Kinetics weapons mechanic makes kinetic defenses impenetrable as defense scale with hero abilities/traits.

You can make ship IMMUNE to kinetic weapons just by spending 20% of ship space on anti-kinetic defense)fleet with commander), no matter how many offensive abilities have player that use Kinetics.



So... Kinetic weapons are BROKEN. It's not just poorly balanced, it's broken.



So after we exclude missiles(because they are overpowered) and kinetics(because they are underpowered) all we have are beams.



And here comes into equation fleet modules.

Offense use Neutrino Pulsion(+12% per module == per ship) that can increase fleet damage x3.88 (x4 for cravers) on destroyers (naaaah it's not broken.... module that have higher impact on fleet damage than upgrade from 2nd tier beam weapon to top)

Defense use Neutrino Capture(+ 8% per module == per ship) that can increase fleet defense x 2.92 (x3 for cravers) on 1CP ships or by 1.92 on battleships (naaah not broken as well. higher impact of module than upgrade from shield 4/8 to 8/8)

However it still points that non-destroyers can't withstand destroyers(designed to take down big ships) fire.



Also whole evolution proved only that in world dominated completely by destroyers there is point to create a few stacks with well-shielded ships to force opponent to use sub-optimal in economic terms destroyers.



So as you should noticed as soon as we start throwing out one broken thing by another we're left with nothing.

Ofc... we can call techs 'poorly balanced' even if they alone are more valuable than whole tree of research... but in this case we can also stick back to missile destroyers... quite nothing changes.



Whole combat structure is currently broken.

FluffyBunny wrote:
In one of my other tests i used 8 neutrino and 14 fusion and with 9BS the 22DD couldn't get through the shields, whereas with 22 neutrino they can.

Hence it seems neutrino multiplies up the damage before absorbtion but crits take affect afterwards.

Can anybody confirm this? If so, this is depressing--it means that damage bonuses help beam weapons get through defense but not missiles or flaks, so late-game the only options are high-tech beams or maybe spam level 1 missiles (since each flak can only block 1 missile), but the damage probably isn't enough to beat beams.



On the other hand it may be preferable to late-game fleets being completely unable to damage each other...

That calculation is most likely no longer valid; flak and beam defenses had a significant boost in the release, the the glass cannon doctrine no longer seems to work.



The math has changed some one would have to redo it looks like the defenses have been doubled if not tripped.



Besides I am yet to play a game where I research all the way to the top of the military tree so far games on Hard/Serious end at about turn 150 my current game looks like it will end by turn 200 tops on Impossible, and even less for multilayer. I play on medium to large galaxies does using huge really stretch the game that much?



For the math to have any relevant effect on the game you should do it on tier 5-6 (Quantum Inert Alloys and Localizes Stasis) weapons I am yet to play a game that takes longer. Might try to set a huge galaxy see how long a game takes.

Mer wrote:
Lots of great feedback.

The details of the exmperiment are outdated, since it was last edited about a month ago. I will definitely be updating it to account for the changes since that time, but it's on my back burner while I study for the MCAT I'll be writing in a few weeks. Priorities.



At the time of the guide's last edit, I was using a saved file where I'd locked down most of the galaxy, and I was building the ships within it using the available strategic resources. As such, I designed ships that took into account the system improvements, but not strategic resources, in order to provide some consistency across games (e.g., you might not always have a Hyperium monopoly). In any case, it's the evolutionary approach that's important here, since it should be applicable to any given set of conditions during play.



It's interesting that you mention glass cannon supremacy, since this guide's original incarnation was an effort to prove that glass cannon destroyers trump everything, and one of the major overhauls occured when I proved that they could not. However, it's possible that the situation has changed since then.



One more little nod: I was glad to see you cleaning house in the new 30-turn challenge with Hissho affinity. I always favoured the Hissho design, but they were much maligned due to the AI's incompetence, and there were so few people willing to try them out that the monstrous advantages provided by their affinity went unnoticed (to the extent that it got buffed!).

As for my calculations extreme low tech destroyers(Ion torpedo/laser) are so extremely powerful that makes whole military tree useless. Also as you got quite interesting results I hoped to disprove my theory that researching military techs is pointless(except bonus resources).

As you can win against everything just by using 2 simple designs:



Missile Destroyer 1(all you need is Tech that cost 40 sci)

up to 35 Ion Torpedo

Endgame Cost 37.5(33.7 for Hissho)

Potential dmg per CP: 1487(+36% faction trait, +20% Hissho Bushido)



Missile Destroyer 2(all you need is Tech that cost 40 sci)

High Energy Couplings

up to 33 Ion Torpedo

Endgame Cost 42.9 (38.6 for Hissho)

Potential dmg per CP: 1963(+36% faction trait, +20% Hissho Bushido)



Laser Destroyer (all you need is Tech that cost 300 sci)

High Energy Couplings

up to 30 Lasers

Endgame Cost 54.3(48.8 for Hissho)

Potential dmg per CP: 840(up to 4 shots per phase)(+36% faction trait, +20% Hissho Bushido)



As I pointed earlier whole tactic is to spam Missile Destroyers(either 1 or 2) (fleet that have 200+ of them is not sth uncommon) and if sth is too resistant to missiles then punch it with lasers.

Ships are simply too small to put in them enough flaks to handle missiles(from stack of Missile Destroyers) and shields to handle lasers(from stack of Laser Destroyers).



@strategic resources

At early game hull cost is major part of overall ship cost so titanium monopoly is nice buff, but is not that crucial.

It's also player priority to get that monopoly even at expense of decent planet in other system(with monopoly you will take that system back anyway).

The design of flak is flawed, so the missile spam might work.



The laser spam is useless - high level defences will result in zero damage to anything really.

@Velaux

I've never proposed laser spam.

Laser destroyer are just 'must have' addition missile destroyer spam just in case that someone would decide to build anti-missile tank. In my multi-player games I tend to keep 10-20% of fleet stacks to be laser stacks. Also laser stacks are effective at hunting opponent missile destroyer stacks.



Just notice that missile destroyers could become theoretical perpetuum mobile.

If you have racial that grant you +20 dust per killed CP and experienced adventurers that also add +20 dust per killed cp on empire then you then you have net-gain on 1CP for 1CP atrocity combat.

build missile destroyer 37.5 production

buyout it with dust 37.5*0.75 = 28,125 dust

send to battle and make it kill 1CP worth of units (die in process) == +40 dust

so you are 12 dust on plus on every exchange.



If you also use building for cheaper buyouts or use 2 adventurer heroes then you can double your armies every few turns(required to reach frontline) just from snowball effect.



Well... that's theory as you won't have time in multi-player to buyout several hundreds of destroyers per turn.

Basic laser destroyers as missile-killers is still inefficient. If your opponent has a functional brain, he'll add a couple of beam defence to his missile glass cannons, then you'll have to upgrade yours and so on. End result being you'll want a ship with a few top level beams. The OP covers how this arms race works.



Missiles/flak is obviously broken though, I'd never use it against the AI and I wouldn't bother playing MP unless it's agreed to not use such a poor mechanic.

Mer wrote:
As for my calculations extreme low tech destroyers(Ion torpedo/laser) are so extremely powerful that makes whole military tree useless. Also as you got quite interesting results I hoped to disprove my theory that researching military techs is pointless(except bonus resources).

As you can win against everything just by using 2 simple designs:



Missile Destroyer 1(all you need is Tech that cost 40 sci)

up to 35 Ion Torpedo

Endgame Cost 37.5(33.7 for Hissho)

Potential dmg per CP: 1487(+36% faction trait, +20% Hissho Bushido)



Missile Destroyer 2(all you need is Tech that cost 40 sci)

High Energy Couplings

up to 33 Ion Torpedo

Endgame Cost 42.9 (38.6 for Hissho)

Potential dmg per CP: 1963(+36% faction trait, +20% Hissho Bushido)



Laser Destroyer (all you need is Tech that cost 300 sci)

High Energy Couplings

up to 30 Lasers

Endgame Cost 54.3(48.8 for Hissho)

Potential dmg per CP: 840(up to 4 shots per phase)(+36% faction trait, +20% Hissho Bushido)

Assuming for the moment that your numbers are correct, what you have here is the maxed-out glass cannon starting point. Now evolve.



Step 1:

The HP of these ships is far lower than their damage output, which means that they can be killed by similar destroyers with far fewer weapons. In fact, since the tonnage requirements are drastically reduced, the hard counters to Destroyer 1, Destroyer 2, and Laser Destroyer might as well be Corvettes for +1 movement (or Transports to troll people). Remember to use the published accuracy figures in the manual (90%/50%/20% missile/beam/kinetic at long range). Keep introducing counterbuilds until you reach an equilibrium of similar nature to the ones I found in my original experiment. You'll probably get two fits (at least for the missile fits) representing the upper and lower limits of the equilibrium range. These fits will be the optimal 1CP ship fits.



Step 2:

Compare the upper and lower equilibrium fits for 1CP ships to 2CP ship builds. You'll probably need to do round-by-round battle simulations, including multiple tag-teams variations due to random target assignment.



Frankly, I also hope you disprove your theory that the Galactic Warfare tree is useless, but even if you don't, you'll have gone through an educational exercise that will prevent you from squandering huge amounts of resources in game, plus provided crucial feedback for the community and the dev team. I'm still going to re-write this guide at some point using the post-release figures, so don't feel that I'm simply trying to get you to do my dirty qork for me!

Mer wrote:
Dust shenanigans.

That sounds horrifying, and it's even worse using the evolved counterbuilds to the fits you listed. However, it remains to be seen if those 1CP ships are the best fleet composition.

Kreios wrote:
Assuming for the moment that your numbers are correct, what you have here is the maxed-out glass cannon starting point. Now evolve.



Step 1:

The HP of these ships is far lower than their damage output, which means that they can be killed by similar destroyers with far fewer weapons. In fact, since the tonnage requirements are drastically reduced, the hard counters to Destroyer 1, Destroyer 2, and Laser Destroyer might as well be Corvettes for +1 movement (or Transports to troll people). Remember to use the published accuracy figures in the manual (90%/50%/20% missile/beam/kinetic at long range). Keep introducing counterbuilds until you reach an equilibrium of similar nature to the ones I found in my original experiment. You'll probably get two fits (at least for the missile fits) representing the upper and lower limits of the equilibrium range. These fits will be the optimal 1CP ship fits.

I have been using that exact laser gunship he listed. First, they cost me about 50 industry which means some of my planets construct huge numbers of them at a time (one planet popped 15 of them at once). It didn't matter how many I lost, I could make them so fast it was like a fire hose.

First thing that you would notice is that unit cost is rampaging up as soon as you add ANY defense to your missile destroyers(they are awesome just because they are cheap). And as soon as you add shields to your Missile destroyers then old missile destroyers become effective counter. Also such missile destroyer would lose some of it's potential against heavier targets. So whole reproduction of arms race reproduction is not working as you would wish it to work.

Missiles/flak is obviously broken though, I'd never use it against the AI and I wouldn't bother playing MP unless it's agreed to not use such a poor mechanic.

Except that AI is abusing this mechanics as well. Some AI races are focusing on missiles and sending anything other that dispensable ships is straight way to lose.



Also Kinetic Mechanics is broken as well, however in opposite direction. Kinetic Defense is scaling with traits/bonuses while attack ability to pierce defense is not.

Also Fleet bonuses also are broken... are you not using them too?

What's the point of that laser gunship? It's overkill and trivially countered. You only need ~10-15 (depends on weapon mods + risk you want to take with bad targetting & misses) lasers to kill a glass cannon destroyer. Even 30 lasers is easily countered by decent tech, though.

First thing that you would notice is that unit cost is rampaging up as soon as you add ANY defense to your missile destroyers(they are awesome just because they are cheap). And as soon as you add shields to your Missile destroyers then old missile destroyers become effective counter. Also such missile destroyer would lose some of it's potential against heavier targets. So whole reproduction of arms race reproduction is not working as you would wish it to work.

Yes. Notice how missiles are broken? As soon as you take something that messed up out the equation, those ships become trash.

Except that AI is abusing this mechanics as well. Some AI races are focusing on missiles and sending anything other that dispensable ships is straight way to lose.

They don't abuse missiles, they use high tech missiles. Missile abuse is using low level missiles because flak is such a poor design and can't stop them.

Also Kinetic Mechanics is broken as well, however in opposite direction. Kinetic Defense is scaling with traits/bonuses while attack ability to pierce defense is not.

Also Fleet bonuses also are broken... are you not using them too?

Poorly balanced != broken. Missiles make the entire warfare tech tree pointless. Kinetics/fleet bonuses are, at worst, too bad/too good. They don't break the entire combat structure.

Quite nice experiments yet some of your assumptions were wrong. I wonder if you could evolve doctrine around destroyer focused assumptions.



First of all Destroyer focused race is going to pick race traits that makes destroyers much more potent in economic way(and impact here is much greater than in case of anti-destroyer races)

Race traits include -50% weapon module cost(mandatory with highest economy impact).



Another incorrect thing is your experiments is picking of non-economic weapons.

Only weapons that require resource should be used as they could be 60% cheaper than weapons that don't use resource.

Cheapest missiles are extremely potent because they overcome defenses with numbers(this is also one of reasons why full missile design might be better than missiles+dmg module).

Strategy is to use 2 destroyer glass cannon types to overcome super-defense ships:

- missile glass cannon (cheaper)

- beam glass cannon



Weapons that should be considered:

1. Ion torpedo (TI)

dmg 35-50

cost 1.2 = 6(base) *0.4(resource bonus) * 0.5(Masters of Destruction)

weight 8 (6.4 for destroyers)



2. Laser

dmg 16-24

cost 2 = 10(base) * 0.4(resource bonus) * 0.5(Masters of Destruction)

weight 9



3. Disruptor beam

dmg 125-200

cost 11.6= 58(base) * 0.4(resource bonus) * 0.5(Masters of Destruction)

weight 18



this costs could be modified further multiplicative by:

20% discount due to Self-Organizing Cities

30% discount due to Militarists



As you probably noticed first 2 weapons don't require tech investment in military tree at all.

Usage strategy:

1. throw at opponent missile destroyer glass cannons till sth resistant to missile appear

2. destroy missile resistant targets with beam destroyer glass cannons

go back to point 1.



Also in this scenario Rock-Scissors-Paper might looks a little different, like anti-missile glass cannons is beam glass cannon, that come into battle 1 beam GC vs 4 missile GC



PS 40 resource cost missile destroyers wreak havoc both against AI and human-players.... I wonder if it's possible to counter that at all(as my own calculations points that you can counter it with other destroyers only).

Velaux wrote:
What's the point of that laser gunship? It's overkill and trivially countered. You only need ~10-15 (depends on weapon mods + risk you want to take with bad targetting & misses) lasers to kill a glass cannon destroyer. Even 30 lasers is easily countered by decent tech, though..

Going to have to wait to see someone run the numbers with the current game. While all tech all bonuses numbers games are fine (referring to OP) they are meaningless mostly because most games are decided before then. What stood out for me with laser gun boats is that full hulls of these things still cost 50 industry. As in, what does the dreadnaught cost that can ignore them? Early on I don't think the tech exists.

Mer wrote:
Kinetics weapons mechanic makes kinetic defenses impenetrable as defense scale with hero abilities/traits.

You can make ship IMMUNE to kinetic weapons just by spending 20% of ship space on anti-kinetic defense)fleet with commander), no matter how many offensive abilities have player that use Kinetics.



So... Kinetic weapons are BROKEN. It's not just poorly balanced, it's broken.

You don't need much because the game never goes to the latter phases. That part of combat is broken, which makes kinetics weaker than they otherwise would be.

So after we exclude missiles(because they are overpowered) and kinetics(because they are underpowered) all we have are beams.

How are missiles overpowered?

However it still points that non-destroyers can't withstand destroyers(designed to take down big ships) fire.

The OP disproves this. And that was written before defences were buffed.

Whole combat structure is currently broken.

No, some things are broken, some things just need a tweak in their numbers. There's a huge difference.

Shivetya wrote:
Going to have to wait to see someone run the numbers with the current game. While all tech all bonuses numbers games are fine (referring to OP) they are meaningless mostly because most games are decided before then. What stood out for me with laser gun boats is that full hulls of these things still cost 50 industry. As in, what does the dreadnaught cost that can ignore them? Early on I don't think the tech exists.

I agree re: the endgame tech stuff.



Let's see, 30 lasers do 20*30*0.5=300 per destroyer. At 15cp that's 1500 per round. 3 dreads (less CP but whatever) will take ~500 per round, or ~1500 for the full phase. Completely ignoring that would require 15 quantum dampings (same tier as dreads). That number will drop depending how fast you kill the destroyers, cards (defense ones tend to be stronger), and of course if we even out the CP. Ideally you'd design a battleship that can kill a glass cannon each round.



Of course, all this then gets messed up because of missiles. If missiles could be defended though, then the OP's point would be sound - glass cannons can be stopped with dreads.

So, here's the funny thing about that missile ship. 10 basic flaks per CP hard-counter it. (Actually, it gets worse for the attacking ship if they use higher-tech missiles because you have to go pretty far up the tech tree to find a missile that will get past a basic flak.) This is because each flak fires three times, so a single flak cannon can take down three missiles. Because of the way heroes and defense boosters work, you almost never want more than basic flaks, because you can boost their intercept chance, but you can't boost their rate of fire.



That's 70 tonnage per CP you want to neuter, and it's completely irrespective of what ship it's on, (well, battleships get it cheaper) or even, really, what tech level missiles they're throwing at you. (This is the real reason missiles are broken, IMO: you need to be halfway up the tech tree to beat basic flak with your missiles. Cravers have it a little easier with their racial missile that's harder to intercept, but a hero or stacking defense boosters can make up the difference pretty easily.) The package also only costs 24 industry without any ship cost bonus, so your missile-immune destroyer or corvette weighs in at 44 industry before bonuses or weapons. I think you can find a way to get 300 damage in a phase out of the remaining space, especially if you've got a tonnage boost or two... and, if you don't, they'll be packing fewer missiles, too.



So, the low-tech missile gambit is countered by a low-tech flak gambit. Beams are a stickier question, though, because damage absorption actually ramps up with tech, unlike with missiles. As such, I'm not going to do that math here, because I don't know the answer.



You know, nonetheless, I think I'm coming around to the idea of three missiles being shot down by a flak, especially with shields buffed the way they have been... but I still think it's dumb that it's actually counterproductive to mount flak modules that aren't the lowest one.



Edit:

As for lasers and shields lategame? First, I'm pretty sure shields and deflectors refresh every round, not every phase, so your numbers should get divided by four. The best shield per I/O is Particle Attractor, which is a bit more than 5 shields per I/O before its Antimatter Abundance discount... with that, it's something close to 10 I/O for 144 shields... which means two of them per CP will eat incoming laser damage at long range; four of them at medium range, and that's before cards, defense boosters, levels, and heroes. That's 20 I/O and 28 tonnage to block lasers at long range, or twice that for medium range.

So, the dreadnought HMS Destroyers Are A Sucker's Bet can take on 4CP of missile ships (any, really) and 4CP of laser ships (basic only, without a hero on the DN) for 392 tonnage. Research a passive tonnage booster, and you can fit enough weapons to go to town on those guys! (... and hope you shoot the laser ships first, as the missile ships will be harmless the next round ) Battleships can do their 2CP for under 160 tons, so they've easily got room to add a buffer, either an extra round of flaks for when they get triple-teamed or some extra laser buffer to survive the firestorm in the medium phase.



On the other hand, if you're looking at high-tier laser destroyers, there's the Disruptor Beam, which gives a whole new set of thresholds to the laser fight, to the tune of 8-10x the damage, albeit at around 15x the cost. (So, cost per damage roughly doubles, but HMS Destroyers Are A Sucker's Bet can't statistically fend off both them and destroyers at the same time.)

rickynumber24 wrote:


This is because each flak fires three times, so a single flak cannon can take down three missiles.

Is it confirmed information(didn't found such info anywhere yet)?

How interception chance is affected by flak accuracy and missile evasion?



Also anyone know what's exact mechanic of critical hits?

for Kinetic/Missile I guess it's: If particle/missile hits(surpassed defense) then there's chance to multiply damage.

How is it working on lasers? Critical hits are calculated before or after shield dmg absorption?

In other words

offence has laser(100% accuracy) that deal avg. 30 dmg and 100% chance for critical hit x3

defense has shield that absorb 70 damage

Q: Is one shot from offence weapon going to surpass defense shield and deal damage to health?

Low tech flak can be ignored by high tech missiles, but high tech flak will sweep the sky's.



In-fact all of the high level defenses are really good, the way to beat them is to have more of that type of weapon, leading you into a thinking game where you try to out do a opponents weapons while keeping your weapons high as well.

That's not a sort of an answer we're looking for. this is general 'rule of thumb', but brings nothing to theory-crafting discussion.



Another question is:

How is working Targeting system(which ship is attacking which)?

First noticed fact is that if we have X same ships on both sides then every ship shot at one opponent ship.

What would happen if one side outnumber opponent? like 10 ships on one side and 5 on another. Is each of that 5 ships going to take shots from 2 ships?

What if fleets compositions are not mono-hull. like

Side A: 1 Dreadnought, 2 destroyers

Side B: 6 Destroyers

Is every ship of side A going to be attacked by 2 destroyers? Or targeting systems takes CP into calculation and 4 destroyers shot at dreadnought and 1 on each destroyer?



Or maybe shots over first one per ship are distributed randomly?