I just started playing this game and I can't see why anyone would build any other ship than a corvette

[CornbredCrusader]

They have a low cost, a fairly high DPS for that cost if you use missiles/torpedoes, and exceedingly high evasion. They are also the fastest ship in the game.

So if you have a fleet of 100 missile corvettes vs a fleet of 25 cruisers or ~12 battleships, the corvettes win every time, since when a corvette gets hit they die, but they have a lower chance of getting hit. Not only that, but when the larger vessal fleet loses a ship, it loses a large chunk of its fire-power, whereas the corvette fleet barely loses any steam.

I just cant see why you would want any other ships than corvettes for ship-ship combat, bringing a second fleet of battleships with support destroyers to plough through defense stations.

Is there a counter to corvette missile spam?? I only just started playing and the game seems like it gives you the best ship from the first level.

[GreyBeard512]

A fleet of just battleships would suck, but battleships bring a much longer range to your fleet. I like a ratio of two destroyers per battleship. The destroyers are configured as picket ships, and the battleships have stem mounted weapons. Titans add even more range, and an area of effect weapon. Current game has two fleets with 1 titan, 10 battleships, and 20 destoryers. Plus another fleet with 100 corvettes. The corvette fleet is significantly weaker than the other two, and is restricted to capturing systems without colonies.
In other games I've built cruiser / corvette fleets. Again with at least a 2 to 1 ration with more of the smaller ships.
So you never phase out your corvettes, but it pays to add bigger ships into your fleets as you can.

[Xobra]

If you play MP, the other could build lots of Destroyers with good PD and you're done. But in SP you normally want the bigger Ships for Endgame Crisis for the Extra Range and Burst Damage

[_ALuX_]

Lets just say its more cost effective to build one huge ass expensive tank of a warship than it is to rebuild dozens of smaller ones that have nowhere near the resiliance or stopping power. I tend to begin phasing out my corvettes relativley quickly.

[Ploof Ploof]

I'd like to see you go up against any given crisis with your corvette fleets

[annaliseh]

I have a variety in a few fleets corvettes all the way up to Titans. There is a need for that but Battleship Fleets with one Titan makes a very powerful fleet which can start firing from the edge of the gravity well and takeout many enemy ships and installations. But this is all early mid game to late game stuff.

Early game you haven't got much of an option and your weapons suck too. So don't get to exicted by the damage a few measly corvettes can do. Besides the DEVs have debuffed the effectiveness of torpedos, making them 75% effective than they were. But someone will correct me on the exact figure.

28 Battle ships and a Titan make a very formidable fleet but you must configure them so that you have combinations of effective weaponary. The day of the corvette is gone...

[Spud]

Originally posted by Comrade Fluffs:

I'd like to see you go up against any given crisis with your corvette fleets

180 Corvette fleet = Contingency done...

[Wilson]

Originally posted by GreyBeard512:

A fleet of just battleships would suck

Try 1 titan, and 23 battleship fleets with only kinetic artillery/giga, 3 shield, 3 armor. Just the basic one without the other good techs. But none the less get 2 or 3 fleets of it and they don't " suck ". Even with one they wreak anything the AI sends. If you have 2, you destroy half the enemy fleet before it even fires a shot, with 3 you'll never take losses aside from the 100k + crisis fleets. For instance a run or two ago i took out a 580k fed fleet with two of them ( 400k fleet power ) and only lost 8 - 12 ships. If you put crap guns ( literally everything but kinetics ) on a battleship ofc it'll suck. That being said, that vs a torp corvette fleet the vettes will probably win in a 1v1 fleet wise. But we're not talking pvp.

[Malaficus Shaikan]

It is a mather of preference.
I dont like losing ships.
Corvettes die all the time.
There expendable.
Yes in large numbers they do alot of damage.
But so does everything else.
Spamming corvettes is a strategy but now the only strategy.

I prefer to build self-healing ships that can heal up while flying.
Corvet fleets tent to require alot of downtime getting reforcemence.
They do die often.

[lPaladinl]

They also have the shortest range and get picked off like flys.

It's a legitimate strat to just mass corvettes and nothing else, but there's some situations where it's not a good idea.

Evasion also only matters early game. Even at the evasion cap, which is what, 95%? Your enemies are able to subtract more than 100% evasion from the math that occurs, resuling in evasion being a flat 0% with ship upgrades.

It's true though, the game makes buying larger ships seem like a bad idea because they cost so much more for less DPS, but their defenses and range increases make up for it.

[slightly_jaded_95]

Because flies die when hit with a flyswatter.

Seriousyl though, corvettes are better bang for your buck for one battle. But the drop off means you have to rebuild everything you lose. As the ships get larger, they're more likely to survive a couple of hits, and repair costs nothing. revuild costs everything that you need to spend on every single vessel.

[Belhedler]

I don't really understand the point. All ships are a counter to each other and that mostly comes from the type and size of the ports you put in each section (and how many of them you have). If you adjust your fleets to what you're facing you can get up to 2/1 ratio with the same apparent firepower. For each ship category you can build an anti-corvette loadout, a ship offensive loadout or a mix of the two (AI does this often)

In case of doubt, here is the slot vs ship table to keep in mind:
P and S slot: corvettes. All ships have access to P slots but Destroyer is the best there is for this.
M slot: destroyer, cruiser. Cruiser has the most of these.
L slot: cruiser and battleship. Battleship has a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of these.
X slot: battleship and battleship has access to one after (expensive) research.
G slot: any large ship with corresponding defense type (G types are either specialized against armor or shield and do often increased damage to hull). Only corvette (1 slot) and cruiser (3 slots) have access to this. However since 1 cruiser is 4 corvettes in term of cost, this means Cruiser is less potent than its cruiser counterpart when it comes to G slots. However it will be far more durable against ennemy P/S loadout.

Now why battleship is favored by many players? Because if you think in term of available ports you get this (S is worth one):
Corvette : 3 -> S ports and G port aka torpedoes swarm
Destroyer: 5 -> L to S ports and the most P ports you can get for this cheap price (3)
Cruiser: 10 -> L+M or S+G configuration. Stand in between corvette destroyer (destroyers does this better), sort of buffed corvette torpedoes swarm (3G slots!) or (very) mini-battleship with 2L+2M ports.
Battleship: 18, which can be 6L, X + 5L, P/S/H anti-corvettes or a mix of all sizes (S/M/L/X/P/S/H). I kind of think that anything but X/L is a waste on a battleship, especially because destroyers will be just behind your corvettes and battleships far behind. However if you are going to face a large force of corvettes with battleships alone, be sure to have a decent number of these overhauled to P/S/H to deal with them.

While not being strictly the double of a Cruiser, the force of the Battleship is that it can be overhaul with only X and L slots, vs only 2 for Cruiser, which makes him the supreme contender against any other large ship.

If we try to summarize this information:
- Corvette is weak against any P/S/H loadout otherwise strong against Cruiser and Battelships especially with G+S hull damage loadout,
- Destroyer is very strong against corvettes with P/S, strong against Destroyer with L, weak against L/M cruiser and M battleships. Not clear against other cruiser/battleship loadouts
- Cruiser is strong against Destroyer with L/M, strong against Cruiser with G/L, decent against Corvettes if P/S otherwise weak against G Corvettes, weak against M/L/X Battleship
- Battleship is strong against Corvettes if S/P/H otherwise very weak against them, strong against Cruiser and Destroyers with L/M, strong against Battleship in full L or X/L configuration.

First thing to consider: S slots will have a hard time dealing with high armor and/or shields because of their regeneration rate. Even torpedoes swarm has difficulties dealing with these later in the game. Corvettes have only a few S slots. I like to think the problem in term of slot size. Why would I want a L or X slot? To face larger ships, and at all times against battleships. One on one large weapon is good for that. You'll need large weapons for efficient orbitary bombardment too. But guess what, the game now allows L slots starting at Destroyer and they make for a good contender to Cruiser and Battleships because their price to firepower output is quite good. Yeah I'm dead serious, check what the ship manager now offers in term of sections, that's a crazy lot compared to previous versions. Will my L or X weapon suck against numerous evading low cost ships? yeah clearly: it may have high damage output, it has low tracking low attack rate just to destroy a few pesky corvettes. But nothing comes close to a Battleship when it comes to L slots: you can have 6 of them vs 2 on cruiser, 1 on destroyer, 0 on corvette.

Secondly, check the ennemy loadout before confronting him. That's the best way to deal with the best odds you can against it. But tbo the AI navy is built on a very balanced pattern both in term of composition and loadout. The only case it will really make a difference is: environmental effects (try full armored anti armor/hull fortified place in pulsar system once for fun. Ennemy has a loadout made for a half to deal against shields and half armored too - fun times)

Lastly and that's probably why the devs invented this new feature: small ships do not survive battles for long. Since there now is an experience mecanism which yelds significant rewards, there's even more worth having your ships survive battles after battles. As a result, you'll likely end-up with an initial fleet of corvettes veterans and new generations ships to babysit which will become your next generation veterans for the rest of the game (while the corvettes will likely die in the process). It's likely that only battleships will make it to this point. And a elite unit is +40% damage power. On a Battleship that means about 10L ports in effectivness which is absolutely huge.

imo the only time I consider building a one-ship only fleet is for a specific purpose and among them:
- fast reaction in defense: pesky pirates. S corvettes + P/S destroyers against rogue corvettes and later add a few cruisers to deal with stronger units,
- fast reaction in attack: quickly take down non-upgraded or low-grade starbases to blitzkrieg the damn war goals or just luring fleets. Blitzkrieg is well done with G/S corvettes + L Destroyers unless the starbase loadout is P/S only (but even then the L snipe should have dealt most damage already)
- the navy I'm facing has only one type of ship (and mostly the same loadout): happens with lone scripted aliens quite a few times or after taking out the initial defense force, the AI tends to spam corvettes in response because they are quick to produce.

btw I have a permanent +10 evasion rate in empire from event and would still not consider doing a corvette only navy.

Actually, the one thing I would trully consider is cruiser vs battleship because it's strictly 2 for 1 if, forgetting about the X slot, for less construction time (if you have the shipyards to spare that is). But tbo corvette spam is good at taking out weak opponents fast and with a bit of luck this can lead to not death and XP for every ship.

That's the fun part with the new fleet manager / ship manager combo: you can somewhat reconfigure your ships, and potentialy the fleets, before facing your opponents so that they get at a greater disadvantage for mere few minerals cost and time in reconfiguration.

By default, I go with a 8:4:2:1 fleet pattern for a total of 32 naval cap (same as 4 battleships if you ask) for 2560 minerals / 2380 cumulative build time vs 2880 minerals/1920 cumulative build time for 4 battleship. This does not consider reduced construction cost and time from techs although it's pretty sure you'll have corvette and destroyer reduction at that time so the figures are actually too high for the patterned fleet.

[Botji]

The reasons you want battleships late game:

Less combat losses
Lower war exhaustion(less lost ships)
Higher enemy war exhaustion(more ships die before escaping)
Faster wars(combat ends faster and you fight less since their ships die instead of run away)
Larger fleets(dont need a high income for lots of replacements, can afford to build ships to cut income)
Easier battles/faster wars/less losses because you now have a even larger fleet due to ^

[HugsAndSnuggles]

Originally posted by DeusVult117:

So if you have a fleet of 100 missile corvettes...

...it dies horribly if enemy has 100 PD slots.

[The Wolf Steel]

Crusiers can effectively shut down destroyers and corvettes if built correctly. They can mount plenty of S and M hardpoints with good tracking and accuracy with solid DPS, and are tanky enough to survive, especially if you mix in a few destroyers.

Also, you're wrong about corvettes being the fastest. Destroyers and sometimes Cruisers can out-speed a corvette if you put enough thrusters into their A hardpoint slot. One fleet composed entirely of lighter ships can easily be shot down by cruisers mixed with a screening force. You take battleships to counter cruisers and other larger ships, and also deal with heavily fortified defense stations.