugs as defensive weapons against fighters and missiles). So you could do the same thing with missiles, having the larger (carriers/cruisers/battleships) ones decked out with mostly missiles/kinetic fighters or bombers and some slugs/rails, and the smaller ones mostly used as slug/flak defensive ships. 

I believe the idea is the weapon systems is a Rock/Paper/Sizzors idea - roghly speaking (and very basically): 

   Torpedoes beat lazers - They cannot get shot down

   Lazers beat kinetic  - Sit at long range and burn the kinetic ships away as they try and close the distance 

   Kinetic beats torpedoes & fighters - Being able to soot them down.

Of course this means if you can identify what your opponents use you can kit out your fleets accordingly. Taking this idea I think you have a couple of choices for your "Optimal" kinetic fleets - make the balanced fleet you surgest and then keep at long range vs energy based fleets and come into short range against kinetic fleets; basically using the tactics to your advantage.

Alternativly (and I think trying this out seems fun) you can use some support ships to counter your counter. What I mean is this - If you want to build a Kinetic & Rail gun fleet your issue is what to do against Lazer fleets that could burn me upon the way in. Well my thoughts would be to 

  (1) Use the "fleet wide" boosts to shild strength: so you can build a ship who uses the Fleet shielding modules... possiably combining this with a "reduce chance to be targeted" modules to keep your extra shilds from being terminated.
  (2) Build a decoy; Have a support ship, or two, maxed out on defencive shilds with one (or more) "increase chance to be targeted" modules - paticularly as a medium ship escorting smaller ships this could cause a lot of damage to be negated on a "tank" while your morefragile ships clos in for the kill. 

I'd be intrested to see how this works if you give it a go, but it certainly seems a fun idea.

You could also invest in the EMP guns - if you have guns which target and knock out the counter to your fleet you run a good chance of always being effective.

Okay there are some thoughts - have fun experimenting!

fucojr wrote:

I could make two loadouts, one being the 'ship-of-the-line' with mostly slugs and rails, and another being the 'missile cruiser' with torps and some swarms/EMPs to taste. 

This is my favorite approach. Mixed fleet with different load-out templates to maximize bonuses. I use the medium hull sizes for "support ships" which have minimal weapons and lots of modules that heal, shield and make the other ships more effective.  The computer will usually tune toward kinetics or lasers, in which case I just place an extra ship or two in the fleet that will counter what they are doing.

You do need to watch for the AI to switch it up (as it will), then you just rebalance toward the counter.

I use support ships for slugs. I also use them for the speed upgrade and try to get at least three per fleet. This way, I have one for each range. 

That's the bare minimum. Offensive ships have more weapon slots and sometimes I throw in a slug here and there, too. Depends on what the enemy is using but often it's just to be prepared. (pirate missile ships come to mind)

Atm, I still design ships with a balanced loadout but I began to create ships for single roles, too. There are different ways to tackle the design now and this is really great news. Kinetics were too strong in the past.

I'm a fan of using small support ships as "aura" ships: i.e. load out a small coordinator with accelerators, shields or fleet-wide repair bots and maybe a flak to slow down missiles, then arrange your fleet and tactics to keep them far away from the frontline of a battle.  Best part is, even if you lose some, that just means the enemy DIDN'T focus on your more expensive ships.  Also, they're T1 ships, so they're cheap and fast to replace--as long as you have the strategics.  This lets you focus your bigger ships on being the combat monsters they truly are.

I had a fantastic game recently where a ruin gave me the tech for Carriers really early on. It was super fun (albeit terribly broken) to experiment with all the possibilities for early-mid-game mega-ships cruising around...

Abrasax wrote:

5) my favorite ... build multiple fleet types, one that specializes in energy and keep them in the front lines, and one with pure strategic kinetics and hide them just behind your front lines. Nothing is better than sneaking in with heavy kinetics to rip up their best fleets.

Now that's just devious.

Giving this a little more thought, I've come to the conclusion that, thanks to the tech trees, specializing in a weapon type is something of a mistake.  There are only two damage types; energy and kinetic.  Specializing in one (at least in terms of military tech) locks you out of the other, at least at each tech stage.  This means your opponent, once they discover or deduce this, has only to bring the right defense modules to shut you down...and since you're specialized, you've not only used up critical resources to outfit your ships, but have given your foe a way to cheaply counter you by using generic modules, enabling him to win trades for far less cost.

Old Starcraft players would liken this to building a fleet of Battlecruisers against a Zerg player, who has only to rapidly hatch a swarm of dirt cheap scourges and throw them at your fleet, blowing it up for half the cost and build time.  That's a painful trade.

I tend to keep some ship designs with both weapon types on hand.  This lessens the value of damage boosters and some cards, but it prevents my fleets from getting decimated by fleets of far lesser power that just happened to have the right defenses.  Abrasax has the right idea: have both on hand and bait out the wrong fleet, then swoop in to counter it with devastating force.

I am also a single palyer only, so I'm guessing there are quite a few strategies for multiplayer that I am ignorant of. I find missles to be the best damage dealers early game, placing them full out on my attackers and guardian hero ships and using flak guns on my support ships. With a fleet of 2 support and 3 attack, this takes care of both long and short range, and in early game (tier 1 ships), crushes energy weapns for pure dps. 

Once I hit mid - late game, a mix is obviously required. I also use multiple ship designs for each type, keeping missle ships around for fleets without a strong flak defense and then using tactics to place thme at far range. I don't find much point in only having a few missles in a fleet though, as almost every fleet will have some flak. 

If the goal is pure kenetic, I always have a flak support ship in every flotilla, and a combo of rail guns and missles for damage, separated out by flotilla designed to fit their ranges. I also look closely at the range and weapon types fo enemy ships to try and figure out which ships are carrying missles / flak and then guess which flotilla they will be in to match mine better against theirs