Heya guys again, let's hit the ball running with as much info and experiences regarding ship types, fleet builds and roles.



To start off with, I'm mainly using corvettes for the early part of the game to fend off pirates - mainly equipped with kinetics so I can take out enemy scouts / colony ships, as missile version seems to never fire when the opponent plays the retreat card, unlike kinetics (am not bothering with beams to refit them).



Destroyers are good with either beams or missiles for me, am mainly going and sticking with 1 of the 2 depending on my resources and research, I might add some armor but mainly just weapons since you can't really strike a balance ofense / defense on your destroyers in the early part of the game, so is best to have highest chance to do max damage.



Cruisers are a mystery for me. If am not playing a warring faction and am playing peaceful (at least for early / mid game) I find no use for those ships. Since am not invading, I don't need those modules, sure extra speed from an engine, sight and some offensive or defensive modules are nice, to make 1 ship per fleet, but apart from that....



Battleships: loaded with defense modules and possibly some armor, and a single type of armament, I avoid missiles on those, prefer beams or kinetics again depending on which one I decided to pursue in my research.



Dreadnought: every bit counts defense wise, must have defense to each weapon type, armor, and still pack a solid punch, kinetics or beams again single armament type.



My fleets composition for midd - late game are something like: 1 cruiser for the support role and modules, 1 maybe 2 dreadnoughts (usually 1 per fleet), 2 - 4 battleships (depending on my CP and where am with research wise), and rest destroyers. I always have a 2nd fleet with couple destroyers and another cruiser to replace loses in main fleet (as you will inevitably lose destroyers here and there).

Sounds like a fairly solid build. I usually like having a balanced fleet but with some of its power diverted to kinetics etc. I like to have a single dreadnought as a flagship and build around that, couple of battleships a few other things here and there, a few repair barge corvettes. It seems to work fairly well in the earlier game too just to have a couple of dedicated ships with a repair module and defense, slap a few armaments on too, their sole purpose is to survive and keep my fleet in the fight longer so my kinetics can be of use. I'm still testing things out of course, i usually like to run the builder trait in my custom faction so i get things like the Isotope refinery and other improvements quicker, saving a few turns and then rush out ships of the line with my bumped up research.

I like missiles too much to not put them in every(not in transports) single tincan in my fleet. Besides, I'm trying to stick to their respective roles and repair module in every bigger ship. Fleet composition pretty much the same, except for more cruisers.

Interesting...



Late game my fleets are almost completely Dreadnaughts and Battleships (so I always tend to be 1 short of the theoretical maximum)... I've tried adding Destroyers, but they mostly end up getting destroyed, so mostly I don't bother with them, except near the beginning. I find that with a good defence, I very seldom have any problems with losses, and regularly take on equivilent size fleets, or even larger ones, and win.



The only time I use Cruisers is early game wnen Battleships are not yet available, and Cruisers are new; although I sometimes have a Cruiser fleet still going quite late into the game. If you update them regularly (very important), they can be a threat to any other fleet.



Imo, it matters very little what weapons you choose... beam and kinetics fire 4 times per phase, and missiles fire once, and do 4 times the damage. What is more important is checking to see what defences your opponents have, and staying ahead in the tech trees and fleet sizes.



I always update my models and fleets when I can (Dust permitting), and always do every modification by hand... in this way I try to keep my fleets at optimum for my tech level.



I still regard myself as a bit of a newby at this game, I've only got 125 hours so far, so any help and/or advice is very welcome.

Am sure I read in a thread that missiles end up as worst damage compared to beams and kinetics (and to be frank, as soon as flask come into play they are easiest to counter as well). The bad thing about missiles is that they only deal damage once per round and at the end of the round. So if you can't 1 shot whatever you fired your missiles at, they can repair next round and get 8 rounds of beam or kinetics fired at your fleet. Unless your defenses are vastly superior both in power and tech level to their level and power of beam / kinetics, they will kill your missile fleet with ease.



Shields are a bit too good now vs beam as well, absorbing a tad too much damage, so kinetics on paper are the strongest (but also only getting to shine from medium range and going to town at melee range).



I don't believe stacking highest CP / tonnage is the best way to go, from my experience playing up to impossible difficulty (am not doing any MP yet before they fix the sync / disconnects, but am really looking forward to it!), is better to have a bigger fleet (numbers wise) to present more targets to the attacker, so that even if he got 1 mega duper super ship or 2 or 4, who can theoretically eradicate any of your ship in 1 round of combat, he can't kill them all, and your damage if you're not too far behind in tech will chew at their hp and possibly kill them in melee round.



When I was playing in the beginnings I had a similar mentality from GalCiv2, mass as many of the latest ship tonnage / class, but even in SP it's not working great at higher diff levels. The AI learns on the fly some things, and he will modify his fleet comp / ship design to have the best chance to beat your fleet. (of course excluding high level hero and past level 10-15 ships in one of your fleets at lower diff levels, then yeah you pretty much kill fleet after fleet without breaking a sweat).



Of course the system could use some changes, like target priority of some sorts, I wouldn't mind if we could manually select targets for each ship in fleet, or by type (let's say I want my destroyers to go to town on his dreadnought, while my battleships go for his cruisers and my cruisers draw the fire from his battleships etc) or select target by class or something As it is now first ship in your fleet targets first ship in his fleet, 2 to 2, 3 to 3 and so on until one side runs out of ships, let's say I have 8 ships and you have 4, my ship nr. 5 will target your ship 1, my 6 will target your 2 and so on (they double up sort of).



Battle cards to play a role in the outcome of each round - given they don't negate eachother, so playing the right cards at the right time can still have a great impact on the fight (like negating a repair on round 2 for example).

I tend to use mixed fleets and different fleets for different purposes. I tend to never scrap ships, and I start early-on with destroyers as the primary makeup of my fleet. Early on I use both kinetics and missiles, then upgrade to beams later on.



I view ships in terms of roles that I want them to fulfill. Destroyers I view as glass-cannon gunships. They are easy to be killed, but they are useful to doling out early damage and taking hits my larger ships would have to take. They are cheap and replaceable. They die often but it isn't like I can't just pop out another several every turn if I wanted to.



Still, I would say that each of my fleets (later game) is probably, 10-20% battleships/dreadnoughts, 60-70% cruisers, and 10-20% destroyers. (CP cost-wise)

(Varies depending on their purpose).



As my ships get larger they also tend to get tankier. I prefer to utilize larger ships as long-term command vessels, intended to survive battles and get lots of XP over time. The destroyers are just expendable gunboats.



Destroyers tend to be armed primarily with missiles, maybe some beam weapons. Very little in way of defensive modules.



Cruisers are used to fill one of two roles:

-Combat: Some missiles, primarily uses beams, self-repair modules and some defensive modules especially health buffs.

-Escort: Beam weapons, missiles if I can afford them. Self-repair modules and what defensive modules I can afford. Includes scanning and engine technology to give the entire fleet a small scanning and movement buff.



Battleships (and larger) are generally designed as 'tank' vessels. They are heavily armored with a moderate selection of beam and missile weaponry, perhaps some kinetic. The reason I do not heavily arm these is because of the potential of wasting firepower on overkill. Instead, I take a long-term approach with these ships. Giving them enough firepower to take out smaller vessels and focusing on having enough defenses to survive the fight.



I feel like a larger selection of Cruisers with moderate defenses is the way to go to counter large forces of destroyers; and that in-general mixing the fleet up gives you the best versatility.

I am not using weapons on my cruisers, I need them for the variety of support modules, and some defense / armor modules, they are just an extra target, possible hard to take down and providing the buffs my fleet needs.



Regarding Battleships and Dreadnoughts, I agree on the tankines importance, but I never put 2 type of weapons on same ship. I'd rather have a kinetic battleship and a beam one than lower damage of 2 types on same vessel. I need my ships to be able to deal damage to enemy big ships as well, and having 2k beam or kinetics is better than 1k beam and 1k kinetics when the enemy dreadnought or battleship is sporting 700 plating and 800 shields



I suppose you don't play with pirates on since you can go straight for destroyers early game. I often get pirate events in first 10 turns, so I use corvettes quite a lot in early game. Am finding I don't build destroyers early game unless am a warmongering faction or a threat from a neighbor is imminent. But I'd never put missiles on destroyers, since they are so fragile they need to do max damage as often as they can before being destroyed, so kinetics or beams looks better to me, and you avoid overkill shots (having 4 destroyers firing 1k missiles each at 1 enemy destroyer is a waste of damage, when they can take it out with 1-2 rounds of kinetics or beam then fire at another target in same turn).



Mixing the fleets is a necessity IMHO, you get better value and more staying power by doing so.

Anelyn wrote:
Cruisers are a mystery for me. If am not playing a warring faction and am playing peaceful (at least for early / mid game) I find no use for those ships. Since am not invading, I don't need those modules, sure extra speed from an engine, sight and some offensive or defensive modules are nice, to make 1 ship per fleet, but apart from that....

Cruisers are useful for building a ship that has defense against all three types of weapons - armor. They'll never have as great defense as a battleship that's packing the *correct* type of defenses, but cruisers will always provide a well-rounded ship with no 'gamble' on having put on the right type of defense. You shouldn't be putting engines or radars on them, however, those you put on a repair ship (corvette with engine + radar + repair). Beyond that cruisers are critical in the offensive role for building carriers with lots of invasion modules (the only way to speed invasions to acceptable rates) so it is clear you'll find less use for them while defending.

Anelyn wrote:
Regarding Battleships and Dreadnoughts, I agree on the tankines importance, but I never put 2 type of weapons on same ship. I'd rather have a kinetic battleship and a beam one than lower damage of 2 types on same vessel. I need my ships to be able to deal damage to enemy big ships as well, and having 2k beam or kinetics is better than 1k beam and 1k kinetics when the enemy dreadnought or battleship is sporting 700 plating and 800 shields

True. This is one of the things Amplitude should change about the combat system IMO: Reward players for equipping ships with a mixture of weapons rather than just the boring one type always. In your given example, it should rather be the other way around with the latter ship being the best in [most] situations. Possibly a system where each extra weapon module of the same type past a certain amount starts putting out less damage.

Why would you use a corvette with sensor and engine in a fleet when it will get instantly blown up in first encounter (unless of course you severely overpower enemy fleet and you can destroy it in first salvo). My cruiser is meant to stay within the fleet as much as possible and provide it the bonuses it needs (mind you not the sensors, corvettes are good for eyes in the sky of course, but not really fit to join a frontline fleet past the mid game IMHO).



I think the current weapon system is working, even if is not most exciting out there, but pretty much is either this, or everyone puts a bit of each type to keep it balanced or with a small favor to a specific weapon type (preferably the one highest tech level).



Best weapon systems, ship roles and fleet battles I ever experienced was in Homeworld 2 (I still play it for that unique feeling of space combat). There each ship was good at something, but maintains it's role and usefulness even in the very late stages of the game (they do not get obsolete or complete overshadowed by bigger tonnage ships). But then again there were more factors at play in that space combat. You had small ships divided in 2 categories, fighters (or interceptors) which were very fast, not much firepower, but exceeded at taking down other fighters and bombers, then you had the bombers, slower, can't really hit fighters or other small crafts, but great at taking out big ships (or modules on those ships). Then it was corvettes, light armored crafts, a bit slower than fighters, good at taking on the fighters / bombers too, as well great against frigates. Then we had frigates which were slower, and of 2 flavors, gunships great at taking out swarms of interceptors / bombers, but dealing less damage to other frigates and higher tonnages, and missile frigates great vs other frigates and greater tonnage ships but helpless vs fighters, bombers, corvettes etc. Then we get to destroyers if memory serves right which were the backbone of your fleet, as they were both packing a good firepower vs frigates, other destroyers and even damaging battleships, but weak to bombers, missile frigates (you get the drill). Battleships were the behemoths, packing a large array of weapons and defenses being strong vs frigates, corvettes, destroyers and even with other battleships BUT they were very weak to bombers and missile frigates. So it was all intertwined and you had to balance your fleet to be able to stand a chance to enemy fleets, you couldn't spam just highest damage ship or one type, you would lose badly.



Am not sure if something among those lines can be implemented in ES in some form or shape, since you have absolutely no control in the battles apart from the battlecards (in HW2 fleet positioning - full 3d, formations, targeting orders for every single ship / squadron - for example take the battleship engines with your missile frigates while your bombers attack the weapon modules, then your destroyers / battleships move in to clean house safely etc).

I'm not a fan of kinetics, as I like doling damage out in early combat. On that principle, and because destroyers get killed easily, I never put kinetics on destroyers. The risk of them getting destroyed in the long and medium ranges of combat are too great, which would thus destroy their effectiveness. I want the destroyers to serve as early battle damage dealers, softening targets up for the rest of my fleet and (since the rest of my fleet tends to be beam-weapon heavy), possibly having them focus more on flak modules (or regretting that they didn't). With the destroyers I would rather have high burst at the beginning of the fight before they start blowing up. But I do sometimes use beams on them instead.



I do play with Pirates and I usually don't have much problems dealing with them. I just start off making a strong enough fleet to go hunt them down and explore early and explore fast to minimize the spawning. I will say that my early ship builds do tend to be more mixed than later-game builds. For instance, I do not use destroyers are 'expendable' vessels early on. I have too many other things to build. So I give them some minimal defensive gear and especially health, setting them in combat fleets with corvettes.



I like to have versatility in my ship's weapons so that I can continue dealing strong damage throughout the fight. The way I look at it, the damage probably [mostly] balances out in the end (depending on circumstances, of course). For example: If you use half of your ships with missiles and half of your ships with beams. After the first engagement, the enemy knows that it needs beam defense and missile defense. They can either have full shields on each ship, full flak on each ship, or a mixture to negate 'some' damage from each. Assuming you go full beam on some ships and full missile on some ships, and they likewise go full flak on some ships and full shields on some ships, half on each: 50% of your attacks will do very little damage (as it will hit the appropriate defense) while 50% will do a lot of damage. Thus, about 1/2 of your attacks probably do a large amount of damage, the others do minimal damage.



In the opposite side, using mixed missiles and beams: the enemy can either use full shields, full flak, or a mixture of defensive modules. If they use either full shields or full flak, then each ship will do moderate damage to them from the other weapon type. If they use a mixed defense, they likely will not block all damage and so the weapons will still do a moderate amount of damage of each type (unless of course, their defenses are simply stronger than your firepower is period; in which case I'd argue that you may be outclassed in the fight anyway). That seems, to me, to logically be about equal. With one set up each attack is either doing high damage or low damage. With the other set up, each attack is doing moderate damage. Of course, exact load outs and cards used are going to alter this.



Now, that isn't to say that either side doesn't have its advantages. I can see several strong reasons to use full loadouts of one type or another for each ship. As I said, I usually do that with my destroyers (which I use as primary damage dealers). So I actually use some ships with full-load outs of one weapon-type and some ships that are mixed. It also changes depending on the enemy and their equipment and the fleet itself. If the enemy is packing shields by default, I'm certainly switching over to other weapons and if they are heavily mixing their defenses, I might switch to just one type of weapon.



Naturally, it is the state of the game that strategies have to adjust to every situation. This is just my 'default' strategy. It is my go-to. Equipment and tactics changes based on conditions. You have to be able to quickly change equipment and tactics or you will be crushed. I'm not saying my mixed ships are necessarily 'better', just that it is my preference by default. I may find that other methods are stronger and may change up. I admit, I haven't been playing the game that long.



I will admit that there is one significant advantage that I can see to the all-one-weapon loadout. That is, you have the greater chance of entirely eliminating some ships early on. This of course decreases the enemy's firepower overall, and is why I usually focus destroyers into either missiles or beam weapons.



We definitely agree about mixed fleets though. I think being able to use mixed fleets and utilize the damage of destroyers, while maintaining a core of powerful, larger vessels that can gain experience over the long-haul is the way to go. I love ending up with early-game ships that are still alive and more highly leveled in the late game.