ARESIV

Join Date 05/2011

+58

REQUEST STICKY - The ultimate strike craft comparison

Test setup:

Neutral gravity well, no culture effects. Both carrier fleets were moved into the gravity well, regenerated their antimatter pool to maximum and then launched all their strike craft at the exact same moment. So no side did have any advantage. Both fleet were left to fight to the death.

Testing was done using the Dev.exe and manually controlling all involved factions and units where applicable.

FACTION COMPARSION:

Fielded ships:

TEC: 20 Percheron Carriers

Advent: 14 Aeria Drone Hosts

Vasari: 20 Lasurak Transporters

Credit Cost:

TEC: 16700

Advent: 17920

Vasari: 16200

Metal cost:

TEC: 3000

Advent: 3220

Vasari: 3200

Crystal cost:

TEC: 2700

Advent: 3080

Vasari: 2800

Fleet supply cost:

TEC: 280

Advent: 280

Vasari: 280

Squadrons fielded:

TEC: 40 wings

Advent: 42 wings

Vasari: 40 wings

Strike craft fielded:

TEC: 240 fighters / 200 bombers

Advent: 378 fighters / 294 bombers

Vasari: 160 fighters / 120 bombers

BATTLE TEST 01 - FIGHTERS VS FIGHTERS

ROUND 1: NO RESEARCH

TEC Fighters VS Advent Fighters:

Advent carrier fleets wins, 14/14 Drone Hosts survive. Advent fighters have a slightly better combat performance and the higher antimatter pool of the Aeria allows it to rebuild fighters long after the Percheron has run out of antimatter.

TEC Fighters VS Vasari Fighters:

Vasari carrier fleet wins: 20/20 Lasuraks survive. TEC fighters don’t stand a change.

Advent Fighters VS Vasari Fighters:

Advent carrier fleet wins: In pure combat both fighter fleets are nearly equal and only the larger antimatter pool of the Aeria saves the day for the Advent.

ROUND 2: WITH FULL RESEARCH

TEC Fighters VS Advent Fighters:

Advent carrier fleets wins, 14/14 Drone Hosts survive. Even with full research the tide of battle doesn’t change much. Advent do better very slightly than without research but it is only a very minor difference. And so the battle is solely decided on which fleet runs out of antimatter first, which naturally doesn’t end well for TEC.

TEC Fighters VS Vasari Fighters:

Vasari carrier fleet wins: 20/20 Lasuraks survive. With or without research, TEC fighters don’t stand a change.

Advent Fighters VS Vasari Loyalist Fighters:

Vasari carrier fleet wins: 20/20 Lasuraks survive. Vasari Fighters are slightly superior and inflict more heavy fighter losses on the Advent. Enough losses that in the end the Aeria, although having enough antimatter, cannot rebuild the losses quick enough. Advent wings are more and more decimated and in the end the carriers come under fire.

Advent Fighters VS Vasari Rebel Fighters:

Advent carrier fleets wins, 14/14 Drone Hosts survive. About equal combat power but superior AM reserves save the day for Advent. Contrary to the Vasari Loyalists the Vasari Rebel fighters do not inflict enough damage to outmatch the Aerias build speed and so the higher antimatter pool rescues the Advent.

END RESULT: FIGHTERS VS FIGHTERS:

In pure fighter wars TEC perspectives are grim. Both the Advent and the Vasari are quite capable of killing even the better TEC Rebels fighters and so TEC Loyalists are facing even more grim odds. The Advent fighters are overall slightly superior to both TEC and Vasari fighter wings, although it is not enough to decide the battle by anything but lack of remaining antimatter. The Vasari Loyalist however have by far the best fighters when fully researched. Vasari Loyalists fighters are so powerful they can actually decimate a fully researched Advent fighter fleet so hard that even 14 full time working Aerias cannot replace the losses quick enough.

END RANKING: FIGHTERS VS FIGHTERS:

1. Vasari Loyalist

2. Advent

3. Vasari Rebels

4. TEC Rebels

5. TEC Loyalist

It should be noted that any carrier loss in a fighter vs fighter only battle is unlikely to happen in a real game. The loosing fleet will simple withdraw its carriers once it is clear that the other side is gaining advantage. It takes very long for such a battle to finish and so the loosing side has plenty of opportunity to withdraw.

BATTLE TEST 02 - BOMBERS VS BOMBERS

ROUND 1: NO RESEARCH

TEC Bombers VS Advent Bombers:

Advent wins, only 1/14 carriers survives the battle.

TEC Bombers VS Vasari Bombers:

Vasari wins, only 1/20 carriers survive the battle.

Advent Bombers VS Vasari Bombers:

Vasari wins, only 1/20 carriers survive the battle. So even without any shield piercing phase missiles Vasari bombers are better than Advent bombers, although not by much.

ROUND 2: WITH FULL RESEARCH

TEC Bombers VS Advent Bombers:

TEC wins, however only 3 carriers survive the battle. This battle was a very close call and the TEC nearly had lost another carrier. Testing was done with the superior TEC Rebel bombers so I believe TEC Loyalist will do slightly worse, however mutual destruction should be assured. The numerical superiority of the TEC carrier fleet does help a lot.

TEC Bombers VS Vasari Loyalist Bombers:

Vasari wins, 14/20 carriers have been destroyed. The power of phase missiles does easily outclass the additional damage upgrade of the TEC Rebels.

TEC Bombers VS Vasari Rebel Bombers:

Vasari wins, 11/20 carriers have been destroyed. The even nastier phase missiles in combination with very durable carriers (thanks to shared shield Tech and armour restoration) make this battle go quite in unfavour for the TEC.

Notice: This test was done with 1.041 version of the game. In Patch 1.1 the durability research of the Vasari Rebels received a considerable nerf, so it is likely that their carriers will now take more heavy losses. They probably still will win though.

Advent Bombers VS Vasari Loyalist Bombers:

Vasari wins, 16/20 carriers have been destroyed. The inclusion of phase missiles research naturally reduces Advent changes.

Advent Bombers VS Vasari Rebel Bombers:

Vasari wins, 10/20 carriers have been destroyed. The even nastier phase missiles in combination with very durable carriers (thanks to shared shield Tech and armour restoration) make this battle a swift brutal execution of the Advent.

END RESULT: BOMBERS VS BOMBERS:

If everyone is only building bombers the Vasari unsurprisingly reign supreme. What is surprising however is the less than stellar performance of the Advent against the TEC. Advent fighters might be slightly better than TEC and Vasari Rebel fighters, but their bombers are at best equal to TEC bombers without research. Once people start to move trough the Tech tree, Advent bombers become the weakest. The lower number of carriers vessels also means more focus fire in any kind of engagement, which probably offsets the somewhat higher durability.

END RANKING: BOMBERS VS BOMBERS:

1. Vasari Rebels

2. Vasari Loyalist

3. TEC Rebels

4. TEC Loyalist

5. Advent

As bomber heavy fleets are a late game occurrence, the minor better performance of Advent bombers without any research is of no consequence.

BATTLE TEST 03 - FIGHTERS VS BOMBERS:

Now, we have established who does win a fighter and a bomber mirror battle. Now comes the most important test. If my enemy is having superior bombers, can my fighters at least defend against those? Preferably before those bombers destroy my key ships?

ROUND 1: NO RESEARCH

TEC Fighters VS Advent Bombers:

TEC wins, however at the cost of 6/20 carriers being destroyed

TEC Fighters VS Vasari Bombers:

TEC wins, however at the cost of 3/20 carriers being destroyed. This is a very interesting result as the stronger Vasari bombers do actually far worse than the weaker Advent bombers. This is probably due to the numerical differences. TEC Fighters attacking Advent bombers have only 5 fighters for 6 Advent bombers. In a large carrier fleet this does add up quite a bit and so it takes time. On the other hand TEC fighters attacking Vasari Bombers have 5 fighters against 3 bombers..... and so they can gang up onto the fewer bombers, doing a lot of damage.

Advent Fighters VS Vasari Bombers:

Advent wins, however at the cost of 1/14 carriers being destroyed

Vasari Fighters VS TEC Bombers:

Vasari wins, however at the cost of 2/20 carriers being destroyed

Vasari Fighters VS Advent Bombers:

Vasari wins, however at the cost of 5/20 carriers being destroyed

ROUND 2: WITH FULL RESEARCH

TEC Fighters VS Advent Bombers:

Advent wins: 0/14 no losses. TEC is better of by just building bombers in this scenario.

TEC Fighters VS Vasari Loyalist Bombers:

TEC wins, however at the cost of 3/20 carriers being destroyed.

TEC Fighters VS Vasari Rebel Bombers:

TEC wins, however at the cost of 8/20 carriers being destroyed. The latest phase missile upgrade is probably by far the best weapon upgrade in the game.

Advent Fighters VS TEC Bombers:

Advent wins, however at the cost of 5/14 carriers being destroyed. At first the TEC Bombers destroy 5 of 14 drone hosts. Then they run out of AM and it becomes a stalemate. The fighters destroy all rebuilt bombers immediately, however due to 20 carriers working full time at rebuilding them, the fighters never get a chance to attack the carriers. However due to the durability of the Aerias you can ignore the remaining bombers long enough to destroy 2 carriers. After that, kill the temporarily unharmed bombers and then wait for shield regeneration on the Aeria before killing the next 2 carriers. With 16 carriers left the critical point is reached, the bombers are now completely decimated and the carriers are killed by the fighters. It takes ages though.

Advent Fighters VS Vasari Loyalist Bombers:

Advent wins, however at the cost of 2/14 carriers being destroyed

Advent Fighters VS Vasari Rebels Bombers:

Advent wins, however at the cost of 5/14 carriers being destroyed. Phase Missiles FTW again.

Vasari Loyalist Fighters VS TEC Bombers:

Vasari wins, however at the cost of 3/20 carriers being destroyed

Vasari Rebel Fighters VS TEC Bombers:

Vasari wins, however at the cost of 3/20 carriers being destroyed. The lower total fire power of the Rebel fighters is offset by the higher durability of the carrier cruisers.

Vasari Loyalist Fighters VS Advent Bombers:

Vasari wins, however at the cost of 7/20 carriers being destroyed.

Vasari Rebel Fighters VS Advent Bombers:

Vasari wins, however at the cost of 12/20 carriers.

The initial result was quite similar to the Loyalist Fighters, however there was a stalemate between 15 Lasuraks and 14 Aerias...it was necessary to destroy the Aerias vessel for vessel with fighters. This lead to the loss of 7 more Lasuraks.

END RESULT: FIGHTERS VS BOMBERS:

Now, this is the only discipline where fighter performance truelly matters. And the results are interesting to say at least. Vasari are the winner, but they are closely followed by the Advent. TEC however is performing considerable below those two. On the other hand, TEC can most easily replace losses and has the most durable ships on average so it might be justified.

END RANKING: FIGHTERS VS BOMBERS:

1. Vasari Loyalist

2. Vasari Rebels

3. Advent

4. TEC Rebels

5. TEC Loyalist

TOTAL END RESULTS:

Now all of the above can be summarized the following:

Advent Strike Craft superiority is a myth. While the fighters are slightly better than the Vasari ones their bombers are at best equal to TEC.... but they dont have the economy to field as many carriers as TEC and Vasari and so they fall behind even on that front. When it comes down to it... Advent strike craft fleets even when fully supported can hold the line...nothing more nothing less.
The price for the best strike craft goes to the Vasari. The supreme bombers more than compensate for the minorly weaker than the Advent Fighter fleet. Fighers or bombers... the Vasari reign supreme most of the times and can more than hold the line when they dont. Phase Missiles are a very cheap weapon upgrade for their power and make their bombers unstoppable with far lower numbers than the other factions. The Vasari Rebel phase missile tech is even more lethal and makes every other weapon upgrade of the other races look pathetic in comparsion.
As it has been noted before... TEC have overall the weakest strike craft..... this is even more true for the TEC Loyalist who lack the additional weapons upgrade of the Rebels. A bit more armor on the carriers isnt going to help you in large scale strike craft battles, nor is it going to protect important ships from destruction for any reasonable ammount of time. However, if TEC is using their superior economy they should be capable of outproducing the Advent and possible the Vasari.
But the most shocking discovery I made is the very poor performance of fighters against bombers overall.

THERE IS NO REASON TO BUILD FIGHTERS. BY THE TIME YOUR FIGHTERS DESTROY THE ENEMY BOMBER FLEET ALL OF YOUR IMPORANT SHIPS ARE LONG GONE.

FIGHTERS DEFEAT BOMBERS.... but they take WAY TO LONG.

IN MOST CASES, all factions are way better of by just building bombers.

This should be adressed in the future. If I have 100 fighters and my enemy has 100 bombers I expect that none of my capital ships, let alone my Titan dies from the bombers.

Thank you for for reading.

Feedback is welcome.

Version history:

1.0 - Initial post - 03. January 2013

1.1 - fixed invisible text and typos - 03. January 2013

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To be fair though part of Advent air superiority isn't reflected by your tests: they have the strongest Anti-SC capitalship ability in the game(TK-push) and they can gain a large boost to strikecraft performance from Rapture battlecruiser.

And early-mid game before carriers are produced en-mass nothing gains air superiority faster then a Halcyon fielding fighters, especially if it hits level 6.

While it comes up less often, Deliverance engine shots also buff strikecraft.

Not to mention Advent also has by far the strongest flak frigate for removing enemy air from the equation.

It's also worth noting that the Advent Loyals have extra techs that affect strikecraft damage: Fury of the Unity, Ancient retribution, and Assimilated populace all buff strikecraft damage

Don't get me wrong, I'm rather surprised at how poorly the Advent strikecraft fared in your tests, but there are a lot of other factors beyond the raw stats of the strikecraft/carriers.

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ARESIV

Join Date 05/2011

+58

Quoting bilun,

reply 1

Good point about abilities in general. however those are very difficult to test as much of them come down to luck or very precise timing.

But what is the big deal about TK-Push? It throws them away... sure... but for how long? 30 seconds? That just means my ships will live 30 seconds longer.... that certainly useful but it wont change the outcome of the battle. The damage is irrelevant as it is not enough to deal with bombers... especially Vasari ones who happen to be Advents worst nightmare already.Add high antimatter cost and cooldown and you have a nice graphic effect... but little more. Easily 80 % of the hostile bombers will survive it..... and continue to pulverise your important ships. Assuming of course they didnt already. Against Phase Missile bomber wings Advent can forget Cap ships above level 4.... because they just die and die and die.

Yes, the Rapture is nice, but is another Capship that eats away your badly needed Titan experience.... Advent need quite a few capital ships to have full synergy...... nowadays you need a Radiance against Titans, you need a Progenitor..... ect..... I also dont think that 30 % firepower increase on fighters does help against bombers.... it a quantity problem, not a quality one.

Not to mention that said Rapture will likely die within seconds should your enemy spot it.

Quoting bilun,

reply 1

And early-mid game before carriers are produced en-mass nothing gains air superiority faster then a Halcyon fielding fighters, especially if it hits level 6.

True, however early game air superiority isnt that important anymore with large corvettes fleets running arround. Not to mention a level 6 Halycon looses to an Level 4 Kortul....believe me... I learned the hard way.

Quoting bilun,

reply 1

While it comes up less often, Deliverance engine shots also buff strikecraft.

It does? Nice, didnt knew that.

Quoting bilun,

reply 1

Not to mention Advent also has by far the strongest flak frigate for removing enemy air from the equation.

Why is it strongest? All say it is, but why?

But no reasonable ammount of flak will protect your Titan from going boom due to an overdose of phased missiles. And Flaks happen to be terribly against most other things. Not saying that they are worthless, just not up to the task in late game.

Quoting bilun,

reply 1

It's also worth noting that the Advent Loyals have extra techs that affect strikecraft damage: Fury of the Unity, Ancient retribution, and Assimilated populace all buff strikecraft damage

Indeed, although Fury of the Unity only works in culture.

Quoting bilun,

reply 1

Don't get me wrong, I'm rather surprised at how poorly the Advent strikecraft fared in your tests, but there are a lot of other factors beyond the raw stats of the strikecraft/carriers.

Yes, there are a lot more factors, but this is the raw power comparsion. Because abilites, culture and all the other things are highly situational. You cant count on them. Advent capships have awesome synergies, however against Vasari that often doesnt help them much because said capships usually life less than 30 seconds at the frontline. So it is helpfull to know if at least your carriers can make a stand or if they too should run like hell.

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Seleuceia

Join Date 01/2008

+240

I thought it was a well known fact that Vasari had best SC, and that was before Rebellion specific techs...

In any case, I question the usefulness of these tests, as it's extraordinarily rare for carriers to be duking it out with only other carriers...better questions would be like what bombers are best at killing titans/SBs, which bombers are most resilient to fighters and flak (which your later tests do partially address), what bombers and fighters are most resilient to TK push and flak burst, etc....

Vasari SC are in general the best without a doubt, in part because of phase missiles (for the bombers) and in part because the armor and high HP....the phase missiles when upgraded give Vasari bombers an immense firepower advantage over the other factions, allowing them to wipe caps, titans, and SBs much faster with their bombers....the higher HP and armor of course make Vasari SC very resilient (especially to cap abilities)...

Advent however I think are better than you make them out to be....

For one, carriers are often fighting after making jumps (sometimes several in a row), and thus the higher AM capacity of the Aeria becomes a much more significant factor....

Additionally, the enemy bombers likely aren't going to be hitting the enemy carriers, but other targets (caps, SBs, titan, support ships, HCs, structures)...in these far more likely cases, you are pitting the firepower of the fighter against only the resiliency and build rates of the bomber (not the DPS of the bomber and resiliency of the carriers fielding the fighters)....Advent fighters tend to be better at taking out enemy bombers than TEC fighters when you aren't dealing with large amounts of flak (which does happen quite often), though if you got lots and lots of flak it's kind of a wash....

Finally, Advent do have the possibility of using concentration aura...while raptures aren't common, they do appear every once in a while in the late game if a player chooses to go SC heavy...not as common now though that corvettes aren't affected by Advent or TEC titans....

Some other considerations are build times, which do not affect all SC equally and could be considered an advantage....

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Quoting ARESIV,

reply 2

Quoting bilun, reply 1To be fair though part of Advent air superiority isn't reflected by your tests: they have the strongest Anti-SC capitalship ability in the game(TK-push) and they can gain a large boost to strikecraft performance from Rapture battlecruiser.

Good point about abilities in general. however those are very difficult to test as much of them come down to luck or very precise timing.

But what is the big deal about TK-Push? It throws them away... sure... but for how long? 30 seconds? That just means my ships will live 30 seconds longer.... that certainly useful but it wont change the outcome of the battle. The damage is irrelevant as it is not enough to deal with bombers... especially Vasari ones who happen to be Advents worst nightmare already.Add high antimatter cost and cooldown and you have a nice graphic effect... but little more. Easily 80 % of the hostile bombers will survive it..... and continue to pulverise your important ships. Assuming of course they didnt already. Against Phase Missile bomber wings Advent can forget Cap ships above level 4.... because they just die and die and die.

And then when they come back it throws them away again. Effective use of TK push can pretty much render bombers completely unable to actually hit advent capitalships- their primary purpose. It buys a ton of time for your fighters & light frigates to do their respective jobs(killing bombers & carriers), during which time other races would have lost capitalships.

The large penalty to acceleration & max speed also makes it much easier for the advent player to position flak to best deal with fighters, and advent fighters will tear slowed bombers to ribbons.

The damage is just icing on the cake, softening up the enemy strikecrat a bit. But the primary purpose lies i nthe pushback & debuff.

A very good point, and indeed you certainly won't be getting one in the early to mid game. Rapture is a late game luxury purchase- even though it doesn't come up most games, it still comes up plenty often enough that it should be considered in any discussion about the relative strength of each faction's airforce/control.

Not to mention that said Rapture will likely die within seconds should your enemy spot it.

Not if you also have a Halcyon with TK push. Again though the Halcyon is very much a purchse made later into the game then most games run- but advent players will have that Halcyon more often then not.

Quoting bilun, reply 1And early-mid game before carriers are produced en-mass nothing gains air superiority faster then a Halcyon fielding fighters, especially if it hits level 6.

True, however early game air superiority isnt that important anymore with large corvettes fleets running arround. Not to mention a level 6 Halycon looses to an Level 4 Kortul....believe me... I learned the hard way.

Only if you stand toe to toe with the Kortul. A halcyon kiting the Kortul would fare much better.

Then again any 1v1 comparison with the kortul is kind of silly. Practically no cap-ship can manage that(due to the shield regen kortul has up at most times, least of all an advent capship which relies on synergy rather then raw power.

Quoting bilun, reply 1While it comes up less often, Deliverance engine shots also buff strikecraft.

It does? Nice, didnt knew that.

Quoting bilun, reply 1Not to mention Advent also has by far the strongest flak frigate for removing enemy air from the equation.

Why is it strongest? All say it is, but why?

Highest DPS per cost and per supply by a decent margin, bit better survivability per cost as well.

Flak isn't meant to counter bombers. But I digress.

TK push certainly helps keep enemy bombers off your titan. But in general yes, the Advent has a great deal of trouble dealing with Phase missiles. Many people actually do argue that Vasari bombers are overpowered due to their possession of phase missiles and the fact that they don't have inferior DPS per supply like every other unit with phase missiles- which honestly I think is a valid point being that phase missile research makes every other weapon research in the game look like a complete joke.

Quoting bilun, reply 1It's also worth noting that the Advent Loyals have extra techs that affect strikecraft damage: Fury of the Unity, Ancient retribution, and Assimilated populace all buff strikecraft damage

Indeed, although Fury of the Unity only works in culture.

Honestly I doubt an advent loyal player with 8 harmony labs will have any trouble having culture present where they need it. But like the Rapture this is very much purely something that will only really show up in very long games.

Quoting bilun, reply 1Don't get me wrong, I'm rather surprised at how poorly the Advent strikecraft fared in your tests, but there are a lot of other factors beyond the raw stats of the strikecraft/carriers.

Yes, there are a lot more factors, but this is the raw power comparsion. Because abilites, culture and all the other things are highly situational. You cant count on them. Advent capships have awesome synergies, however against Vasari that often doesnt help them much because said capships usually life less than 30 seconds at the frontline. So it is helpfull to know if at least your carriers can make a stand or if they too should run like hell.

Well it's certainly true many(not all though) of the factors I listed are situational, but that's no cause to completely discount them. I understand it's impractical to do any testing with these extra variables, and there certainly is value in knowing which factions have stronger strikecraft just based on base stats & weapon techs. That said though, that alone isn't enough to pronounce one faction's airforce superior. When it comes down to it in doing so you're basically discounting many of one faction's significant advantages then commenting that that faction comes up short by comparison to the others.

I do fully agree Advent bombers can't pump out the damage of vasari bombers regardless- any discussions about whether vasari bombers are balanced aside that's not where Advent shines- they are much better at controlling the proverbial skies, dealing with enemy strikecraft and in doing so keeping their own safe.

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Good read, and good research! I appreciate the attempt at apples to apples here and every piece of information is useful to those that know how to put it to use.

I will say, however, that fighters ARE important to build. Fighters and bombers are more or less effective at different things. Bombers have a damage bonus against larger ships (carriers for example) while fighters actually do higher damage than bombers against light frigates and corvettes.

Since mass corvettes are the preferred method for killing titans having a mix of fighters in your SC can save your butt.

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It would be possible to write a program that creates a "fleet" and then randomly distributes damage between them until annihilation. If you recorded the average results and the standard deviations of several runs, you could figure out what set up is more likely to win.

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I think that program is called Sins of a Solar Empire

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ARESIV

Join Date 05/2011

+58

Quoting Mr_Book,

reply 6

Good read, and good research! I appreciate the attempt at apples to apples here and every piece of information is useful to those that know how to put it to use.

I will say, however, that fighters ARE important to build. Fighters and bombers are more or less effective at different things. Bombers have a damage bonus against larger ships (carriers for example) while fighters actually do higher damage than bombers against light frigates and corvettes.

Since mass corvettes are the preferred method for killing titans having a mix of fighters in your SC can save your butt.

Only as long as you field low numbers. If you have maybe 10 squadrons it makes a difference.... but in late game we speak about much more.

100 bomber wings may have a terrible damage multiplier against certain ships.... but that doesnt matter much because they have so much raw firepower that anything dies regardless of the damage reduction. Fighters dont counter Corvettes very well, too.

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Quoting ARESIV,

reply 9

Fighters dont counter Corvettes very well, too.

That has not been my experience, and as Bilun and others have pointed out there are a LOT more factors than pure carrier vs carrier in any actual game scenario that renders your conclusions questionable in value.

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I'm curious if you're willing to do a corvettes vs. carriers w/bombers in a large scale fight (equal fleet supply). I've done a small scale test of 3 Percherons with bombers vs. 14 Shriken (sp?) corvettes (no upgrades for either), and the corvettes won with 4 losses--the equivalent of one carrier, basically. Had I thrown in a repair platform on the vettes side, it would have been zero losses, while a repair platform (alone) would not have helped the carriers at all (it would have been killed after the bombers, but before the carriers). What happened in this fight is that the corvettes wiped out the bulk of the bombers pretty quickly (1-2 minutes) then worked on the carriers while also shooting at the occasional bomber that still comes out (about 3-4 minutes). Alas, I have no recording because the ships were spawned with the dev exe and I forgot to do a save-load cycle at the beginning, so I got a desync'd recording at the end. Also, the same 14 corvettes lose badly to the same 3 Perches loaded with fighters; they barely scratch the paint on a Perch's hull before they're all gone. (An annoying thing in corvettes vs. fighters is that you cannot target fighter squads with the corvettes; if you click on the fighter squad, the corvette goes after its base carrier instead. You can click on individual fighters to target them with corvettes, but that's really annoying and impractical at larger scales. You can target bomber squads with corvettes though, and that works as expected.)

Anyway, corvettes are surprisingly good against bombers, probably because they have anti-light guns matching the bombers' armor (not anti-very-light like the "flak"), plus the corvettes can keep up with the bombers, have better maneuverability than the fighters, and they can shoot at the bombers while they turn (effectively almost 360 coverage, given how quickly corvettes turn). I suspect that if the fighters could either turn faster or could adjust their speed so they can actually dogfight/tailgate bombers instead of overshooting them by miles, they could work better as a canonical counter. Some of this could require game engine changes, although I'm hoping that maybe reducing the fighter's top speed to just above that of bombers but giving them a sort of intercept ability (like the Kodiak has) might be a workaround. I haven't tried to make such a mod myself yet...

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Quoting Tankbushed,

reply 6

Quoting Mr_Book,

reply 7

I think that program is called Sins of a Solar Empire

Yeah, but it's terribly slow/cumbersome for a large number of tests, unless you do nothing and let the AI handle the entire fight at 8x time; even then, it can take while. So I wrote a stand-and-shoot Python simulator, which does only Cobalts for now (https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/453834/page/1/#3463280); its results are an accurate representation of what happens in the game in small scale fights (verified up to 8v8 with what happens in the real Sins.) As for large scale... who knows, it would take an insane amount of micro to pull off the [nearly] optimal firing strategy given the game's interface, although it would be trivial for a decent AI (simply translate the target selection algorithm into C/C++; that part is only a few lines and hardly takes any CPU.) As an aside, according to my Python sim, which can resolve 1000 v. 1000 Cobalts in a matter of seconds, focus fire still loses [in uniform fights like this], even at that scale. Anyway, you could adapt the code for other purposes, like "what's the best LF?", "how effective is such and such upgrade?", and similar questions... My sim (obviously) does not account for any ships maneuvering; adding that would indeed turn it into Sins by and large, and would balloon the code by a substantial amount, assuming you could figure out the exact kinematic equations used in Sins (which aren't the real[istic] ones)... so it's not something I plan to do. So my tiny sim wouldn't be useful for stuff like fighters vs. bombers, where the [default] maneuvering is a big part of the issue.

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