Corvettes vs. Destroyers

[ඞ]

Early game, which is better? I tend to build like a swarm of corvettes and then add enough destroyers to make them 1/3 of my fleet. Are they worth building, or would I be better off spamming corvettes early game?

[Ficelle]

Contrary to many people (it seems at least), i like destroyers, and prefer them over corvettes.

They can mount PD, neuteuring any missile based fleet early game.
They dont run stupidly in front of the enemy and stay back.
They murder corvettes just fine.

Later in game, while my corvettes still die at an alarming rate and need a constant resupply, my destroyers handle surprisingly well (i generally skip corvettes anyway, can be bothered to rebuild them after each heavy fight)

Now, very early game, destroyers are quite costly and require higher tier starport, so...

[ඞ]

Yeah, i'm currently in a war with an inferior empire, and the only reason I haven't killed them is their fu*king starport destroys my fleet, and they just hide in the port until I fight the port, then they come out of hiding then. I'm technologically superior, yet this is just annoying tbh...

[Ficelle]

Well, early game wars are costly because starports act as a great defensive tool.

What you can do is build your fleet, but stay near your own starport and let the AI comes to you.

Use your starport and fleet combined to crush them, then immediatly jump to kill their starport.
Expect heavy loss anyway early game.
Also, if you havent them, try to get shields, they help a lot to conserve ships.

[HugsAndSnuggles]

Usually it's better to spam corvettes: assembly yard comes early and leaders that reduce corvette cost even further are not that rare. Economy aspect aside, if you have targetting computers, destroyer tends to be better (against corvettes).

[Red Bat]

Destroyers and Cruisers should be the mainstay of your fleet in most cases. However Corvettes are the most cost effective way of handling a few things. Their high evasion let's them wreck battleships and millitary stations armed with anything but missiles. They can also be armed with torpedo's which can help counter a few things such as void clouds. Corvettes are also the most effective means of dealing with Shroud Avatars, and they tend to do fairly well vs several of the leviathans. For general use, destroyers are USUALLY better, but it's easier to get starbases to be pumping out corvettes than destroyers so they never really become completely obsolete.

It's Battleships that are kind of ineffective. They have lower tracking than other ships. They require an obscene amount of time to build, and they cost twice as much as Cruisers while not really being twice as effective. They also tend to hang back and be the last ships to enter combat. This makes it so they really are only very good at destroying other battleships or millitary stations, something corvettes are also good at.

[Richon]

A common strategy for fleet composition is the 8:4:2:1, that is, for every 8 corvettes, you'll want 4 destroyers, 2 cruisers, and 1 BB.

[mcsproot]

Early game, you want Corvettes unless the enemy has missiles, in which case you want some Destroyers since they can mount Point Defense.

Corvettes are a lot cheaper, faster to build and easier to build than Destroyers, so early game you can have a Corvette swarm a lot easier.