Small Ship spam

[NinjaSloth]

Don't know if others get this problem but the AI only spam small ships. Even on hard. Larger ships become useless and the only way to counter the spam is for you to spam too. More balances need to happen because my 10 titans couldn't beat a spam of small ships.

[Ixal]

Missiles + retargeting tech solve that problem nicely.

[pinky]

It does seem that small ship (frigate/destroyer) fleets can overpower large ship fleets, perhaps the command point costs shouldn't increase so much but at the moment i'd expect 16 titans (160 CP's) to lose verse 160 frigates

[Affixiation]

A mixed fleet will trump a small fleet spam which I approve of, it makes the small ships far from useless late game. What I do is for every 3 frigates I build a destroyer and for every 2 destroyers I build a cruiser. Battleship and above are thrown into main fleets but not really needed.

Grabbing the 2x hull item tech I find to be the most important early game tech, I always rush for it after grabbing a few earlier techs. With this on all your ships they are able to take a beating and keep on trucking.

Another tech that I love is the mass drivers, these babies only take up 8 space and go through shields. For some reason the ai likes to overright them in ship design with the physics tech weapons, so always upgrade your ships manually.

So with shield piercing mass drivers and ships that can take a beating, your fleets should have no trouble at all.

[Gut]

Actually it is a good thing, the classic 'bigger = better' is so boring.

Missile + Retargeting system is a good counter too.

[Dragnir]

I tried to counter that AI behavior with some Carrier design on battleship hull.
11 fighter hangers, some point defense and the best shields/armor/hull I got.

Took about 5-6 turns producing one (the export tech comes in really handy when you own systems with multiple planets, pumping one planet above 100+ production easily while all others in system export to it)

Well, that worked to a certain degree, I was able to beat a 230k Meklar fleet with my 180k-ish mixed fleet with 7-8 carriers, didnt loose one of them.

Problem is the fighters are launched at a pretty short distance, making the carriers vulnerable during that period... didnt end up too well against additonal fleets later on (got my ass kicked. hard.)

Also the battle screen started to lag quite a bit, even with a R9 Fury running ^^. but hey, I tried.
Guess I'm gonna go the small ship spam too until I find something more adequate.

On a side note: The Meklar got too strong so I declared war on them, despite being WAY weaker in fleet than them. I'm around 100000 while the meklar are ranked 230k or so... the Sakkra even 500k+, no idea what I'm gonna do about those.
The AI now does build bigger hulls (turn 335 now) and likes to send single cruiser to attack your unguarded outposts, too.
Still have to see some kind of bigger invasion though.

[Grimmsch]

10 Titans can easily handle hundreds of Destroyer /Frigates if build right and win.
Dauntless Guidance + Missiles + PD weapons + Automatic Repair do the trick.
You can also kite them.

Just had a fight with 2 Titans vs 50 Destroyer and 29 Frigates and won without losing a Titan.
Will try different upgrades and compare the performance with that save later when i have more time.

Edit:
Tried several Energy weapon setups and lost the same battle every time.
Main issue - Energy weapons overkill and lose a lot of damage that way while Dauntless prevents overkill.

[Kerrovitarr]

Originally posted by Ixal:

Missiles + retargeting tech solve that problem nicely.

This! 1-2 titans can handle swarms of small ships.

[i-dot]

With right tactics there are no troubles against small ships.
1. The first time when I met swarms of Sakras - I've lost the battle
2. but at the second time - my battle ships defeated swarms without any losses!

[thehive123]

It really is easy to counter.
And because of AI only using small ship, all my ship designs are the same -.-

Also the AI builds cruisers until round 200, after this I only saw frigattes and destroyers again.
Very odd.

[Silversata]

For some reason the AI tends to break up these spam fleet periodically at which point you can pick off the smaller branches.

These fleets can take a lot of CP so the tactic of using your large ships to run in and take out their starbases in unguarded systems to decrease their overall CP should still work.

[NetPCDoc]

Presuming one accepts ALL the Research recommended blue print updates - I wouldn't be surprised to see large ships loosing to fleets of frigates.

Seems, currently, that your researchers always think the last tech to be researched is the best; and try to replace tech researched earlier with it. As the last to be researched is not always the best - you sometimes get a downgrade - when you are expecting to get an upgrade.

For example swarms of dauntless guided missles vs a single large swarm of missiles - due to a ill timed upgrade that replaced your dauntless guidance system with a reinforced hull - attacking a single target.

Then again, your tactics may make certain techs of more strategic value than others. Examples: trying to stop beam attacks with anti-missile missiles (or shields) or using a reinforced hull (or heavy armor) to protect your ship from shrapnel / explosive derbris / etc.

For military purposes - currently (at build 42.6) - manually updating the blue prints is usually simpler than selectively applying your researcher's recommended blue print updates. Note: for unarmed ships you don't have any real choice - you must selectively apply your researcher's recommended blue print updates for unarmed ships.

[Dalakaar]

Originally posted by NetPCDoc:

For military purposes - currently (at build 42.6) - manually updating the blue prints is usually simpler than selectively applying your researcher's recommended blue print updates. Note: for unarmed ships you don't have any real choice - you must selectively apply your researcher's recommended blue print updates for unarmed ships.

This is what I do. Mostly it's the Engine upgrades that you have to be careful to [Upgrade]. Apart from that screen I don't know how to upgrade your scout/colony ship/etc. Doubtful you can. (which is dumb)

Me want custom civilian ships. Particularly if they're on my Tactical Map now.

Think how awesome it would be if colony ships had modules to help you with your first planet. Maybe one mod actually has an instant Autofac? Or maybe you load up all your modules with surplus population, instead making a colony ship that delivers (and takes) 3-4 population. You'd have to build it, and pay the piper when you lose 4 pop from the planet it's leaving, but just having some more options there could be fun.

Maybe it's a bare-bones colony ship as a substitute for a colony base?

***

I'm not sure how Dauntless will counter their Frigate Spam as well now after Update. The Bulrathi fleet that just attacked me (On Very Hard) had enough Point Defense to counter every missile I threw at em.(A not insignificant number fyi) Their fleet chewed through mine with no losses, given literally the only weapon I had equipped were two separate types of missiles on each ship. I reloaded, switched to Mass Drivers and PD MD's, and walked through theirs losing two frigates instead.

Between the fire rate nerf and enemies applying real point defense weapons on multiple craft I think the previous "hey-day" of missiles is over. We'll see how things go though.

[Stelar Seven]

Get heavy armor and the armor repairer. My cruisers nom the swarms.

Of note, pay tatical. If I let the computer decide than my fleets are much more likely to lose.

Oddly the other night I was attacked by the Psilons swarm and I was not allowed to select tatical battle. The computer ruled that my fleet was destroyed with minimal losses to the swarm.

I rolled the clock back and attacked, instead of being attacked and won with minimal losses. Their swarm could not engage enmass when I was able to maneuver.

[i-dot]

IDEA! Need spies! The spies should have a change to get an information about an enemy fleet - their ships, weapons and so on.

[Tzyder]

The AI was small ship spaming in my last game too. Its fine as long as the AI rotates its strat once in a while. I posted a suggestion under the ship design suggstion section for the devs to add Sword of the Stars-like front arc deflector shields which block 100% of weapon dmg from one arc. That way you could tank through the first volly and blast all the little ships with your rear and side guns on the flyby. Everyone should post this suggestion if you thinks its a good one.