Destroyers vs Frigates....food for thought

But what would happen if you replaced some of the destroyer's armor with another weapon?

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Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

Well for only 100kt, thats not that much size difference in SEV. Are you putting combat sensors on both ships?

Given that the frigate gets a 10% higher doge bonus than the destroyer.
The extra weapons that a destroyer can carry should more than offset the bonus on the frigate.

try putting an extra weapon on the Destroyer see if that give the destroyer the win.

And tweaking strategies. And using combat sensors.

You have to get level 5 frigates before you get level 1 destroyers, so if you didn't also get level 5 destroyers it's not a fair test.

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Not really. If you spend research points on something it should yield you a better product - not a worse one. The benefit might be insignificant at low levels but it should at least be a step sideways...instead of a step backwards.

That's not true. In stock you can choose between researching more levels of frigates, or start researching destroyers. If lvl1 destroyers were better, or at least as good than lvl5 frigates, I can't see why you would choose to continue researching frigates (which is a dead-end), when it's obviously better to research destroyers!

The stock game doesn't provide many benefits to larger ships, with the exception of weapon mounts. Destroyers are particularly lousy due to crew requirements. I would ignore the destroyer class and skip straight to light cruisers.

In order to properly simulate the benefits of large ships you need to take an approach similar to that of the Gritty Galaxy mod. Thanks to leaky directional armor, larger ships are better equipped to make use of heavy armor plating which can deflect small arms fire. I plan to use a very similar approach in an upcoming project.

Get master computers and that space for bridge,crew and life support goes away.

Unfortunately the master computer costs more than the rest of the entire destroyer. The master computer is not cost-efficient to put on a destroyer, at least not in stock.

I think destroyers may make better seeker vessels than frigates, since with those the aim is not to get in weapons range but for direct fire the frigate is better

But frigates turn faster...

As far as my little experience extends, a level 5 Frigate is better than a level 1 Destroyer in combat. But, in the end, when both reach level 10, the Destroyer overcome the Frigate. This is why I do not use the first 2 - 3 level of a given ship, continuing to upgrade the design of the previous class. But, for a level 1 Destroyer there is a good use: very fast colony ship. It can host the maximum number of engines (2 more than a colony ship) and a number of supplies that allows it to reach even systems very far from the ones of yours (on the contrary, if you value less the time needed to reach a planet, colony ship are better, since have more space for supplies).

One of the other things to consider is upgrades. The minimum ship size (in stock) that can use a Large Mount is 400kt. That's a level 7 FF, a level 3 DD, and already at level 1 for CL and up. Sitting at 5 FF, 1 DD, if you have an existing ship base it may be a more immediate improvement in combat punch to go for 7 FF and upgrade existing ships than to change tracks, go for 3 DD, and build a bunch of destroyers from scratch. The max size of a destroyer is 575 to a frigate's 475, which is an improvement but not a whole lot.

The minimum size for Heavy Mount is 800k. Not even a fully upgraded light cruiser (675) can hit this; the first ship that can manage is the level 6 cruiser. Note that frigates through light cruisers go up by 25kt per level, while the cruiser goes up by 50kt per level, making level improvements a better buy. In stock, the cruiser is also the largest unrestricted ship that can have 12 engines.

Depending on how one's empire and neighbors are doing, a logical upgrade plan might be 7 FF, minimum 5 DD (which does hit the 3 needed for mount), minimum 5 CL, and then push CC all the way to 10. In many of my games the fully-upgraded cruiser at 1,000kt is as large as I really need for mobile units, given the loss of both tactical and strategic mobility of anything larger. You need to get battleships up to level 8 before they can use the Massive ship mount, and I'm rarely convinced that's worth it.

On the other hand, the Massive base mount increases to-hit and range as well as damage efficiency, and that can be crucially important. A Space Station can't hit that, but even the first level of Starbase can; if you're planning on needing serious fixed defenses it's well worth shooting for Starbase.

I noticed, that generaly (in any game) it is good to give same ammount of critical resource in defense and offense for units that hits and get hit (so it is only for slugging matches, not for parthian shot ships).
This is of course only "starting point" of design, and works only if choices are balanced (1kt kill everything weapon would beat this approach).

By the time you field a few Destroyers you should be able to field at least 10-15 Frigates, all of them were either at the frontlines or in yards for upgrades. And those ship are crucial in defending territories because they have more space and that their supplies are larger with a better weapon outfit, the Destoryers at first wouldn't have enough space to field the equipment so i don't use them.

Enemy destroyers gets chewed up early on (especially for me as i am a shield and phased beam FOCUS player). Of course, i couldn't argue that the Destoryer could take the next level of mount but will that be able to make it destroy a frigate is still out of the question.

Isn't researching DD or FF to lvl 10 a waste of research points? Normally when i hit lvl 5 i swap to the new design and stop resaerching the previous designs.

Best regards.
Pit Fiend

getting frigates to level 10 is a good idea because they're cheap and have the built in defense bonus so make good fodder ships if you need them, and have other uses

I have no problem with destroyers, they usually have 1000 armor/hull vs 500 for frigates. I know there is some overlap, but so what. i'd rather get the extra hull space and add weapons, than rely on the defense bonus.

I think for the points to get Lvl 10 DDs i can easily swap at Lvl 5 to Light Cruiser and get Lvl 2-3 in this field.

Lvl 3 Light Cruiser should beat Lvl 10 DD, isn't it?

Hope for some experience,
Pit Fiend

>Lvl 3 Light Cruiser should beat Lvl 10 DD, isn't it?

Sure. I usually switch, when the new ship type has 50-100kt more space than the old one.

But the original poster was saying that destroyers are useless, because frigates can always beat them. I'll have to try it myself, because the AI does not design frigates very well.

One thing to remember about any Frigate vs. Destroyer matchup: that defensive bonus only applies to Direct Fire weapons in stock. Seekers always hit if they catch you.

The larger hull sizes may be easier to hit with DF weapons, but also allow you to put more PD on them, defending against seeker weapons.

So if an opponent is going full DF, a smaller ship size is likely better. If they use a lot of torpedoes and missiles, then the smaller hulls sizes will actually be a liability, unless they can outrun/outrange the target.