Since when does Equal Fleet Power mean double...

[Welp]

So first thing first, Declared war on a neighbor who was marked as inferior till the very second i clicked declare war, then they jumped to equal.

Second, we had 2 fleets, mine was 50k and hes 60k, i lightning striked a bunch of worlds till i saw his fleet coming then retreated to my choke planet with an upgraded shipyard to draw him into a losing battle... took awhile but he finally bit... and i won, lost half my fleet though (im a noob but im not here to discuss that)

i had reached 100% war exhaustion after that so i decided now that the majority of his military was downed i could be aggressive and steal some land i really needed.

then BAM another ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ fleet of 60k appears out of no where and destroys me.

[Totally Innocent Chatbot]

It's the same fleet. Sounds like most of his ships simply emergency jumped out during the battle rather than being destroyed, which is very common if you're using mostly small ships, then had time to repair and return to fight again at full strength.

[LuNi]

Equal does not mean that you are actually equal in strength. They can be either stronger or weaker than but they are about the same relative strength.

Having twice the fleet power should have easily put them to superior to overwhelming category. Did you by chance get attacked by their allies? Their allies are not counted in their relative strength ratings.

[Welp]

My theory is that my Starbases counted toward my mil power which gave me the equal... is thar correct?

and as for chatbot, damn...

[Gokki]

Originally posted by Totally Innocent Chatbot:

It's the same fleet. Sounds like most of his ships simply emergency jumped out during the battle rather than being destroyed, which is very common if you're using mostly small ships, then had time to repair and return to fight again at full strength.

This, i used this as an actual tactic with fleet doctrines, full evasion full corvette. I was attriting down fleets 4x my strength with just engage-retreat-engage-retreat spam and printing corvettes out of 3 shipyards. When the fleets were down i quickly rolled over the enemy empire and landed troops everywhere and won the war shortly after.

[Dakota]

Your enemy hit you with the best tactic in the book: Hit and Run.

Since these fleets are 50k and up I'm assuming there's at least cruisers and maybe battleships involved, those types of ships are great at surviving losses at a base level but get much better if you also get a trickster admiral and hit and run war policy after supremacy tree. With that you can go into a battle, lose, not take much war exhaustion because most of your ships actually survived and warped back to a base to repair, then come right back moments later with the same fleet and repeat all while taking very minimal losses while opponents, especially those who pick doctrines such as "no retreat" or admirals that lower disengagement chance, take massive attrition and war exhaustion penalties.


Also starbases are not counted within the fleet power readings.

[Xaphnir]

Originally posted by Man Emperor of Mankind:

My theory is that my Starbases counted toward my mil power which gave me the equal... is thar correct?

They don't. Fleet strength means fleet strength, nothing else.

[Welp]

Ima have to start using trickster admirals, such a pain searching for em though

[some moron]

For what it's worth, pay little notice to the fleet power. While it's no doubt some kind of accurate when counting guns and shield values, there's more to it, such as evasion and spam. I've been experimenting, and with some (high-evasion) corvettes I can take out a single larger ship with more than twice the power. I think evasion might be overpowered in this game. Really, tracking should address that, such that a large ship with small guns is as (probably more because of durability) effective than equal power of small ships. Except a large ship lacks equivalent evasion, so maybe as I suspected, you can't only have large ships because a fleet of small craft will evade your guns and take out large ship, i guess corvettes can be viewed as fighters, or bombers.
Imagine a battleship using it's main gun to try to take out dive bombers.

[Dakota]

Originally posted by some moron:

For what it's worth, pay little notice to the fleet power. While it's no doubt some kind of accurate when counting guns and shield values, there's more to it, such as evasion and spam. I've been experimenting, and with some (high-evasion) corvettes I can take out a single larger ship with more than twice the power. I think evasion might be overpowered in this game. Really, tracking should address that, such that a large ship with small guns is as (probably more because of durability) effective than equal power of small ships. Except a large ship lacks equivalent evasion, so maybe as I suspected, you can't only have large ships because a fleet of small craft will evade your guns and take out large ship, i guess corvettes can be viewed as fighters, or bombers.
Imagine a battleship using it's main gun to try to take out dive bombers.

Evasion's actually total garbage and very niche for the most part. It's ok against battleships loaded up entirely with large and XL weapons, but battleships setup with something not so cripplingly specialized easily fend off corvettes with strike craft, which have extremely high tracking and accuracy so that they hit corvettes nearly 100% of the time and intercept them before they get into range of battleships.

Evasion also falls off further as the game goes due to improved sensor tech and combat computer options that add in a lot of base tracking strength or accuracy. Even if you get up to 90% evasion with corvettes it's really more like 20% of things dodged, and mostly only if the enemy has a mix of weapons so the larger ones are missing sometimes.

Corvettes also tend to be the weakest type of combat ship by a good margin due to how fragile they are. They have such low health values that they are likely to be destroyed outright or not have time to warp out after a fight, in comparison battleships, even after they lose a fight, are likely to return to base and repair.

Corvettes also lack frontloaded damage since they're entirely small guns or a little missile and a small gun, missiles get shot down easy, especially by strike craft or carriers with PD. Corvettes lose a lot of health going up to the enemy and having to wear down their health bar or slowly take down a large capital station whereas battleships warp in, fire their XL weapon on the front, and if you have like 10-20 of them then the station's probably down in the first second of combat before it can really get a shot off.


TLDR: don't just use only large weapons on your large ships, set them up as carriers with an XL mount on the front and then they're a very strong dual purpose craft.

[Welp]

i always build a wide range of ships and ship types, making a mosaic of overlapping defenses and attacks leaving as little ways as possible for the AI to overpower me, probs not what you should do in PvP though.

that being said, what kind of weapons should i be using over others?

[some moron]

Okay I hear that. But if my corvettes have flak, they should take out the fighters and then have free fire on the large ship, true?

And if the BS has L or XL, it gets one shot and destroys one corvette but if you have 19 more, they'll get in many shots before the L recharges. Maybe not enough shots true. But corvettes build cheap and fast, and quickly move across the map to reinforce.

I think I'd like to see some battles where we have the same fleet cap (20? 100?). One fleet is a few large ships, carriers if you want that, and my fleet is all corvettes. I'd like to see who wins. I'm claiming I would lol

Then again I never get past mid game because the grind gets so massive and pointless. What am I supposed to do after I dwarf everyone except the two unfallens. I'm trying to make a federation but noone likes me enough, even with 2 envoys and giving them free stuff. Should I just kill them all? The game gets so boring just rearranging buildings and pops and dealing with occasional pirates. It seems to bloated into boring tediuous unenjoyment. About three games like this so far. Is something supposed to happen?

[Welp]

Lawls your not challenging yourself enough mate, plus there are the endgame events. If you want to see what to look forward too in endgame watch Templin Institutes Stellaris Invicta, its a dramatic reading (and showing) of their play through that is quite entertaining.

[Dakota]

Originally posted by some moron:

Okay I hear that. But if my corvettes have flak, they should take out the fighters and then have free fire on the large ship, true?

And if the BS has L or XL, it gets one shot and destroys one corvette but if you have 19 more, they'll get in many shots before the L recharges. Maybe not enough shots true. But corvettes build cheap and fast, and quickly move across the map to reinforce.

I think I'd like to see some battles where we have the same fleet cap (20? 100?). One fleet is a few large ships, carriers if you want that, and my fleet is all corvettes. I'd like to see who wins. I'm claiming I would lol

Then again I never get past mid game because the grind gets so massive and pointless. What am I supposed to do after I dwarf everyone except the two unfallens. I'm trying to make a federation but noone likes me enough, even with 2 envoys and giving them free stuff. Should I just kill them all? The game gets so boring just rearranging buildings and pops and dealing with occasional pirates. It seems to bloated into boring tediuous unenjoyment. About three games like this so far. Is something supposed to happen?

Flak is ineffective against strike craft. I wrote out a large response to this a few times before, so this time I'll just go ahead and link one.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/281990/discussions/0/2251182852551661220/#c2251182852551838088

In short, flak does nothing to strike craft in high numbers since strike craft are moving around so much that flak is likely spreading its damage or is otherwise just not able to put out enough damage to deal with the swarm. It is ironic in a way that the corvettes are not the ones swarming the battleships, the battleships are swarming the corvettes with fighter swarms.

Strike craft aren't weakened by jumping either unlike regular weapons, so a battleship fleet consisting of hangar bays can more easily warp around and deal with running corvette fleets without much worry since strike craft are brutal against corvettes.

Corvettes are more expensive than battleships in terms of a cost per fleet power metric and they also have much higher attrition due to almost never being durable enough to survive and warp out unlike battleships which once they are built are likely to stay around.

I have also just been considering balanced battleships with XL weapons on the front for killing stations and other large targets, strike craft for outranging enemy targets and destroying corvettes before they can get into range, and then a back weapon of either 1 large or 2 mediums depending on user choice. A battleship could go full corvette cleanup by removing the XL weapon on the front and equipping another hangar bay which comes with point defense and a medium weapon if I remember correctly.

Mediums by battleship stage are great corvette killers due to the high damage per shot coupled with high tracking that doesn't go over cap like with smalls once radar techs are done.

[Heimdall313]

Originally posted by Dakota:

Flak is ineffective against strike craft. I wrote out a large response to this a few times before, so this time I'll just go ahead and link one.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/281990/discussions/0/2251182852551661220/#c2251182852551838088

In short, flak does nothing to strike craft in high numbers since strike craft are moving around so much that flak is likely spreading its damage or is otherwise just not able to put out enough damage to deal with the swarm. It is ironic in a way that the corvettes are not the ones swarming the battleships, the battleships are swarming the corvettes with fighter swarms.

Strike craft aren't weakened by jumping either unlike regular weapons, so a battleship fleet consisting of hangar bays can more easily warp around and deal with running corvette fleets without much worry since strike craft are brutal against corvettes.

Corvettes are more expensive than battleships in terms of a cost per fleet power metric and they also have much higher attrition due to almost never being durable enough to survive and warp out unlike battleships which once they are built are likely to stay around.

I have also just been considering balanced battleships with XL weapons on the front for killing stations and other large targets, strike craft for outranging enemy targets and destroying corvettes before they can get into range, and then a back weapon of either 1 large or 2 mediums depending on user choice. A battleship could go full corvette cleanup by removing the XL weapon on the front and equipping another hangar bay which comes with point defense and a medium weapon if I remember correctly.

Mediums by battleship stage are great corvette killers due to the high damage per shot coupled with high tracking that doesn't go over cap like with smalls once radar techs are done.

tl;dr I am vindicated in my months long support of Strike Craft :P
I run le standard XL/LLL/L battleship about 60:40 to XL/HH/L carrier ships; front hangar bay is a massive waste of potential damage output. Arc Emitter and Cloud Lightning when I can, or Kinetic Artillery / Neutron Launcher. Has worked solidly.

[DankDansk]

Originally posted by Man Emperor of Mankind:

So first thing first, Declared war on a neighbor who was marked as inferior till the very second i clicked declare war, then they jumped to equal.

Second, we had 2 fleets, mine was 50k and hes 60k, i lightning striked a bunch of worlds till i saw his fleet coming then retreated to my choke planet with an upgraded shipyard to draw him into a losing battle... took awhile but he finally bit... and i won, lost half my fleet though (im a noob but im not here to discuss that)

i had reached 100% war exhaustion after that so i decided now that the majority of his military was downed i could be aggressive and steal some land i really needed.

then BAM another ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ fleet of 60k appears out of no where and destroys me.

Just because they are currently inferior doesn't mean they can't build more ships. Corvettes, especially with traditions and technology, can be built rapidly, possibly within a months time.

Also could be the Said cheating, but that's only been proven with resources. They could have been building a second fleet before you declared war.

Originally posted by Dakota:

Your enemy hit you with the best tactic in the book: Hit and Run.

Since these fleets are 50k and up I'm assuming there's at least cruisers and maybe battleships involved, those types of ships are great at surviving losses at a base level but get much better if you also get a trickster admiral and hit and run war policy after supremacy tree. With that you can go into a battle, lose, not take much war exhaustion because most of your ships actually survived and warped back to a base to repair, then come right back moments later with the same fleet and repeat all while taking very minimal losses while opponents, especially those who pick doctrines such as "no retreat" or admirals that lower disengagement chance, take massive attrition and war exhaustion penalties.


Also starbases are not counted within the fleet power readings.

This.