Sins Deathbattles

Well, PJIs obviously work for trapping ships of any kind and forcing a longer fight/exchange. Why do you think that the bombers can't take out any structures in this setting if they could get to the Halcyon? Does it regen AM so fast that they can't just ignore it? What level was the Halc? An initial save game would help. Also, you could allow the attacker to bring a capital ship as well since the defender has +50 fleet supply advantage here. (Attacker: 40*14=560 supply. Defender 187*3+50=611 supply.) What about an Akkan for instance to shut down the Halc? Besides it's not clear to me what was the purpose of the SB here and why the attacker bothered to bomb it (instead of the PJIs for example). Neither Mass Disorientation nor Meteors work on strike craft... so the SB poses little immediate threat to the attacker. If the purpose of the SB is to deplete the AM of the carriers when they jump out, then you need to have some realistic goal in pursuing them outside the well, e.g. their actual target is in another well or they are trying to retreat to a friendly well (e.g. one with an Argonev with Docking Booms). And you need to play that scenario with and without the SB to see what difference it makes. But it seems the carrier player doesn't have a clear goal in your scenario. Attacking the toughest nut in the well (SB with one hull up), when it's not much of a threat to the carriers, doesn't sound like a worthwhile objective. If the SB was down to 2K hull (from 6K) that kind of damage would have taken out one shielded structure, e.g. a PJI, even in range of shield bestowal.

Also you should probably change the thread title to something more descriptive like "Countering bombers [with corvettes and a Haclyon]". Your Deathbattles posts are generally interesting [including this one] but sometimes lose focus by testing too many [varied] things...

And as a general note: defending vs. carriers [just] with corvettes is probably not practical in the long run because the carriers can switch their squads to fighters; I guess you know you can scuttle just the strike craft squad[s] by right clicking on their icon in the carriers' panel and then build different one[s]... So defense with an all corvettes fleet would probably only work if the carrier attacker didn't scout beforehand. (My quick test in the other thread was simply to see what happens when a large formation of bombers passes through a large formation of corvettes--for those that din't read it: results differ dramatically in bombers' favor compared to the small scale test I had ran previously because in the large scale numerous corvettes overkill the same bomber squad[s].) I'm guessing given the flexibility of the carriers in choosing their strike craft, a 50/50 (or thereabout) mixture of corvettes and flak might be more prudent for the defender if you want to make this a more realistic fight as opposed to a quick test of game mechanics. I've heard that on ICO fighter spam is more common than bomber spam these days, so that also might be fun to test counters for; mixtures of 50/50 fighters/bombers [for the attacker] are probably interesting as well [if the defender isn't also spamming carriers].

And frankly, I think that the designers' idea of making flak only counter fighters well was kinda lame given that carriers can switch squad types with only a relatively minor time/AM cost. At least the flak should get some sort of research upgrade that would make them more effective against bombers' "thicker" armor, e.g. call that research "armor piercing flechettes" or "neutronium flak rounds" for TEC (both names are a hat tips to SotS). But let's not discuss modding fixes any further in this thread, and instead focus on what counters are possible using the stock game.

I should clarify that the purpose of the test was to test the strategy of bombers just killing civilian structures and then moving on to the next grav well, or retreating to friendly territory, in relative safety while ignoring the defending corvettes. I wouldn't expect an engagement like this to occur if the goal is to actually kill the planet. That's the purpose of the PJIs, to prove their effectiveness in discouraging such a tactic.

With that in mind, the bombers could certainly take out one structure if they wanted to focus it first, but what's the point? A PJI is extremely cheap, less than the cost of even one carrier. Individual civilian structures are about the same cost to replace as one carrier as well. The Halcyon and the Starbase are the gravity well's high value assets. It's not worth putting 500+ fleet supply at risk just to kill one lab or trade port.

And I think I mentioned that the Halcyon was level 3, so level 2 push.

I did think about this but you have to factor in risk/reward of the attacker. The plan is to kill econ structures and then retreat easily since the carriers never leave the edge of the grav well. An Akkan however would have to venture beyond the edge of the well and into range of the SB to do its job, putting a very expensive asset at risk. I haven't actually tested but I am quite confident that it would die with no chance to retreat against 200 corvettes and an SB. Even if it buys you enough time to kill an additional civilian structure, that's an extremely inefficient trade in terms of resources considering the cost of an Akkan vs the cost of one logistics structure.

Additionally, the corvettes are far cheaper to produce in that number than the carriers. If you factor in resource cost rather than fleet supply the corvette defender could probably field 2 halcyons instead of 1 and still have a pretty similar production cost.

This was just the first post in the thread. Any other testing I do, for any purpose, I'll dump in here so as not to clog up other threads with my lengthy speculations.

Yeah, but presumably you can move back or forward with one [or more] PJIs dead, i.e. you are no longer discouraged by it. Being cheap does not mean easily replaced (in combat in particular if you kill the constructor frigates, something that most human attackers do). Also, the PJI might be cheap but it has a very long [re]build time, equal only to superweapons.

SBs do little damage to capital ships. Their power against a fleet comes from their multiple weapon banks (4 on each side for every weapon type/upgrade they have, i.e. 16 total; some [e.g. Vasari] allow +1 extra bank per side to be researched.) But the way the Sins engine is coded, a SB will fire at most one bank from each side at a cap ship. Against an immovable star base, that's exactly one bank [per SB weapon type] firing, unless the attacker is careless, in which case it's two. Try it in the dev exe with the targeting lines and weapon state enabled [in Entity Info menu enable options "n" and "q"]; the consumer-oriented graphics can be extremely misleading in this regard; you may see a torrent of fire coming from the starbase against a single ship, but the damage actually registered by game's logic [against a single target] is much, much less than what the fireworks suggest. The visual effects don't get cut to 1/4 when there's a single target on a SB's side, but the damage registered is cut that way. (As an aside, this is one of the reasons why titans waste SBs so easily, even if the SB is max upgraded with everything; most titans have a high-powered single-target attack [via some ability], an order of magnitude or more powerful compared what the SB can hit the titan back with from a single bank per weapon type.) Presumably approaching the SB with the Akkan would be dangerous if the SB had Meteors and/or Mass Disorient; how dangerous remains to be tested. Alas the Akkan only gets some kind of ass-saving ability at L6. If you're willing to try the (OMG OP!) Vasari instead, then an L3 Kortul will probably survive much longer even against all those corvettes, but will also take longer to nix the AM on the Halc.

But the main thing to try differently for a more realistic fight is to bring some fighters on the carriers. From what I've seen in small scale, probably just 1/4-1/2 fighters on the carriers will already be tough on the corvettes. (So their side will want some flak instead of all corvettes.)

Yea once they're dead, you can't really rebuild them before the carriers can leave, but it takes a significant amount of time for them to kill 2 shielded PJIs. By that time the halcyon is in position to use TK push and the corvettes are working on the carriers and you've really accomplished nothing, none of the actual fleet or econ of the opponent has been touched yet. If you dive the PJIs first they have served their purpose by acting as a distraction.

Yea it's not going to kill a capital by itself, it's just an extra bit of damage.

Really? You want to send in 20 something fighter wings against that many corvettes? I don't think that's going to make much difference...... you're welcome to try it though. I might try it myself at some point, just depends on whether or not I ever feel like it lol. I still play SP actively and running the dev exe resets my extensively customized settings in the normal game, very annoying.

Anyways, every fighter wing you use means less firepower against and more time spent to kill the real valuable targets, capitals, starbase, tradeports, etc. Corvettes are very expendable costing as close as you'll get to 0 metal/crystal. I wouldn't want to sacrifice firepower in other areas to kill some of them.

That happens to me too and it is indeed very annoying, particularly that it resets the video resolution. Something the devs could easily fix... The rest [of the settings being reset] don't bother me as much. You can make a backup copy of your user.setting (or of the entire Settings folder to be sure) after using the regular exe and then just restore your backup after using the dev exe.

I do wonder if there ain't some bug there at work. Those files have internal format versions (of their own) so that when you upgrade Sins they can migrate settings as needed. But for the same version of Sins (1.82.5006), the production exe writes "Version 1241" to user.setting whereas the dev exe (of the same Sins version) writes "Version 241" (omitting indeed the first "1") to the same file. So when the normal exe then loads, it thinks it needs to reset/ignore the video settings and so forth. I'm not sure if this is by design (i.e. the first "1" in the user.setting version is supposed to indicate being written by the production exe) or if it is a bug that the dev exe writes a Version field that is 1000 less. I think I'll better ask in the Technical forum.

I don't think too many people believe bombers are OP anymore...fighter spam (or 50/50 on bombers/fighters) is much more common since the fighters counter the corvettes pretty well...

Regardless, this test really isn't very realistic and doesn't accurately test the strength of the bomber...both sides should have caps and titans, probably some support ships (hoshikos and guardians), and the attacker should have an advantage in fleet supply, not a disadvantage like in your test above as an attacker isn't going to attack if they don't have any chance at winning....you currently gave the defender about 50 more fleet supply with that halcyon, and then another effective 35 fleet supply with the 5 SC the defender has from the hangar and SB...

If both sides have a titan and cap as well as some support ships, then that means the attacker can kill or drive off the halcyon without having to rely on his SC...you have to micro the bombers to keep them out of range of the corvettes -- if that means they run around the map chasing each other, then so be it, you can let the titans and caps duke it out...if the corvettes focus on a cap or titan, then your bombers have free reign to hit whatever they want...you also can break up your bombers into 2 groups so that worse case scenario, only half are hit by TK push...I'm not saying the bomber side will win, but it'd be a much better fight...

Did you read the topic? I believe I stated that this was a test about the viability of jumping in, sniping something valuable, and then jumping out. In another topic RespawnedTitan mentioned that in a scenario he tried a bunch of bombers were able to kill all the structures in a test gravity well despite 100 corvettes being present, so I wanted to try it for myself. It was never intended for a fight to the death.

Yeah WTF with Seleuceia not reading topics? His ignorance truly surprises me at every turn...

I read the topic, and I understand what you are trying to do, but just bringing your carriers when there is a larger defending fleet is simply not realistic...if you are Advent, TR, or VL, you would almost certainly want to bring your titan (and possibly a cap) -- the combination of your titan and your bombers would wipe out the Halcyon far faster than the enemy could threaten your titan...much more of your bombers would survive, allowing you to wipe the SB much faster...even if your titan just sat there, it would kill some of the corvettes should they try to attack the carriers nearby...if you are lucky, your enemy might even focus fire on the titan instead of the bombers...

This would be easiest as VL or TR, but even Advent could do it...I never said you have to fight to the death, just use some more realistic fleet compositions to do your sniping....an immense strength of carriers is that they are very durable per ship, and they benefit significantly from having support ships...replacing even two carriers with 7 hoshikos could cut your losses significantly...and with a titan or cap, you are in much better shape to handle the Halcyon...a ragnarov, a dunov, or a corsev would all be really useful in that situation....

My large scale test in the other thread shows that (unlike in small scale) you don't have to worry about keeping bombers outside the corvette's range in the large scale. The corvettes massively overkill a squadron or two on every pass, but that's small potatoes when you have 80-100 bomber squads and it only takes a few passes to take out everything in the well. The AoE anti-SC tech (such as TK) were added probably because of this issue (whatever point-fire anti-SC ships you have, they'll just overkill the same [few] bomber squad[s].)

I haven't played with TK much, but I suspect you can run away with the bombers while it's active instead of banging the bombers' head against the TK wall and taking damage in the process. You can for instance attack with only half the bombers, and keep half in reserve. Is the defender going to trigger TK? If so, at least half your bombers don't get damaged by it. Also, TK will deplete AM quickly (large AM cost, short cooldown). All you might have to do is run around the well for a little while with the bombers. That's why I'm not confident in drawing too much from this fight as it took place. YMMV.

Also, Advent on defense is more of a special case because of their shielded structures (from hangar's shield bestowal). Other factions' structures will only last half as long (no shield mitigation).

And like I said before, the biggest issue with corvettes as defense vs. carriers is that carries can switch SC [to fighters] with only a relatively minor time/AM cost [and no credits cost.] You can't morph the corvettes into flak. You'd have to build both.

I haven't done a large scale corvettes vs. fighters, but in the small scale (3 Perch vs. 14 Shriken), the fighters annihilate the corvettes so fast they can barely scratch the paint on a carrier. Fighters vs corvettes might also have overkill issues in the large scale, unless heavily micromanaged, but [like I said] I haven't tested yet.

Sel is also right that carrier spam being a late game tactic, titans should probably be introduced as well. Which opens a much bigger can of worms given how diverse their abilities are. I'd normally expect the attacker to bring some cap or titan capable of AoE attack when confronted with masses of corvettes and knowing that he'd have to fight for a while (because of PJIs). You basically gave the defender (besides a slightly bigger fleet) a nice AoE counter for the attackers' weapon of choice, but the attacker waltzes in with no such AoE for dealing with the corvettes (or keeping his carriers alive), again presumably knowing he would have fight for a while because of PJIs. A PJI takes almost two minutes to build even on "faster", so it's hard to spring a trap with them on any human willing to sacrifice a scout before jumping in his main force.

Finally, I've actually done a calculation of fleet cost. Advent corvettes might be cheap individually, but there's 4.66 of them for a Perch carrier given equal fleet supply. The credit cost is actually almost the same: 835 for the Perch and 817 for the [4.66] corvettes, but the Perch does cost twice as much in resources 150met+135cry while the [4.66] corvettes only cost 70met+70cry.

The TK push is an instant ability, not one that's channeled over time like repulsion. It's not like you can wait for the Halcyon to "turn it on" and then run. And I wasn't hitting more than half the bombers with each use anyways. Even without any micro, with that many bombers, they don't bunch up enough for that. Running around the grav well with your bombers trying to avoid the halcyon is quite pointless since they're doing nothing while your carriers take damage. I haven't tried ordering the bombers to attack and then immediately ordering them to turn around after firing, so that they don't fly past their target structure into range of the ability, as they do normally; I don't know if that would work but it would be worth trying out.

No it's more of a middle case which is why I chose it. Good luck killing Vasari structures with this if they have 3-4 hangars up around their buildings. TEC however I believe would have a harder time defending than Advent.

Even 30 seconds of your fleet losing all weapons capability I would hardly call "minor" in an engagement of this size.... If you switched all the carriers over you might have some success in a shoot-out against corvettes, but you're not a threat to any structures or capital ships, at all, and given that it does take time to build the fighters your opponent has time to retreat his corvettes if he doesn't want to lose many of them (or just cluster them around the halcyon and wait to use TK push). Attacking a planet with PJIs and a starbase with nothing but fighters doesn't seem like it would accomplish anything..... If you can't damage structures or the planet itself the opponent has nothing to actually defend himself from.

I've done a test of my own using 400 fleet supply: 25 carriers vs. 116 corvettes + a cap on each side (Halc and Akkan both L3). The carriers were loaded with half-and-half fighters/bombers. The Halc had fighters only.

Both capital ships amusingly die at exactly the same time, despite using their abilities. The corvettes then menacingly head for the carriers. And then... big FAIL. They manage to kill 4 carriers before beeing all wiped out. That's right 4 carriers lost out of 25 and the whole 116-strong corvettes fleet wiped out. What worth are the [putative] PJI's and a starbase in the system after that, with no fleet to defend them against strike craft, which are nearly intact? Clearly corvettes beat carriers... at dying much faster! Recording: http://www22.zippyshare.com/v/34798969/file.html

I'm probably going to try replacing half [and then all] the corvettes with flak to see what happens (and/or using L6 caps), but I don't have time for that today.

Addendum: one interesting thing I've noticed on replay is that not giving strike craft any orders (in the 2nd half of the furball fight) seemed to work much better. In the beginning they were [over]killing about one corvette at a time. When left to their own devices the seemed to nab 2,3 or even 5 in parallel.

Oh, shit, I just realized I used Advent corvettes and these are affected by a save+load bug, which disables their side and rear weapons (https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/427902/page/1/). But without save+load there's no recording of ships spawned in the dev exe (https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/455085/page/1/#3472452). All hail the Sin devs.... I'll probably have to spawn TEC corvettes on the Halc's side, as weird as that may seem.