I can think of a number of tactics and equipment that help to counter beams. I do not know in their current state with hero buffs and max tier weaponry if these pan out as effective counters as I rarely make it to highest tiers of military tech or indeed face such circumstances from the AI. It would be interesting to see if they do indeed work as well as they seem to in earlier tiers of tech. 

My guess is that the best counter play initially might be High teir short range kinetic slugs and rail guns with modules that allow you to cloak into optimal range and just out DPS them. This is counterable by a single Level 3 stealth detection unit however so it will likely only work once. 

I know that such adjustments happen in Endless Space 1, but they were tuned so that the average split of hits and misses over a whole battle would correspond to the accuracy rating shown in the tooltip. This was done to reduce the number of outliers, and make the combat "feel right" (since the natures of randomness often feels wrong to our intuition.)

 I am not sure right now if this exists in ES2, and will have to confirm with a designer.

EDIT: After talking to designers and looking into the xml files, I think there are indeed adjustments to Accuracy after a miss. However, as far as I can tell, these adjustments should work out just as they did in ES1, with the battle as a whole averaging out to the listed accuracy most of the time.

aerothgow wrote:

problem is there is no real rock paper scisors it's just beams and hp for defense. the rest is only for role-play.

A fleet of pure beam ships (what the AI sometimes like to do) can be countered by missiles.

A fleet of beam ships with some slugs to stop missiles (what players like to do) can be countered with evasive manuvers + yellow lasers on the co-ordinators to de-buff hunters.

This resullts in-50% Accuracy for any enemy hunter using beams/lasers at long range.

This is assuming your opponents is using shield penetration stuff like "Red zone overkill" or the EMP thing.

At medium range beams are inferior to every other weapon.

The-Cat-o-Nine-Tales wrote:

The Evasion value is substracted from the enemy's weapons accuracy. That means that it is more effective against low accuracy weapons than high accuracy weapons.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. This isn't right at all!

The damage taken = damage of weapon * (accuracy - evasion).

Or, expanding the brackets, your damage taken = damage of weapon * accuracy - damage of weapon * evasion.

The amount of damage reduced by evasion is entirely that last term: damage of weapon multiplied by evasion. So we see that evasion's effectiveness is entirely dependent on how much raw damage the weapon does - it has nothing to do with the accuracy of the weapon. 

Aside:

It's true that kinetics will have their 10% effective dps reduced by half to 5% at long range with 5% evasion. But that is reducing a very small number to an even smaller one! Now compare that number to 5% of missile damage at long range! The latter is much more important, even if it's 'only' a 5% reduction in damage. This is the danger of considering things in % terms!

In truth, evasion only seems to be more effective for innacurate weapons because some weapons have their high raw damage balanced by low accuracy, like kinetics or railguns. But this is a feature of game design, and is not really what evasion is best at helping against.

Thank you for pointing this out. I was unable to put it into words yesterday exactly what was wrong with his analysis when I read his post, but you are spot on with your critique. 

gap81 wrote:

I can think of a number of tactics and equipment that help to counter beams. I do not know in their current state with hero buffs and max tier weaponry if these pan out as effective counters as I rarely make it to highest tiers of military tech or indeed face such circumstances from the AI. It would be interesting to see if they do indeed work as well as they seem to in earlier tiers of tech. 

My guess is that the best counter play initially might be High teir short range kinetic slugs and rail guns with modules that allow you to cloak into optimal range and just out DPS them. This is counterable by a single Level 3 stealth detection unit however so it will likely only work once. 

Lasers/beams already have 10% shield penetration > add to that heroes with 80% shield penetration > add that lasers/beams already have 80%/90% hull penetration > add to that orange lasers/beams have additional 20% hull penetration...

You end up with lasers/beams being able to penetrate 90% of shields and 100% of hull and you are nearly always directly damaging ships.

Bunch that up with a ton of CP all rocking the same setup and you destroy one ship per volley easily...

SteveRaptor wrote:

aerothgow wrote:

problem is there is no real rock paper scisors it's just beams and hp for defense. the rest is only for role-play.

A fleet of pure beam ships (what the AI sometimes like to do) can be countered by missiles.

A fleet of beam ships with some slugs to stop missiles (what players like to do) can be countered with evasive manuvers + yellow lasers on the co-ordinators to de-buff hunters.

This resullts in-50% Accuracy for any enemy hunter using beams/lasers at long range.

This is assuming your opponents is using shield penetration stuff like "Red zone overkill" or the EMP thing.

At medium range beams are inferior to every other weapon.

With the above setup, you can use missiles and you'll lose some of your ships before you even fire the first volley, and then your next volley is going to be even weaker with more ships dropping immediately, especially because if the enemy is rocking full Hull defenses, there is no way to get your hull penetration on missles up high enough.

Which is the premise of this whole thread right?  Energy trumps Kenetic mainly because Hulls trump Shields.

videovillain wrote:

gap81 wrote:

I can think of a number of tactics and equipment that help to counter beams. I do not know in their current state with hero buffs and max tier weaponry if these pan out as effective counters as I rarely make it to highest tiers of military tech or indeed face such circumstances from the AI. It would be interesting to see if they do indeed work as well as they seem to in earlier tiers of tech. 

My guess is that the best counter play initially might be High teir short range kinetic slugs and rail guns with modules that allow you to cloak into optimal range and just out DPS them. This is counterable by a single Level 3 stealth detection unit however so it will likely only work once. 

Lasers/beams already have 10% shield penetration > add to that heroes with 80% shield penetration > add that lasers/beams already have 80%/90% hull penetration > add to that orange lasers/beams have additional 20% hull penetration...

You end up with lasers/beams being able to penetrate 90% of shields and 100% of hull and you are nearly always directly damaging ships.

Bunch that up with a ton of CP all rocking the same setup and you destroy one ship per volley easily...

SteveRaptor wrote:

aerothgow wrote:

problem is there is no real rock paper scisors it's just beams and hp for defense. the rest is only for role-play.

A fleet of pure beam ships (what the AI sometimes like to do) can be countered by missiles.

A fleet of beam ships with some slugs to stop missiles (what players like to do) can be countered with evasive manuvers + yellow lasers on the co-ordinators to de-buff hunters.

This resullts in-50% Accuracy for any enemy hunter using beams/lasers at long range.

This is assuming your opponents is using shield penetration stuff like "Red zone overkill" or the EMP thing.

At medium range beams are inferior to every other weapon.

With the above setup, you can use missiles and you'll lose some of your ships before you even fire the first volley, and then your next volley is going to be even weaker with more ships dropping immediately, especially because if the enemy is rocking full Hull defenses, there is no way to get your hull penetration on missles up high enough.

Which is the premise of this whole thread right?  Energy trumps Kenetic mainly because Hulls trump Shields.

I think you overestimate beams and their DPS.

Lets put some stuff into perspective first.

Beams are only superior to slugs and lasers at long range, at medium range they lose to lasers and slugs and at short they lose to slugs.

In general, the goal is to kill the enemy tank before each phase ends, because then the repair modules kick in and repair the tank (PVP -wise, since I never seen the AI using repair modules).

Like i said previously, long range tactics is hard countered by evasive manuvers, since 30% flat accuracy reduction translates into 30% less damage done by beams, since they start with

100 accuracy.

Next you can debuff them further by 20% with yellow lasers, thats 50% reduction in damage done, generally this means beams can't kill the enemy tank or even hunters before the long range phase ends, and im assuming here that you beams ignore all armor and all shields.

This effectivly nulifies their only advanatge (long range).

For example, here is some crude math:

A UE hunter, armed with T3 white beams has 717 dps at all ranges, cut that down by 50% and you get ~358 dps.

A UE co-ordiantor with 3 armor modules and 2 shield modules (white) has a raw HP 11780.

This means that the hunter needs around 30 seconds to kill the co-ordinator assuming you ignore all the shields and all other damage mitigation, the perfect scenerio.

Lasers, for example, are harder to counter because their optimal distance is medium range, and evasive manuvers 15% accuracy reduction is less effective here.

And its harder to keep your fleets alive for the short phase vs a laser focused fleet than a beam one.

Still, you can debuff them with your own yellow lasers and get 15+20=35% damage reduction at medium range.

Regarding kinetics.

It is true that by themselves slugs and missiles are worthless for serving as the fleet main damage dealers because they can't bypass armor and even negated by shields.

But if you have a hero with the 40% armor penetration you end up with 60% penetration for slugs and 50% for missiles.

This immediatly brings them up to be competetive, and unlike lasers, their accuracy can't be debuffed.

If you play UE and add Sherdyn slugs you get 100% penetration on both.

This makes Slugs win vs lasers at medium range and missiles very, very deadly both at long range and medium range.

In matter of fact, missiles with 100% penetration is one of the best things i witnessed in combat.

I had 2 UE hunters, each had 3 Red missile modules, 1 shoting carriers, from 100 to 0 in one volley.

However, as you can probably guess by now, making kinetics work takes a lot more effort than beams and lasers, and as expansions goes, it seems that the odds stack against kinetics.

(Shields EMP, shield re-chargers being a flat value instead of a scaling %, 80% shield penetration skill.... with the latter being the most problematic as it cannot be countered).

Bottom line is still, energy is supreme to kinetics because its just so easy to make them work compared to slugs and missiles, but kinetics can pull ahead if built around and played with the right tactics, but its just too niche (UE being the only faction that can achieve 100% armor penetration).

And yeah, also because shields are inferior to hull and raw HP.

SteveRaptor wrote:

I think you overestimate beams and their DPS.

Lets put some stuff into perspective first.

Beams are only superior to slugs and lasers at long range, at medium range they lose to lasers and slugs and at short they lose to slugs.

In general, the goal is to kill the enemy tank before each phase ends, because then the repair modules kick in and repair the tank (PVP -wise, since I never seen the AI using repair modules).

Like i said previously, long range tactics is hard countered by evasive manuvers, since 30% flat accuracy reduction translates into 30% less damage done by beams, since they start with

100 accuracy.

Next you can debuff them further by 20% with yellow lasers, thats 50% reduction in damage done, generally this means beams can't kill the enemy tank or even hunters before the long range phase ends, and im assuming here that you beams ignore all armor and all shields.

This effectivly nulifies their only advanatge (long range).

For example, here is some crude math:

A UE hunter, armed with T3 white beams has 717 dps at all ranges, cut that down by 50% and you get ~358 dps.

A UE co-ordiantor with 3 armor modules and 2 shield modules (white) has a raw HP 11780.

This means that the hunter needs around 30 seconds to kill the co-ordinator assuming you ignore all the shields and all other damage mitigation, the perfect scenerio.

Lasers, for example, are harder to counter because their optimal distance is medium range, and evasive manuvers 15% accuracy reduction is less effective here.

And its harder to keep your fleets alive for the short phase vs a laser focused fleet than a beam one.

Still, you can debuff them with your own yellow lasers and get 15+20=35% damage reduction at medium range.

Regarding kinetics.

It is true that by themselves slugs and missiles are worthless for serving as the fleet main damage dealers because they can't bypass armor and even negated by shields.

But if you have a hero with the 40% armor penetration you end up with 60% penetration for slugs and 50% for missiles.

This immediatly brings them up to be competetive, and unlike lasers, their accuracy can't be debuffed.

If you play UE and add Sherdyn slugs you get 100% penetration on both.

This makes Slugs win vs lasers at medium range and missiles very, very deadly both at long range and medium range.

In matter of fact, missiles with 100% penetration is one of the best things i witnessed in combat.

I had 2 UE hunters, each had 3 Red missile modules, 1 shoting carriers, from 100 to 0 in one volley.

However, as you can probably guess by now, making kinetics work takes a lot more effort than beams and lasers, and as expansions goes, it seems that the odds stack against kinetics.

(Shields EMP, shield re-chargers being a flat value instead of a scaling %, 80% shield penetration skill.... with the latter being the most problematic as it cannot be countered).

Bottom line is still, energy is supreme to kinetics because its just so easy to make them work compared to slugs and missiles, but kinetics can pull ahead if built around and played with the right tactics, but its just too niche (UE being the only faction that can achieve 100% armor penetration).

And yeah, also because shields are inferior to hull and raw HP.

But these are fleets, not just ship vs ship.

My 10CP (2 hunters + 1 coordinator + 1 protector) all running orange beams (save for slugs on coordinator) with energy intensifiers -and a hero running the same- with a +20% damage modifiyer from the hero, along with all the shield and hull penetration means my fleet will be packing roughly 1800dps almost always perfectly focused on a single target.

That means your coordinator, (not taking accuracy/evasion into account yet) even with the best hull HP+ armor in the game, is gonna drop in about 6 seconds.

• 1770dps + 20% damage on fleet = 2130dps vs a 12920HP coordinator (being kind) is about 6 seconds to finish it off.

Now with your 30% evasion -your extra 20% will only apply to one of my hunters at a time- so taking that into account I'd still be pumping out roughly 1200dps direct to your ship's HP.

At the absolute worst, I'll take down your coordinator in just about 9 seconds.  (actually no, if you happened to target all my ships at the same time with the extra 20% accuracy drop, then 11 seconds).

And that's your coordinator, once I'm through that, the rest is just clean up, with less and less volleys that are less and less powerful from you, and no more extra 20% accuracy penalties for me.

Now lets take into account that I usually use "By any means" card so thats another 30% damage on my weapons to make up for your 30% evasion, so we could just cancel those out and we are back to lets say and average of 7 seconds to take out your coordinator.

I'll look at the numbers closer for a 2 hunter 1 protector 1 coordinator fleet for your 10cp running full missles with enhancers and see how that works out.

However, I suspect at best you'll be putting out roughly 13000dps at best even with a UE guardian hero ship, all with red missles and enhancers (even your coordinator)

With my normal coordinator setup of 3 hull 2 shield and full slugs, even if every one of your missles hit me in the first volley (assuming all my flak just missed your missles for some reason), I'd only loose my shields along with an extra 5000hp... leaving me around 6000hp left after the first volley.

• (vodyani coordinator) 11444hp with 56% hull 77% shield and no criticals > 5262 damage taken, sheilds depleated = 6081hp left

You volley 4 times a phase and thats every 10 seconds, but I'm dropping your ships every 7 seconds on avg, and you still havne't finished off one of mine after the first volley, even if every single missle hit me (which they wont)

Your missles still need to contend with my coordinator's 1800dps vs missles, so that drastically drops your missle damage down making it very likely that my coordinator survives the first phase.

If it does, then you're toast because your best asset (long range) is now immediately halved.

Now give me a 20CP fleet?  Your ships are dropping like flies each and every second, where as you only get 4 volleys max per phase.  Not to mention that any fleet over 10CP I'd be using a few coordinators with full slugs on top of being loaded with antimatter lensers to draw fire.  You'd be lucky to take even one out in the first phase, and if you don't, you'd not have a single chance in hell to beat my fleet.

And this is all with the Virtual Endless Seeker hero isntead of a Technology Guardian (who'd give 40% damage boost, 65% maxed, isntead of 20% maxed).