I suck at it. I know that missiles are most effective at long range, beams at medium range, and kinetics at short. So, I evenly put those weapons on my ships. I evenly put my defenses on my ships. I get obliterated. I send five cruisers against eight corvettes. My cruisers are obliterated. I send a fleet of eleven destroyers against a fleet of two cruisers and 3 destroyers and I get obliterated. I think I just need some guidance here. When you first unlock destroyers, what are your designs with them? How do you go about evolving your ships?

Well i devote about 50-60% of a ships tonnage to defenses (Adapting the amount of each one i use depending on the weapons being fired, but never completely leaving one out and possibly leaving a vulnerability).



It is important to stay with the times in technology, defenses quickly ramp up as you advance, try to never let enemy weapons get too effective against you.



Be flexible, you should also adapt your ships weapons to expose enemy defensive weaknesses when possible.



Finally, try to keep up with production rates, never let the enemy completely swarm you, always have reserve forces in case the worst should happen.

When I get Destroyers I just load them with weapons, nothing else. Since you get space bonus for weapons it seemed the logical thing to do and it works like a charm.



I also bring a scout with repair/radar/engine mod to help speed up my fleet as well as provide valuable intel about incoming enemy forces. Seems the enemy doesn't perceive the scouts as much of a threat and generally leaves them alone in combat so 1 is usually enough.



The repair mod on the scout can be invaluable in repairing your fleet quickly as the usual repair rate is far too slow. I don't like to waste space by putting a repair mod on every class of ship so the scout serves this purpose. You will lose destroyers rather frequently with this though so always have some more being produced back in your production world to replace attrition. Just send wave after wave of men until your enemy surrenders hehe



When I get bigger ships I tend to omnitank them with 1/3 space used for defence and the rest on weapons. I haven't really experimented with any other types of setups although I'm testing the armor mod on cruisers atm which makes them have as much armor as a Dreadnought. Repair mods are covered by the dedicated engineer scout that is attached to the fleet so this saves quite a bit of space for other things like more weapons

Based on how I believe Defenses work in this game, it seems ideal to use the strongest type of weapon you have, and just use that. Spreading out your weapons to balance Long/Medium/Melee is pointless as Beams do decent at long and short ranges anyways, as do Missiles with Medium. Kinetic seem to kind suck untill they're up close. Missiles pack the most punch always, but if your ships are destroyed before they reach their target they won't do any damage. Therefore I've preferred Beam weapons. I use missiles still sometimes, but aim for Beam weapons.



Enemy AI seems to like to stack 1 or 2 types. They'll take Kinetic and use Kinetic Defenses, or Beams and Shields, or maybe Kinetic/Missile with Deflecting/Flak. Anyways, for every point of defense they have, it equally reduces that amount of damage it seems. So if you do 300 of each type and they have 300 of each defense, you're essentially doing no damage it seems. But if you have 900 of 1 type, and they have 300 of each, you're still putting 600 damage on them. Roughly it seems, (weapon ranges seem to play a role in the effectiveness of the weapons, but most battles seem to end in Long-Medium Range for me)



It's kinda why I don't like the Combat/Ship Design in this game, it's kinda lazy and doesn't make much sense. Basically, build the biggest ship you have, load it up with 1 type of weapon and as many as you can and profit.

If you only research 1 weapon type any human will just retrofit to defend against it and smash you. The AI won't because it doesn't retrofit, but I'm sure they'll patch that in.

Velaux wrote:
If you only research 1 weapon type any human will just retrofit to defend against it and smash you. The AI won't because it doesn't retrofit, but I'm sure they'll patch that in.

The AI doesn't refit, but it does adapt! (With newer fleets but they really can screw you over)

i am wondering is it is more benefitial to just run one weapon type on all your fleets or to mix it up a bit.



like say you have a fleet composed of 2 dreadnaught, 2 battleships, and 5 destroyers (17 cp). lets say your dreadnaughts are loaded with kinetic, your battleships are loaded with beam, and your destroyers are loaded with missiles.



would this make an effective fleet or should all that jazz be ignored and run beam on everything?

With the update to defenses balance you really use use them all, the AI will eventually adapt with shields.



My current game regularly see's me and my enemy weapons effectiveness never come above 20%, its a long war of slug-fests and is really fun to watch.

I'm told that unlike Kinetics and Missiles, damage bonuses to Beam weapons help them penetrate defenses (Shields). If so, this could cement them as the premier weapon type.

Well all of the defenses are leaky, but most defenses are usually superior to their weaponized counterparts.



Beams are a good all rounder, kinetics are good for mowing people down in medium and short range and missiles are superior vs larger ships.

I have mixed feelings about this.



First off, putting all your eggs in one basket like Visko suggests is only a good idea in the early game. After that, the enemy WILL begin building ships with max defence in the area you've invested all your offensive weapons research. Broadly speaking, I've found that in the mid to late game, a better approach is to rely on a mixture of weapons types, and more importantly, to change frequently based on the intelligence you gather from battles. If your enemy is relying heavily on missile defence then try cutting missiles out of the mix and throw your research into beam weaponry; arm your ships with beam and kinetic. When your enemy adapts to this, be ready to switch to a missile heavy loadout. Rinse and repeat.



If you're playing a smart human, this should lead to some interesting interplay as you try to stay one step ahead in the arms race. Keep in mind that retrofitting is expensive. Theoretically at least, since the one losing the arms race is going to be losing more ships, their retrofitting cost will be lower (you cant retrofit a wrecked fleet), and their investment of production into shipbuilding will be higher (they need to rebuild their fleet ASAP). As a result I'd expect the loser to be trying to rapidly respond to enemy ship designs, and trying to find a countering formula which gives them the upper hand. The side with the upper hand, however, will likely be using dust to pay for retrofitting, rather than needing to invest so heavily in new fleets. Therefore dust production is critical for the side on the up, along with its ability to stay ahead in research terms. This should lead to some really fun strategic face-offs...



BUT: There are some imbalances to be considered. Firstly, missiles, beam and kinetic. Although kinetic are supposed to be the most powerful in terms of total damage, kinetic weapons seem UP to me. The fact is, they're not effective in the first round of combat, and by the time that round is over, I worry that any fleet which relies heavily on kinetic weapons will be understrength unless the opponent is weaker or also relies on kinetic weapons. I've only been playing a short while, but that's how it seems to me. Next up, missiles are powerful, but they're also easily blocked, and the damage they do can really be mitigated if you invest in defences against them. They also take a long time to reach the target, during which beam fire will be hitting at about 50% accuracy. The net result is that a beam heavy fleet will pop off a few enemy ships before missile damage comes into play, even in the long range round. Since next up is the beam weapon's best round (mid-range), beam weaponry, in my limited experience, seems to be the dominating factor in most mid-late battles. Although one should never rely solely on beam weaponry unless the enemy has no shielding, having beam superiority seems to be more critical to winning than having the best kinetics or missiles (similarly for defences). I wonder, what does everyone think about this issue?



The second imbalance is playing against the AI. It does learn to counter your ship designs eventually (the enemy AI is finally building beam shielded ships in my game, after many turns of my fleet having total supremacy despite being around three or four times smaller than all the other fleets), but the lack of retrofitting hurts the AI badly. Another issue the AI has is its tendency to rely too heavily on kinetic or kenetic/missile builds. This doubles the weakness of AI fleets because not only does it make them easy to predict and counter, they also rely heavily on the least useful weapons. By the time the slow-reacting AI is countering your beam heavy fleets, it's already losing the war because of your initial advantage.

Beam weapons are just too effective. I don't care how long the game goes on, I have never seen the AI make ships capable of withstanding class cannon destroyers.



My attrition fleets are entirely beam fleets. Other than battleships configured to negate just those ships I don't know what withstands them. If an equal CP fleet of beamers met anti-beamer BBs then I would suspect the BBs might win.



I have tried the missile boats, in attrition and non attrition ships and frankly the beam ships still came out better. Kinetics I abandon so fast as to make that tech moot.



In my current game, around 125 turns or so, I have 50 industry cost attrition destroyers which I can make near 15cp fleets of them per turn on one system. I just thrown them fire hose style out there