Difference and uses of different ship types

[LordMM]

So what is the use of having a destroyer in a fleet instead of a cruiser ? IS there any point in making 250 sized ships instead of making a fleet of largest sized ships ?

[Bingeling]

Keep in mind that a "destroyer" can be any kind of warship, apart from a resupply ships or a carrier. But if we think of it as the 250 (or a bit larger) ship that is not of cruiser or capital ship size:

One can imagine a smaller ship as a fast ship. One can also imagine two kind of fleets. One kind is the main bruiser fleets, that battle colony defenses and the "Fleets" of the AI. In this kind of fleet I would not find a role for the "destroyer". I can see a setup with two main types of ships (cruisers and carriers), and also a variant that would be capital ships (long range scanner? Hyper deny?).

Another kind of fleet is the "strike fleet". It should stop smaller pirate fleets, AI strike fleets, and destroy mines during war. In such fleets, the cruisers of the main fleets may be too slow in finding their target and in turning to jump away. This could be the fleets that are to swoop in and bust mines, and be gone before the defenders managed to turn around to face them. And for such fleet, one could imagine two different kind of ships, maybe the frigate and destroyer. Maybe both are reasonably fast, but the destroyer got a fighter bay which the frigate do not?

That being said, if the main battle fleets got somewhat mobile cruisers and carriers, and has the capital ships as the slower brutes, I am sure 3 cruisers and 1 carrier would make a pretty good strike fleet too.

[Retreat1970]

IS there any point in making 250 sized ships instead of making a fleet of largest sized ships ?

Nope, just cost.

[Aeson]

ORIGINAL: Retreat1970

IS there any point in making 250 sized ships instead of making a fleet of largest sized ships ?

Nope, just cost.

Assuming equal construction tech, smaller ships will be completed more rapidly than larger ships, so that can be a factor, too.

Regardless, when asking whether there's a point to making a size-X ship instead of a size-Y ship, you really need to think about what you want to do with the ships and how much of a difference it makes whether the ship is size-X or size-Y. If you're looking for a front line battleship and X = 250 while Y = 500, there's very little reason to make size-X battleships instead of size-Y battleships. If X is 400 when Y is 500, or X is 250 when Y is 276, then there's probably a justifiable reason to build the slightly smaller battleship instead of the more powerful battleship.

An example of a situation where you might build a smaller ship rather than a larger ship can be found with the Ackdarians. At construction size 300, they can build standard military ships to size 360. If their support component technology gives their support components a support size of 85, it takes 5 life support and 5 habitation modules to build a size-360 ship, but 4 of each will allow them to build a size-352 ship.

Another example can be found with carriers due to the required 40% or more size invested into fighter bays. Let us assume that the maximum size carrier we can build is size-600 (standard construction size limit of 400) and that we are using advanced fighter bays. A size-600 carrier requires 240 size to be spent on fighter bays in order to be a valid design. In order to meet this requirement, the design must include 6 advanced fighter bays, which consume 270 size. If we are willing to reduce the size of the carrier a little, we can instead use 5 advanced fighter bays, allowing us to build a carrier with a maximum size of 562. A size-600 carrier with 6 advanced fighter bays has 330 capacity available for components other than fighter bays whereas a size-562 carrier with 5 advanced fighter bays has 337 capacity available for components other than fighter bays. (Incidentally, another possible solution for a carrier of nominal size 600 is 2 advanced and 3 standard fighter bays, which exactly meets the minimum required size spent on fighter bays for a size-600 carrier and is an example of a time when you might consider using lower-tech components despite having upgraded versions available since this produces a size-600 carrier with 360 size available for components other than fighter bays.)

[McUH]

So what is the use of having a destroyer in a fleet instead of a cruiser ?

With exception of special hulls (carrier, supply ship etc.) it is just tag to keep things organised. You can design huge escort and tiny capital ship. But I think AI also makes different decisions based on the type so you might try to keep it to the spirit of the description if you keep some things automated.

IS there any point in making 250 sized ships instead of making a fleet of largest sized ships ?

Well, two smaller ships can be on two different places (more flexibility), big ship is powerful but can't split. I'm new to this game so I might do it wrong, but for fixed fleets (manual controlled or postures) I'm starting to prefer big durable ships - cruisers, carriers, capitals, and for background automated defense (automated escorts/patrols without fleets) I prefer bigger number of smaller ships - escorts, frigates, destroyers - to better cover the space and allow more flexible immediate threat response.

Also, and I'm not sure yet how feasible it is in this game, but one big target, especially if it has some weakness, could be easier to disable (boarding, sabotage, unlucky hit with component damaging weapon) - in such situation swarm of disposable ships could be more effective (but area damage weapons are bane of those usually).

[Aeson]

Also, and I'm not sure yet how feasible it is in this game, but one big target, especially if it has some weakness, could be easier to disable (boarding, sabotage, unlucky hit with component damaging weapon) - in such situation swarm of disposable ships could be more effective (but area damage weapons are bane of those usually).

This isn't very feasible in the game.
- Sabotage missions cannot target operational ships; at best, you might cause a bit of damage to nearby ships if you blow up a station.
- Boarding defense is dependent upon the number of habitation modules and assault pods carried by the ship, and as most standard-template designs carry no assault pods and only as many habitation modules as are required due to the vessel's size, boarding defense tends to be strongly dependent upon ship size; on top of that, in order to begin a boarding assault, the target's shields need to be reduced below a threshold value set by the level of boarding technology available to the attacker, and larger targets generally have stronger shields that regenerate more rapidly.
- Getting lucky and destroying critical components is possible, but not particularly likely, and as the number of components on the ship increases the likelihood that a specific component will be disabled by a given amount of damage decreases. Plus, if you're concerned about it, larger ships can often afford more redundant components than smaller ships; a second command center on a ship that's already somewhere around 700 size has a fairly low opportunity cost by comparison to doing the same for a ship that's somewhere around 300 or 400 size.

[Retreat1970]

But I think AI also makes different decisions based on the type

It doesn't. All classes guard, patrol, and escort. Escorts are not in fleets, but every other class gets put in one.

[Bingeling]

If so, that is a bug. The classes (by AI standards) increase in power, and more powerful ships should get more valuable tasks. So if working as intended, you should see a frigate guard a puny steel mine, and a cruiser guard a colony or important gas mine.

Admittedly, since I don't run automated military ships, I don't observe this myself...

If you observe a cruiser escorting a freighter, make sure it is not due to being short of other ships to do that task.

[Retreat1970]

I've played many automated games when I was modding, and unfortunately it's true. I also don't think it's a bug. Working as intended.

I've seen capital ships escort freighters, even carriers. There was no lack of smaller ships.

Play a full auto game and see how the AI behaves.

[Bingeling]

It is a bug if it is not working the way they have said it should work

[Retreat1970]

Bingeling, do you have a source I could read? I'm probably wrong as usual. Thanks.

[Aeson]

The game manual gives a brief description of how the various roles are supposed to be used by the computer.

[McUH]

One more area where AI takes ship class into account is composition of fleets (if automated) and suggestions what to build (on that ship order screen). I suppose though that the used/suggested ratios can be modified.

And one more example when small ships might be useful, but it requires combat system where ships always choose only one target and missiles do not acquire new targets. Against much superior ship which can one hit kill almost anything, it is better to have swarm of small ships as this will induce lot of overkills (wasting big ship firepower). This worked pretty well in GalCiv 2. However, in DW:U it is hard to design small effective ship, because:
1. All ships need hyperdrive + 2 reactors, which is the same fixed size making small ships inefficient
2. Small ships have no inherent bonuses (many games give them at least some defense/countermeasures bonus based on fact, that they are small, so harder to target/hit)
But at least fighters are pretty useful, that was one of the weak parts of MoO2 - any other weapon system I could somehow use but fighters/bombers were completely useless...

[Retreat1970]

Page 68 says: State-owned ships can be automated so that they assign their own missions appropriate to their type.

In the ship descriptions on page 72, only the Escort has a stance: Escorts are used to patrol smaller colonies and facilities. The others are ambiguous.

I would still argue no bug, but since I argue just to argue I'll shut up. I wonder if DW2 will have a better system?

[Bingeling]

I know that Erik has confirmed what the manual says on the forum. No source, just my memory. And it is a long time ago.

More valuable objects to defend -> preference for "bigger ships".

[Retreat1970]

ORIGINAL: Bingeling

I know that Erik has confirmed what the manual says on the forum. No source, just my memory. And it is a long time ago.

More valuable objects to defend -> preference for "bigger ships".

Sounds good to me.