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Starsector => Suggestions => Topic started by: XazoTak on December 01, 2018, 04:54:09 AM

Title: Enemy having 120DP worth of carriers fielded
Post by: XazoTak on December 01, 2018, 04:54:09 AM
This is basically unbeatable, unless your fleet is designed to counter this.
This occurred because an absurdly huge invasion was sent to disrupt my heavy industry, and instead of being slightly staggered like usual 5 of the 6 fleets all arrived at my planet simultaneously.
I deployed an Astral bomber carrier to defend the battlestation (didn't think a star fortress was necessary, boy was I wrong) and natural selection took place.
First big ships went from being abundant to being scarce.
Then the normal frigates died off.
Then most of the phase frigates followed suit.
Although perhaps a hundred ships had been downed by this point (The Astral and station suffering minimal damage), almost no carriers had been lost, because there were tonnes of Dovers and Herons and they're really hard to kill.

Now, the enemy fleet was nothing but carriers with a sprinkling of phase frigates, and due to the sheer number of tankers and troop transports brought with, they still held the DP advantage.
The Astral drowned in fighters.
The station drowned in fighters.
The counterattack drowned in fighters.
The retreat drowned in fighters.

Basically, the enemy sacrificed almost their entire ultrastupidmassive fleet to boil it down to a still huge fleet of their most survivable ships, meaning fighting 120DP worth of tried-and-trusted super-survivable ships using only 80DP, which is basically impossible.
I think maybe the lesson here is that Heron and Dover are OP, if a fleet composed entirely of those ships actually works extremely well.
Heron and Dover both offer a great fighter:DP ratio, and they're way faster than other carriers so the tentative shooting of AI ships will never kill them.
Between speed, damage, and endurance, a ship should only have two at the most. Heron gives all three however: Speed rivalling that of destroyers, the endurance of a cruiser, and the damage of three fighter wings.
Title: Re: Enemy having 120DP worth of carriers fielded
Post by: TaLaR on December 01, 2018, 05:09:09 AM
How exactly is this a bug? A balance suggestion at best.
Your Astral's bombers got countered by fighters, as expected. How did you expect to hunt faster carriers that use fighters (and superior amount of them) with single bomber-only Astral anyway?
Title: Re: Enemy having 120DP worth of carriers fielded
Post by: Thaago on December 01, 2018, 09:39:18 AM
Have you heard the word about our Lord and Savior, Onslaught? :P

More seriously: Yeah, fighter fleets are powerful... Right up until you take a skilled combat ship and ram it down a carrier's throat. I don't mean a strike ship, or a kiting ship, or a hit and run: I mean a proper brawling death ship. For smaller fights where you are fighting something like 3-4 destroyer sized carriers and 1-2 cruisers, a Hammerhead is a pretty ideal player ship as, with skills, it can take down a huge number of fighter/bombers and destroys a drover/condor in seconds. For larger fights a Dominator will do the same, but at that point might as well go for (praise be) an Onslaught.

A skilled Onslaught, covered in dual flaks, railguns, and large weapons of choice, can burn drive straight through an enemy carrier formation and crush it with ease. Bonus points if you have a few escorts - Omens or Enforcers work well for anti-fighter/missile. Improved Point Defense AI is surprisingly potent for dealing with bombers, as damage against missiles will go from 150% to 200% (+15% + 10% from other skills) and flares will no longer confuse things.
Title: Re: Enemy having 120DP worth of carriers fielded
Post by: Sutopia on December 01, 2018, 10:09:55 AM
If you're using high tech station it's just a bug. The bomber payload can ignore shield of high tech station exclusively and kill the station like a hot knife in butter.
Otherwise it's almost always a must bringing a few dedicated AD(Area Defense) ship, namely 5 flak Enforcer, Tempest, Doom or Monitor.
I always bring doom to counter carriers. One phase mine and entire wing go boom.
Title: Re: Enemy having 120DP worth of carriers fielded
Post by: Linnis on December 01, 2018, 10:22:25 AM
First thing. They had DP advantage, that is allready a huge factor in them winning.

Second. High tech battlestation's setup is particularly bad aginst fighters.

Third. You spend your DP on a Astral-BOMBER carrier. The worst thing for bombers to fight is fighters.

You happened to be countered pretty well I would say.

An onslaught with flack cannons could have easily stood in front of the base and took down all carriers down to 1% fighter replacement within a few min. Then deploy the rest of your fleet to individually kill the carriers.
Title: Re: Enemy having 120DP worth of carriers fielded
Post by: XazoTak on December 01, 2018, 01:57:12 PM
First thing. They had DP advantage, that is allready a huge factor in them winning.

Second. High tech battlestation's setup is particularly bad aginst fighters.

Third. You spend your DP on a Astral-BOMBER carrier. The worst thing for bombers to fight is fighters.

You happened to be countered pretty well I would say.

An onslaught with flack cannons could have easily stood in front of the base and took down all carriers down to 1% fighter replacement within a few min. Then deploy the rest of your fleet to individually kill the carriers.
It was a low tech station, it had tonnes of flak and still it wasn't enough for the sheer number of fighters the enemy eventually deployed.
And if I deployed anything but the bomber carrier, the station would have been lost before fighters became a problem.
And I couldn't swap out the bomber carrier for something else because retreating would take minutes which would just lead to the station getting swarmed.

Even if I knew that my strategy would cause the enemy to become a carrier swarm, I still would have had to use it, because it was the only way to survive being ridiculously outnumbered.
I consider a carrier swarm being viable a bug, because if having only one kind of ship is viable then the game's balance is obviously flawed.
Cruisers only doesn't work, they need frigates and/or destroyers for target saturation and swarming a single enemy.
Frigates only doesn't work, with no heavy damage dealers to pressure them cruisers can just ball up to do tonnes of long-range damage.
But apparently 120DP worth of carriers just gobbles up a well-balanced fleet extremely quickly, once I lost the station and Astral everything else went pretty fast.

This was against Persean League, which are usually an absolute pushover even in 80:120 fights.
Title: Re: Enemy having 120DP worth of carriers fielded
Post by: Linnis on December 01, 2018, 02:31:39 PM
Trust me I been in the exact same situation. I simply told my fleet to stay in a ball around my legion turtling. Fighters almost never got a shot off on me since Odessy + Legion and their fighters took care of it easily. The main damage came from the ships occasionally crashing into each other.

Then I took the paragon and just went top right along the edge of the map killing fighters as they came. 10 - 15 wings at a time, manually firing 4x HIL into fighters eats them up and the missiles they fire easily.

Then I corralled them into the top left side of the map. While some in the process of dodging me came into the fire arc of the battle station and got melted.

You cant chase down herons so you can't expect to win vs them that way. Either you have fighter advantage or they run out of the map to kite while you eat the fighters.


The problem in this situation is not heron OP. It is how DP is split.


Title: Re: Enemy having 120DP worth of carriers fielded
Post by: Sutopia on December 01, 2018, 02:37:46 PM

But apparently 120DP worth of carriers just gobbles up a well-balanced fleet extremely quickly, once I lost the station and Astral everything else went pretty fast.

This was against Persean League, which are usually an absolute pushover even in 80:120 fights.

Obviously your so-called "well-balanced" fleet never included any dedicated anti-fighter ship is all I can tell from the story.
They were never a problem in previous version simply due to enemy not able to deploy so many ship in this size. Now you know they do so get yourself prepared.
Title: Re: Enemy having 120DP worth of carriers fielded
Post by: Thaago on December 01, 2018, 02:56:09 PM
Food for thought: if all carrier fleet A can wipe fleet B out with ease, then B isn't 'well balanced'.

Unfortunately anti-fighter is not what people expect it to be. Sci-fi (and real life to a certain extent) has trained us that the way to counter fighters is with small, point defense laden ships. With the exception of the Omen and maybe Monitor, frigates are hard countered by fighters due to force concentration - they simply cannot survive being swarmed. Similarly, we expect all point defense weapons to be effective against fighters. This isn't the case at all: small ballistic point defense is mostly worthless against fighters and beam point defense struggles to deal enough dps unless massed (luckily beam pd can be massed to good effect.)

What counters carrier fleets are A) interceptors or B) effective anti-fighter weaponry on mutually supporting ships or C) a battleship with good point defense. I don't really think 'dedicated anti-fighter' is needed, but picking up either a dual major or at least a minor in anti-fighter on everything helps tremendously.

A) Is a pretty simple concept: you have a few carriers, those carriers use interceptors, and you use those interceptors to escort your combat ships. You don't need to do the last part, but its extremely effective: your own fighters are immune to your ship guns, so the enemy fighters are getting double teamed, and the main ship PD will shoot down swarmers.

B) effective anti-fighter weapons can be broken down into:
a tier: Phase Lances, Devastators (I haven't tested the new Paladin PD, so I don't know if it falls here)
b tier: Dual flak, railguns, burst pd (with ipdai for flares: c tier without)
c tier: flak, pulse lasers, light assault guns, ir pulse, lrpd, pd lasers, tactical lasers
d tier: the rest
(I'm sure I've forgotten some weapons in there.)

Instead of just putting weapons that are ideal for ship to ship combat, mix in some of these. Then, don't let your own ships run off. Put down a defend command or two (for station fights I like to put one on each side slightly behind the station). When fighters can't force concentrate (IE when they have to run a multi-ship gauntlet to reach the target, or whenever they do a strafing pass find themselves being fired on by another ship) they don't do very well.

Honorable mention goes to the beam eagle: with 2x phase lance (or 3 if you have a good flux managing officer), 6x lrpds, itu and advanced optics (and 3 heavy autocannons for shields) this thing projects a big ring of anti-fighter death. Not as tough by itself against fighters as a Dominator (dual flaks and railguns/lags are tough to beat), but the great accuracy of beams means that this ship will cover all the ships around it out to 1100 range or so.

Bonus points if your officers have Advanced Countermeasures 3 for +50% damage to fighters.

C) is again pretty simply. Either an Onslaught with a ring of dual flak and railguns/lags in the smalls, or a Paragon with pulse lasers/phase lances in the mediums and beam pd of choice in the smalls, will just no sell multiple enemy capital ships worth of enemy fighters attacking it. The Paragon relies on pulsing its fortress shield against strike, while the Onslaught just shoots down everything, from fighters to missiles. Personally I'm a fan of the Onslaught because you can use burn drive to catch everything - no Heron is going to live long enough once its in range to get away.
Title: Re: Enemy having 120DP worth of carriers fielded
Post by: Goumindong on December 01, 2018, 03:04:28 PM
Pulse lasers and phase lances are only OK against fighters. The real power is tactical lasers because they never miss and have absurd range.

Best on the Odyssey because the paragon doesn’t have enough small slots and because the extra range can be a detriment
Title: Re: Enemy having 120DP worth of carriers fielded
Post by: Thaago on December 01, 2018, 03:28:39 PM
Try phase lances. Seriously. I agree that pulse lasers are only ok, but phase lances are amazing. (Edited last post to add tactical lasers, they are indeed good.)
Title: Re: Enemy having 120DP worth of carriers fielded
Post by: Vind on December 01, 2018, 05:12:12 PM
While talons can body block plasma and tachyon shots clouds of strike craft will be effective. AI wont need to replace lost crew either. And game only got one good aoe weapon - devastator flak which is either insanely OP up close or worthless at max range.
Title: Re: Enemy having 120DP worth of carriers fielded
Post by: Sutopia on December 01, 2018, 07:54:31 PM


What counters carrier fleets are A) interceptors or B) effective anti-fighter weaponry on mutually supporting ships or C) a battleship with good point defense. I don't really think 'dedicated anti-fighter' is needed, but picking up either a dual major or at least a minor in anti-fighter on everything helps tremendously.


I always like to min-max attributes so that's why I get those dedicated fighter hunter. Plus, there IS already dedicated hull doing that.
Tempest in 0.9a is effectively the dedicated AA ship, choice of escort. Terminator drones melt any incoming fighters with ease.
It also benefits from integrated point defense AI if you use heavy burst pd on them for some extra AA power along with advanced optics and advanced gyro.
To me it's almost like Akitsuki class destroyer in IJN fleet, the last hope preventing Yamato sunk by TBF spam. (Well... not a good example since Yamato got sunk in the end).

I don't think interceptors really do anything due to sole speed of fighters themselves, too small of window for intercepting and never deal enough firepower to actually intercept. IMO flash bombers are better than any interceptor since they're dropping VT mines and any enemy fighter is not gonna survive the mine field, ever.

My strategy is more of "death ball with every ships specialized for something". The core DPS ship is usually astral, conquest or paragon, followed by enforcer for cheap long range HVD spam, then a tempest and an Omen for anti-air along with extra EW. I seldom deploy astral in 0.9 now solely because enemy have chance to get real strong AA firepower rendering DP-suppressed fleet don't get air superiority even with all DP spent on carriers.
I'm dropping point defense for most of the ships in my fleet especially the DPS hull just because they're built to be glass cannon and they don't have the OP to spare. They are surrounded and escorted so their own PD often got LoS blocked by friendly ships, rendering PD useless most of the time. Getting glass cannons more OP to vent means more ships killed faster, which maximizes it's advantage.

Just to say it again, fighters and bombers were never a thing pre-0.9a and people have been forgotten how important it is. It's just now back-to-normal.
Title: Re: Enemy having 120DP worth of carriers fielded
Post by: Death_Silence_66 on December 01, 2018, 09:59:26 PM
A few Omens built for shield durability or Drovers loaded up with Wasps can protect against much more DP worth of fighters.
Title: Re: Enemy having 120DP worth of carriers fielded
Post by: Deshara on December 01, 2018, 10:15:32 PM
you can see an invasion fleet's composition (including fighters) ahead of time. It doesn't feel like you should be -- it feels like cheating -- but I peak the enemy's composition and then rush back to my base to kit out my defense fleet based on it and that works pretty well for me.
I always keep some monitors with nothing but reactors stats and shield hullmods on standby for carrier fleets
Title: Re: Enemy having 120DP worth of carriers fielded
Post by: XazoTak on December 02, 2018, 03:34:47 PM
Honorable mention goes to the beam eagle: with 2x phase lance (or 3 if you have a good flux managing officer), 6x lrpds, itu and advanced optics (and 3 heavy autocannons for shields) this thing projects a big ring of anti-fighter death. Not as tough by itself against fighters as a Dominator (dual flaks and railguns/lags are tough to beat), but the great accuracy of beams means that this ship will cover all the ships around it out to 1100 range or so.
I had two beam eagles, with a configuration even better against fighters than what you describe (more beam DPS, plus advanced tracking).
They didn't help against the fighter swarm.

you can see an invasion fleet's composition (including fighters) ahead of time. It doesn't feel like you should be -- it feels like cheating -- but I peak the enemy's composition and then rush back to my base to kit out my defense fleet based on it and that works pretty well for me.
I always keep some monitors with nothing but reactors stats and shield hullmods on standby for carrier fleets
I think you're missing the point.
It wasn't a single carrier fleet, it was five balanced fleets. Everything that wasn't a carrier died, creating a carrier fleet.
I did try to get back to base knowing I couldn't deal with the carrier fleet I had inadvertently created, but because it was still technically five separate fleets, when I retreated from an engagement I was instantly re-engaged again by a different fleet to the one I initally fought.
Title: Re: Enemy having 120DP worth of carriers fielded
Post by: Goumindong on December 03, 2018, 02:29:57 AM
That is why it’s an honorable mention. Though Thaago is incorrect about the fit. You want 3 tactical lasers and 3 graviton beams (or 3 more tactical lasers). They have longer range, also don’t miss fighters, do a lot more dps, and won’t detour to missiles and flares.
Title: Re: Enemy having 120DP worth of carriers fielded
Post by: borgrel on December 03, 2018, 11:03:33 AM
HVY Burst pd(x3) + extended magazines makes an eagle fighter proof far better than IPDAI and phase lances does
Phase lances fire tooo slow and use tooo much flux, sure u can kill 1 (or 2) fighters 1 shot with phase, but the other 18 fighters that are left dont use Vaseline !!!

- after Guardian and Hvy Burst ur best anti anti fighter defense is prox mines, which can protect any ship with a med missile port from fighters for 70%+ of its hardened subs deploy time.
- Then comes Burst pd, hellfire chaingun dual hvy MG and other 400-500 rng fast firing inaccurate weapons that have insane flux efficiency.

Nowhere in the list do u find phase lance, 1500 flux for one dead fighter is just a way to shave 10secs off the time the double dual mg's on fighters will take to flux out ur shields.

and as for beating carriers, u aim for the ship, not the fighters
i will nvr deploy an astral with bombers without having 3 herons of wasps (or claws) to keep fighter balls off the bombing runs
9:6 is a good interceptor:bomber ratio



All of that said:
Carriers should be using PPT when their fighters are set to engage instead of regroup
(the carriers survive because they can spend the entire battle outside of PPT decay range) yet still deal lethal damage.
If the carriers were using PPT through the entire death of multiple Battleships + etc etc etc as described in OP, then none of them would have any CR left by the time only carriers are left on the battlefield
and there would then be no fighters left either
.......
.......
problem solved.
Title: Re: Enemy having 120DP worth of carriers fielded
Post by: TaLaR on December 03, 2018, 11:09:32 AM
Carriers should be using PPT when their fighters are set to engage instead of regroup
That's close to how it works - carriers tick ppt when fighters are not at max wing sizes (due to taking losses).
Title: Re: Enemy having 120DP worth of carriers fielded
Post by: Alex on December 03, 2018, 11:12:09 AM
Carrier PPT ticks down based on their fighters' proximity to enemies, in addition to the carrier itself. Basically it checks whether there are significant enemies either near the carrier, or near the wing leader(s).
Title: Re: Enemy having 120DP worth of carriers fielded
Post by: borgrel on December 03, 2018, 11:21:25 AM
Wierd ......

Destroyer and Cruiser carriers that deployed from the beginning of combat will still be inside PPT after the battleships, that deploy when the first rush dies, are busy decaying
Well, thats my general impression, I will pay better attention and try confirm, but atm i'm killing fleets to quickly to see PPT interplay

Not sure how recent it is but i have seen butt loads of fleets wittled down to only carriers (and lots of those were deployed at start of combat) and i dont remember ever seeing them having PPT problems
Title: Re: Enemy having 120DP worth of carriers fielded
Post by: Thaago on December 03, 2018, 11:40:04 AM
Sorry all, but Phase Lances are both amazing anti-fighter and excellent anti-armor/hull, and are significantly better than heavy burst lasers at anti fighter. They won't protect against missiles at all, but thats a different game.

1) Phase lances have better sustained damage - 217 vs 73. If you are swarmed by fighters than heavy burst lasers are big disappointments.
2) Phase lances are more flux efficient than heavy burst lasers at 1.2 f/d as opposed to 1.36f/d.
3) Phase lances have better alpha, firing their whole 1250 damage at first contact. The 5 charges of a heavy burst PD do 735 damage, IE: an entire clip of heavy burst laser will not kill a broadsword (probably will with skills).
4) Phase lances do not become confused by flares.
5) Phase lances have better armor penetration: 1000 beam dps vs 400 beam dps. Only matter for the toughest of fighters, but it also lets phase lances be effective against cruiser armor. As an example, phase lances against a fresh broadsword do 83% damage (on first calculation), while heavy burst pd does 67% damage (on first calculation).

Overall: for anti-fighter, phase lances are many times better than heavy burst pd.

Vs tactical lasers: Different slots so the comparison is harder, but:

0) Tactical lasers use small slots, which are much more plentiful. You can use both tactical lasers and phase lances.
1) Tactical lasers are more flux efficient: 1:1 vs 1: 1.2.
2) Tactical lasers struggle against heavily armored enemies because their effective dps for armor penetration is only 37.5. Against a Broadsword their damage is initially reduced to only 27% of normal! A phase lance kills a broadsword or warthog in one burst.
3) Tactical lasers are fine against shielded fighters when massed, so as long as you have 2 or 3 on the same target its ok. The fighter's dissipation reduces damage done though, while a phase lance burst will instantly overload and destroy.
4) Tactical lasers have better range, so can interdict enemy fighters much further away. This is especially nice for frigates that can somewhat kite the fighters.
5) Phase lances have much better alpha, allowing you to instantly blunt the impact of a fighter attack.
6) Dps is roughly 2.9:1 phase lance:tactical laser. This matches the OP cost fairly well.

Overall: different tactical profiles. Tactical lasers are better for creating a huge zone where fighters don't want to be and will slowly be killed, and only take small slots. Phase lances create a smaller zone where the leading fighters are instantly killed, and offers rough dps/OP parity. Against low tech (heavy armor) fighters, phase lances are superior, while for creating a big fleetwide anti-fighter screen tactical lasers are superior. Luckily a fleet can have both.
Title: Re: Enemy having 120DP worth of carriers fielded
Post by: Goumindong on December 03, 2018, 11:52:02 AM
Phase lances overkill fighters (and can also miss) especially if they’re on auto fire they will tend to shoot at the same target in overlapping fields of fire.. Massed Tactical lasers are really effective at cleaning fighters from the sky because their damage application is so consistent. And because fighters don’t have enough dissipation or armor to make much of a difference in terms of overall TTk

Like, phase lances are fine (better at anti-frigate) but tactical lasers are king