New discovery: Late game, I don't need corvettes any more

[Kalemenos]

I tried a game where, after mid-game, I didn't make any more corvettes. I fill in with carrier battleships. I didn't know how it would go, but I lose zero to few ships and I clobber every other fleet. If I have a fleet allowance of, say, 250, 48-56 will be various kinds of cruisers, and all the rest are battleships, about 50% of which are carriers. I was always afraid to let those corvettes go, but I'm really enjoying the results. I'm wondering if I should jettison the cruisers too, except they provide missile, torpedo, and neutron launcher capabilities that bb's don't, and those weapons can pack a punch. I thought I'd share and invite some constructive criticism.

[Xaphnir]

You have discovered what pretty much every other player discovers before long.

[nilfiry]

As someone who never played the Corvette metagame, you can safely let go of the corvettes and cruisers. I run 288/290 Battleships (and titans) fleets. Maybe throw a destroyer in there to make it 290 for the lols.

Your battleship fleets can be some mixture of pure lance artillery and arc carriers. Strike Craft will deal with other corvettes. Stack a few Hit/Tracking modules to deal with evasion and you are set.

[Geoff]

Originally posted by Kalemenos:

I tried a game where, after mid-game, I didn't make any more corvettes. I fill in with carrier battleships. I didn't know how it would go, but I lose zero to few ships and I clobber every other fleet. If I have a fleet allowance of, say, 250, 48-56 will be various kinds of cruisers, and all the rest are battleships, about 50% of which are carriers. I was always afraid to let those corvettes go, but I'm really enjoying the results. I'm wondering if I should jettison the cruisers too, except they provide missile, torpedo, and neutron launcher capabilities that bb's don't, and those weapons can pack a punch. I thought I'd share and invite some constructive criticism.

I don't know how well it works after some of the latest rounds of upgrades, but battleships are all you really need on 3.6. To me, carrying tiny ships into the late game is just punishment, so I usually let my allies build them, rent them from mercs, or buy them from the scrapper's citadel if I want them at all.

My current game I've been trying to assemble a separate full fleet of corvettes (and a second one of frigates), but their attrition rate is so brutal I almost never put them into combat, cuz I don't want have to rebuild 160 tiny ships every time I fight. I've already lost them twice. Sure, the battleship casualty rate is a little higher without them. But battleships have enough hullpower to withstand a hit then retreat. So their survival rate is just way higher. Cruisers are right on the button of "one hit and done" in the late game.

If you hit an AI fleet capable of breaking a wall of battleships, corvettes are cheap and quick to spam, so just be ready to pump them out if you find you need them.

[Xaphnir]

Originally posted by nilfiry:

As someone who never played the Corvette metagame

why have I now seen two people in the last couple weeks or so who seem to think there was a time when corvettes were the late game meta?

[Geoff]

Originally posted by Xaphnir:

why have I now seen two people in the last couple weeks or so who seem to think there was a time when corvettes were the late game meta?

There are people who post about it in this forum pretty frequently. If you're not a meta chaser, there's no real way to judge the merits of the various contentions that get advanced around here.

[HappySack]

You mean short-range fodder ships with low damage don't scale as time goes on?

What a surprise.

[nilfiry]

Originally posted by Xaphnir:

Originally posted by nilfiry:

As someone who never played the Corvette metagame

why have I now seen two people in the last couple weeks or so who seem to think there was a time when corvettes were the late game meta?

Because Corvette swarms are a thing, and you would be amazed how many people stick to Corvettes through to endgame, such as the TC.

[felmari]

It can be effective. They are also cheap but need replaced often. Giving them disrupters can be effective in numbers.

Personally I like battleships and use carriers for my swarm. With that I have a screen and heavy hitters.

[uni790]

I like keeping a corvette swarm around for rapid response, say for that random merc fleet, or pirate invasion, etc. At least until I have gateways up on every semi major system.

[Supreme Admiral Brenton]

I never build a fleet before anything other than cruisers simply because of this and why i always build carrier stations because unless the AI hard counters with flak they just arent touching you at all.

I DID however recently spam out 200 corvettes to take down a fallen empire and it went very well and i won... annnnnd then sent the remaining 150 off to the scrapper because corvettes are boring to just spam out.

[HyperKnight]

From my experience, having about 30 PD corvettes in every fleet reduces loss of bigger ships, especially when fighting Leviathans.

Concerning your boredom, it haves nothing to do with corvettes but with war weariness.
I am playing pacifists now without participating in a single war in all playthrough and, amusingly enough, I am not bored.

[Xaphnir]

Originally posted by felmari:

It can be effective. They are also cheap but need replaced often. Giving them disrupters can be effective in numbers.

Go and compare the cost of a max-tech full corvette fleet vs. a max-tech full battleship fleet. You might be surprised at how expensive corvettes actually are. They're individually cheap, but on a per-naval capacity basis they're not.

[Kalemenos]

Great insights, thanks everyone!

[Kalemenos]

Originally posted by nilfiry:

As someone who never played the Corvette metagame, you can safely let go of the corvettes and cruisers. I run 288/290 Battleships (and titans) fleets. Maybe throw a destroyer in there to make it 290 for the lols.

Your battleship fleets can be some mixture of pure lance artillery and arc carriers. Strike Craft will deal with other corvettes. Stack a few Hit/Tracking modules to deal with evasion and you are set.

So not even cruisers, eh? Hmm. Revolutionary for my little brain.

So I guess you say goodbye to neutron launchers? There's nowhere to put them on battleships, but they have good range and seem to deliver lots of damage. Do I guess right that the Lance does all that so you don't need them?

You also don't mention the Gigacannon/Saturator Artillery. Do you simply never use them?

[nilfiry]

Originally posted by Kalemenos:

So not even cruisers, eh? Hmm. Revolutionary for my little brain.

So I guess you say goodbye to neutron launchers? There's nowhere to put them on battleships, but they have good range and seem to deliver lots of damage. Do I guess right that the Lance does all that so you don't need them?

You also don't mention the Gigacannon/Saturator Artillery. Do you simply never use them?

You can use Gigacannons against the Unbidden, but there isn't any point to using them otherwise since they nerfed neutron launchers. The only other long ranged weapons you have are kinetics, so using tachyon lances has a bit better synergy. Of course, you could also just go all in arc emitters and call it a day too.

You don't need neutron launchers, since AI factions aren't heavy on large ships, so you aren't losing out on much.