Sometimes auto resolve is such a gem, perhaps just alittle OP

[Kalisa]

The auto resolve can give and it can take away, but moments like these it just blows me away at how effective it can be sometime, this was the first large fleet i was engaging with my first real defense force, was not expecting to win and wanted to see how the auto resolve did first, certainly didnt expect these kinds of results with these ships.
Year is pretty late, it took awhile for me to get going in this game due to kinda triggering the aliens much earlier then i expected and humanity first doing some crazy nuclear wars >.<
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3068768938
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3068768735

alien fleet was about 3.2k in power, and here i was just planning to send my ships to their death, weaken the enemy fleet some before my new battleships rolled off the line with much greater tech.

[Torpex]

I thought autoresolve is all about combat rating? Wouldn't it make more sense sticking at least some torps or coils on your ships?

My early escorts with torps did relatively well manually and I saw people saying that 30 of them fare very well on auto too.

[Kalisa]

doesnt seem to be combat rating, if it was my fleet would have been destroyed, my fleet power is only around 540 and took minimal damage (0 losses) vs a 3.2k fleet, i also had fleets of like 600 power early game engage alien fleets of similar strength and lose so i think the build matters allot. Another prime example is also defense platforms on stations, my stations have around 2 to 3k combat power, if i auto resolve they die all the time to larger fleets, but if i manually watch it, they win.
However early game, defensive platforms seem to do allot better with auto resolve, i think it matters much on the weapons they have.

Im really happy with these battleships though, they were pretty cheap to make, only being about 600 metal, 300 noble, and 80 fissiles, so its not hard to build a fleet of 8 of these pretty quick, i did toss an exotic heatsink on it for testing but was certainly not needed.

the next generation are actually not much more expensive to build but now im getting into UV weapons with better drives, im seeing their "combat power" go up nearly 50%, cant wait to see how well these next generation ships do.

[Torpex]

I see, thanks. To bad we can't test autoresolve like skirmish.

I might as well try building 30 of these and send them to alien orbital.

[Kalisa]

no idea how these ships would do on sieging yet, if you do use these types to attack more fortified spots let me know how it goes :D

[gimmethegepgun]

I don't see much of a problem here. Those ships should be more than capable of taking on enemies that aren't using tons of plasma.
The real problem is that the AI doesn't just flee once it realizes how useless its attacks are against a wall of lasers.

The ECMs are completely useless though.

[Kalisa]

Originally posted by gimmethegepgun:

I don't see much of a problem here. Those ships should be more than capable of taking on enemies that aren't using tons of plasma.
The real problem is that the AI doesn't just flee once it realizes how useless its attacks are against a wall of lasers.

The ECMs are completely useless though.

why are the ecm's useless? true i can usually shoot down most of their torps/missles before they reach but dont mind having the extra (this fleet also is used to clear all the human stations i attack as well)

[Torpex]

I think as war progresses aliens stop using missiles.

[Kalisa]

oh that would make sense, right now though most of the ships are running torpedoes so even if it doesnt help much il take a 60% reduction for the torps that may get by. but also very usefull for fighting the human factions, in my current game i have been engaging the servants and protectorate allot and they seem to love their missiles.

[gimmethegepgun]

Originally posted by Kalisa:

why are the ecm's useless?

ECMs are almost entirely useless because if you're relying on a 60% chance to not get hit, after they get through point defense and dodging, then a 60% chance probably isn't going to save you anyway, because they've exceeded your point defense's saturation point, and there's almost certainly going to be enough hitting that they'll destroy you through the 60% anyway.
If there's absolutely nothing else worthwhile to put in the utility slot, I guess you might as well, but there's clearly other things you can put in that slot, including another, better, "might as well" like yet another Laser Engine.

[Kalisa]

in the several fights that i have done with these fleets, the ecm has saved a ship on more then 1 occasion, you could argue the laser engines dont make enough difference to matter either in allot of situations since the buff is minimal on certain loadouts or higher tier lasers, more usefull perhaps on the lower tier or spamming small weapons. Also im not just fighting aliens, human missiles are in much larger swarms typically so knocking down afew of those can also save a ship or 2 sometimes.

But a PD being overwhelmed doesnt mean its a death sentence in some fights, allot of my fights have been at the very edge of my PD saturation point, ecms may be situational but they seem to be far from useless, having effectively a 60% dmg reduction effect to a specific weapon type is not bad for a utility slot. not best in slot but certainly has its uses in some situations.
But its true if i have a huge line fleet then ecm wont make a difference since il have more then enough pd coverage. Its just a tool for different tactics and situations.

[gimmethegepgun]

Originally posted by Kalisa:

you could argue the laser engines dont make enough difference to matter either in allot of situations since the buff is minimal on certain loadouts or higher tier lasers, more usefull perhaps on the lower tier or spamming small weapons.

Laser engines increase the effective range of laser weapons due to the fact that the defense against them is flat damage mitigation from armor. That extra range and/or damage means that the enemy ships will be hobbled or destroyed sooner, which means they'll stop firing stuff like small hull kinetics at you that saturate your defenses.
The extra damage also means that your lasers may not need as many shots to destroy larger kinetic projectiles, as the increased damage means they destroy more projectile mass per shot. The Point Defense Turrets in particular only have 50 MJ shot energy, so each Advanced Laser Engine is a 20% increase in the damage they deal to kinetic projectiles.

having effectively a 60% dmg reduction effect to a specific weapon type is not bad for a utility slot.

It's not a 60% reduction, it's a 60% evasion, which is much worse when you're dealing with small numbers of high-damage hits like what the advanced missiles do. Any decent missile will ruin a ship if it hits the side/rear of your design with 8/12 armor on them, and they'll leave a pretty good chip in the 90 armor front, which will let lasers and plasma shoot through it at long range on occasion, entirely bypassing the armor.

Another thing that would be better than an ECM would be a Hydron Trap, were you to use a drive with Hydrogen propellant like the Fission Spinner instead of the Minimag. You're spending an awful lot of Metals, Nobles, and Fissiles keeping those things fueled, for so little dV, when a Fission Spinner with a Hydron Trap would have fairly similar fuel efficiency, but with much less valuable Water, and it would have a lot more combat thrust, even with only an x1 (Orions are limited to x1, but others can go up to x6), or thrust in general for an x2 or larger, and a Spiker would increase that advantage by more.

[Kalisa]

Theres been discussion of the Laser engine if they have any noticable effect on PD, unless that was changed recently it doesnt seem to be, it, would be curious to see test results, and its not usually a 1:1 increase for lasers, if u look at some of the larger lasers, they may have +50 power, but their effective dmg at range only shifts from like 120% 118% or similar so even if it does work for PD its almost non existance in effect with larger weapons, again subjective, some people hate laser engines.
and effectivly it is 60% reduction which does still work out to roughly 60% dmg reduction, if a shot would kill you regardless its also the only way to actually give you a chance of living.
and if it hits high armor, lets say if missle hits it would do 10 damage to armor, ur ship has 100 armor, (just a basic math exercise not that any of this means anything) so 10 missles will kill it, weith the ecm, on average your ship will take 60% less damage. it also enables things that would normally kill your ship regardless to have a 60% chance to take none.

if you dont like ecm that is fine, they are not probably as usefull on some ships espically due to the weight of utility and the type of loadout you may use.

rounds dont seem to have any armor so increasing your lasers effective damage to armor at range doesnt really help, it may help with rounds that have allot of hp in general though, but 3 engines and an ecm vs 4 engines, would be curious to see the math breakdown on whats truely more effective from missle perspective, but thats getting into min/max,

I can say from experence with my ships camping on my defensive platforms early/mid game, when the PD sometimes do get overwhelmed, that ecm has saved several ships so the cost is certainly justified in my situation.

fine if u dont like it though, it doesnt seem like a garbage tech though.
also hydrogen trap i dont think is always unlocked, in current game it has not popped up for me yet and i have all the prereq, had them for ages.

[gimmethegepgun]

Originally posted by Kalisa:

and effectivly it is 60% reduction which does still work out to roughly 60% dmg reduction

It's not, though. It's roughly 60% across a large number of shots, but there's extremely high variance because it takes very few hits to actually kill something with missiles.

and if it hits high armor, lets say if missle hits it would do 10 damage to armor, ur ship has 100 armor, (just a basic math exercise not that any of this means anything) so 10 missles will kill it

That's not how armor works in the game. Armor reduces damage taken by the hull from shots that hit it by a flat amount. Some of the damage that it takes is Chipping damage, which damages the armor, basically by punching holes in it. The percentage of the armor that has been Chipped is the percentage chance for any attack that hits the armor to completely ignore it and hit internals, in what in Battletech is called a Through-Armor Critical (TAC).
So in your numerical example, assuming that represents the armor exceeding the damage of the missile, after the first hit the next would have a 10% chance of ignoring armor. If that also hits armor, the next after that is 20%, etc. By the fourth absorbed hit it's already had a nearly 50% chance of one scoring a TAC that has all but certainly destroyed or crippled the ship (1 * 0.9 * 0.8 * 0.7 = 0.504), and even if not, those big gaping holes in the armor are most likely going to be hit by a laser and go straight to internals, instead of chipping the paint like normal at longer ranges.

rounds dont seem to have any armor so increasing your lasers effective damage to armor at range doesnt really help

It doesn't increase effective damage to armor, it increases damage, which both makes it stronger against armor (or the same effectiveness against the armor from a further distance), and makes it deal more damage to kinetic shots.

but 3 engines and an ecm vs 4 engines, would be curious to see the math breakdown on whats truely more effective from missle perspective

Laser Engines don't directly help against missiles at all, but they help against kinetic weapons, particularly the large ones, which indirectly helps against missiles by reducing the number of shots spent on shooting down the kinetics that are also being fired at you.

also hydrogen trap i dont think is always unlocked, in current game it has not popped up for me yet and i have all the prereq, had them for ages.

While it's true that it has a 50% availability chance, it has direct global tech prerequisites, which means that if you get the faction project prerequisites first, then you can boost it to 100% by spending enough on the global tech instead of letting everyone else do the work.
Also, it has the prerequisite of Exotic Hybrid Systems, which isn't shown in the tech tree until you get it. So do you have that as well? Remember that Exotic Heat Sinks just need Exotics research and Advanced Heat Management Concepts.

[Kalisa]

would need to jump back into my game to double check, is exotic hybrids even available to most factions? did a quick google search and exotic hybrids are under exodus only? pehaps thats just for the objective, but im in year 2045 now, and still have yet to see the tech im pretty sure since I have researched every alien/hybrid tech that has popped up, the only stuff i have not done was further resistances to aliens on earth doing their thing.
I certainly have quantum computing researched and its not popped up.
The math i gave was just an example of how dodge works, in most situations, dodge is often greater value then armor/dmg reduction due to how games usuaully have diminishing returns.
do the aliens missiles do chip damage?
also read somewhere that people did testing in an old build of game so not sure if this is changed but seems that missiles have that 60% flip happen when the missile barrage is fired, not sure if this is true, but people have reported mother ships doing 0 damage to their ships when an entire volly hit them since it seemed the ecm had flipped and that entire volly on the ship was a miss, again i dont know all the math or mechanics, but arguing that a single module that makes 1 weapon type 60% less effective is hardly useless, its ideal in situations where u would get hit, and its up to the player to decide when thats useful.
Also fighting many humans as i have said, they use ALLOT of missiles, in my current game the average station i attack from the protecterate or servants has a bunch of small ships around it that fire missiles, their alpha strike often will overpower my PD system in the smaller fleets i use to attack them, and having allot of those shots do no damage is a big deal, means less ships i need to dedicate to each situation.

[gimmethegepgun]

Originally posted by Kalisa:

would need to jump back into my game to double check, is exotic hybrids even available to most factions? did a quick google search and exotic hybrids are under exodus only?

Exotic Hybrid Systems is available to all factions, 100%, and requires Exotics research and Quantum Computing. If you have both of those and don't see it within 2 months then it's a bug.
Exodus requires it for their victory condition, for everyone else it's just something that opens up a lot of good techs.

do the aliens missiles do chip damage?

All weapons except nuclear weapons deal chip damage. Nuclear weapons, if they somehow don't destroy the ship outright, damage the armor by making it thinner and thus weaker, rather than chipping it to put holes in it.

also read somewhere that people did testing in an old build of game so not sure if this is changed but seems that missiles have that 60% flip happen when the missile barrage is fired, not sure if this is true

It doesn't matter when the chance to miss is calculated, because even if it's calculated long before hitting, it still is a target for point defense and thus helps with saturating it for other weapons anyway.

arguing that a single module that makes 1 weapon type 60% less effective is hardly useless

60% reduction on 0 is still 0. Other means are available to 100% remove the threat of missiles, and ECM contributes exactly nothing to help those other means achieve that protection.