Are corvettes still the best ships?

[berandro]

I haven't really played Stellaris that much since the ship rework that eliminated the damage mitigation effect of armor, which gave a big advantage to corvettes (specially those equipped with missiles) over all other ship classes. Is this still true? Can someone bring me up to date on that?

[Doomwarrior]

I have written a balance mod for 1.6 and 1.8 until they "fixed" combat...
To a degree they did, but never really. Instead of downgrading ships with new tech you are now equalgrading them. Sounds weird? it is, but thats what is happening if you do not get more bang for the buck.

In my calculations corvettes are still the best overall ship. Most cost efficient, fastest, fastest built and replaced and so on. But usually its the bang for the buck that makes the most compelling argument. Hell i even wrote a battle simulator for this kind of nonsense. And still mass corvettes are still a thing. Not as bad as it used to be but...still bad.

[berandro]

Thanks for all your inputs!

[AnemoneMeer]

Depends. If you're going psi, corvs are probably gonna be your bread and butter due to how nutty psicorvs can get. 90% evade for free is 90% evade for free. Add in hull/armor regen and a willingness to Emergency FTL and they become stupid accurate, stupid damaging locusts that take entirely too much effort to kill with their supercharged shields unless hitting with small weapons, and then they just outgun. A medium mass driver line weapon with maxed sensors has a 30% hitrate, and a large one has a 5% hitrate. Missiles don't fare much better, being a coinflip if they hit or not.

Cyborg path generally wants the heavy ships, since their boosts to fire rate and range really help with battleships, granting extra free shots with their extremely long range weapons, while said boosts would be marginal on smaller guns. Range means more when you're not already in range of the enemy.

[TangoImmortalis]

Goku corvette spam

Devastator Torpedo (tier3)
Small Phase Disruptor (tier 3)

Shield (tier3)
Plasteel Armor (tier 3)
Plasteel Armor (tier 3)

Advanced Afterburner

Since torps will retrack targets at close range, you are an anti battleship/titan/cruiser ball of death, whose weapons all bypass shields.

The idea is to keep the build cheap (which anything larger is most definately NOT) while useful. High evasion, excellent alpha, and high dps in numbers make it a viable solution to just about everything your gonna face in game.

2nd Edit: Note, this design is garbage, against small pirate fleets unless you have overwhelming numbers. My anti pirate build swaps the weapon mounts for a railgun and pair of lasers.

[AnemoneMeer]

Originally posted by TangoImmortalis:

Goku corvette spam

Devastator Torpedo (tier3)
Small Phase Disruptor (tier 3)

Shield (tier3)
Plasteel Armor (tier 3)
Plasteel Armor (tier 3)

Advanced Afterburner

Since torps will retrack targets at close range, you are an anti battleship/titan/cruiser ball of death, whose weapons all bypass shields.

Honestly, that's a garbage setup. While it looks impressive, Torps don't track for ♥♥♥♥, and tend to get obliterated by PD very easily due to their abysmal fire rate, lack of evade and slower speeds. Likewise, running Advanced Afterburner in place of a more useful aux such as auxfires (for corv duels) or regen is giving up one of the corvettes greatest strengths, that being the ability to rapidly recover from damage.

The instant that setup runs into picket destroyers, or even picket corvs, it's going to immediately die, and simple PD on anything will shut it down. Torps want a picket setup, but disruptors have hilariously terrible range. You'd be better served running standard mass drivers and torps with a picket computer and either reactor boosters or regeneration depending on if you want offense or defense.

[TangoImmortalis]

Originally posted by AnemoneMeer:

Originally posted by TangoImmortalis:

Goku corvette spam

Devastator Torpedo (tier3)
Small Phase Disruptor (tier 3)

Shield (tier3)
Plasteel Armor (tier 3)
Plasteel Armor (tier 3)

Advanced Afterburner

Since torps will retrack targets at close range, you are an anti battleship/titan/cruiser ball of death, whose weapons all bypass shields.

Honestly, that's a garbage setup. While it looks impressive, Torps don't track for ♥♥♥♥, and tend to get obliterated by PD very easily due to their abysmal fire rate, lack of evade and slower speeds. Likewise, running Advanced Afterburner in place of a more useful aux such as auxfires (for corv duels) or regen is giving up one of the corvettes greatest strengths, that being the ability to rapidly recover from damage.

The instant that setup runs into picket destroyers, or even picket corvs, it's going to immediately die, and simple PD on anything will shut it down. Torps want a picket setup, but disruptors have hilariously terrible range. You'd be better served running standard mass drivers and torps with a picket computer and either reactor boosters or regeneration depending on if you want offense or defense.

Despite your opinion, it works just fine.

[AnemoneMeer]

Originally posted by TangoImmortalis:

Originally posted by AnemoneMeer:

Honestly, that's a garbage setup. While it looks impressive, Torps don't track for ♥♥♥♥, and tend to get obliterated by PD very easily due to their abysmal fire rate, lack of evade and slower speeds. Likewise, running Advanced Afterburner in place of a more useful aux such as auxfires (for corv duels) or regen is giving up one of the corvettes greatest strengths, that being the ability to rapidly recover from damage.

The instant that setup runs into picket destroyers, or even picket corvs, it's going to immediately die, and simple PD on anything will shut it down. Torps want a picket setup, but disruptors have hilariously terrible range. You'd be better served running standard mass drivers and torps with a picket computer and either reactor boosters or regeneration depending on if you want offense or defense.

Despite your opinion, it works just fine.

VS the AI, which can't build an intelligent ship design to save its life.

[TangoImmortalis]

Originally posted by AnemoneMeer:

Originally posted by TangoImmortalis:

Despite your opinion, it works just fine.

VS the AI, which can't build an intelligent ship design to save its life.

In that we agree.

[HugsAndSnuggles]

Originally posted by AnemoneMeer:

Originally posted by TangoImmortalis:

Despite your opinion, it works just fine.

VS the AI, which can't build an intelligent ship design to save its life.

Against humans you just spam "classic" (L+PD) destroyers - nothing new here.

[キールス]

Corvettes are still good at tanking damage with their evasion but going mixed is also good. Ships with tracking like destroyers/cruisers are good against corvettes if you put S and M weapons on them.

Battlecruisers still wreck starbases with their long range L and XL weapons. Titans can be used as a walking FTL jammer. These two ships are also good for tanking that initial damage since the AI seems to prioritize battleships/titans for some reason.

[Matiati]

1. Combat-wise the answer is yes corvettes have an asymmetric advantages against larger ships in the game due to how evasion mechanics work. If specced correctly corvettes become mostly immune to large and medium weapon fire as they are poor in tracking and accuracy.

Armor, Shield and Hitpoints mechanics though all work the same. So a battleship will still take full damage from a corvette independent of how hard its armor is. It is like destroying a tank with enough pistol shots. In reality, this is almost impossible, but in Stellaris this is quite possible so Battleships dont have the same assymmetric advantage (damage reduction) at all. But they have a larger hp and armor pool.

2. Resource-wise no. You'll lose too many corvettes per fight and it would require a higher budget to replenish the fleet after battles.

A battleship is equivalent to around 8 x corvettes in price. But it has 600 more hitpoints, more armor and more shields than 8 x corvettes combined.

It means that a battleship can survive a battle in a mixed fleet at front lines whereas you might lose 5-6 of the 8 corvettes during the fight.

So you'll need to replace 5-6 corvettes after the battle. But if you had a battleship instead, it would lose %75 of its hp (roughly the hp of 6 corvettes) but would not get destroyed. You would only need to repair it after the battle which is much cheaper.