Hull size uses?

[ulzgoroth]

I feel like some of our options have narrow niches at best. Wondering if there are other perspectives.

1 MC

• Gunboat: Fast build, absolute maximum agility, nose mount that can always be a threat. Possibly the top pick for dogfighting, probably not the top pick for anything else.
  
• Escort: Does what it says on the tin, carrying light batteries and point defense weapons to cover bigger ships that can't carry as much as they want. And early missile boats. Also maybe useful for colony ships, since with two utility slots it can carry a hydrogen storage or a science lab in addition to a colony module, but still is super-light and cheap.
  
• Corvette: The most bang you can get for 1 MC, but it does lose a lot of agility for it. Does it matter? If you want a gunboat that also has a turret, or an escort that uses a laser cannon to fry mag shells, this is your option. Since it has the same utility slots as a escort, it probably shouldn't be used for utility roles.

2 MC

• Frigate: The small fry of the category. IIRC its slots are arranged so you could put a 2-slot battery in, but the only role I can really see for this is utility duty with its generous 4 slots. I use these for marine assault vessels. You could also make a fancy colony ship with ISRU, survey, and hydrogen tankage in addition to the kit.
  
• Monitor: I used them for big missile boats. You could also fit a 2-slot battery or two to get a small anti-dogfighter turret platform.
  
• Destroyer: Queen of battles in my fleet. Powerful 2-slot nose mount and some self defense, on an agile, affordable, and reasonably expendable platform.

3 MC

• Cruiser: I don't get it. The only thing it seems to have going for it is 6 utility slots, and I'm not sure what trick you'd need that many slots for. A colonizer that can drop multiple bases? Maybe some kind of attempt to exploit laser engines? A optimized heavy marine assault boat when you also want to use a hydrogen tank mod?
  
• Battlecruiser: If you want to get a three slot nose mount into a 3-MC ship, you use this. Otherwise you probably don't.
  
• Battleship: Big hull slots. First ship that can use heavy batteries. Sluggish compared to everything before it. A contender for the most efficient platform for heavy batteries. And it's still got the nose armament of a destroyer. Seems like the obvious staple of the tier, only one I've built.

4 MC

• Lancer: If you want to get a 4 slot nose mount into a 4-MC ship, you use this. Otherwise you probably don't. I do, for heavy plasma cannon.
  
• Dreadnought: Biggest stack of hull slots in space. Can fit two heavy batteries if you don't mind not having any defensive turrets. Or just one and a really generous supporting arsenal. And a battlecruiser's nose battery. Seems like the obvious staple of the tier though I haven't built one yet.

5 MC
The Titan takes a lancer and bulks out its broadside to battleship levels. Is it worth it? I dunno. Also 8 utility slots for sheer howling redundancy. Probably pack multiple batteries and heat sinks so that you can't be crippled too easily by an unlucky internal hit?

[N311]

Originally posted by ulzgoroth:

Originally posted by N311:

Also like to use crusier as laser boats 2 small frontal lasers and 2 2slot hull lasers. Plus 2 PD or light lasers (depends on tech). They melt any ships that try and break through my lines to hit the rear of large fleets. And act as strong PD shisp with extra frontal armour

I'd like to use cruisers as that too, except that would require them to be battleships because cruisers have a total of 3 hull slots.

By bad got mixed up between my bs and cruiser indictor design.

its one battery plus 1 mount ligh laser and 1 light laser or pd

[corisai]

Originally posted by ulzgoroth:

That said, I am dubious that that would be enough against an actual peer-weight missile spam scenario. Which would be 12 dreadnoughts with at least 6 slots of missiles and a mag cannon each. You'd probably have to conjure that up in the skirmish mode rather than getting the aliens to provide in campaign though.

In my tests - this is a ultimate coilgun-based skirmish design (probably need a bit more armor as I can put 6th engine, but price is already ... >_<)

Similar results from another player (and as I understand he even used Arcs lasers instead of phasers): https://steamcommunity.com/app/1176470/discussions/0/5595184948705716732/#c3481871877433686980

And your suggestion is ridiculous. I never saw fleets consist from only alien dreadnoughts... But yean, I'm curious enough to try now :)

[ulzgoroth]

Originally posted by corisai:

And your suggestion is ridiculous. I never saw fleets consist from only alien dreadnoughts... But yean, I'm curious enough to try now :)

No, my suggestion is a fair fight.

As opposed to casually massacring the alien chaff, which I have no doubt your swarm of doom-barges is more than sufficent for.

[Mistfox]

Frigates are my go to for mid class/mid game fighting ships, like corisai I use nose lasers as PD with twin missile turrets as the "sting". These are 0-1-2 armor ships and are meant to be used en-mass and close to resupply.

I suppose I could build a corvette with one nose laser and one missile launcher instead but meh, the twin launchers makes sure something gets through at least.

[corisai]

Originally posted by ulzgoroth:

No, my suggestion is a fair fight.

~2 to 1 kill ratio: 7/12 remaining dreadnoughts. Most (if not all) alien kills are by ramming No maneuvering from my side - nothing but frontal assault and focused fire.

Don't forget it's SKIRMISH alien Dreadnought. You can't see this endgame loadout in campaign now:
20/20/10 armor; Heavy Plasma; Advanced alien Mag Spinal; 2 x alien laser PD turret; Alien 128cm violet laser battery.

I think I'm loving my Dreadnoughts <3

[ulzgoroth]

Originally posted by corisai:

Originally posted by ulzgoroth:

No, my suggestion is a fair fight.

~2 to 1 kill ratio: 7/12 remaining dreadnoughts. Most (if not all) alien kills are by ramming No maneuvering from my side - nothing but frontal assault and focused fire.

Don't forget it's SKIRMISH alien Dreadnought. You can't see this endgame loadout in campaign now:
20/20/10 armor; Heavy Plasma; Advanced alien Mag Spinal; 2 x alien laser PD turret; Alien 128cm violet laser battery.

I think I'm loving my Dreadnoughts <3

Nice, though...not actually addressing the point defense vs. missiles question even a little.

[corisai]

Originally posted by ulzgoroth:

Nice, though...not actually addressing the point defense vs. missiles question even a little.

Adressing. Alien missiles should phase out in endgame as most of their top-tier Skirmish designs don't include them (obviously - past basic lasers missiles do not pose a threat anymore).

P.S. I also would like to remind that before PD fix - 3x240cm phaser & 2 phaser PD turrets was enough to stop missiles&kinetics from alien mothership in Skirmish. And would like to remind about next patch when missiles will be no longer lauched as whole salvo and instead will follow same rules as kinetics :)

[N311]

Does any one actually know what ecm do. Is it little more than % chance that a missile will not explode if it actually hits your ship. (assuming you have the tech that allows them to work against alien missiles)

[corisai]

Originally posted by N311:

Does any one actually know what ecm do. Is it little more than % chance that a missile will not explode if it actually hits your ship. (assuming you have the tech that allows them to work against alien missiles)

It's exactly working like you'd written - if missile will leak through PD and hit your ship, before rolling damage you will roll for ECM. On success - no damage, missile just vanish (no explosion animation). On failure - roll damage like usual.

[mrolli]

battlecruiser with 2 phaser pd + 1 advanced booster can take out 36 missiles + 15 mag rounds in a flybe attack. (3 alien frigates). phasers are THE gamechanger in terms of pd.
the pahser pd also doesn't have trouble with mag rounds, and 350km range make cross cover easier. not sure you need the extra costs and weight of the bigger phasers unless you need them for knifefighting.
your late game dreads are nice, but so heavy the barly can point their nose towards the enemy. by the time you have 12 of them, i could get 36 cheaper coil/missile/pd dreads, split them in two fleets and each could swat any aliens in it's path.

[ulzgoroth]

Originally posted by corisai:

Originally posted by ulzgoroth:

Nice, though...not actually addressing the point defense vs. missiles question even a little.

Adressing. Alien missiles should phase out in endgame as most of their top-tier Skirmish designs don't include them (obviously - past basic lasers missiles do not pose a threat anymore).

'It has adequate missile defense because it's not meant to fight against missiles' is sort of addressing it, I guess, but not in a way that I consider useful.

Originally posted by corisai:

P.S. I also would like to remind that before PD fix - 3x240cm phaser & 2 phaser PD turrets was enough to stop missiles&kinetics from alien mothership in Skirmish. And would like to remind about next patch when missiles will be no longer lauched as whole salvo and instead will follow same rules as kinetics :)

Your historical reference suggests that your ship doesn't have enough point defense to stand up to what I'd want it to?

Your future reference, well, yeah. I have no idea how that'll play until I see what actual stats are being used.

[Waladil]

In my personal opinion: You simply avoid combat as much as possible until you can build Dreadnaughts. Maybe Titans are a little better afterwards. But Dreads? Slap a big plasma battery on their hull, four PD turrets in the rest of the slots, three 1-slot lasers on the nose. Point towards enemy. The aliens seem to hardly ever use lasers, you can PD down everything else they throw at you. Lasers pack enough punch to work down anything fast enough to dodge plasma, and the main weapons being hull-mounted means even if they do get out of your nose guns' targetting, the plasma can still reach them.

Deploy in groups and keep them close together in combat so their PDs overlap for even more absolute protection. The only thing that scares these ships are alien stations, because they DO use lasers heavily.

[DigitalVulpine]

So far I've had pretty good results using Destroyers to mass medium coil cannons, supported by a couple cruisers packed with advanced laser engines to make their lasers hit harder than they should.

Though I think a lot of this is driven by the fact I rolled a very resource-poor solar system. So neither I nor the aliens have the resources to throw fleets of dreadnoughts around, and what few dreadnoughts (and fewer motherships) the aliens have sent have been lightly armored enough that medium coil cannons and medium laser cannons were sufficient to mulch them.

Of course I did run into the problem that this configuration doesn't work against stations. Turns out they like to put 10-12 layered defense arrays on those things, which gives them more than enough lasers to swat any number of coil rounds I can throw and dice any ship foolish enough to fight laser vs. laser. So I've started rushing plasma tech and working on a dedicated station-busting ship, since plasma's range and immunity to PD seem like an ideal answer to the question of how to deal with 12 layered defense arrays.

Of course with stations like that, I think resource-poverty might not be the only reason the ayys in my run are short on ships...

[Sinsling]

the problem with gunships is they rely on a method of defense that caps out at 60% chance at best, because any missile will absolutely gut them. and while the big ships are cool, destroyers and monitors seem to be the best for manual combat since they can actually turn and chase down any smaller ships that try flying to the outside edges. frigates and cruisers make good hab/marine carriers though.

[ulzgoroth]

Originally posted by Sinsling:

the problem with gunships is they rely on a method of defense that caps out at 60% chance at best, because any missile will absolutely gut them. and while the big ships are cool, destroyers and monitors seem to be the best for manual combat since they can actually turn and chase down any smaller ships that try flying to the outside edges. frigates and cruisers make good hab/marine carriers though.

Under the limitations of the AI, you can confidently trust that the enemy will use up all their missiles quickly. Once all the missiles are in flight, you can swing your gunships forward without fear on that front.

(Or you can use a corvette with a point defense turret as a tough gunship.)

IMO my battleships are quite useful at anchoring the destroyer wall and adding more volume of fire. But I would certainly not want to cut all the destroyers from my fleet, because the battleships are terribly slow to turn.