Are the bigger ships even worth it?

[Synida Pry]

I know that they can use bigger weapons, which doesn't do that much more than having smaller ships with the smaller guns for the same price. Ship HP or armor wise also seems like a bad investment. They move very slowly and turn very slowly on the battlefield.
There are some special utility modules you can put on them, like the scrap collector module, or flag bridge, but in overall performance I'm not at all amazed.
If they get some critical hits you can either sacrifice one utility slot for a heavy repair module or dump the whole ship to the garbage, while loosing a few small ships for much less wont get you sad.
Anyone here who is a fan of big ships here with experience?

[corisai]

Define "bigger weapons"?

Small lasers are useless as a weapon at all.
Small coilguns aren't doing enough damage (ayys now going up to 100+ front armor) unless you're doing bombing runs with highly agile ships.
Only missiles do not exist in "bigger" version.

So basically if you want to kill alien en mass : you're either going all missiles route (quickly draining sanity due to manual control of every ship in combat) OR going for biggest ships and their 4-slots nose weapons.

[Projectmayhem]

Ship design is actaully more complex than you first realize. You first have to identify what role the ship will have. Will it be a ship to intercept an enemy fleet and be fast enough to prevent its escape. Or is it a ship that will be a defense weapons platform to defend a key location? Or will it be a ship designed to siege and bombard installations.

[Blaarg]

Bigger weapons is why you build the larger ships.

Lasers, in particular, are very sensitive to aperture size for their armor penetration. They also want as many utility slots as possible for adv. laser engines.

The best magnetic weapons, the siege coilers, are only available in 3 or 4 nose slots. Sure, you can use smaller size magnetics and get results. The siege rounds have much better performance against pd. (For example, a 2 slot coil cannon shoots a 50kg warhead - goes down in 2 shots from an alien pd. A 3 shot siege coiler shoots a 750kg warhead. That takes around 23 shots from an alien pd to destroy.)

The larger weapons also have better range. I usually don't want alien ships getting within 750km.

[Projectmayhem]

So if its an interception fleet it will need enough DV, cruise speed and combat speed to prevent escape. This often means smaller swarmy ship designs to meet the engine requirements. This changed later on with lighter armors and better engines. This is incredibly import for earth orbit.

If its stationary defense ship to defend a location from siege. Well then you dont care about DV, cruise, and combat speed that much. You want lots of armor and long range powerful weapons. This often means large ships with big cannon and hull slots for weapons.

Siege ships need just enough DV to reach their target they also want decent armor to survive the engagement and long range heavy hitting weapons slot. So once again big ships. They will also need support ships that can build platforms to resupply them and move onto the next target.

[debott]

I agree, packing more firepower on a single platform is the deciding factor. This is an advantage for fleet formations that rely on PD phalanx.

In the late game, large vessels are the only way to go, when fleet sizes become larger than the game allows in battle at any time, which by default is 40 ships total I think, so usually ~20 per side.

[Synida Pry]

What about for example laser 480cm(15dmg/20s), which perfectly fits on destroyers vs 960cm(20dmg/20s) which you can only put on a lancer or mb titan(I didn't have that research yet, so I'm guessing)?
Or there are the Spinal Siege Coiler Mk2 I have, which can do 336.2dmg/36s, but then if they can shoot it down with 2 PD shoots which shoots every 3rd seconds, then will it ever hit anything?
And what's the deal with these mounted weapons I don't get this part either. Anything that is not PD looks so weak I don't even know why is it even an option?

I also have a lancer design which uses Spinal Siege Coiler Mk2 - never built it tho, because it costs like 180w, 1.8kv, 2.2kbm, 400nm, and 420 uranium. while in the same time I could make like 10 destroyers from that price. I'm not at endgame yet, more like middle game maybe, so there are smaller fleets. I'm playing on normal - since it's my first game.
So isn't it cheaper just to swarm them, maybe kamikaze 1 destroyer or corvette into some big expensive ship, than building these big ships, that costs a lot and I'm not even sure if they could make that much more dmg. Cuz these are these bigger version of nose weapons too, but most of them make laughable damage or PD can take them out the projectiles very easily isn't it? How does this part work? I don't wanna invest 20-50k resources into a big fleet just to learn that it was totally useless.

And what if I swarm with these small ships from the sides where there is barely any armor? Cuz I'm pretty sure I won't have a change against the alien fleets if I attack head on. I have like 4-5k fleet power, while they have a total of 35k or so. Or it's how it should be done?

[Synida Pry]

Originally posted by Blaarg:

...For example, a 2 slot coil cannon shoots a 50kg warhead - goes down in 2 shots from an alien pd. A 3 shot siege coiler shoots a 750kg warhead. That takes around 23 shots from an alien pd to destroy....

where can I see this information?
These are all really good infos btw.

[gimmethegepgun]

Originally posted by Synida Pry:

Originally posted by Blaarg:

...For example, a 2 slot coil cannon shoots a 50kg warhead - goes down in 2 shots from an alien pd. A 3 shot siege coiler shoots a 750kg warhead. That takes around 23 shots from an alien pd to destroy....

where can I see this information?
These are all really good infos btw.

You can infer it from the cost it takes to reload the weapon. The mass is fully encapsulated by that cost.
However, I'm not certain that the 750 kg number is correct for this purpose, because that's the ammo mass, not the warhead mass, which is less (562.5/600/656.25 for tier 1/2/3). You can find the exact numbers used in TIMagneticGunTemplate.ini

[Projectmayhem]

Debott made a good point as well. those small ships will be outclassed in very large engagements because of fleet limits in combat. I run 60 ships just so combat goes faster. 60 lancers will be better than 60 battleships.

[corisai]

Originally posted by Synida Pry:

Cuz I'm pretty sure I won't have a change against the alien fleets if I attack head on.

That's exactly because you're using small guns.

960cm UV Phasers* and Siege Coils Mk3 have enough punch to deal even with heaviest armor.

*Well, lasers aren't able to cut through super thick frontal armort so current meta is mixing them with a few Siege Coils (or Heavy Coil Batteries on Titan). Lasers main advantage that anything trying to flank you will die instantly (as 960cm UV Phasers easily penetrate side armor at max range).

Originally posted by Synida Pry:

where can I see this information?

SOME additional info would be shown once you're do right mouse click on weapon tab ("magnetic", "laser", "missiles" and etc) in ship designer.

[Blaarg]

Yeah, you are right. I accidentally looked at ammoMass instead of warheadMass. 656kg (~20 alien pd shots) is correct. It looks like I screwed up the warhead mass of the two slot coil cannon as well (should be 43.75kg, not 50kg. That's still two pd shots either way).

It is pretty straightforward to back calculate the warhead mass using the kinetic energy of the projectile (given in MJ under damage) & the muzzle velocity. It is also listed in the .json files in the \templates folder.

As for number of pd shots taken to drop a incoming magnetic projectile, it is 1kg of warhead neutralized for every 2 MJ of the pd shot (or, equivalently, 10kg for every point of damage on the pd shot). Alien pd lasers hit for 64MJ a shot, so they neutralize 32kg of warhead with each hit.

[Pawleus]

Originally posted by corisai:

quickly draining sanity due to manual control of every ship in combat

To be precise, not for the whole wall you almost always only assign targets, usually once per combat, and you often even don't do it for every own ship (as Group Orders work not just for burn orders) and sometimes even not for every enemy ship (as missiles acquire new targets after assigned ones are destroyed). It is very rare when you have to make burn orders not for the whole wall in the maneuvering missile combat so I don't know why people think it borders on insanity - eg. tightning formation in the static combat is much more micromanagement-heavy and people still do it for some reason.

Additionally, missile combat allows you to fight much earlier so the aliens don't have large fleets even in the late game - I've never had to fight (outside of Skirmish) using more than 25 missile ships and my standard late-game antimatter combat fleets in the current experimental branch (on standard Brutal) have 7 Monitors and 8 Escorts showing clearly that currently larger ships are a worse option.

[axossk]

Titans are not worth it but Dreadnought are.

[corisai]

Originally posted by axossk:

Titans are not worth it but Dreadnought are.

Titans >>> Dreadnoughts for a Laser-based fleet. Because 960 cm >>> 720 cm and 8 slots for laser engines >>> 6 slots.

Just mix HCB titans with extra PD titans (due to increased danger from alien missiles).

[Synida Pry]

Originally posted by Blaarg:

Originally posted by Synida Pry:

What about for example laser 480cm(15dmg/20s), which perfectly fits on destroyers vs 960cm(20dmg/20s) which you can only put on a lancer or mb titan(I didn't have that research yet, so I'm guessing)?

You put /20s which matches arc lasers, but I don't have uv arc lasers researched in my late game save, & looking at the research only gives armor effectiveness values for the 240cm, which does not help. So, instead I'll do a comparison of 480cm uv phaser cannon on a destroyer with a 960cm uv phaser cannon on a lancer. The target will be the front of an alien ship with 50 points of diamondoid armor. I'll presume you do not have precision focusing software researched.

The destroyer has three utility slots. One needs to be a heat sink & another a targeting computer. This leaves space for one advanced laser engine. This changes the nominal damage against an unarmored target to 16 points / 10s.

The lancer has six utility slots. Again, one goes to a heat sink & another a targeting computer. So we can fit 4 ales on it. This changes the damage against unarmored targets to 24 points /10s.

The max range of the 480cm is 900km, so lets start there. The armor effectiveness against a 480cm uv phaser at that range is about 38% (17%ae at 600km * (900km/600km)^2). 38% of the 50 armor means the armor will block up to 19 points of damage. The destroyer with 480cm only does 16 points of damage, so no damage will be dealt internally, even if the laser rolls high on its rng (+-20%, but 16*1.2 ~=19, still blocked).

For the 960cm on the lancer, the armor effectiveness at a range of 900km is about 14% (6%ae at 600km * (900km/600km)^2). 14% of the 50 armor means the armor will block up to 7 points of damage. This puts around 17 points of damage going internal.

Dropping down to 600km (way too close), the destroyer deal about 7.5 points of internal damage while the lancer does 21 points.

It is possible for a swarm of 480cm destroyers to out damage a 960cm lancer, but you would have to get uncomfortably close to the alien ships.

Okay, I thought that you basically need to evaporate all the armor before you can even deal internal dmg. Should I consider using that armored internal components module on the bigger ships as well then?