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PittTheElder
Feb 13, 2012

:geno: Yes, it's like a lava lamp.

twistedmentat posted:

Is the Shroud the Chaos Gods one? I really want that end game crisis but holy poo poo they make you work for that. "Attempt to contact, Fail" over and over and over.

That's one of the things that's in there, but it's really unusual to get. Also you can't get it in Multiplayer which is just heartbreaking.

Ak Gara posted:

pew pew






Charge!



ohshit



Pew. Pew.



This is rad.

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THE FUCKING MOON
Jan 19, 2008
If you're going for the exterminate-all-life-as-a-xenophobe achievement, can you use a g-modded version of your own species? I've got 3 different variants who have self-modded themselves into tomb world compatability after I took the keflings territory, and I'm thinking about applying one of those templates across the entire species.

edit: I guess it shouldn't matter, seems like fanatic purifiers don't care about sub-species

THE FUCKING MOON fucked around with this message at 21:00 on Apr 2, 2019

twistedmentat
Nov 21, 2003

Its my party
and I'll die if
I want to
I wish there was a way to get more Living Metal, I cannot properly play Necrons without it.

Warmachine
Jan 30, 2012



THE loving MOON posted:

If you're going for the exterminate-all-life-as-a-xenophobe achievement, can you use a g-modded version of your own species? I've got 3 different variants who have self-modded themselves into tomb world compatability after I took the keflings territory, and I'm thinking about applying one of those templates across the entire species.

edit: I guess it shouldn't matter, seems like fanatic purifiers don't care about sub-species

Subspecies of your main species don't count for any xenophobia-related modifiers. Which is fortunate because my humans seem to LOVE making offshoots.

twistedmentat
Nov 21, 2003

Its my party
and I'll die if
I want to
What are the general guidelines for specializing your planets? I tend to just built what is needed at that time. Oh I need more motes? Mote plant. Need more energy? Energy district etc.

AAAAA! Real Muenster
Jul 12, 2008

My QB is also named Bort

Can anyone recommend a lightweight mod that enhances the building interface (for when choosing which building to build). Like...I would like to, essentially, flag a building as deprecated so it doesnt show in the interface unless I tell the interface to show deprecated buildings. I never build Resource Silos, Luxury Residences, Precinct Houses, Hydroponic Farms, Holo Theatres, and maybe one or two other buildings so I would love it if I could just tell them to gently caress off, somehow.

ConfusedUs
Feb 24, 2004

Bees?
You want fucking bees?
Here you go!
ROLL INITIATIVE!!





AAAAA! Real Muenster posted:

Can anyone recommend a lightweight mod that enhances the building interface (for when choosing which building to build). Like...I would like to, essentially, flag a building as deprecated so it doesnt show in the interface unless I tell the interface to show deprecated buildings. I never build Resource Silos, Luxury Residences, Precinct Houses, Hydroponic Farms, Holo Theatres, and maybe one or two other buildings so I would love it if I could just tell them to gently caress off, somehow.

Play a Warrior Culture and do ALLLLLLL the holo-theaters

Duelist jobs are amazing.

THE FUCKING MOON
Jan 19, 2008

Warmachine posted:

Subspecies of your main species don't count for any xenophobia-related modifiers. Which is fortunate because my humans seem to LOVE making offshoots.

Awesome, thanks. All these tomb-worlders are going to make it a lot easier to just throw out colonies wherever I feel like. It seems like it's really worth it to try to get some pops to self mod for tomb world habitability as fanatic purifiers since you can't rely on having multiple species.

ConfusedUs posted:

Play a Warrior Culture and do ALLLLLLL the holo-theaters

Duelist jobs are amazing.

Yeah, I had at least one on like all of my planets in my last game

edit: Just actually killed the Khan in battle for the first time, since I can't just submit and I figured my fleets were probably about strong enough to handle the Chosen of the Great Khan. I was only just right for the first engagement, I beat the Khan, but only because I had no retreat on. It was right down to the wire. Second round went a lot better for me when she came back.

THE FUCKING MOON fucked around with this message at 00:34 on Apr 3, 2019

AAAAA! Real Muenster
Jul 12, 2008

My QB is also named Bort

ConfusedUs posted:

Play a Warrior Culture and do ALLLLLLL the holo-theaters

Duelist jobs are amazing.
I've been on an Authoritarian/Spiritualist/Xenophobe with Byzantine Bureaucracy and Police State kick lately and even if it is not optimal I really enjoy it and seem to be doing well with it.

Xerxes17
Feb 17, 2011

I've been crunching some numbers about early game warfare. Very strangely, the best overall design seems to be 2 Lasers and one Flak.



I've accounted for tracking and bonuses against Shields, Armor and Hull.

If you have only T1 weapons, the 2RL1FLK is the best design as it has a very low TTK and the smallest difference in it's TTK between the 100/50 split each way.

But if you have T2 weapons, the 1CG2BL or 2CG1BL setups are best.

Xerxes17 fucked around with this message at 06:29 on Apr 3, 2019

twistedmentat
Nov 21, 2003

Its my party
and I'll die if
I want to
While sitting around waiting for something to happen, I decided trhat the fallen empire near me was easy pickings because they have half the fleet strength that I do. Lol they dumped all their ships in one fleet while mine dribbled in and were easily picked off.

So I went after the empire near me that stole the Curators station and I needed 69% to win the war.

Nice

DarkCrawler
Apr 6, 2009

by vyelkin
What to do when your massively overpopulated world of near-immortal utilitarian planner funguses who are completely harmonious starts being a problem?

Why, politely agree to enslave a part of your population and eat them!




They are the allies of convenience for my communist dictatorship bent on liberating the whole galaxy. I can imagine allying with these weirdos being somewhat of an issue among the part of the population who think slavery cannibalism is not exactly ok.

Ironically enough a populist monarchy who is closer to me politically and does not kill and eat their own people just went to war with them and now I have to fight for these guys' right to munch on their own babies :negative:

DarkCrawler fucked around with this message at 11:04 on Apr 3, 2019

Splicer
Oct 16, 2006

from hell's heart I cast at thee
🧙🐀🧹🌙🪄🐸
That's a hell of a habitability list

Weebus
Feb 26, 2017
Playing as UN I just conquered an arid planet and now I have human pops growing in a planet where they have 30% habitability. Is this supposed to happen? If so, how do I stop this?

ZypherIM
Nov 8, 2010

"I want to see what she's in love with."

Xerxes17 posted:

I've been crunching some numbers about early game warfare. Very strangely, the best overall design seems to be 2 Lasers and one Flak.



I've accounted for tracking and bonuses against Shields, Armor and Hull.

If you have only T1 weapons, the 2RL1FLK is the best design as it has a very low TTK and the smallest difference in it's TTK between the 100/50 split each way.

But if you have T2 weapons, the 1CG2BL or 2CG1BL setups are best.

Why didn't you do any 2 red lasers 1 mass driver? Or laser+missiles. You'll want to have a set of data for 400 hull ships, as that is very common.


I'm not sure how you're getting to some of your math bits. For example, a small mass driver's average dmg (without tracking, with accuracy) is 2.28 (10.5 / 3.45 * 0.75). With a tracking bonus of 50%, your average damage against hull is somehow 2.64 (a 15% increase). Flak for some reason only gets a 6.67% (3->3.2) increase against hull for it's 50% tracking. Flak's damage against armor looks strangely high as well (before tracking damage should be 0.5625, which your value of 0.8 is 42% higher than). Red laser values against hull somehow drop below average damage after tracking (2.15 -> 1.91).

I guess I'm a little wary to take this claim at face value when it appears that you're doing something really wrong math wise and I'm not sure what. It shouldn't be tracking, since all 3 weapons (red laser, mass driver, flak) all have 50% tracking. The conclusion is a little bad as well, since a major thrust of any early game warfare is to get at least 1 level of any weapon improvement (and the default design is 100 shields 50 armor). If you start building up a large flak fleet the refit costs are going to cost you a lot when you re-tool.

Demiurge4
Aug 10, 2011

Weebus posted:

Playing as UN I just conquered an arid planet and now I have human pops growing in a planet where they have 30% habitability. Is this supposed to happen? If so, how do I stop this?

It’s weighed. If the conquered pops there have 100% habitability it’ll grow humans until they make up about 10-30% of the population.

Splicer
Oct 16, 2006

from hell's heart I cast at thee
🧙🐀🧹🌙🪄🐸

Weebus posted:

Playing as UN I just conquered an arid planet and now I have human pops growing in a planet where they have 30% habitability. Is this supposed to happen? If so, how do I stop this?
Underrepresented pops get a boost. Miserable pops don't get much of a penalty. It's not great. They apparently toned it down in the beta, you'll still probably get one though.

Splicer
Oct 16, 2006

from hell's heart I cast at thee
🧙🐀🧹🌙🪄🐸

binge crotching posted:

The energy cost is basically meaningless by the time you can breach the shroud. The thing that sucks for me is the timer, since the timer is the same regardless of result. I feel like if you get a bad result, you should be able to try again sooner, so at least if you keep rolling snake eyes you aren't screwed for as long.
It's the principle of the thing :colbert:

SettingSun
Aug 10, 2013

How soft of a cap is naval capacity? In my latest game, I found the Exterminators far sooner than I'd like and they're coming at me hard, and I JUST researched destroyers and have like 15 ships with a 20 capacity. I guess money is no object if your survival is at stake but I'm not coming out of this one alive, but I can do better the next game.

OwlFancier
Aug 22, 2013

It's as soft of a cap as your economy is strong. There's no really hard rule. If you want to run a bigger navy over the long term then you would be better building more military buildings to get more naval cap, but in the short term you can absolutely overbuild a navy to win a war even if you need to disband it afterwards.

Though you would also be well served in looking at fortress starbases to help you punch above your weight, especially in the early game.

AAAAA! Real Muenster
Jul 12, 2008

My QB is also named Bort

SettingSun posted:

How soft of a cap is naval capacity? In my latest game, I found the Exterminators far sooner than I'd like and they're coming at me hard, and I JUST researched destroyers and have like 15 ships with a 20 capacity. I guess money is no object if your survival is at stake but I'm not coming out of this one alive, but I can do better the next game.
I think the penalty gradually gets bigger in terms of upkeep costs, however, it is relatively easy to increase your naval cap. Early on its hard to get the research that increases it, so aim for either building a Fortress in one of your building slots (adds 4 naval cap, 6 with a tech) OR building extra starbases with Anchorages in their building slots. Which you do should depend on available building slots or Alloy throughput, thus if you have a full fleet but are short on alloys and only have one building slot, save the alloys you are producing and build a Fortress. If you just plain need alloys either way, build the Foundry and plan on investing in Anchorages. If you have multiple building slots I recommend the Fortress over anchorages when it comes to increasing your fleet cap, at least initially.

Also dont forget that starbases with Guns built are a good force multiplier if you can get your enemy to engage you at one (at a chokepoint or whatever).

Xerxes17
Feb 17, 2011

ZypherIM posted:

Why didn't you do any 2 red lasers 1 mass driver? Or laser+missiles. You'll want to have a set of data for 400 hull ships, as that is very common.

Look at the blue entries. 1MD2RL. I just started with this so I haven't focused on the extras, as I was kinda curious to see what is the situation where you just do an immediate rush with basic weapons and no upgrades.

ZypherIM posted:

I'm not sure how you're getting to some of your math bits. For example, a small mass driver's average dmg (without tracking, with accuracy) is 2.28 (10.5 / 3.45 * 0.75). With a tracking bonus of 50%, your average damage against hull is somehow 2.64 (a 15% increase).
You're misreading and getting the damage of a coilgun here.

ZypherIM posted:

Flak for some reason only gets a 6.67% (3->3.2) increase against hull for it's 50% tracking. Flak's damage against armor looks strangely high as well (before tracking damage should be 0.5625, which your value of 0.8 is 42% higher than).
I made a copy error here, giving the Flak 80% accuracy instead of 75%.

ZypherIM posted:

Red laser values against hull somehow drop below average damage after tracking (2.15 -> 1.91).

Base corvette evasion is 60%. As the RL has 50% tracking, that means the accuracy goes down from 90% to 80%.
11/4.6*0.9=2.15
11/4.6*0.8=1.91

ZypherIM posted:

I guess I'm a little wary to take this claim at face value when it appears that you're doing something really wrong math wise and I'm not sure what. It shouldn't be tracking, since all 3 weapons (red laser, mass driver, flak) all have 50% tracking. The conclusion is a little bad as well, since a major thrust of any early game warfare is to get at least 1 level of any weapon improvement (and the default design is 100 shields 50 armor). If you start building up a large flak fleet the refit costs are going to cost you a lot when you re-tool.
Lasers (90%) have a different base accuracy than to Mass Driver (75%) and Flak (75%). Of which I note I did have a copy error with the flak before, giving them 80%. I've fixed this now, and I'm going to go over the numbers again to check for errors. As to getting the upgraded weapons, I've had games where I failed to get any weapon upgrades in time for the first war dec, so I wanted to see what you can do in the worst case scenario. While I pick the 2RL1FLK, that's because it's good for taking out both 2S1A and 1S2A ships.

Edit: In short I have mistakes, so I'm going to do a rebuild to try and weed out any mistakes that crept in the first time.

Thank you for taking the time to look and find faults, it helps me get better results! :)

Xerxes17 fucked around with this message at 14:33 on Apr 3, 2019

Staltran
Jan 3, 2013

Fallen Rib

Weebus posted:

Playing as UN I just conquered an arid planet and now I have human pops growing in a planet where they have 30% habitability. Is this supposed to happen? If so, how do I stop this?

Set Population Controls to Allowed in the policies tab, then click the growing pop in the planet screen and select what species you want to grow there. You'll get a -20% growth penalty for forcing a species to grow though, and also lose half of your progress to the next pop each time you select a species to grow. You might want to consider letting the human pop grow before locking another species in so you lose only a small amount of growth.

SettingSun posted:

How soft of a cap is naval capacity? In my latest game, I found the Exterminators far sooner than I'd like and they're coming at me hard, and I JUST researched destroyers and have like 15 ships with a 20 capacity. I guess money is no object if your survival is at stake but I'm not coming out of this one alive, but I can do better the next game.

Each point you go over naval cap increases the maintenance of all (military?) ships by 1%. So if you still have 20 cap and are at it, another corvette would cost as much maintenance as 1.21 corvettes normally would (1.01 for the corvette itself, 0.01*20 for the other twenty corvettes) and so on. So it's quite soft early game, where having 40/20 corvettes only gives you a 20% maintenance penalty. But later being at e.g. 400/200 cap would give you +200% maintenance, which is pretty ruinous.

e: e.g: with guesstimated base maintenance of 0.25 alloys/month and 1 energy/month for an early game corvette, going 8 over the base 20 cap would cost 0.56 alloys and 2.24 energy from increased maintenance from being above the cap. Upgrading an outpost to starport and building two anchorages would increase its maintenance by 3 energy. So getting the anchorages would still result in lower maintenance (assuming you don't go above starbase cap), even with low numbers. It's not a huge difference though and the upfront cost is high, so it's perfectly fine to go above the cap and get the naval cap later when you can afford it if you need the ships now.

Staltran fucked around with this message at 15:03 on Apr 3, 2019

AAAAA! Real Muenster
Jul 12, 2008

My QB is also named Bort

Staltran posted:

Each point you go over naval cap increases the maintenance of all (military?) ships by 1%. So if you still have 20 cap and are at it, another corvette would cost as much maintenance as 1.21 corvettes normally would (1.01 for the corvette itself, 0.01*20 for the other twenty corvettes) and so on. So it's quite soft early game, where having 40/20 corvettes only gives you a 20% maintenance penalty. But later being at e.g. 400/200 cap would give you +200% maintenance, which is pretty ruinous.
Thank you for explaining this. I've been playing for years and didnt know these fine details.

Weebus
Feb 26, 2017
Goddammit just noticed these assholes have gaia preference so thats most likely the problem. The planet's gonna be a massive resource sink forever but at least its somewhat stable now, thanks for the answers guys.

Splicer
Oct 16, 2006

from hell's heart I cast at thee
🧙🐀🧹🌙🪄🐸
There were gaia guys already on an arid planet? What? That's hilarious.

ZypherIM
Nov 8, 2010

"I want to see what she's in love with."

Xerxes17 posted:

Look at the blue entries. 1MD2RL. I just started with this so I haven't focused on the extras, as I was kinda curious to see what is the situation where you just do an immediate rush with basic weapons and no upgrades.

You're misreading and getting the damage of a coilgun here.

I made a copy error here, giving the Flak 80% accuracy instead of 75%.


Base corvette evasion is 60%. As the RL has 50% tracking, that means the accuracy goes down from 90% to 80%.
11/4.6*0.9=2.15
11/4.6*0.8=1.91

Lasers (90%) have a different base accuracy than to Mass Driver (75%) and Flak (75%). Of which I note I did have a copy error with the flak before, giving them 80%. I've fixed this now, and I'm going to go over the numbers again to check for errors. As to getting the upgraded weapons, I've had games where I failed to get any weapon upgrades in time for the first war dec, so I wanted to see what you can do in the worst case scenario. While I pick the 2RL1FLK, that's because it's good for taking out both 2S1A and 1S2A ships.

Edit: In short I have mistakes, so I'm going to do a rebuild to try and weed out any mistakes that crept in the first time.

Thank you for taking the time to look and find faults, it helps me get better results! :)

I'm a bit tired, made some copy errors as well it seems. In terms of formatting, something about how you're formatting just makes it hard to parse. It might be based on ordering by TTK and not grouping based on weapons (ie all 2MD designs followed by all 1MD designs followed by flak), just feels hard to get a good feeling for differences in design (even making sure to group all armor+shield variants together would help).

I see what you mean by tracking effecting accuracy, but you need to re-run your numbers I think. Notably flak appears to have not been adjusted for tracking at all (in addition to your giving flak another 5% accuracy, and maybe some fraction error?) and should be listed as 2.6/0.65/2.6, which I'm pretty sure should knock flak variants out of your top slot.


Important to note for early wars is that basically everyone should highly consider fitting in 1 circle of militarist into their build. Not only will this bump your tech weights for weapon techs to 1.25 (basically ensuring you'll have an upgraded weapon), you also are more likely to get leaders with bonuses to war stuff giving you another edge along with your 10% fire rate.

In terms of early war though, it is far more important to have more hulls than the exact perfect basic ship layout. Then once you are able to upgrade your ships, the cost to retrofit types is quite high, so you'll take a second hit there if you go for a big flak build.

ZypherIM fucked around with this message at 15:37 on Apr 3, 2019

THE FUCKING MOON
Jan 19, 2008

Splicer posted:

There were gaia guys already on an arid planet? What? That's hilarious.

I had a game a month or two ago back in 2.2.4 where my two closest neighbors were the Marauders, and a regular empire that was still only on their homeworld. The species in the regular empire had a gaia preference, despite their homeworld being a regular planet. I never did figure out what the gently caress happened there, my best guess is that they... I dunno, had an unfinished terraforming machine anomaly on their homeworld that turned the gaia planet they spawned on into a regular doodoo world. I don't know if that's possible or not.

edit: I conquered them and put them in chemical bliss until I could g-mod them into being alright with their homeworld.

Saros
Dec 29, 2009

Its almost like we're a Bureaucracy, in space!

I set sail for the Planet of Lab Requisitions!!

Well that was funny, my Rogue servitors went to the aid of an AI rebellion in a neighbor before noticing that the new AI was a determined exterminator. Yikes. We love the squishy bio's and don't want them all purged.

The only answer was to do all the conquering myself and hoover up all the biological pops from the worlds before turning them over to the exterminator full of robot pops only. Now I have a just completed Cybrex Alpha which I was gradually relocating more um, local, biotrophies to one planet at a time absolutely ram packed with nearly six hundred refugees and my economy is falling apart trying to feed and house them all in the paradises they rightfully deserve.

Oh and the Fallen empire almost totally engulfed by me just woke up.

PittTheElder
Feb 13, 2012

:geno: Yes, it's like a lava lamp.

Weebus posted:

Goddammit just noticed these assholes have gaia preference so thats most likely the problem. The planet's gonna be a massive resource sink forever but at least its somewhat stable now, thanks for the answers guys.

Splicer posted:

There were gaia guys already on an arid planet? What? That's hilarious.

THE loving MOON posted:

I had a game a month or two ago back in 2.2.4 where my two closest neighbors were the Marauders, and a regular empire that was still only on their homeworld. The species in the regular empire had a gaia preference, despite their homeworld being a regular planet. I never did figure out what the gently caress happened there, my best guess is that they... I dunno, had an unfinished terraforming machine anomaly on their homeworld that turned the gaia planet they spawned on into a regular doodoo world. I don't know if that's possible or not.

It was (is?) a bug, AI empires that started with a civic that changed their homeworld preference (life seeded, post-apocalyptic) didn't actually get their homeworlds changed to be that type. So AI Life Seeded empires would just be terrible forever, Post Apocalyptic ones would shrug and keep on being great everywhere. I think I read that they fixed it in 2.2.6 but I could be wrong.

Xerxes17
Feb 17, 2011

I've now redone it and as it's getting very complicated I'm just going to link it.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VrAWuhhvXBl1zLm8JRREfOJiQonZUimkVAkrSKsACsg/edit?usp=sharing

Also, because of the exponential growth of possible combinations as technology progresses, I'm going to just look at some broad trends.

First, my original idea of the 2RL-FKB design being the best was dead wrong. It's actually the worst! :v: The best T1 ship is the MDRL-FKB, which gets the lowest TTK against both 2S1A and 1S2A corvettes.

Second, the default 2S1A arrangement seems to be a bad idea as designs with 1S2A are on average going to live longer, and this becomes especially true once the AC and PT show up. This is even before we start looking into the value of CIP and CFP to boost hull points, which could be interesting in the sense that they boost strategic survivability instead of tactical toughness.

Third, getting your hands on AC asap cannot be stressed enough. They are hands down the best small weapon type and completely overshadow other options. However, it also seems that against other corvettes, a UV laser is better than a plasma thrower, but if you're fighting bigger stuff, the plasma is better.

binge crotching
Apr 2, 2010

Xerxes17 posted:

I've now redone it and as it's getting very complicated I'm just going to link it.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VrAWuhhvXBl1zLm8JRREfOJiQonZUimkVAkrSKsACsg/edit?usp=sharing

Also, because of the exponential growth of possible combinations as technology progresses, I'm going to just look at some broad trends.

First, my original idea of the 2RL-FKB design being the best was dead wrong. It's actually the worst! :v: The best T1 ship is the MDRL-FKB, which gets the lowest TTK against both 2S1A and 1S2A corvettes.

Second, the default 2S1A arrangement seems to be a bad idea as designs with 1S2A are on average going to live longer, and this becomes especially true once the AC and PT show up. This is even before we start looking into the value of CIP and CFP to boost hull points, which could be interesting in the sense that they boost strategic survivability instead of tactical toughness.

Third, getting your hands on AC asap cannot be stressed enough. They are hands down the best small weapon type and completely overshadow other options. However, it also seems that against other corvettes, a UV laser is better than a plasma thrower, but if you're fighting bigger stuff, the plasma is better.

Can you toss the Tiyanki weapon on there too? With the research bonus you get for completing the special project I tend to get it about the same time I'd be picking up t2 mass drivers anyway.

PittTheElder
Feb 13, 2012

:geno: Yes, it's like a lava lamp.

Xerxes17 posted:

I've now redone it and as it's getting very complicated I'm just going to link it.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VrAWuhhvXBl1zLm8JRREfOJiQonZUimkVAkrSKsACsg/edit?usp=sharing

Also, because of the exponential growth of possible combinations as technology progresses, I'm going to just look at some broad trends.

First, my original idea of the 2RL-FKB design being the best was dead wrong. It's actually the worst! :v: The best T1 ship is the MDRL-FKB, which gets the lowest TTK against both 2S1A and 1S2A corvettes.

Second, the default 2S1A arrangement seems to be a bad idea as designs with 1S2A are on average going to live longer, and this becomes especially true once the AC and PT show up. This is even before we start looking into the value of CIP and CFP to boost hull points, which could be interesting in the sense that they boost strategic survivability instead of tactical toughness.

Third, getting your hands on AC asap cannot be stressed enough. They are hands down the best small weapon type and completely overshadow other options. However, it also seems that against other corvettes, a UV laser is better than a plasma thrower, but if you're fighting bigger stuff, the plasma is better.

Your abbreviated forms for the weapon loadouts make the table needlessly difficult to read.

I'd suggest that rather than having MD and CG for Mass Driver and Coilguns, just use MD1 and MD2, and L1, L2 for lasers, etc. This appropriately conveys the tiered nature of the weapon classes.

Then standardize the combinations: rather than saying MDRL-FKB, 2MD1RL, and RGUV-FKC, use MD1-L1-FK1, MD1-MD1-L1, MD3-L3-FK2 instead.

Overall very interesting stuff though.

AAAAA! Real Muenster
Jul 12, 2008

My QB is also named Bort

Xerxes17 posted:

I've now redone it and as it's getting very complicated I'm just going to link it.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VrAWuhhvXBl1zLm8JRREfOJiQonZUimkVAkrSKsACsg/edit?usp=sharing

Also, because of the exponential growth of possible combinations as technology progresses, I'm going to just look at some broad trends.

First, my original idea of the 2RL-FKB design being the best was dead wrong. It's actually the worst! :v: The best T1 ship is the MDRL-FKB, which gets the lowest TTK against both 2S1A and 1S2A corvettes.

Second, the default 2S1A arrangement seems to be a bad idea as designs with 1S2A are on average going to live longer, and this becomes especially true once the AC and PT show up. This is even before we start looking into the value of CIP and CFP to boost hull points, which could be interesting in the sense that they boost strategic survivability instead of tactical toughness.

Third, getting your hands on AC asap cannot be stressed enough. They are hands down the best small weapon type and completely overshadow other options. However, it also seems that against other corvettes, a UV laser is better than a plasma thrower, but if you're fighting bigger stuff, the plasma is better.
What does MDRL-FKB stand for? Mass Driver Red Laser - ???

PittTheElder
Feb 13, 2012

:geno: Yes, it's like a lava lamp.

Flak Battery.

ZypherIM
Nov 8, 2010

"I want to see what she's in love with."

Yea autocannons are really good in general, impressive tracking combined with solid damage. It is hard to have better performance in small slots. Plasma is good unless you're facing any respectable amounts of evasion, but where it starts to get better than lasers is when you're moving to larger slots.

Also I'm completely unsure of how damage bleeds over between defense types (like if you have 1 point of shields left, and you take 10 damage from a laser, what exactly happens) which could gently caress with a ton of these slight edge cases in all sorts of ways. The uncertainty from that alone makes me not worry too much about slight edges, instead investing in more hulls on the field.


Keep in mind that you'll want to up the hull on corvettes (and other sizes) as you're moving up the tech tree (https://turanar.github.io/stellaris-tech-tree/vanilla/#top). Tier 1 tech for +100 hull, rare t2 tech for another +100 (could roughly say you'd get it during t3 weapon techs). These techs are super good, because your costs don't change (like they do for improved armor/shields).

Shields are cheaper than armor in terms of alloys and can regen without going back to a base. You save 5 alloys per shield slot, which adds up in the early game pretty quickly. Later on there are some things that effect shields that don't effect armor (though this is mostly a wash as there are negative shield effects as well).

I'm a little down on plasma mostly because I'm going to want lasers to unlock later techs anyways and they perform nearly as good in the mid-game. Later on when plasma is going to be a lot more effective than lasers going back to research them isn't as big a deal. In a similar efficiency vein, I'd point out that if you plan on upgrading your fleets you'll save a lot of alloys by not doing a flak design, and since as soon as you *do* get any upgraded weapons flak falls off.


binge crotching posted:

Can you toss the Tiyanki weapon on there too? With the research bonus you get for completing the special project I tend to get it about the same time I'd be picking up t2 mass drivers anyway.

Rough rule of thumb is your alien/event techs are much better than t2 weapons, and usually on-par or maybe a tad worse than t3 while being a bit cheaper than t3.

Aethernet
Jan 28, 2009

This is the Captain...

Our glorious political masters have, in their wisdom, decided to form an alliance with a rag-tag bunch of freedom fighters right when the Federation has us at a tactical disadvantage. Unsurprisingly, this has resulted in the Feds firing on our vessels...

Damn you Huxley!

Grimey Drawer

Xerxes17 posted:

I've now redone it and as it's getting very complicated I'm just going to link it.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VrAWuhhvXBl1zLm8JRREfOJiQonZUimkVAkrSKsACsg/edit?usp=sharing

Also, because of the exponential growth of possible combinations as technology progresses, I'm going to just look at some broad trends.

First, my original idea of the 2RL-FKB design being the best was dead wrong. It's actually the worst! :v: The best T1 ship is the MDRL-FKB, which gets the lowest TTK against both 2S1A and 1S2A corvettes.

Second, the default 2S1A arrangement seems to be a bad idea as designs with 1S2A are on average going to live longer, and this becomes especially true once the AC and PT show up. This is even before we start looking into the value of CIP and CFP to boost hull points, which could be interesting in the sense that they boost strategic survivability instead of tactical toughness.

Third, getting your hands on AC asap cannot be stressed enough. They are hands down the best small weapon type and completely overshadow other options. However, it also seems that against other corvettes, a UV laser is better than a plasma thrower, but if you're fighting bigger stuff, the plasma is better.

You missed out one of my favourite designs: missile plus MD. The math for it for the default arrangement is:

TTDS (MD only) 33.67s
TTDA (M only) 14.92s
Damage applied to hull by missile only while MD kills shields: 78.35
Remaining hull: 221.65
TTDH: 35.98
TTK: 69.65s

Of course, missile DPS is slightly random given its low rate of fire, but on raw numbers alone this is the strongest T1 arrangement. Easy to hard counter, of course.

ZypherIM
Nov 8, 2010

"I want to see what she's in love with."

As long as you're not outnumbered ship-wise, missiles don't really get hard countered though. I haven't done the math in a while, but if I remember correctly as long as you're 1:1 on flak:missile slots you'll be roughly even on damage output based on stuff like needing 2 flaks to take down a missile at point blank range. If they don't have enough flak missile volleys can swing closer fights in pretty good ways through your front-loaded damage as well.

Synergizes well with strike craft as an added bonus.

Staltran
Jan 3, 2013

Fallen Rib

ZypherIM posted:

I'm a little down on plasma mostly because I'm going to want lasers to unlock later techs anyways and they perform nearly as good in the mid-game. Later on when plasma is going to be a lot more effective than lasers going back to research them isn't as big a deal. In a similar efficiency vein, I'd point out that if you plan on upgrading your fleets you'll save a lot of alloys by not doing a flak design, and since as soon as you *do* get any upgraded weapons flak falls off.


Is it still a lot? I think they increased the rebate you get for the cost of the replaced component recently.

ZypherIM posted:

Also I'm completely unsure of how damage bleeds over between defense types (like if you have 1 point of shields left, and you take 10 damage from a laser, what exactly happens) which could gently caress with a ton of these slight edge cases in all sorts of ways. The uncertainty from that alone makes me not worry too much about slight edges, instead investing in more hulls on the field.

I tried this out. I modded autocannons to always do 100 base damage and attacked an unarmed battleship with 1110 shields (a single Large dark matter deflector). The first 7 shots did as expected doing 150 shield damage each, leaving the target with 60 shields remaining. The next shot then left it with no shields and... 4550/4600 hull? This confused me until I was writing this, but the damage done to shields was reduced from the base damage, and the remainder was given the +25% modifier for autocannons, doing (100-60)*1.25 hull damage. So the way the bleedover works seems to work against weapons with shield/armor bonuses (depending on what you're initially hitting). Presumably it also favors weapons with penalties against them similarly, right? Well this is where things get weird.

I modded the basic plasma cannons to also always do 100 base damage. Then I sat there watching the single plasma cannon plink away at the dark matter deflectors 25 damage (because of the -75% modifier) at a time. I thought shields regenerated during combat, but apparently not? Did they change that or do I just remember wrong? I could have sworn I've seen it happen... Anyway, the first complication came when the ship shooting leveled to Experienced, giving it +10% damage. But aside from confusing me briefly, that was fine.

So, the weird part: when the target ship reached 100 shields, damage started bleeding over to hull even though shields were still up.

code:
Shield hp		hull hp
155			4600
127			4600
100			4600
72			4585
45			4528
17			4431
0			4292
(Fist thing you might notice: hp is apparently calculated with more precision than shown, so each plasma shot is doing 27.5 damage to shields, not being rounded in either direction.)
So, the first plasma hit to damage hull did 15 hull damage. I'm guessing the math goes like this:
base 110 damage (100+10% for Experienced)
110>100, so base damage>remaining shields, plasma has +50% to hull, apply (110-100)*1.5=15 damage to hull
Then for the next shot, there's only 72(.5?) shields left, so the next shot does (110-72)*1.5=57 damage to hull, which matches the results.

...so, bleedover favors weapons with penalties to shields/armor (whichever you're shooting at) even more than you would expect, since you're getting free damage to the next layer. Also, I'm making a bug report.

Staltran fucked around with this message at 20:32 on Apr 3, 2019

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ZypherIM
Nov 8, 2010

"I want to see what she's in love with."

I haven't checked since the update I guess, but I believe since you're changing slots/weapons it functions differently. At least before the cost when changing the section types was much higher than just switching weapon types in the same section was.

Also that is the most amazing bug, but good to know that damage is carried over instead of just being lost or something. I'm way too lazy to see how that changes any of the TTK calcs, because that edge is still so small compared to just building more ships.

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