Demoulius said:
1: What kind of ship types are best in a fleet?
Depends what your fleet is using - certain weapons are best when used on specific ships.
The AI is stupid (this will be a running theme), but occasionally they'll build a coherent fleet by accident, and some of those coherent fleets counter smaller ships. The AI never builds anything that counters larger ships, so those are pretty safe.
The standard design for "i just want something that beats the AI" is usually fleets made entirely out of cruisers with nothing but whirlwind missiles, or a mix of battleships with artillery and hangars.
Demoulius said:
2: Ive noticed the AI LOOOOOVES spamming autocannons on their fleets.
The AI doesn't understand how to compare weapons, so judges components based on how much power they use, because high tech weapons usually use more power. One of the weaknesses of autocannons is that they use a lot of power, but the AI doesn't really understand this, and just thinks autocannons are some super-strong future tech weapon.
AI sometimes uses other weapons if it has a personality that likes different types of weapon, or is behind on autocannon techs, but it's very heavily biased to autocannons.
Demoulius said:
3: Ive seen ships stay at range, and try to stay at range with artillary computer. And ive seen ships with simular builds charge headlong into melee range for some reason (like the above mentioned battleships with autocannons) but im not quite sure what causes it.
So there are two important numbers surrounding engagement range - there's preferred_attack_range, which determines what the ship tries to do after it's reaches its target position, and there's formation_distance, which determines the ship's target position.
For example, the swarm computer has a formation_distance of 10, so the ship will charge to 10 distance when the fight begins and then orbit at its preferred_attack_range, which for swarm is "min", the range of the shortest range weapon on the ship.
This means if your swarm ship has 3 missiles, it will fly to 10 distance of the enemy, then fly back out to 100 range (the max range of the missiles), and then try to circle the enemy at that distance until the fight ends.
So while the preferred_attack_range of an artillery combat computer is "max", the maximum range of the longest range weapon on the ship, it has a formation_distance of "median", which is the maximum range of the median ranged weapon on the ship.
So if the AI is being stupid and built a ship with 5 autocannons and 1 X slot weapon, the ship will first fly to the median range, which in this case is an autocannon, so 30 range. Once it gets there, it then switches to the "maintain_distance" pattern, and says "oh im way too close, my max range is 150", and so attempts to fly away to 150 distance away.
In other words, the ship charges to autocannon range, and then immediately attempts to fly away, but can't do that because it's a slow battleship and probably already died.
Carriers have the same problem - if you have a carrier ship with 6 point defence and 3 hangar slots, the median range weapon will be point defence, so the ship will start the fight by flying to PD range. Always ensure you have more long range weapons than short range weapons on any ship that's supposed to stay away from the enemy.
Demoulius said:
4: Anoter targetting computer question: Line computers. I havent really gotten a good design that relied on them and im mostly using carrier and artillary computers. Is there something that they do that makes them good?
They're mostly useful for the accuracy, yeah. Freeing up aux slots is nice, and there's a handful of weapons with 75% accuracy that can't be brought up to 100% using the aux component, but usually artillery is better.
There's a couple unusual uses for them though:
- So it makes sense to use a picket combat computer on a picket ship, right? Actually, no.
You only need as much tracking as your opponent has evasion. P slot weapons already have enough tracking to completely cancel out the evasion of strike craft and missiles, so you don't need the tracking bonus. However, P slot weapons all have 75% accuracy. This means putting a line computer on your picket ships makes them around 20% more effective! - It makes sense to use artillery combat computer for Neutron Launchers, right? Again, no.
Neutron launchers are all about the alpha-strike - they have a cooldown twice as long as X slot weapons. That means it's essential that you lower the enemy's shields *before* your neutron launchers get in range, so you don't waste your volley. The best way to do this is to have artillery combat computers on your kinetic artillery ships, and then put line combat computers on your neutron launcher ships. As an added bonus, neutrons are one of the other weapons with 75% accuracy, so line combat computer is a big power boost here too.
Demoulius said:
5: Fleet power. How much should I really look at this?
6: To tie together with #5 I suppose. I notice that the DPS for autocannons is way, way higher then equal sized components of other weapon groups.
It used to be much more important - now there's a lot more gimmicky weapons with inaccurate fleet power, like autocannons. Ultimately, big fleets are scary even if they're made of junk, so don't completely ignore fleet power, but it's fair to say that you shouldn't take it too seriously. Depending on what weapon I'm using, I sometimes consider battles against AI fleets with twice as much power to be easy victories.
Autocannons are a good weapon - the AI is awful at using them, but there's a reason they have high fleet power. Autocannons do big damage.
Small autocannons are the best ones - you typically want to put them on corvettes, and use it with the energy point defence (because the devs forgot to make it bad against ships, so it's just OP on corvettes), and plasma cannons (not as good as PD, but almost). I'd stick to an all-corvette fleet, and use a few flak ships to deal with enemy strike craft, but you could also mix in some artillery battleships or something to deal with enemy carriers. Either way, it'll roll over the AI.
Demoulius said:
7: I tend to use a design I call the 'jack' build because its a jack of all trades. Like I said at the start of this question its a jack of all trades build but are specialist designs better? And if so, whats a good design for corvettes?
Your "jack" build is better than the garbage the AI puts out (because the AI often forgets to balance energy and kinetic weapons), but it's not great - if you're using missiles, it's best to use a lot of missiles, so you can take advantage of them bypassing shields and overwhelm enemy PD. There's not much point in using missiles if you're going to destroy the enemy's shields anyway - missiles do less damage than real anti-armor weapons.
The autocannon build from earlier is pretty good, you can also build a fleet that only uses disruptors. Disruptor corvettes are basically unbeatable until the hardening aux components arrive, which is several techs after disruptors, so there's a really strong window of opportunity there in PvP. In PvE you don't need to worry about timing - the AI tends not to use hardening components, so disruptor corvettes never stop being good.
Like missiles, you should only use disruptors if you're not using other weapons in the fleet - there's no point using other weapons to damage shields and armor if the enemy dies before they can reach the hull.
Demoulius said:
8: Ships and disengaging. But what I mostly see is enemy ships getting away 99% of the time while my own fleets get obliderated (killed not escaping) and I mostly feel that in the early game.
The current theory is that disengagement changes in 3.6 were poorly thought out - they made it so ships have fewer chances to disengage, but a higher chance to disengage on each roll. However, the chance is way too high and basically always hits the cap (50%), even if the fleet has an unyielding admiral or something, so ships with more than one disengage roll have a really high chance of escaping. The AI likes to retreat when its losing a fight, so ship losses can be really low.
That doesn't explain all the oddities though - the short answer is that it's probably bugged. It's certainly not working as intended.
Demoulius said:
9: Final question. Ive noticed that some weapons carry with them a great cost in upkeep and some literally 0 additional upkeep costs. Is this intended? It seems abit OP to me....
Ship upkeep should just be a function of the component's alloy cost. From the wiki:
"around 0.833% of its build cost in Energy Credits and around 0.15% of its build cost in Alloys. Strategic Resource will also increase upkeep by a bit."
Which weapons don't seem to have the right upkeep?
