Does fleet power mean nothing?

[Sticks]

Been watching a lot of streams and videos of this game and one common trend in all the combat is that there seems to be no way to tell whos going to win an engagement.

Things like 6k fleets completely obliterating 15k fleets of twice as many ships and still remain at 6k by the end, or a 15k fleet taking on 3 15k fleets and making all 3 of them retreat, if the power level of a fleet doesn't determine who wins then why does it even exist? Whats it for?

[Xcorps]

The only thing fleet power measures is the combined offensive output of all the ships in the fleet.

It would therefore be possible to have a 10k strength fleet attack a 250 strength fleet and lose. You have to scout the defenses of the ships you are fighting against to determine if they can deal with your damage output and if you can deal with their damage output.

[VoiD]

Messaggio originale di Xcorps:

The only thing fleet power measures is the combined offensive output of all the ships in the fleet.

It would therefore be possible to have a 10k strength fleet attack a 250 strength fleet and lose. You have to scout the defenses of the ships you are fighting against to determine if they can deal with your damage output and if you can deal with their damage output.

This is specially true if if the big fleet is using tons of missile weapons and the defensive fleet is crazy about PD.

Learnt that the hard way starting with missile weapons on my first war. Not sure if I dealt any damage at all.

[FieserMoep]

Messaggio originale di PingvinSalat:

If youve ever played eve online you already know how this works. Its called Gun Tracking and Angular Velocity :)

Doesnt make much sense still.
The very same gun should hit just as good no matter if fired from a small or a big ship. The only difference is that a big ship naturally is a bigger target, given the relative size of space combat tho and the accuracy to hit in the first place there is no big difference in hitting a 10m or a 100m long target for your fire solution has to be that accurate in the first place that there is no much of a leway. Also a larger ships might just have ordonance that might make direct hits unneccessary for they just blow the area of space with shrapnels the enemy ship is supposed to be in.
(Tho combat in Stellars is more portrayed like a brawl rather than anything that would make sense in the first place so nvm.)

[Mistfox]

Fieser, it's more like the mount itself has so much mass that it's harder to bring to bear along the right axis than small quickfirers though I do agree in real life space is so big that you either hit or totally miss. Unfortunately, a whole string of misses a nice game does not make, so we just have to take it as sacrificing a bit of reality for entertainment.

[FieserMoep]

Messaggio originale di Mistfox:

Fieser, it's more like the mount itself has so much mass that it's harder to bring to bear along the right axis than small quickfirers though I do agree in real life space is so big that you either hit or totally miss. Unfortunately, a whole string of misses a nice game does not make, so we just have to take it as sacrificing a bit of reality for entertainment.

Not if its a turret of the same size than on the small ship. Also a big ship might actually be more accurate for it may have a better mass ratio between turrets and hull so the turret movement might not be a factor the ship has to compensate with its own thrusters. That aside there is not much movement from the angle in the first place if you target something "halve" a solar system away.
But yea, we have to sacrifce here for gameplay and fun reasons and imho I do not have a big problem with it as long as each element of the combat system stays reasonable. In the End Battleships should stay supreme in this brawling combat that has more in common with lets say WH40k and less with Antares or the Lost Fleet to some extend.

[Astasia]

Messaggio originale di Panda:

Here's an excerpt from a post by /u/Sevsquad:

...

WHAT COUNTERS WHAT

Every weapon and armor type in Stellaris has a direct hard counter.

1. Energy weapons are weak to shields, strong against armor.
   
2. Kinetic weapons are strong against shields, weak against armor.
   
3. Missles are strong against both however can be countered better than any of the others with point defense systems.

...

• Bombers and Fighters are very hard to hit, basically have to be shot at by small weapons.
  
• Corvettes are most easily hit by small weapons.
  
• Destroyers are most easily hit by medium and small weapons.
  
• Cruisers and Battleships are most easily hit by literally everything.

...

That is outdated, as are the weapon descriptions in the race creation screen. It was explained in the release day stream that weapons have been rebalanced, and for example kinetic weapons are no longer bad at anything, they are now a general pupose weapon that always does decent damage. Shields are equally effective against all three major weapon types, with only special weapons like disruptors and torpedoes having any extra effect or bypassing them.

[RodHull]

Messaggio originale di VoiD:

Wow, finally found some one else that's not just saying "SPAM DA BIGGEST SHIPZ!"

You realise you can build cruisers with all small weapons right? A cruiser built to deal with corvettes will hit them just as easily but have a metric s*** ton more hull strength and shields as the modules likes shields and armour are so much more effective on larger ships.

[Ulysses]

Right now it doesn't matter what you use once you have the Taychon Lance. Taychn Lance is just unbelivably broken atm, used 4k ship squads to destroy the swarms / a 50k TL fleet can destroy 100k+ fleets before they even get in 40 weapon range, even if that ship has pure cqb Tanks. The max shield / armour modules at end game don't compensate enough for how powerful the TL is oddly enough, where as matter distengrator / all end tiers of other weaponry are some what equivalent to their respective armour / shield tiers.

[Mistfox]

What I find strange is that even with small turret mounts, the modules still do the same amount of overall damage for most of them, makes me wonder what is the point in getting a single large mount that can't hit anything vs a whole lot of smaller guns that combined will do the same DPS.

[RodHull]

Messaggio originale di Mistfox:

What I find strange is that even with small turret mounts, the modules still do the same amount of overall damage for most of them, makes me wonder what is the point in getting a single large mount that can't hit anything vs a whole lot of smaller guns that combined will do the same DPS.

Its slightly more as the weapons get more powerful and fleet numbers grow the slight difference starts to add up. Also more range

[AnemoneMeer]

Something people seem to be forgetting is that missiles, or at least torpedoes, have 100% accuracy across all sizes instead of less accurate large guns.

Torpedoes as a direct result are excellent jack of all stats weapons, bypassing shields and hitting targets easily.

[VoiD]

Messaggio originale di RodHull:

Messaggio originale di VoiD:

Wow, finally found some one else that's not just saying "SPAM DA BIGGEST SHIPZ!"

You realise you can build cruisers with all small weapons right? A cruiser built to deal with corvettes will hit them just as easily but have a metric s*** ton more hull strength and shields as the modules likes shields and armour are so much more effective on larger ships.

And hull points are meaningless against quite a few weapons in the game while having no ability to dodge, which smaller ships can, even against small turrets having over 60% dodge is very significant.

Messaggio originale di ULD Ulysses Castle:

Right now it doesn't matter what you use once you have the Taychon Lance. Taychn Lance is just unbelivably broken atm, used 4k ship squads to destroy the swarms / a 50k TL fleet can destroy 100k+ fleets before they even get in 40 weapon range, even if that ship has pure cqb Tanks. The max shield / armour modules at end game don't compensate enough for how powerful the TL is oddly enough, where as matter distengrator / all end tiers of other weaponry are some what equivalent to their respective armour / shield tiers.

And here comes the greatest offender of big-shi-rapage, a tachyon lance equiped fleet will annihlate anything made of only big ships.

On the other hand if you have an equivalent power fleet of corvettes and destroyers going against the same fleet you will take minimal losses.

PS: Fallen empires SPAM this weapon.

Messaggio originale di Mistfox:

What I find strange is that even with small turret mounts, the modules still do the same amount of overall damage for most of them, makes me wonder what is the point in getting a single large mount that can't hit anything vs a whole lot of smaller guns that combined will do the same DPS.

Range, in bigger battles you'll be able to fire plenty of longer range weapons before the smaler ships get closer.

Also, smaller ships are a lot faster than bigger ships so they can get closer a lot sooner than say battleships that never really get anywhere near the enemy, the enemy usually gets to them first, to start firing at their smaller-ship frontline as well.

But you're right about the accuracy issue, if you put L turrets on destroyers and make a comparable fleet to battleships and both sides are using tachyon lances, for example, the destroyer fleet will win with minimal casualties every time, that's something to take into account. In the end what matters the most is knowing what your opponent will be fielding, but since you can't always know... Don't put all of your eggs into one basket, you'll hate having a fallen empire comming after you when all you have is a big fleet of battleships for example.

Messaggio originale di AnemoneMeer:

Something people seem to be forgetting is that missiles, or at least torpedoes, have 100% accuracy across all sizes instead of less accurate large guns.

Torpedoes as a direct result are excellent jack of all stats weapons, bypassing shields and hitting targets easily.

Yeah those are pretty great but I gave up on their use after a few wars against races with some point defense weapons, i'd deal close to zero missile damage every single fight, I'm not sure if that's ballanced

[RodHull]

Messaggio originale di VoiD:

Messaggio originale di RodHull:

You realise you can build cruisers with all small weapons right? A cruiser built to deal with corvettes will hit them just as easily but have a metric s*** ton more hull strength and shields as the modules likes shields and armour are so much more effective on larger ships.

And hull points are meaningless against quite a few weapons in the game while having no ability to dodge, which smaller ships can, even against small turrets having over 60% dodge is very significant.

Destroyers get just 10% less evasion, cruisers get about 25% less they can still have considerable evasion (40+) and about 10x the health

Hull is not meaningless it is the hit pool. A cruisers has about 6 x more basic health than a corvette, so its worth about 6 corvettes, it also has the benefit of medium and large utility slots so it can have larger shields and armour

I get your point but cruisers are better than corvettes, that said the most effective fleets use good combinations of all 3, a whole fleet of corvettes loses MP to quickly, a fleet with a buffer of hard to hit corvettes backed up with longer range destroyers and cruisers is best tbh. Its relatively well balanced, much like EVE. If you come just with one type of ship you wont have a good time.

[VoiD]

Messaggio originale di RodHull:

Messaggio originale di VoiD:

And hull points are meaningless against quite a few weapons in the game while having no ability to dodge, which smaller ships can, even against small turrets having over 60% dodge is very significant.

Destroyers get just 10% less evasion, cruisers get about 25% less they can still have considerable evasion (40+) and about 10x the health

Hull is not meaningless it is the hit pool. A cruisers has about 6 x more basic health than a corvette, so its worth about 6 corvettes, it also has the benefit of medium and large utility slots so it can have larger shields and armour

I get your point but cruisers are better than corvettes, that said the most effective fleets use good combinations of all 3, a whole fleet of corvettes loses MP to quickly, a fleet with a buffer of hard to hit corvettes backed up with longer range destroyers and cruisers is best tbh. Its relatively well balanced, much like EVE. If you come just with one type of ship you wont have a good time.

That's pretty much what I say, I just focus on speaking more about the smaller ships because people seem to ignore them (and then make huge threads on the forums saying that the game is broken because the enemy had less firepower numbers and barely lost anything to their massive battleship fleet)

[FieserMoep]

Wierd, I just roll all BB and smash AI all the time with barly my fleet droping below 90% and that is against Unbidden and Fallen ones.

In the end, just as in any Paradox game, the key ist just bring more. More of anything works mostly.
In an environment with same production value against each other I would bet on an all big fleet tho but that is a rather sterile environment that also depends on the matter if you know what the other brings.