Anyone able to use destroyers effectively?

[Fenris]

TLDR: Do destroyers suck, or am I doing it wrong?

Just curious if I'm the only one who thinks they might be absolute garbage. I'm not saying for certain they are garbage, I fully admit I might just be "doing it wrong", so I'm up for advice.

The only time I will use them is in early game if the enemy ai has a lot of missiles. Then I will create a bunch of destroyers with point defense. They seem to work well for that. If there is no missile using ai empires around I will just skip over them and keep building corvettes until I can make carriers.

Seems like for the price compared to corvettes they die fast and while corvettes might not do as much damage individually, I can make more and replace them faster if needed.

Are destroyers a one trick pony? Do they need some kind of minor buff? Or are they fine as is?

Thanks,

[Cryten]

They are great with auto-cannons, I run them with 1 medium laser/plasma and all the rest as auto-cannons. They shred corvettes. As time goes by I convert them to medium weapon platforms so they can fight corvettes and hold their own against cruisers.

I also usually run a few dedicated armour shredders with plasma in the fleet to compensate for the weakness of auto-cannons

[Sabaithal]

Also destroyers with Kinetic Artillery excel at long-range opening barrages, especially in high numbers. Have secondary weapons as either gamma lasers or autocannons and they're pretty well balanced ships.

[[A2M] Lenny]

Destroyers also have powerful tracking and chance-to-hit bonuses which are amplified with combat computers and enigmatic decoders

[Fenris]

Thanks for the tips, I'll give them a try.

[TwoTonTuna]

I only play single player, so my experience doesn't count for multiplayer.

That said, I view destroyers as an early and mid-game tool for large-weapon slots. Slapping an L-laser can help burn down bases and bigger ships more quickly than corvs.

I do, however, eventually transition to battleships + corvettes. BB's pack the big guns to kill bases, destroyers, cruisers, and other BBs. Corvettes screen for the BB's, shooting down missiles/craft while tanking damage with their 90% evasion score.

The only other reason I can imagine for massing DDs is to hard-counter swarms of missile corvettes, strike craft bastions, or carrier BBs. The AI doesn't do this though, so I'm guessing it's more for MP than SP games.

[Mr. Banzas]

asfad

[Meewec]

i only play single player except for sometimes playing basically co-op with a friend and i use all the ship types in my fleets. i smack medium weapons on my destroyers all game to give them a mixed ability of helping my corvette swarm with enemy corvettes and being able to still hit the bigger ships decently enough. my fleets are basically a swarm of corvettes to hit the enemy first and rip through shields, the destroyers to tangle with any corvettes that get past the swarm or to close with the bigger ships, cruisers to get into large weapon slugging matches and battleships/titan hopefully sit back relatively unmolested and ping away with their artillery

[HugsAndSnuggles]

Destroyers shred corvettes, suffering much lower losses. Of course, if you only build them for PD, they will only be able to do PD - hardly their only use, though. Overall, it best all-around ship... athough, in later game stages it's somewhat viable only with psi-ascention.

[Ahvena]

A good way to think of destroyers is as auxiliary ships in a fleet. They're too weak/awkward on their own, but they're versatile enough to be paired well with any of the other weight classes since they have so many loadout options. Examples include:

-L/PD/PD setup; used well with battleships, at range, protecting alpha battleships with PD and staying at sniping ranges.

-PD/S/S/S/S setup; used with autos and high-tracking ship computers, this setup makes the ideal anti-corvette loadout. I pair this off with cruisers/carriers. with medium plasma and/or bombers for high tactical dps, re: camping a hyperlink point where the enemy will come in.

-M/S/S/M setup; It can be awhile sometimes before you get cruisers (or have enough space in your fleet to support them), so a stopgap i sometimes use if i get plasma early is this setup. Does decent enough damage, and can be swapped out for another loadout later on.

[TheStratovarian]

I like destroyers in two rolls, The L/PD/PD with one of each for helping seige with battleships with a carrier core and L/CV/L

And the use for one Ahvena mentions in the last, With S siphon beam and M mining lasers, you burn through CV's with those.

I wish cruisers were as useful as destroyers in things. Those feel so out of place comparatively.

If they had more missile slots, i'd love them.

[HugsAndSnuggles]

Messaggio originale di TheStratovarian:

I wish cruisers were as useful as destroyers in things. Those feel so out of place comparatively.

Cruisers only become lackluster once battlehships are commonplace. Until then they tend to work better than destroyers.

[Nightmyre]

As with all else in this game when it comes to combat - all that matters is shooting first and ideally destroying the enemy before they can shoot back.

As such - Corvettes < Destroyers < Cruisers < Battleships.

Theoretically, Corvettes should be able to outperform Battleships due to evasion. But the reality is that while they may win the fight, they'll lose the war - you'll just retreat your battleships with minimal losses, while the corvette fleet takes heavy losses.

Same calculus applies for the other ship types.

Bottom line - don't use any ship except the biggest one you can build.