Are hangarbays on stations worth it (early)

[C4R7M4N]

Early game they improve your output to ~2.2k so it's good to scare off AI but overall I think they struggle against corvettes because they are being shot down. Is it better to go for gun batteries (missile bays(?)) instead?

[galadon3]

hangarbays are mostly for pirate supression, since they add double the amount of other weapon-modules, but to actually fight go with gun batteries.

[Dakota]

Hangar bays are the best weapon against corvettes in the game. Fighters regenerate rather quickly and overwhelm corvettes. and also force some of the corvette's damage to go into firing on the fighters instead of your starbase.

I would guess that people saying gun batteries are better are a few patches behind on balance changes. Hangars have been buffed to now be the best up from periods in which they were the worst due to some bugs.

[Heimdall313]

Missiles are bad, gun bay is always good, hangars are good early game if you get early amoeba flagella since no one is putting flak on corvettes. Scout craft and basic strike craft are awful. Tier 2 and 3 are great though, and helps against torpedo corvettes.

[Dakota]

Just going to dump out a lot of math here to show my work if you doubt it, but to keep it short and sweet.

-Strike craft have no practical worry about flak unless the enemy has around 18 flak guns per hangar
-Strike craft will out DPS gun battery massively, especially against corvettes
-Cruisers are a huge game changer due to giving you mobile hangar bays


On Flak:

A basic T1 fighter has 35 hull, 10 shields, and 65% evasion. You get 8 units and can replenish 1 unit per day. (effectively +45 health per day given to you against flak or pd)

One flak battery puts out 3 damage on average per second. Assuming that you hit 100% of the time it would take 15 flak batteries to take out 1 fighter per second. However you do not hit 100% of the time as the accuracy is only 75% and trading is only 50%.

Chance to hit an enemy is your Accuracy - (evasion - tracking) with the second part having a max of 0. So your hit rate would be 75 - (65-50) for a total of 60%. Average damage takes into account accuracy in the above "3 damage on average per second" value, so a reduction of 75% to 60% would mean you really deal 2.6 damage per second.

So in short you need 18 flak batteries to defeat one hangar bay which effectively means that any slot used on a flak battery is practically useless as they're likely just going to be indefinitely pushing out damage into fighters that are respawning.


Against Corvettes:

A corvette, lets put it in the best case scenario for the corvette against strike craft and say it has 100% armor and 0% shields as strike craft just fully ignore shields, would have 450 health, 300 hull and 150 armor.

Strike craft have a 50% boost to damage vs armor and deal 24.34 damage per second. Note that an early corvette deals around 6.5 damage per second. The strike craft will have 100% accuracy against them as their evasion is under the 80% tracking of T1 strike craft and will rip through the armor in 4.1 seconds and the hull in 12.3 for a total of 16.4 seconds of combat to destroy a corvette.

In comparison the gun battery module gives you 2 medium weapons, so early game 2 blue lasers. Blue lasers do -50% shield damage and +50% armor damage, let us once again assume full armor so they have the benefit whereas strike craft had worst case. Blue lasers that are medium have 90% accuracy and 30% tracking. An early corvette will have at least 60% evasion. So the accuracy drops to 60%, cutting the damage to 2/3s. Those two blue lasers will be doing 9.52 damage per second and will take 10.5 seconds to take out the armor and then 31.5 seconds to take out the hull for a total of 42 seconds.

In short, with best case scenario of blue lasers vs worst case scenario of T1 strike craft are still over twice as effective.

[C4R7M4N]

Originally posted by Dakota:

Just going to dump out a lot of math here so show my work if you doubt it, but to keep it short and sweet.

-Strike craft have no practical worry about flak unless the enemy has around 18 flak guns per hangar
-Strike craft will out DPS gun battery massively, especially against corvettes
-Cruisers are a huge game changer due to giving you mobile hangar bays


On Flak:

A basic T1 fighter has 35 hull, 10 shields, and 65% evasion. You get 8 units and can replenish 1 unit per day. (effectively +45 health per day given to you against flak or pd)

One flak battery puts out 3 damage on average per second. Assuming that you hit 100% of the time it would take 15 flak batteries to take out 1 fighter per second. However you do not hit 100% of the time as the accuracy is only 75% and trading is only 50%.

Chance to hit an enemy is your Accuracy - (evasion - tracking) with the second part having a max of 0. So your hit rate would be 75 - (65-50) for a total of 60%. Average damage takes into account accuracy in the above "3 damage on average per second" value, so a reduction of 75% to 60% would mean you really deal 2.6 damage per second.

So in short you need 18 flak batteries to defeat one hangar bay which effectively means that any slot used on a flak battery is practically useless as they're likely just going to be indefinitely pushing out damage into fighters that are respawning.


Against Corvettes:

A corvette, lets put it in the best case scenario for the corvette against strike craft and say it has 100% armor and 0% shields as strike craft just fully ignore shields, would have 450 health, 300 hull and 150 armor.

Strike craft have a 50% boost to damage vs armor and deal 24.34 damage per second. Note that an early corvette deals around 6.5 damage per second. The strike craft will have 100% accuracy against them as their evasion is under the 80% tracking of T1 strike craft and will rip through the armor in 4.1 seconds and the hull in 12.3 for a total of 16.4 seconds of combat to destroy a corvette.

In comparison the gun battery module gives you 2 medium weapons, so early game 2 blue lasers. Blue lasers do -50% shield damage and +50% armor damage, let us once again assume full armor so they have the benefit whereas strike craft had worst case. Blue lasers that are medium have 90% accuracy and 30% tracking. An early corvette will have at least 60% evasion. So the accuracy drops to 60%, cutting the damage to 2/3s. Those two blue lasers will be doing 9.52 damage per second and will take 10.5 seconds to take out the armor and then 31.5 seconds to take out the hull for a total of 42 seconds.

In short, with best case scenario of blue lasers vs worst case scenario of T1 strike craft are still over twice as effective.

Thank you for your time. This is a really good work and what I was seeking for.

[Dakota]

You're welcome. There is only one thing I am not entirely sure on the answer of, and that would be if paradox's UI is saying that the strike craft have their health readout setup as the health of the entire group or per ship. It would almost seem that they are far too good if this is the health of each fighter, but considering a basic tier one missile gets to be 6 health on its own then I am unsure.

Basically the only difference is if the health is the total wing then you'd only be getting +5.625 health per second extra, which sounds a bit more balanced and it would take 2.25 flak batteries to take out a fighter per day.

I personally have not encountered an instance in which my fighters have dried up in a fight though. I would like to test further but this game doesn't have so much available for clear testing to be done.

[warrickbartley]

also as a new player first campaign would the best defense for your territory be to equip hanger bays on all your bordering space stations. asap or does this become invalid as the other nations develop more powerful ships, sorry also bit of a noob

[Dakota]

Just an update, I did a battle against some raiders with a year 300 fleet, mix of cruisers and battleships. They had a few flak batteries on their stations and some of their ships.

Looking at the damage output readout it says I shot down 112 missiles and 0 strike craft as they have none, however it also says the enemy shot down 0 strike craft. Strike craft were my second highest damage dealing weapon behind tachyon lances. It still feels like there must be some mistake or bug in the readout or maybe my calculations above are correct and the damage also gets spread around between different strike craft as they move in and out of range.

A second shorter battle shows the strike craft actually doing more damage than the tachyon lance and again no fighters shot down. About double damage against the armor and 20% more vs hull. However, this was right after a jump, which reduces ship weapon damage by 50%, so this shows that hangar bays do not have their damage reduced by jumping.