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[itBeABruhMoment]

I feel like destroyers don't have any good applications at the moment. When I'm building a fleet, I usually have two general roles I need to fill. First, there's the damage dealers for fighting the bulk of the enemy fleet. Second, there's the support ships which fight off small ships to prevent the damage dealers from getting swarmed and distract larger ships. Destroyers don't fill any of these roles very well. They aren't very good damage dealers because cruisers and capitals have a massive advantage in terms of raw stats and range. They also aren't good at being support. Unlike most frigates they are not fast enough to run from cruisers and capitals with movement abilities, so getting charged by one is usually a death sentence. In practice, most frigates can do better job at tying up a superior enemy at a lower dp cost. This results in me picking cruisers and capitals as damage dealers and frigates as support ships.

What do you all think about destroyers?

[SafariJohn]

IMO destroyers are squeezed on several sides. To wit:

- much slower than frigates
- much larger than frigates
- double fuel consumption vs frigates
- no "elite" destroyers with cruiser DP
- most damage bonuses against them
- least damage bonuses against others

[Foraven]

Destroyers are much more durable and have way more firepower than frigate. Yeah they lack the mobility to get out of arm way but when equipped properly they can murder opposing frigates and stand up to cruisers, at least the ones that don't massively outrange them. But I agree they don't fair well against cruisers and capitals than can rush them...

[Lawrence Master-blaster]

- no "elite" destroyers with cruiser DP

This is the real issue IMO. You're not going to be using most frigates late game either but there are just few "premium" ones that keep up. Destroyers basically have no premiums.

[BigBrainEnergy]

It would be nice to have something along the lines of the destroyer equivalent of the hyperion but setting that aside most existing destroyers were at least ok in the late game if you played to their strengths last patch, but now I know the manticore falls off way harder than it did before so I have to test out the other destroyers to see how they've been affected. The good news is that the medusa is performing really well so far even without SO or converted hangar. It can capture points better than a lot of frigates and rarely dies even against double ordos.

medusa

[close]

stats

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 poor guys

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Maybe destroyers would be better if their targeting unit was 10 op for 25% range instead of 8 op for 20%?

[Hiruma Kai]

Second, there's the support ships which fight off small ships to prevent the damage dealers from getting swarmed and distract larger ships. Destroyers don't fill any of these roles very well.

I find they work fine as escorts to fight off the small ships to prevent the damage dealers from getting swarmed, and distract larger ships.  Now I find an Enforcer tends to be a better escort than distractor, but the Medusa can do the later quite well (although perhaps not as good as a close escort, sacrificing its mobility due to escort AI).  Linked Sabots + Harpoons with an Expanded Missile Rack plus Missile Specialization officer on an Enforcer will wipe the first few frigates that get close, while also outranging or at least matching the range of any beam frigates.

- most damage bonuses against them
- least damage bonuses against others

These are a bit of an exaggeration. 
Target Analysis is only a +10% bonus against destroyers, compared to +15% vs cruisers or +20% vs capitals.  So clearly not the most damage bonuses against them.
S-mod Advanced Gyros provides a larger bonus against frigates than destroyers.
Wolfpack Tactics gives frigates the same 20% bonus against capitals and cruisers as it does destroyers. 
And Wolfpack Tactics is also a +10% damage for a destroyer against cruisers and capitals that cruisers and capitals cannot get.  So they don't have the least damage bonuses against others.

They really get the middle of road bonuses, rather than most and least.

As far as premium frigates that cost as much a light cruiser go, I actually prefer Medusa over Hyperion in 0.96.  With Safety Overrides or without (although without SO I tend to take advantage of Tesseract weapon drops).  Same maximum flux stats and shield stats, but more OP, PPT, and mounts, plus a ship movement system that is comparable.  You can get 360 shields now with it as well. And all for 80% of the DP.  It might not compare to a heavy cruiser, but a Medusa is a solid competitor to a light cruiser when fit with an appropriate officer.

I certainly have used Medusa in double Ordo fights.  Might get unlucky and have one pop, but they definitely feel more durable than frigates in the same roles. Given the attached screen shot is from a Neural Link + Automated ship character build, those Medusa are doing quite well for only having Wolfpack Tactics and Crew Training from the leadership tree, and not using safety overrides.  Systems Expertise + Phase skimmer + Helmsmanship (+50% maneuverability to get moving in the right direction faster) lets them back out from Novas and Brilliants most of the time.

Admittedly, not as strong as having, say, a pack of Gryphon cruisers, but I'd say it compares favorably against swapping in 4 Hyperions for the 5 Medusa (25% of the fleet DP).

[prav]

They suffer a lot from the faster cruisers, which just run roughshod over destroyers. Not strong enough to survive a fair fight, not fast enough to avoid it.

There's a fair argument that that's what the fast cruisers are for. But what do I want the destroyers for? They're not particularly good at screening frigates (not generally a pressing need anyway) nor at flanking capitals.

[llama]

Yeah, I agree that the Medusa is pretty good but the Enforcer, Hammerhead, etc have fast cruiser counterparts that are actually faster than they are. Not saying the speed brackets should never overlap, but the gap is not so distinct in the destroyer vs cruiser case.

[TaLaR]

Medusa is wholly dependent on smart skimmer use. Player can do that, AI can't.
Hammerhead and Sunder's survival strategy is to unload system boosted dps on approaching fast cruiser. Both have enough firepower to make something like Falcon back off (but Falcon is better in long range build anyway, in which case it has absolute speed + range advantage).
Enforcer is just not built for solo survival. In theory it could play broadside and kite with Burn drive, but AI won't do that and player shouldn't either (because it's waste of player's piloting impact).

And that's only if we conveniently forged about fast capitals like Odyssey and Retribution. Which are fast and powerful enough to leave destroyers no survival options at all.

[Vanshilar]

Yeah right now I feel like destroyers are for the most part basically just for the early/mid game, and it's hard to have most of them be useful in the endgame, i.e. vs [REDACTED]. SO Hammerhead for example works really well at clearing out pirate fleets early on. Certain destroyers like the Medusa can be made survivable against [REDACTED], but such destroyers are far and few in between. LP Manticore is another destroyer that works, but that's basically just upsizing LP Brawler spam as an SO fleet.

And that's only if we conveniently forged about fast capitals like Odyssey and Retribution. Which are fast and powerful enough to leave destroyers no survival options at all.

I think the "defense" against that is that you're then committing 45 DP or 35 DP to take care of a 10 DP destroyer; in other words, the destroyer is successfully splitting off the other fleet, at the cost of its own survival. So the capital might win the "local" matchup, but it makes the "global" matchup i.e. the rest of the fleet more likely to lose.

[TaLaR]

I think the "defense" against that is that you're then committing 45 DP or 35 DP to take care of a 10 DP destroyer; in other words, the destroyer is successfully splitting off the other fleet, at the cost of its own survival. So the capital might win the "local" matchup, but it makes the "global" matchup i.e. the rest of the fleet more likely to lose.

Which hardly matters when your goal is to win without losses. Or at least not lose any s-mod ships (losing some of cheap distraction Shepherds is fine)

[Grievous69]

To me the whole point of destroyers is the best firepower/DP efficiency. And most actually follow that rule. The problems come when the ship is just too slow for end game combat (gets obsoleted by cruisers), too short ranged (so a worse frigate basically) or just doesn't bring enough to a fight versus big fleets.

Sunders and Manticores work because they have enough range and very good firepower. Medusas can work if you carefully build them to be survivable. And Condors and Drovers are okay I guess since they cheap DP wise. There really could be a place for an elite destroyer that has insane firepower potential but doesn't rely on range. Kinda like what Aurora is to an average cruiser.

[Igncom1]

I don't value most frigates as great escorts for my capital ships in the later game, and with a default of only 30 ships in the players fleet I tend to stuck to reinforced bulkhead destroyers like the Sunder.

Some frigates are incredible, but even those I wouldn't value too highly in starbase battles or against foes like the AI with their own super frigates.

[Grievous69]

Destroyers are even worse for starbase battles. In such fights I'll just bring out the cruisers and capitals, sometimes Omens or Scarabs for them to troll other ships and distract the station.

[BaBosa]

I think the "defense" against that is that you're then committing 45 DP or 35 DP to take care of a 10 DP destroyer; in other words, the destroyer is successfully splitting off the other fleet, at the cost of its own survival. So the capital might win the "local" matchup, but it makes the "global" matchup i.e. the rest of the fleet more likely to lose.

Which hardly matters when your goal is to win without losses. Or at least not lose any s-mod ships (losing some of cheap distraction Shepherds is fine)

You know s-mod ships are almost always recoverable just like ships with officers, reinforced bulkheads or rugged construction? That's one reason I like Omens is that you can chuck an s-mod on and then throw them at ships to distract them and if it dies, it is cheap to restore.