I want to know which Corvette design is best for early game.

[ImperialForce9]

What I mean is that only the Kinetic Mass Driver and Laser weapons and or Missiles. Usually early wars happen and I only have those viable.

Do Corvette Missile boats are any good?

Even if I'm slightly outnumbered which one is best?

[Катя Мяу <3]

Missile + Kinetic
Best mix for early, mid, and lategame.
Later you might want to replace missiles with torpedos.

[ImperialForce9]

Originally posted by ֺ Kate Meow (ツ ):

Missile + Kinetic
Best mix for early, mid, and lategame.
Later you might want to replace missiles with torpedos.

What is their Corvettes have PD? and they outnumber me by about 3:2 at the time.

[HappySack]

Don't listen to that troll, the best early game design is always 2 red lasers and a mass driver (because kinetic weapons are only needed to take down shields otherwise they are always inferior to energy weapons), use improved components as they are researched and go shield heavy as you can afford it because winning wars is all about about cost-efficiency as well as good engagements (if you're about to tell what weapons and defensive components your enemies are using then all the better).

Missile boats are only needed when you're against bigger ships like cruisers and battleships otherwise don't bother with them.

If you're lucky enough to get crystal plating then you can use two of those and one shield component for excellent fodder ships.

[CthuluIsSpy]

Missile corvettes are decent against starbases too because of the hull damage, but you'll want to mix laser corvettes in with them to strip armor.

[Mr_Faorry]

I've always used the templates in this as my early and mid-late game templates and have never had any glaring issues.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=911980839

[yuzhonglu]

Design doesn't matter early on. What matters is numbers and timing.

You won't have time to get missiles because you need the engineering tech to get corvette build speed and +100 corvette hull. So just get blue lasers and go.

The three key techs are blue lasers, corvette build cost reduction and extra corvette hull. Don't waste your engineering time with missiles.

[CthuluIsSpy]

You might not get those techs though. Remember that Stellaris doesn't really allow you to choose what techs to research. If you don't get the corvette upgrades but missile techs instead, you might as well research missiles.

[yuzhonglu]

Then research some other useful engineering tech first. Missiles take up too much engineering time. Missiles can get hard countered.

[Ryika]

I think the only time you should consider missiles as your primary choice early on is if the game doesn't offer you any other weapon tech and missiles tier 2 are literally the last technology that the game throws at you before you want to start producing a fleet.

Missiles aren't entirely terrible early on, and they do synergize well with mass drivers, but their low tracking just turns them into a subpar option against fleets that consist of corvettes.

[★REM★]

Personally early game i use Disruptor + Torpedoes.
Mid and Late game i remove the disruptor and use a plasma Cannon for general purposes.

[Xaphnir]

Originally posted by ֺ Kate Meow (ツ ):

Missile + Kinetic
Best mix for early, mid, and lategame.
Later you might want to replace missiles with torpedos.

Late game (and maybe mid, too) missiles are a very bad idea. They get more than hard countered. Missiles get almost completely nullified by point defense in the late game. Torpedoes especially: they're slow, have low hull points and no evasion. It's not uncommon to see a fleet of torpedo corvettes go up against a fleet of equal naval capacity and have zero torpedoes hit over the entire battle.

That said, if the enemy doesn't have point defense, missiles can be good. They're particularly good against pure artillery battleship fleets. That's only for multiplayer, though. The AI always includes a decent amount of point defense in its fleets, and never goes pure battleship.

[Rabob]

What about point defense corvettes? Do they make sense in some way? or does PD not fire at normal ships?

[CthuluIsSpy]

Originally posted by Rabob:

What about point defense corvettes? Do they make sense in some way? or does PD not fire at normal ships?

They are for when you don't have anything better.
Ideally you'll want PD on battleships and cruisers because they can take hangers and small weapons as well. Carrier Battleship + Artillery Battleship is a pretty effective combination.

Originally posted by Xaphnir:

Originally posted by ֺ Kate Meow (ツ ):

Missile + Kinetic
Best mix for early, mid, and lategame.
Later you might want to replace missiles with torpedos.

Late game (and maybe mid, too) missiles are a very bad idea. They get more than hard countered. Missiles get almost completely nullified by point defense in the late game. Torpedoes especially: they're slow, have low hull points and no evasion. It's not uncommon to see a fleet of torpedo corvettes go up against a fleet of equal naval capacity and have zero torpedoes hit over the entire battle.

That said, if the enemy doesn't have point defense, missiles can be good. They're particularly good against pure artillery battleship fleets. That's only for multiplayer, though. The AI always includes a decent amount of point defense in its fleets, and never goes pure battleship.

Yeah I've been trying to use missiles in my games and I found that late game they do indeed fall off pretty hard due to the AI's PD spam.
I sort of get that's what swarm missiles are for, but they have such terrible stats that I don't think its worth using those as opposed to just using a cruiser decked out with plasma cannons and autocannons.

You'd think that swarm missiles would have better evasion and tracking due to them being small, agile little missiles but no, those stats are pretty terrible.

Thing is though that if you made missiles better / PD worse they run the risk of being OP, because they already deal high damage and ignore shields. The system could use a rework but I don't know what to suggest other than make swarmers less mediocre.

[ImperialForce9]

Interesting, thank you all for your input.

Also are Disruptors worth it compared to lvl 1-3 Lasers?

[mss73055]

Missile corvettes against space monsters.
Point defense corvettes against star bases.

Then what is early game?

Sometimes I get Space Torpedos in my opening cards.
Disruptors don't show up in the first draw, they're more midgame.
Autocannon level 1 can be obtained early from pirates.
Blue lasers can be discovered from an anomaly.
Plasma Cannons can be obtained from at least 2 different anomalies, though they still need 50% research.