Help me design a combat dreadnought

[Ruldra]

So I'm basically making entire fleets of a single ship design. Early game I build only corvettes with LR kinetics and mid-game I build cruisers with LR kinetics and MR beams. During my previous matches these ships were enough to win games for me.

In my current match however, the Horatio is bringing along dreadnoughts and my cruisers are unable to destroy them before they get close and annihilate me. So now I'm using dreadnoughts myself but I'm not sure how to design them effectively.

My current design has 10 LR kinetics/10 MR beams/10 LR missiles. I bring one along with my cruisers and set them to spread fire. They destroy enemy corvettes quickly but then needs 3-4 turns to destroy a single dreadnought. Not sure why this is happening. Maybe my missiles are being wasted on a corvette?

So I had a thought...is it bad to design one with 10 melee-range missiles instead? The idea is to let kinetics and beams take out smaller ships and by the time melee phase comes only the enemy dreadnought is still alive, then I pound it with missiles. Would that work?

I'm also considering using bombers, at least their stats indicate that they do good damage. Are they good for ship combat?

[SenecaAthena]

Originally posted by Ruldra:

My current design has 10 LR kinetics/10 MR beams/10 LR missiles. I bring one along with my cruisers and set them to spread fire. They destroy enemy corvettes quickly but then needs 3-4 turns to destroy a single dreadnought. Not sure why this is happening. Maybe my missiles are being wasted on a corvette?

Yes. In many occasions you'll be battling heavy defense stats tanks in battles. Harmony comes to mind, but indeed Horatio can design pretty diehard battleships. Key is Nosebreaker formation to take out those beasts before they had the chance to expose you to 9 rounds of battle. The corvettes can get it spread fire in melee phase.

Originally posted by Ruldra:

So I had a thought...is it bad to design one with 10 melee-range missiles instead? The idea is to let kinetics and beams take out smaller ships and by the time melee phase comes only the enemy dreadnought is still alive, then I pound it with missiles. Would that work?

Personally I never experimented with this short range 'Sidewinder' idea. Mainly because what is said in the above that if I use LR missiles it is because I want to focus fire only on the big guys. Melee is spread firing mopping up the escorts with melee kinetics. Or to stay focused on the bosses by turning the melee kinetics into a nosebreaker gatling gun. You know in-battle you can still change the formation (and battle card) for the coming phase if necessary.

Originally posted by Ruldra:

I'm also considering using bombers, at least their stats indicate that they do good damage. Are they good for ship combat?

There are many discussions about the usefulness of fighters and bombers in terms of effectiveness besides their awesome display in battle... personally I only notice battle significance on their highest tiers. By that time I am usually focussing tech on other areas. What seems to helpful is that bombers are not bound to the attack pattern of your battleships. So when you focus fire on the tanks they can wreak havoc amongst the escorts (correct me if I'm wrong). But again I am personally not very impressed by their low tier firepower.

[MTB-Fritz]

The designs mostly rely on the passive tonnage extension techs you unlock.

I usually use Dreadnoughts if I want indestructable juggernauts with firepower but I still use fleets of cruisers for superior firepower. If you say you cannot overcome enemy Dreads with a fleet of cruisers then using Dreads of your own probably wont solve the problem.

First of all....missiles are a bad choice. They only hit once.....hit at the END of the segment and are the weapon system which can be countered the most easily (flak scales better then shield or deflector). Personally I d stay with kinetics or beams.

The question about range is two-fold.

LR weaponry usually has best results but in terms of pure damage its beaten by melee. The "problem" here is that using melee weapons will grant the enemy a much higher chance to survive the first 2 combat segments meaning they ll pour firepower into your ships resulting in heavier damage or even loss of ships. The AI likes to use nosebreaker attack patterns and if you are not going for a tanking design which can overcome those hellish conditions you ll probably lose the occasional ship and getting grinded down.

Also melee weapons "suck" versus retreating enemies. Missiles especially as they grant the enemy a free pass (enemy retreats before missiles make their to-hit check).

When using the Sheredyn in the past I experimented with melee designs but even with retreat becoming a non-factor my results were better with LR systems (I kept losing ships due to the extended uptime of enemy crafts).

Bombers and Fighters are very good additions to a combat design. Enemy ships cannot target or destroy them (only with Fighters of their own) and aircraft will continue to fight even if its motherships is destroyed (you lose them at the end of the battle as well but you lose your carrier at the LR segment its aircraft will continue till melee segment).

Aircraft also always go for the weakest ships in the fleet on their own. They simply fly past the enemy tanking line.

Bombers have a higher damage output but only start to attack on the medium segment. They use the LR segment to position themselves. So if you got a retreating enemy your bombers are wasted space. Also they will ignore enemy aircraft.

Fighters attack from the start of the battle and also go after the weakest ships in the enemy fleet on their own. If the enemy fleet has aircraft on its own your fighters will pursue those first and THEN attack the capital ships. Their damage output is lower then bombers but they have a higher attack uptime and also counter enemy aircraft.

BOTH aircraft modules are very costly in tonnage tho. I mostly use them on hulls featuring a specific bonus towards these modules. Oherwise I m better off with "regular" designs.



Design suggestions (finally )

Cruiser fleet
1 tonnage extension module (T2)
1 repair module (fleet bonus)
1 armor module (T3+)
1 power module (fleet bonus, min of +5%)
3 defense modules each type (T3....if you are using T4 you can lower this to 2 each type)
Fill up with either beams or kinetics of your choice - I recommend LR

If you use CP20+ fleets the fleet modules will turn individual weak ships into a swarm of pirhanas

Dreadnaught fleet
1 tonnage extension module (T2)
1 repair module (T1...this is important, you really WANT those 10% health per segment)
1 armor module (T3+)
1 power module (T3+....single ship bonus)
3 defense modules each type (T3...if you are using T4 you can lower this to 2 each type)
Fill up with either beams or kinetics of your choice - I recommend LR
***if you want more tanky Dreads sacrifice weapon modules in order to add another armor module***

Avoid auto-upgrade as it tends to mess up your design when it comes to defense and repair modules. I find it highly annoying to go over my designs by hand to see if it got what I want. Its quicker (for me) to manually upgrade them.

So I had a thought...is it bad to design one with 10 melee-range missiles instead? The idea is to let kinetics and beams take out smaller ships and by the time melee phase comes only the enemy dreadnought is still alive, then I pound it with missiles. Would that work?

The disadvantage of your thought is that you MIX weapon systems but this far into the match the enemy will not have any weak spots especially on Dreads so the only thing you do by mixing weapons on a single ship is to weaken your damageoutput in any given damage type versus strong defenses across the board which makes it much easier for the enemy to absorb your damage.

I suggest staying with beams or kinetics (kinetics fire 4x, beams fire 2x...both will be effective but kinetics are really much better).

You probably need to play offensive (or sabotage) battle cards more often because if the enemy fleet gets a defensive card through with those defense values....it ll get much more difficult to score a kill. Heroes work wonders. You can also try to use nosebreaker yourself but this will turn combat into a multi-turn situation where you kill off enemy fleets one by one.

[madgamer2]

to MTB fritz: 1+++++++ I could listen to you all night and day :=)

[SenecaAthena]

Yup, pretty darn good analysis. Amplitude should team him up with Steph'nie !

[Ruldra]

Now that you mention it, I can see why mixing weapons is a bad idea. The Horatio dreadnoughts do have lots of defenses in all three areas so my missiles are probably being countered hard already. Setting them to melee-range won't help. Should be dedicating that space to more kinetics and beams instead.

The defense cards are also something I didn't consider. They do play them everytime but it wasn't enough to save their corvettes and cruisers so I didn't care about it. With the high defense of dreads however it's probably making a huge difference. I remember the one time they didn't play a defense card their dreads took a lot of damage.

In the end sounds like my problem isn't lack of firepower but more like I need to focus fire and counter their cards. Let's see how it goes.

Thanks a lot!

[madgamer2]

It is possible to design crusiers as tanks and corvette's as attack ships with a CP of 16 and beat anything the AI players put up. If the game goes to 150+ turns it get a little harder. The main focus is in the design of ships and single weapons. The focus for the tanks might change to larger ships but the corvette is best suited for a pure attack ship and costs less to build. You should get Fritz to tell you hgow he does it or check out is post on the community page.

[Ruldra]

Update: so I re-designed my ships as Fritz suggested. To be honest, up to this point I had never bothered to use support modules at all, I thought I was better off using only attack and defense modules. Now I added a power, armor and repair modules and removed all extra weapons so they only have LR kinetics.

The result...my ships are nigh invulnerable now 8) They take a massive beating from the AI but they are barely scratched at the end of the battle. Enemy dreads die in one phase when I use nosebreaker + offense cards, otherwise they still take multiple turns to die. But everything is well now. This match is in the bag.

A question about repair modules: Tier 2 repairs 10% HP per phase, tier 3 repairs 180 HP. So T2 is actually better? This is the first time a lower tier module seems better than a higher one.

Also, T1/T2 modules have 0.3 module regeneration per turn , T3/T4 only have 0.1. So lower tier repairs are better for troop ships?

[madgamer2]

yes and no....Large fleets could get by with the lower class. It depends on the points in your fleet. Do, some quick math and choose the best ojne for you. Also consider the cost of each. Spending more money may not be a good trade off with results.

[MTB-Fritz]

A question about repair modules: Tier 2 repairs 10% HP per phase, tier 3 repairs 180 HP. So T2 is actually better? This is the first time a lower tier module seems better than a higher one.

Depends on the ship you put em on. A large hull with several armor modules can end up with 6000+ health so a T2 repair module would repair 600 health per segment thus the T3 would be a bad idea for THAT design.

Small glasscannon designs who are sitting at 450 health tho, T2 is a GREAT addition.

Also, T1/T2 modules have 0.3 module regeneration per turn , T3/T4 only have 0.1. So lower tier repairs are better for troop ships?

Nope, higher numbers are better but if you are talking about fleetwide modules then that 0.1 gets multiplied real quick.

[Ruldra]

Oh ok, I completely missed the 'on fleet' on the description lol.