From playing the game you can tell that the mods only work for the ships they're on, but I find that somewhat odd with the way the hull system is with certain hulls getting bonuses to certain mods. I was thinking, I can understand shields and deflectors working only for the ship they're on, but flak guns? Specially with the fleets always flying in that close formation you think they would cover each other. Destroyers can carry extra guns compared to the corvette while having similar defenses. The cruiser gets bonuses to various supports which makes them good to carry your invasion mods. Battleships are great for the defense, which is where my point is being made. If they can carry lots of defense mods to add mitigation to the enemy weapons, it makes them hard to kill but kind of leaves smaller ships holding the bag. Why can't it be like a group in an MMO, each ship having some kind of role because that's the way it looks like it's suppose to be, but with no way to direct how the enemy attack and with no overlapping defenses as ships just fly in and shoot at whatever is closest.



I prefer a more balanced approach since the AI is so crazy in their ship construction that even though you can specialize your ships you don't really need to. To cram like 10+ missiles on a ship is overkill as really they'll only target one thing at a time and then your ship will get blown up.



The way I would put it, is you have a corvette carrying the repair and engine bonus for your fleet, but then that only leaves you room to slap on some defenses so they don't get blown up in battle since you can't really protect them.

Next, I would get out my destroyers loaded with 3-4 missiles, 2-3 energy, and 1-2 kinetic if that and then slap on some defenses on them

The cruisers again would be for the invasion mods and they can easily have higher health and then with the power mods they can carry the same amount of weapons as your destroyers, or even less and do just the same if not more dmg

Battleships obviously can have the highest defense but really besides 3-4 missiles, 2-4 energy, and 2-3 Kinetic, you really don't need any more weapons

The dreadnaught doesn't have any bonus but it's big enough it doesn't really need any and you can load it up with more weapons than your battleship or destroyer and still have room to care an invasion mod or 2 and then a bunch of other support.



This is the way I've decided to try and play since, really after you get past those first 150 turns chances are you aren't going to see the melee phase. Each ship size seems to have a role, but really it ends up that all the small ships do is take a bullet for your larger ships even though they really have the highest damage potential since you can really load the weapons onto the destroyers. Imo, it might be best just to make them into missile boats. They're going to get blown up anyway might as well get some use out of them. This is why I think flak should be fleet wide kind of thing so that maybe you can get to that "melee" phase even though ships don't really get that close.





Next is a question, is there possibly going to be fleet tactics? Do they have to always fly in like that? Why can't they fly in towards each other like old style naval warfare in which they fly parallel to each other until they get close in the melee phase in a broadside fashion instead of coming in a weird broadside. For that mater, why can't the defenders start of in a "crossed T", that is, perpendicular to the attackers so that they can broadside the enemy. Maybe the different factions have different styles like the the Empire looks more broadside whereas the Hissho would be more front on. This is where I think engines should have some kind of effect on the battle.



Another quick question, what about fighters/drones? I know this would be mean you would need a mod to carry them and then you might need a new defense to counter them, though since really a fighter/drone would really just be shooting smaller versions of weapons then the current defenses would work and flak/point defense guns would all you would need.



Maybe this would make combat more complicated then what they wanted

Well, the tech notes on the flak improvements say something about e.g. localized explosions close to the hull. I don't think such a system would be capable of covering other ships.



Anyways, I build my ship with:

• A repair module
• An energy support module, whichever is technically available
• 20/60/20 in percent def stuffing, where 60 is my current foes most loved weapon at the time
• 20/60/20 in percent weaponry, where 60 is my current foes least defended against weapon with the biggest range
  
  

I also add one ship that only cathes bullets but has a sight range and an engine mod into the fleet.

That makes sense. I just find it weird because you really don't need very many kinetic anyway to get good damage out of them but the problem is that kinetic is best at melee and I rarely have a battle that lasts beyond long phase so it seems that missile and beam are the strongest weapon, so I want to know what is going to happen to them when it goes beta

Beams all the way! There is simply nothing left by the melee phase

Yeah..



All beams and all beam defence for ez mode...



Unfortunately this aspect of the game is not ready for a serious discussion yet, too simplistic and too unbalanced, heh



Cheers,

I actually had a game where missiles became ridiculously dominate and combat degraded into a battle of attrition. It didn't matter how much flak you had, it didn't seem to do any good, so battle ended up being throwing cruisers filled with missile batteries at the enemy and mutually annihilating each other. I just called them suicide ships cause that was what they were.



Ironically it was the pirates that introduced me to the strategy. After many turns of pushing the pirates around, they showed up with a missile heavy fleet of 19 command in the middle of my empire. Expecting to disrespect them, after destroying their 9 command fleets repeatedly, I engaged, destroyed several targets with beams, and then the missiles arrived. My fleet was gone. Absolutely gone. I threw 3 fleets against this pirate invasion before wearing it down at huge cost.