sooo how should i do missiles and neutron launchers now?

[Welp]

should i build 2 frigates? one with launchers the other with torpedos? or is one better then the other?

should i build a missile corvette still?

[uni790]

just ignore missiles, they'll just get shot down and end up doing nothing, same with hangers, you want the same old laser/mass driver/point defence combo that you've always used, other then the battleship artillery, which is still the way to go.

[Welp]

is it possible to spam battleships still in a PVE scenario? id like to know for simplicity sake

also thanks that helps alot!

[CrUsHeR]

Originally posted by Welp:

is it possible to spam battleships still in a PVE scenario? id like to know for simplicity sake

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2899720030

This is the pve meta

Whirlwind Missiles
Strike Craft
PD
Artillery Ship Computer



Don't listen to the other advice, battleships with actual artillery weapons are complete trash and lose against virtually anything, even if that stuff is like 1/3 of your fleet power.

This is due to a mix of the minimum range of weapons, firing arc, and artillery computers causing the ships to turn around and fly in the opposite direction.

Adding smaller ship types than battleships makes it even worse, they just die instantly from any threats of leviathan category and upwards. Build Frigates, Cruisers etc, then basically you'd have to rebuild half your fleet after every battle.
Especially corvettes had their hull strength nerfed so much that they don't even work as cannon fodder.

[VoiD]

I've been having success with missile destroyers and missile/hangar cruisers against late game fleets on GA, but it's situational and it depends if the AI will glitch out or not.

With hit and run it's kinda silly, sometimes my fleet strength goes down to like 5% as I win a close victory, then suddenly everyone comes back, because nobody died due to disengagement chances.

They are also not very vulnerable to torpedos, can dodge a few shots and can't be caught by autocannon spammers, pretty neat.

Before the combat overhaul yeah, missiles weren't even a weapon, 1 or 2 carriers were enough to shoot down every missile and torpedo in your fleet, but now carriers can no longer do anything against them, so they've started doing damage again, and their range is pretty great.

[Welp]

hmm so basically its pretty much a mixed bag, especially with the ancient tech too

[pipo.p]

What Crusher want to say is that artillery ships will _now_ go back and forth between two distances of their target: their max range (from X-slot, strikecraft, neutron launcher, kinetic artillery...), and their median range (median value of all their slots'max range). Swarm missiles (amongst others) allow to force your ship's median range to their max range.

You can easily experience this behaviour by testing an escort destroyer (L1PD2, artillery computer). Median range is then PD's max range...

[Ryika]

If you want to use a pure missile setup, Missile Destroyers work really well in the early half of the game, and missile cruisers are pretty good all around. Both are used with Afterburners (and as many other sources of Sublight Speed as you can get) and Artillery Computer, which makes them run away from threats very efficiently and the amount of missiles fired easily overcomes any reasonable amount of point defense that you can expect.

The AI never really fields large amounts of large ships, so torpedoes are pretty pointless for anything other than early leviathan hunting (which they're VERY good at, but that's a very small niche).

[sawdust3d]

Originally posted by Ryika:

If you want to use a pure missile setup, Missile Destroyers work really well in the early half of the game, and missile cruisers are pretty good all around. Both are used with Afterburners (and as many other sources of Sublight Speed as you can get) and Artillery Computer, which makes them run away from threats very efficiently and the amount of missiles fired easily overcomes any reasonable amount of point defense that you can expect.

The AI never really fields large amounts of large ships, so torpedoes are pretty pointless for anything other than early leviathan hunting (which they're VERY good at, but that's a very small niche).

Ah, neat.

I've been wondering what to do about my resident leviathan.

I didn't think that skull Icon for fleet strength meant it was invincible.

So far all I've sent in after it was an 5k mix of small ships.

[Kameh]

Originally posted by CrUsHeR:

Originally posted by Welp:

is it possible to spam battleships still in a PVE scenario? id like to know for simplicity sake

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2899720030

This is the pve meta

Whirlwind Missiles
Strike Craft
PD
Artillery Ship Computer



Don't listen to the other advice, battleships with actual artillery weapons are complete trash and lose against virtually anything, even if that stuff is like 1/3 of your fleet power.

This is due to a mix of the minimum range of weapons, firing arc, and artillery computers causing the ships to turn around and fly in the opposite direction.

Adding smaller ship types than battleships makes it even worse, they just die instantly from any threats of leviathan category and upwards. Build Frigates, Cruisers etc, then basically you'd have to rebuild half your fleet after every battle.
Especially corvettes had their hull strength nerfed so much that they don't even work as cannon fodder.

Odd that if arty BS are now trash that I can do 5x + crisis with just fleets of them with a titan for aura support.

[Xaphnir]

You don't. By the time they show up you should have switched away from missiles.

Originally posted by CrUsHeR:

This is the pve meta

Whirlwind Missiles
Strike Craft
PD
Artillery Ship Computer

No it's not. That loses hard to anything with just a moderate amount of point defense, which is every single AI fleet you'll come across past the early game. If you're winning with that, it's because you're playing on an easier difficulty than you should be.

Originally posted by Welp:

hmm so basically its pretty much a mixed bag, especially with the ancient tech too

Most of the archaeotech weapons are not worth the minor artifact cost for general ship designs. You could maybe outfit an elite fleet with them, but trying to go much beyond that will cost more than you can afford unmodded.

[Elitewrecker PT]

Whirlwind missiles objective is to overwhelm point defense. And the archaeotech missiles are S sized whirlwinds.

[Welp]

i was hoping if i waited a few months the community would be able to sort out what was best but i guess not XD PDX did their job well here

i have the armor and shield for the ancient tech on all my fleets, i wonder if you all consider that to be viable or waste of resources.

also instead of stacking 1 kind of ship, what if i stacked battleships and then a frontline ship like cruisers?

what would be the best build for corvette (should i skip frigate?) Destroyer, Cruiser, and battleship

[Wraith_Magus]

The basic thing about torpedoes and missiles are that they do less damage than weapons that have to go through shields. Hence, if you're going to make missile/torpedo ships, you need to make your whole fleet a missile/torpedo/disruptor/arc emitter fleet where every single weapon bypasses shields or you're just wasting damage as some weapons do less damage to armor/hull and others are plinking at shields that other weapons don't need to deal with at all.

Anything that can be shot down by point defense can also be quite all-or-nothing. If you have a few missiles and the enemy has decent point defense, you get all your missiles shot down and they're worthless. It's possible to overwhelm point defense with all missile fleets, but it's less effective until you whittle down the PD to lesser numbers. If you fight a no-PD fleet, that's great, but missiles are still less potent unless you are specifically fighting shield-heavy ships and you don't have other weapons that target shields. (Shroud is all shield and no armor, so it's great against them, but space fauna have no shields to bypass. Most AI empires are stupidly PD-heavy and balanced in defenses, so it's weak on them. Fallen Empires have crazy powerful shields, so bypassing them is useful, but FE has tons of PD. Use arc emitters and disruptors on them, instead.)

As for what to do with G slots, I recommend using the neutron launchers, although they're extremely power-hungry and frigates are ill-equipped to deal with them. (You need to make a ship with all armor or crystal plating since you'll have no power left for shields and probably want the armor repair auxiliary. Plus, the frigate will be only slightly tougher than a corvette while having none of the dodge, so these things die FAST. Give it artillery computer because you don't want torpedo computer on a launcher, and make the last weapon slot a missile because even though they're weak, you need something with the same range as a launcher, and that's the only S-class weapon that has 120 range.)

Your best bet for G slot ships I find is a cruiser, which can mount 3 of them. 3 launchers on a size-4 cruiser is not as efficient in pure launcher-per-ship slot terms, but being a much sturdier cruiser that has other weapons is much more useful otherwise. Neutron launchers are the natural complement to the L-size kinetic artillery weapons and X-size giga artillery on battleships, and do heavy damage especially to battleships, titans, and boss-type space fauna like drakes and void worms.

I'd personally recommend something like the L-sized bow with the kinetic artillery, and then the torpedo core to have neutron launchers, with an artillery computer. Since the S-sized slots are likewise going to have trouble reaching out to appropriate range, you might need to stuff weaker missiles in just to have decent range on your S-slots. That said, because battles can get chaotic enough that there's something within every range band, you can try to use line computer and then weapons like plasma launchers and mass drivers or even autocannons in the S slots, and you'll still get decent use out of them.

[Xaphnir]

Originally posted by Wraith_Magus:

you need to make your whole fleet a missile/torpedo/disruptor/arc emitter fleet where every single weapon bypasses shields or you're just wasting damage as some weapons do less damage to armor/hull and others are plinking at shields that other weapons don't need to deal with at all.

If you're going missiles, you should leave the arc emitters/disruptors out of it, too. Those will be hitting hull while your missiles are hitting armor. Should be all missiles or all penetrating weapons.

[Elitewrecker PT]

The missiles will have to hit the hull too eventually so it’s okay to match them with full piercing weapons for the slots that don’t have any missiles.