Ok. For this post, I am getting data and doing the math on the spot. Check the end of the post for results.

Remember, the inception of this design was to hard counter the AI's ship designs and their inept ship defense spread.



Assumptions:

* no crits and no miss for simplicity. maybe do analysis later with crits and miss



Situation:

* Laser and Shield only.

* 22 DD vs 11 BB

* both sides without racial combat boosters like +%O/D, +%tons, +CP, etc

* Full research available

>> ie., (baseTonnage + 50) * 2 => 300ton DD, 500

* Build BB without overkill as much as possible

* Build DD with only weapons

* Weapons and defense:

>> Gluon Disruptor: 20tons, 220 MaxDmg, 75gears

>> Ablative Wave Shield: 20tons, 250 absorb, 75gears

>> Neutrino Pulsion: 24tons, +12% dmg to fleet, 42gears

>> Neutrino Capture: 22tons, +8% all defense to fleet, 64gears

* Ships:

>> DD: (100 + 50)*2 = 300tons; -20% weapon tons; 300hp

>> BB: (200 + 50)*2 = 500tons; -20% defense tons; 600hp



Loadout:

* DD: 300HP, 3470dmg/salvo, 0 def, 1317gears

300 - 24 = 276tons for lasers;

>> 276/(20*0.8) = 17 R4 => no additional possible;

17 * 220 = 3470 dmg per salvo before +%



* BB: 600HP, ~dmg, 6750absorb, 2239gears

need 2x weapon to kill DD in one salvo

500 - 22 - 2x20 = 438tons for shields

>> 438/(20*0.8) = 27 R5 => no additional possible

27 * 250 = 6750 dmg prevented before +%



Round 1: remember 2DD attacks 1BB

22 DD => x3.64 dmg => 25261.6 max dmg before block for 2 DD

11 BB => x1.88 absorb => 12690 dmg blocked for 1 BB

>>> insta kill BBs doh. 11BB dead, 11 DD dead fails



******** Ok lets try figuring out what per DD weapon dmg has to be for BB at 1hp after round 1

(25261.6 - 12690 - 599)/2/3.64 = 1645 less damage from each DD

1645 / 17 = 97 damage less per weapon => NOT possible as 200dmg is min for weapon.





**********************************************

What about BB as cravers

* BB: 600HP, ~dmg, 8000absorb, 2559gears

need 2x weapon to kill DD in one salvo

575 - 22 - 2x20 = 513tons for shields

>> 513/(20*0.8) = 32 R1 => no additional possible

32 * 250 = 8000 dmg prevented before +%

****remember craver has 4 more CP also



Round 1 again: remember 2DD attacks 1BB except 2 which has only 1

22 DD => x3.64 dmg => 25261.6 max dmg before block (12630.8 for single ship)

13 BB => x2.04 absorb => 16320 dmg blocked

>>> insta kill BBs doh. 11BB dead, 13 DD dead; 2BB undamaged.



Round 2:

9 DD => x2.08 dmg => 14435.2 dmg to one BB, 21652.8 dmg to the other

2 BB => x1.16 absorb => 9280 dmg absorbed

>>> insta kill all BBs doh. 13BB dead, 15 DD



******** Ok lets try figuring out what per DD weapon dmg has to be for BB at 1hp after round 1

(25261.6 - 16320 - 599)/2/3.64 = 1146 less damage from each DD

1146 / 17 = 68 damage less per weapon => NOT possible as 200dmg is min for weapon.





********************** what about 2 heroes with +100% o and d, and BB as Craver

Round 1: remember 2DD attacks 1BB

22 DD => x4.64 dmg => 32201.6 max dmg before block for 2 DD

13 BB => x3.04 absorb => 24320 dmg blocked for 1 BB

>>> insta kill BBs doh. 11BB dead, 13 DD dead; 2BB undamaged.



******** Ok lets try figuring out what per DD weapon dmg has to be for BB at 1hp after round 1

(32201.6 - 24320 - 599)/2/4.64 = 784 less damage from each DD

784 / 17 = 47 damage less per weapon => POSSIBLE, > 200dmg is min for weapon.



******** Ok lets try figuring out what per DD weapon dmg has to be for BB undamaged

(32201.6 - 24320)/2/4.64 = 850 less damage from each DD

850 / 17 = 50 damage less per weapon => POSSIBLE, = 200dmg is min for weapon.



CONCLUSION: I might have to recant my balanced uber defense and biased weapon selection, but only against people that use pure weapon DD swarm.

Also, if play as Craver and get a very high +%defense hero, then BB fleet can survive; especially, if some +%d for you, or -%d or -%acc for enemy from battle cards.



Additionally, it appears that DD swarm does not scale as effectively as BB fleet.

Also, if players have +%initialHP buildings, then BB's become LESS effective.

Also, smart money is on mixing in a few DD with the BB to offset your numerical deficiency, but that analysis will have to wait until later.

The deal with any weapon/resist setup is 'but how could that beat x/x setup?' That's why I advocate a omnifit fleet right now. Obviously refit/building can be very useful once you have a good idea of where your opponents techs and builds are however unless you want to get completely destroyed by a specific player or build you have suffer some range of your maximum efficiency to greatly reduce your minimum efficiency. While destroyers can currently have a much larger tonnage fleet their mp only can compete with a battleships when they stack weapons. When stacking weapons you get ripped apart quite instantly and have to rebuild of course. So came along the Missile Destroyer concept, rebuilding destroyers is cheap and we can usually guarantee 1/1 trading against AI. However this doesn't look to me like it will work in multiplayer. The techs and cards available to counter any single build will make it impossible to reliably trade with one shot wonder destroyers.

Ok my last edit went through after you posted Davea.



I added the starred sections to explain the choices.



Basically, BB can stack 25%(?) more defense than any other ships. So, I have to stack all 3 defense types if you use weapon strategy from previous post.



If on the other hand, you only use one weapon type, then I just stack that defense until your weapons do no damage again.



Fully researched, destroyer fleets benefit more from +tonnage, +%tonnage, and + to fleet, but I can have equivalent 2k mp for each defense on BB and still manage about 1.5k mp of weapon. I have yet to manage to make my destroyer fleet to 1.5k mp for each defense.



To borrow a BattleTech terminology, Combat Loss Grouping (CLG), in combat where none of your units drop but all of your units take damage nearly evenly to a point where all of a sudden your all of your units are lost in rapid succession.



Pretty much 1 or 2 salvos should take out a DD, if you stack one non-missile defense then by the end of the 2nd salvo, 4 DD are gone. The weakness to swarms is that if you start to lose your numerical superiority, you lose.



This is why I suggested concentrated fire to reduce enemy numbers in another thread: 11/11 BB only shooting 11/22 DD is as close to concentrated fire as you can get in 0.30.5.

On the flip side, 22/22 DD shooting 11/11 BB is essentially spreading out your damage. The only way a DD swarm can take down a BB fleet is to reach CLG and then drop BBs, where as salvo by salvo, the DD swarm gets smaller and less effective damage against BBs. This only remains true, if the DD swarm evenly targets the enemy fleet; ie., 2 DD targets 1BB; if 1 DD targets 1 BB and all other DD targets only 1/11 BB then concentrated fire overrides CLG.



You are correct Davea, the only way to seriously test this is to wait for multiplayer. But I think my analysis will hold true.