Yes, it's good to mix weapons; no disruptors aren't very good

[Kalemenos]

We players love having strong opinions about weapons. I ran some numbers and want to share the results, but I hope to avoid starting the Next Galactic War. Summary: yes, mixing weapons is better than uni-weapons, and disruptors just don’t cut it.

I know, I know, there are some real “disrupter” fans out there. I’ve always doubted them, as they have short range and do low damage. So I did a numbers study of weapons to see, really, how they perform. People have many wordy opinions, but, I thought, let’s look at the actual NUMBERS.

So I made a nice Excel table, and I thought other players out there might enjoy seeing the results. Every row was 0.10 “time.” This is important, because “daily average” is a worthless statistic: the weapon does not do daily damage, but it does all its damage when it fires, and then does nothing during cooldown. So down the rows, I entered the damage when it actually fires, in order, shields, then armor, then hull (disruptors of course go right to hull). If anyone wants to see and even critique my Excel file, I’d love to share it, only I don’t know how in this forum.

The scenario: Imagine your dad gives you a junk car out on some acres, and he also gives you an RPG to blow the thing to smithereens. But instead of a car, we have a battleship is just sitting there, and one or more weapons get to blast it apart to see how long it takes to kill it. This battleship has 3 large neutronium armors, and 3 L hypershields, so it can endure this much damage:

This battleship:
Shields, 3960
Armor, 5220
Hull, 3000

Assumptions:
Every shot hits, the attacking ship is immortal, the damage is the average damage per hit as reported on the wiki, and I ignore modifiers such as regeneration, bonuses (relics, leaders, etc.), accuracy, tracking, evasion, disparity, ship rank. Such things are where the player’s cleverness comes in to get the advantage. Here, I’m just studying a baseline.

Weapons (I use average damage per hit, not per day, as reported on the wiki):
L Stormfire Autocannon III (av dmg. 120, coold. 1.7, 150% vs shield, 25% armor, 125% hull)
L Plasma III (av dmg. 231, coold. 6.4, 25% vs shield, 200% armor, 150% hull)
M Disruptor III (av dmg. 24.5 (yawn), coold. 3.4, attacks straight to hull at 100%)

First test: ONE WEAPON just sits there and fires at it. How long does it last?
Autocannon: 365.50 (i.e., battleship loses all shield then armor then hull in this many days)
Plasma: 569.60
Disruptor: 414.80
Conclusion: Sorry, disruptor lovers, the Autocannon wins. (The low cooldown helps.)

Second test: TWO WEAPONS. Battleship lasts this many days:
2 Autocannons: 181.90
2 Plasmas: 288.00
1 Autocannon + 1 Plasma: 115.60
Conclusion: Sorry uni-weapon lovers, mixing weapons is actually really good. Where one is weak the other is strong. Teamwork!

Third Test: FOUR WEAPONS. Battleship lasts:
2 Autocannons + 2 Plasmas: 56.20
1 Autocannon + 1 Plasma + 2 Disruptors: 102.00
Conclusion: Sorry again, disruptor lovers, it would have been more effective to not use disruptors.

I tried games with only disruptor fleets to see how it would go. I found them terribly weak, quickly demolished or pushed into retreat. I guess it was because of the low range of disruptors.

So lately I’ve been experimenting, applying all of this:
1. mix weapons, do so weighed vs. my enemy’s strengths (e.g., plasma vs armor),
2. add a little spice of disruptors. I do this by organizing one armada with several (for me) conventional fleets, but adding an extra fleet or two of ONLY disruptors. (Of course, disruptors are M slot, so eventually you get stuck with a L, so I’ll fill it with a Cloud Lightening or something just to keep the anti-hull theme going.)

Great results. I can’t figure out why yet, but I seem to get MORE out of my disruptors in this setup than whole armadas of only disruptor fleets, few casualties and no retreats. I think it is because of the mix: It takes some time for the conventional weapons to wear through the armor and shields, but when the conventional weapons finally get to the hull, it rips through them really fast. Therefore when disruptors can get to work on the hulls early in the battle, it speeds up the conventional weapon’s hull demolition. And since there are other fleets, strike craft, and so on occupying the enemy, it helps the disruptor fleets get to work without getting obliterated or forced into retreat.

I will continue to experiment, and I love learning discoveries from others on these boards.

[Kufesska]

Opprinnelig skrevet av VoiD:

Opprinnelig skrevet av Kufesska:

it looks like you are saying that disruptors on escorts are main weapons and torpedos are supporting for them...
but dude, devastator torpedo has more than 2x average damage than s-slot disruptor, even before huge bonus for ship size
those 3 G-slots are the main source of escort's damage, and those 4 S-slots are just small supporting damage
i prefer predator missiiles for those S-slots, to overwhelm enemy PD in case they have it and because torpedos will annihilate any armor anyway, while missilies' damage is bigger than disrutpors'

I haven't tried them recently but other than very specific scenarios (like Cetana) I've always had terrible results with torpedos.

With missile fleets they never fire, as they are better off kiting the enemy the entire battle and I think a normal mixed loadout would be better than trying to use missiles in close range.

With disruptor fleets battles are often over before they can reload (very slow firing rate) and most of them get shot down by PD anyway, it's not rare to see them doing close to zero damage.

I haven't figured out a setup in which they'd be essential, at least, not against the AI's ♥♥♥♥-salad templates, I'd imagine they would absolutely crush a player making cruiser or battleship fleets like nothing else. Also fortresses.

There are very few battles in which I read the post battle report and they seem to have dealt a surprising amount of damage but in my experience it's always wildly inconsistent

with missiles you need to choose torpedo combat computer and your ships will fly straight into melee, missiles will overwhelm PD
3 devastator torpedos oneshot most of corvettes and destroyers(if they hit) and destroy most of the cruisers and battleships in two shots

checked tracking of torpedoes during writing of that message, and yeah, it is quite bad, 25 tracking with t4 sensors, kinda hard to hit with them if AI would use full-corvett fleets
but even then, escorts have 90% evasion too and few times tougher than corvettes, so they would still wreck them without any problems

those escorts are extremely powerful for 2 naval cap, they are more like a cruiser