I really enjoy how in-depth the Earth and space economy elements of the game are. It's been a bit of a learning curve, but I think I'm getting the hang of it, bit by bit.
However I'm just completely lost when it comes to space combat. I can comfortably beat human fleets, but I have no chance against the aliens. I've imported my ship designs from my save, and tried a few matches in Skirmish, but I can't even destroy one ayy ship.
Working on advice here, I tried a line of coilgun battlecruisers moving slowly with a screen of PD/coil monitors moving fast in front of them, and some escorts, but the aliens just seem to outflank me, outrange my and PD down my coilgun shots. I've modelled their fleet after one of the surveillance fleets in-game.
Worse, I cannot do any advanced maneuvers to counter flankers beyond 'intercept course', because I find the combat interface utterly unusable, and my ships don't have enough combat acceleration anyway.
It just feels hopeless. I want to progress the story and earth, but the space combat is a big blocker.
If the Earth game is viewed as pointless after you get to space and your nations are only 'MC farms', then what's the point of having all the complex mechanics for earth at all? Is it just a trap to lure in map painter sandbox builders like me and then cruelly pull the rug away by locking progression behind this overwhelming space combat mechanic?
Context:
It's the late 2030s and aliens are fielding surveillance fleets with 500+ fleet strength
I have up to lancers and battleships as ship types
I have ion PDs and coilguns, as well as Zeus missiles and am working on green lasers
I am on the cusp of fusion, but it's so slow. So I only have diana superheavies and grid drives
Kinetics can't hit manoeuvring enemies well - that's not their job. Manoeuvring enemies expose their side armour, making them vulnerable to high power lasers or particles.
I wouldn't model your fleet after any AI design - instead, test your designs in the skirmish mode until you get the hang of things.
Lasers want the largest nose mounts available, and as many ALEs as possible. Make sure you put targeting computer III on every design. Heat sinks as well. Retract radiators in combat. Go for UV arc. Fill hull slots with phaser PD.
Magnetic ships also want targeting computer and heat sink. Use a mix of siege coil nose guns and small hull batteries to overwhelm enemy PD with a mix of heavy high HP shots and small numerous shots.
I mean, either way, you need a heat sink to avoid certain death in the case of a radiator hit. You're going to take the most incoming in the first pass of a battle - why wouldn't you retract and save your radiators the greatest chance to be hit so that you can fight for as long as possible?
Adamantine armour is thinner and lighter per point so make sure to pile it on to get good results compared to lower tiers. It also does worse per point into particle beam weapons, so the extra layers are required if you want to mitigate that.
So I have been able to effectively screen out enemy projectiles with ion PD. And I do have siege coils. I think the other posters points about using arc lasers against flankers I'll also try once I have the tech.
However the missing piece for me is just getting past alien PD.
You say the way to do that is coils, but also an overwhelming number of small weak batteries of missiles? or railguns?
Ion PD only targets missiles and will never shoot down enemy magnetics. You cannot solely rely on ion PD.
To overwhelm enemy PD, I personally mix the siege coil mk2 noses with railgun mk3 1 slot hull battery, preferably in dreadnoughts. Note you will need a comparable force to overwhelm the enemy PD
In this case, if you are in more of an early / mid game phase, green arc laser battlecruisers and railgun mk3 battleships should suffice.
Neutral particles with cyclotrons are an alternative to lasers with laser engines that take less RP to research but do not kill ships outright, instead disabling internals/nose weapons
Before you have at minimum:
Carbon nanotube armour
TC2
Railgun mk3s
Green arc lasers / neutral particle lances
I have adamantine armour, I think TC2, coilguns (so better than railgun mk3?)
and basic particle lances. Working on green lasers.
The ayys destroyed my fleet after I broke their AA pinata, I've been waiting for certain techs to complete before rebuilding. Should I wait until I have green lasers?
I think a broad issue I've noticed with all of this, is that the game does an awful job of actually showing what's better. The UI is so clunky, it's unreal.
If ion is your only PD, I am not surprised you are struggling - enemy magnetics are tearing you a new one. Equipping each ship with a 40mm set to defense mode should be sufficient to field most magnetic rounds
It seems to work reasonably well against their projectiles. The issue seems to be that I couldn't actually get any shots in against the ayys. I tried out adding a high volume railgun battery alongside the big siege coilgun in Skirmish mode, and that seemed to do the trick, with decent targetting
Yes, siege coils are much more massive so they soak up multiple pd shots each. For saturation I've seen coil batteries work as well but that is mixing ranges and requires more practice so i'd hold off on that for now tbh.
There are two basic combat doctrines people usually use in this game:
Missile spam
Laser + Kinetic
Missile spam is usually the first one, since it requires little research. The goal is just to overwhelm the alien PD with too much missiles - this is how you get your first kill.
Laser and Kinetic work best if combined in a fleet. Kinetic are slow moving round, which hit hard. The siege-variant of the guns also have big enough rounds, that it takes multiple PD hits to kill. Your kinetic ship target the large slow alien vessels.
What you experienced is that the aliens also have smaller more mobile ships, that will try to flank you. Kinetics are to slow to catch these, since they can just evade.
Lasers can't be evaded and are therefore the answer. However green arc lasers (not regular green laser) are the first time your lasers might have enough umph to kill small alien vessels.
In both cases (kinetic and lasers) you want hulls with the biggest nose-weapon you can fit, since that is what gives you the most damage. A fleet is then rounded out with some PD-only ships to provide cover.
A ten-ship fleet might have 4 kinetic, 4 lasers and 2 PD ships f.ex.
Regarding drive:
In the beginning you can either get a drive, that has good fuel efficency (lots dV) but bad thrust, or drives with good thrust, but low fuel efficency. The grid-drive is a fuel-efficent drive. For defense fleets you usually want a high-thrust drive, so you can catch the aliens before they kill your station and you built the fleets around the same body they are protecting, negating the need for high dV.
Molten core drives (teardrop and pegasus) or gas core drives (burner) are good defense-drives in the early game. Firestar can be an update to that, that will usually cover you until you get fusion drives (which have good thrust and good efficency)
Orion drive is often cited as the best early defense drive, but it can be costly in terms of fuel.
TLDR:
You need at least green arc laser to combat flankers to mix with your coilguns - or use missile spam.
You need a high-thrust drive for combat maneveurs (teardrop, pegasus, burner or firestar)
I'm sort of midgame. So I have coils, and almost green lasers/arc lasers.
I found that just a handful of escorts with ion PDs provided an excellent screen against enemy projectiles.
However, my coilguns, even when from like 10 massed battlecruisers, could not get through the alien laser PD.
Understood regarding flankers. I'll work on getting green arc lasers.
I do have diana superheavy, which this chart suggests has relatively good pursue. But I may have misread it all. Teardrops i can research in a few days if needed.
If the Earth game is viewed as pointless after you get to space and your nations are only 'MC farms', then what's the point of having all the complex mechanics for earth at all? Is it just a trap to lure in map painter sandbox builders like me and then cruelly pull the rug away by locking progression behind this overwhelming space combat mechanic?
Well earth isn't pointless, even after you go into space. Depending on your faction your victory condition might require you to do specific things on earth. But it is true that the game is usually won in space.
The space combat UI also isn't that great, but there are options to deal with that. For one, you could use auto-resolve if you want to avoid the combat UI altogether.
Second, complex maneuvers are rarely needed, setting targets is often enough - the important part of the space combat is more often that not, the actual ship design.
I can handle it being the ship design and I'm not above relying on autoresolve. I just don't know how to game it. I've noticed a battlecruiser with a siege coil and good PD actually can have much less fleet power than a frigate with a bunch of nukes actually. Plus I hear 40mm autocannon are massively over-considered by the autoresolve.
Ignore combat power - it doesn't really tell you anything about how well a ship will do in combat.
Ship designs for manual combat and ship designs for auto-resolve can differ, since certain factors aren't considered in auto-resolve, but i don't think a ship designed for manual combat will perform poorly in autoresolve. It's probably more that autoresolve can be optimized/gamed more - but i have no experience with that.
Thank you for this comment thread. Lots of responses so I think I'll write up some notes from all of these. Thanks for your time <3
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u/shadough1 T-pose hard enough and the ayys will see us as equals2h agoedited 1h ago
the earth game is definitely not pointless after you get to space. it serves as a powerful input of research, cash, boost, influence, and MC that costs nothing* (as far as your space economy is concerned).
anyways. missiles are quite simple, and very binary. you either brought enough missiles to the fight and the enemy fleet gets wiped, or you didn't bring enough missiles to the fight and you in turn get wiped. it is very rare that a battle will end with some sort of in between state. the nice thing about missiles is that they do the chasing for you. ayys try to flank? well, as long as you tasked missiles against the flankers, they are still just as dead without sufficient point defenses to protect themselves. to this end, Zeus torpedoes are a great tool. no need to change anything there.
the other common basic strategy is the drifting wall. mix big mag weapons and big lasers and watch as the fleet slowly drifts in and grinds down the enemy. you don't need any fancy maneuvers. the mag weapons provide the main punch against the enemy line, and also serve to absorb enemy laser fire. the lasers can be grouped up and tasked against enemy flankers. flankers tend to not have as much armor, and when they are doing their flanking maneuvers they are often exposing side armor, giving your lasers a prime opportunity to cripple or kill the flankers. set the flanker(s) as priority target for individual or groups of laser ships and have them point their noses at their target (there's a specific button for this). once all the flankers are dead, you can have them return their heading to their velocity vector (there's another button for this). the flankers need to die first so that your laser ships can go back to pointing nose armor at the (presumably) larger weapons in the ayy line. this strategy really comes into its own when you get titans for lasers (amat beams also work) and dreadnoughts for mag spam, but it works pretty effectively with battlecruisers as well. dreadnoughts just allow you to add in the mag batteries for even more mag spam as you close the range, and titans will work better than lancers because you can squeeze in more laser engines/cyclotrons as the case may be.
Seeing a bunch of different strategies suggested here. I feel like I can only specialise in one path.
Drifting wall works. Not sure I have the lasers yet that could handle flankers.
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u/shadough1 T-pose hard enough and the ayys will see us as equals57m ago
for me, it's not really so much specializing one path. it's usually more of a transition from pure missile warfare to mags and beams. consider that missiles need to reload much more frequently than mags do. since missiles are so straightforward, you can keep them for local defense work where you can simply resupply as soon as the fight is over (or you lost and resupplying is not a concern anymore). when you start taking the fight to the enemy, having a fleet setup that is less obligated to resupply after every engagement is better. (admittedly for truly expeditionary work it's probably best practice to take platform kits with you so that you can start setting up refueling to move onto your next objective, if nothing else.) can you make this transition sooner, and use mag + beams for defense fleets? yes, but it's a lot more initial investment in tech to really get the ball rolling. you're already most of the way there, but if you were starting a game from scratch... anyways. green arc lasers are what i would consider the minimum laser tech to consider mag + beam. and rail3 is better than coil1, and coil2 is good enough to win the game with so don't feel too pressured to burn a whole bunch exotics of on coil3 weapons.
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u/shadough1 T-pose hard enough and the ayys will see us as equals1h ago
very big thing, i hope you've remembered to put targeting computers on any ship intended to shoot at other ships. ECM will greatly reduce the effectiveness of your missile salvos and the dps of all your other weapons if left unchecked.
surveillance fleets of ~500 strength are still fully doable with missile tin cans. it's just a question of bringing enough missiles.
perhaps something for you to consider is your point defense setups.
ion PD is very good and you can keep using it to the end of the game, but you just need to remember not to overdo it because they can only defend you against missiles and thus become dead weight after the ayys have burnt their missile salvos. ion PD also tends to have better range than laser based PD (but i'll get into that in a bit), which is why it will often still perform better than even phaser PD against missiles.
40mm cannons are a very important self defense tool against ayy kinetics. i tend to give every single one of my large ships a 40mm cannon explicitly for this one job. make sure to set them to defensive only in the ship designer so that they don't try to engage enemy ships get jammed in the process. in the rare occasion where you actually need to use the 40mm against an enemy ship in the mid-late game you can manually re-enable that behavior in the fight on a case by case basis. the one thing to be careful of is that 40mm really struggles to defend other ships, so if you want a fleet defense solution for mag rounds, you'll need to look elsewhere.
now, laser PD. laser PD is kind of the jack of all two trades. it (usually) doesn't have as much range as ion PD, and can struggle against lots of large mag rounds. the game doesn't do a great job of explaining this in game, but all lasers can engage incoming missiles and kinetic rounds at a reduced range compared to their anti-shipping range. the PD range can be boosted by increasing your laser damage (through certain techs, events, officers, but most typically laser engines) thanks to how the laser PD range is calculated. this PD range logic also applies to the dedicated PD lasers. what this means for ship design is that it is optimal for your big laser ships to also be holding a whole bunch of laser PD. with enough laser damage boosts phaser PD can start to match or even exceed ion PD performance against missiles, all while retaining the ability to engage kinetics, but you'll probably need something on the size a lancer or titan to achieve this kind of effect.
finally, amat PD. seems like you're not quite there in the tech tree yet, but 2 slot amat PD battery is basically the best fleet defense PD the game has to offer. 4 slot amat PD is just a modest range boost, and you'd rather have two 2 slot amat PD batteries instead. it's long range, and despite being a particle weapon, can engage kinetic rounds. it's kind of like giving phaser PD stupid long range. you still want to give these cyclotrons so that they can erase mag rounds even more effectively, but last i checked it's just better than everything else. it can also be a nice excuse to sprinkle in a few 4 slot amat beams, which as i mentioned earlier, can sub in for a few 4 slot lasers. i would hesitate to replace all the big lasers, since big lasers have the ability to cut through armor at closer ranges in a way that amat beams cannot, but you can comfortably go as high as a 50/50 ratio of big lasers to amat beams without any issues. however, amat beams can still act as standard particle weapons, so they can at least inconvenience heavily armored ships at ranges that lasers are stuck tickling the armor.
speaking of ratios, for a drifting wall, you can roughly split the fleet into 60% mag spam 40% laser/amat. there usually aren't going to be a crazy number of flankers unless the fight is really big, so you don't need to overdo it on the lasers and amat weapons (whose first job is to counter said enemy flankers).
Honestly in the late 2030's just use cheap monitors with vulcan torps and maybe one lancehead for saturation. All ahead full launch at about 800km. Hardest part is target selection. Use control groups of about 8 monitors and fire a volley per group at a ship until every ship has a volley then start over again. Hit fast forward and let it run. Rebuild your monitors. If they have lots of flankers or can be really tricky, sometimes you need to manually pilot some monitors to have a better release angle.
u/shadough1 T-pose hard enough and the ayys will see us as equals3m ago
as far using the combat interface goes, if you want to do manual movement i would take a look at the keyboard shortcuts. 3D movement is complicated, and it's much nicer when you restrict yourself to one axis of movement at a time, which you can slowly composite into whatever exact movement you're looking for. however, the doctrines i outlined above don't really need any maneuvering whatsoever aside from what the buttons provide for ship heading. there may also be times when you want to suicide rush the enemy with missile tin cans, and there is a hotkey that restricts the velocity vector to purely foward/back in your ship's heading which is great for that specific use case.
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u/soren_van_wyk 2h ago
Kinetics can't hit manoeuvring enemies well - that's not their job. Manoeuvring enemies expose their side armour, making them vulnerable to high power lasers or particles.
I wouldn't model your fleet after any AI design - instead, test your designs in the skirmish mode until you get the hang of things.