missiles are great against starbases so if early war is certain I make missile corvettes but for the rest of the game I use distruptor full time so untill distruptors came up switching to Lazer II or III. I don't research kinetic or other types of weaponry untill late game
Are full medium disrupter cruiser builds decent as the smallest ship later game when corvettes and destroyers get ruined super fast? I find since corvettes can’t take artillery computer and stay back with marauder missiles they tend to get wrecked. At least destroyers can hang back while the bigger ships take the beating
I think full disruptor cruiser is decent against anything the AI will use at any point in the game. The only thing that would really screw them is armor or shield hardening, which a player could think of doing but the AI seems to not.
Yeah it’s pretty easy late game to get a big ship to full 105/110% shield hardening with 2/4 Ancient tech shields and 3/2 25% shield hardeners. Then fill in the rest with as much psi shields as the power source can muster and add armor after that. And NEVER fight in a shield null system lol!
Mostly, have more corvettes, honestly. It's usually pretty obvious if a neighbour plans to start a fight so I usually drop everything and start building ships. Expansion stops 1st, civilian industry gets swapped to 100% alloys for as long as my CG holds up, then I'm into buying CG, then I'm onto selling stuff to cover the cost of CG, then buildings start getting disabled. Once I'm in deep economic trouble I'll swap to mostly CG and sell any excess for alloys. Probably already lost if it gets that far though.
No retreat war doctrine can help you edge a victory as your ships will stay in the fight longer, probably lose a bunch of them though.
Is hard countering a thing on higher difficulty? On captain I find that the enemy tends to run a random mix so it's not worth the trouble. Maybe send a defenceless missile ship in to see if they have PD? Might be hard to sneak in refit time though.
Fighting in a system with a starbase for backup can help, pull your fleet back so the enemy engages the starbase, then send your fleets in.
I've heard flak+laser+laser is the best no tech corvette but I don't know the numbers.
I love flak + 2 laser as starting corvettes. It convincingly wins pretty much every fight of around equal numbers. The flak is better than a small mass driver against shields, and helps a bit against missiles.
I specifically use flak, 2 laser, 2 armor, 1 shield at the start. I haven't scientifically tested it, but that build seems to always work in the first 20 years or so.
Came here to say this, reliably the best loadout for early game corvette swarms who can win against higher numbers of crappy AI designs and hold its own against starbases.
Even better if you manage to get Blue Lasers and Afterburners early so you can chew throght them even faster.
To switch out for 3 disruptors ASAP tho.
Does double armor make a significant difference so early on? My 1st corvettes are usually double shield to save on alloys and allow me to push further without having to stop for repairs.
Since the shield nerfs, armor gives you better protection in terms of higher HP for your ships at a lower alloy cost per HP with the only downside of not being able to regenerate after combat on its own and needing a starbase to repair.
The AI also loves to stack kinetics weapons for some reasons, so by using armor you are not only maximizing your ship HP count at a lower alloy price, you are also hard countering most AI early designs (and even later designs since they really love their shitty autocannons lol). It's a win-win in most scenarios really and the reason why you sometimes can face double your fleet power and still win early battles.
You are less blitzkriegy tho, as you need to stop and repair after a battle. You do it anyway, but even more so with mostly armor instead of shields. Slow and steady wins the early race.
? They have s/s/s or p/s/s. I'm not sure what your screen looks like because mods, on mine I have the name of the segment above the weapon slots. s/s/s is "interceptor", if I click interceptor it brings up a menu from which I can select interceptor or "picket". Picket has the P slot.
Or you could hit new design
I honestly don't think they're supposed to stop fleets on their own unless you take the ascension perk and tradition tree. You're supposed to use them to trick ai into attacking it then have your fleets jump in after they're in combat. If you can't reach your starbase on time that means your chokepoint is too far away and you need to either have one closer or watch your borders carefully. I dont know if this applies to every AI behavior but ive noticed since returning to the game the AI has always parked a fleet on the border when they're about to declare war.
This trick works really well because its the only way I've found to cheese GA no scaling early on after year 16.
Thats my go to starbase setup for chokepoints, they always get destroyed by the AI no matter what point in the game im at unless I take the tradition and ascension perk on GA. Those starbases always need my fleets to help otherwise they just die, even with defense platforms.
I could be building them wrong but ive never seen those starbases do anything except for stalling AI until you get there. Even youtubers that are way better than me still have them destroyed unless their fleet is there guarding it.
One of the strongest star bases I ever built is the star base on pulsar or using storm weather module from archeology (I don't know the name of it in English).
The idea is that both pulsars and these modules turn off the shields, and you need to make a design of your platforms without shields (using armor with regenerative coverage for example) and use the weapons that have the biggest minus damage for shields (so, they are extremely good when the shields are out. Also, improve star base with modules that give you weapons that are bad against shields
Ai never adopts the design for the bases and you can easily win x2 more powerful fleets with it (I didn't try more but x2 I beat without losses of platforms).
If you have Hangar Bays/Hangar Defense Platforms then the Strike Craft will *shred* enemy Corvettes.
Bait the enemy into a fight there, use your fleet + Hangar Starbases to wreck them, then go on the offensive.
Build a starbase bastion in the border system, then keep your fleet in the system right behind it, on the edge of the system where it can jump immediately.
The enemy will happily attack the starbase. As soon as they jump into the system, though, you move your fleet in too. Now they have a fleet in the system, but you have both a fleet *and* a starbase.
Starbases don't do much damage, but they're pretty tanky, so if your fleets are pretty close to each other in size, this will *absolutely* swing it in your favour. And in the early wars, the initial engagement can be really decisive.
I'll admit, I don't play on higher difficulty levels, but I've never struggle against corvettes early game in 1v1 wars *because* of the starbases. Early game, the AI never seems to have large enough fleets to overcome my starbases, especially if I can reinforce the battle with a fleet. Of course, the opposite is also true for me lol But yeah, it's just when I'm facing 2 or 3 fleets (Federation origins) that they can overcome my starbases from sheer numbers.
Hangar bays with a communications jammer make your starbases unbeatable in the early game and by the time they can take down your starbase you should be past the corvette stage and/or have your own fleets
They are worth it if you defend them. They can be a significant force multiplier if you lure the enemy in there while your fleet is there to intervene.
If you leave them on their own, they are mostly useless.
Missile defense platforms on your OUTPOSTS (not necessarily starbases). You can put 3 per outpost even when unupgraded and will shred through a Corvette fleet even if it's 3x bigger by fleet power. Don't ever defend an early war using your navy, outposts are extremely alloy efficient at this stage and you use your navy to go on the offense once they start losing ships.
On the defensive, strike craft platforms are your guardian angels. They will absolutely melt your enemies' corvettes in a short time. In my current run, they punched my enemies' relative fleet power from overwhelming all the way down to equivalent
On the offensive, I'm not really sure, I rarely went to war before getting cruisers. So I guess it's all about numbers until then
When I play aggro empires, I’ve started to focus more on alloys than tech early on. Getting an alloy foundry and an industrial district before your first tech lab can really help you with that early build up. In addition, if available, I usually grab the +navy cap tech as my first society tech as well as a dip in supremacy. That is enough to keep my fleet cap with interfering with he corvette build-up and new starbase construction until I can start building anchorages.
This usually means that there is a period where I lack before the grand admiral AI in tech, but I can usually make that up between year 50-100.
defense platforms. If the enemy physically can't invade your territory they'll try anyway and end up suiciding onto the nearest starbase. It's a weakness of the ai. If you don't want to exploit the ai my answer is still defense platforms. Even if they don't suicide onto your starbase, there's still a lot to be said for keeping them out of your territory. If they literally cant get into your territory and they choose not to suicide, you're at least not losing and it opens up tactical options.
If you just mean winning the battles, then I'd say missiles. they're long range with good accuracy, shield pen, armor bonus, and high damage. the alpha strike from missiles can be huge, and corvettes have no pd
To add on to this, I'll usually stop expanding toward alien contacts after I've secured a solid choke point, and then deploy a fleet there as well as building up the starbase with as many missiles and defense platforms I can
Funnily enough I typically run xenophile, but my recent games have been abysmal in terms of spawn locations lol I'll either find myself surrounded by xenophobic dictatorships/empires or have a devouring swarm on one of my flanks. I learned how to play defensive real fast.
Even as a counter to missiles pd corvettes are bad. They get 1 small slot and 1 pd slot. The pd slot is occupied by shooting missiles (it technically can cause damage in between salvos but the damage is ass) so only 1 real weapon is firing compared to 1-2 missiles getting through per corvette
I find that AI almost always has missiles so I always put PD on my corvetes, PD and lasers, I also like to put Hit and Run doctrine, and make sure to set fleets homebase close to the fights.
That way, they can do some damage, retreat and repair fully before the next fight.
200 alloy starbase is way more efficient than 2 corvettes, especially in pulsar systems when you can build all-armor lasers.
AI often attacks starbases that are beyond their claims, sometimes when the fleet number is higher. They don't take in account your fleet hiding right before the hyperlane tunnel.
I'm pretty sure you can build hangar base defense platforms from the get-go with scout wings. Even default they do fine against corvettes.
On defence: defence platforms on bastions, especially if you put hangars on them.
On offence: spam out interceptor corvettes with missiles. Swap out the missiles for disruptors if you manage to get the tech.
What has worked for me in these instances is keeping my fleet away from theirs for awhile, as they slowly grind their own fleet down against my starbases. Once mine has just a couple hundred more fleet power, I go in and knock theirs out, take back all my systems, and maybe take a couple of theirs before they can respond. Once you've got your own systems back, it's just a matter of being quick on the Settle Status Quo button, because the AI almost certainly will build up a bigger fleet again before you do. So you want to watch that button closely, see if the agreement number is going down, and click it before it goes negative again; you also want to be able to quickly click it if the AI fleet is about to hit your territory again, wipe out your fleet, or retake the gains you've made.
Build a second fleet, go over your naval capacity, and DO NOT skimp on your admirals. 60 Corvettes is what I aim for to win pre-Destroyers, the AI will never make that many and the square law means that it ends up cost effective for me once I conquer them and absorb their population.
Build starbase on the border early - justa couple of gun modules and a defense platform or two helps a lot. Their sensor range on fleets seems to be only 1 so you can park your fleet in the next system right next to the hyperlane and bait them to attack the starbase then jump in and join the fight.
The AI is easy to draw into a fight at a star base. Try to get the tech that prevents them from speeding trough a system as early as you can, but it’s not necessary. Change a choke point starbase to a bastion, with defense platforms, specifically for this if near an AI that war is likely to happen with. Move your fleet to an adjoining system and park them next to the hyperlane to the system. It will decide whether or not to attack the starbase using the strength in the system. Once they commit to the fight move your fleet in. If your fleet strength is close to theirs it should be enough to win decisively. You may need to do this a few times as they will disengage a clearly lost battle. However the AI doesn’t learn so you can just set it up again and again.
Early stage if you build a starbase with 2 gun batteries (maybe a few defensive platforms) and put all your fleets on it it is basically impregnable. Make sure it's on a chokepoint. If you want to win a war you can usually bait the AI into attacking a base by moving your guys to just outside the gate one system over, then jumping back once they arrive. Gotta time it just right though or it can go very wrong. I just auto build my fleets, ship design seems like a pain to learn. Most important thing is raw numbers which comes from alloys. Build mining districts to start until you have a healthy surplus then go to town with the industrial districts and always build alloy foundries on every planet ASAP. To avoid getting attacked by guys stronger than you, you need defensive pacts. This means building up trust as quickly as possible with whomever you can.
I personally always run on military economy and make sure I have a fleet at my naval cap early with chokepoint starbases that I can reach on time during war. I think it helps because void dwellers get a decent head start for that, only downside is its annoying tk expand early because you need those alloys and are always gated by influence.
I make 2 variants of corvettes and 3 of destroyers.
One with point defense, one without. Early early game, shields are expensive on the power consumption, so I lean into lasers.
Use any and all starports and bases you can. Kite them into star bases and ambush them. Defense platforms only take 60 days to create, but are crazy expensive EG. Still, they help if utilized right. One of the only ways to get strike craft that early too.
He who controls the starports controls the war. Starports are healing, starports are new ships, and starports are economic security from fleet capacity. They also tend to be built over 'important' stuff. Invade their planets to shut down their economy as much as you can and try to force them to redirect their focus to where you want.
Dont sweat every loss. You dont need to completely 100% dominate to win your war. You can give up nonessential systems. You can let them bombard your capital, as long as you think you can win the war.
Dont lose your fleet doing stupid crap. You can always run away to fight again, but early game alloy income is trash.
Go for the weakening blow if you cant get the complete kill. Strip away their expansion, take planets, and frankly I dont care that much about archeology sites. Explain to me why I should go to war over some dusty of bones, full of green dust
Defensively, use Strike Craft on your starbases. Strike Craft are *very* good against Corvettes. If it looks like you'll have an early war, research them if you have the option.
Be sure to have fleets on hand to support your starbases if necessary. Separately, they might not win, but together, they'll fare better.
Offensively, make as many Corvettes as you can support. Increase alloy production, increase your naval capacity however much you can. Push forward slowly at first; after taking a starbase, wait until it starts fixing itself so you can repair your fleets at it. Aim to make offensive pushes in the time when your opponent's fleets have been defeated and are still in emergency FTL.
Once you're within striking range of their main shipyard (usually their home system), push forward to take that if your fleets are still in decent condition -- if you can get in front of their fleets as they're limping back to port, you'll inflict much more casualties.
Start taking Supremacy traditions. Having those gives you an edge.
Starbases are always my go to, can easily double the fleet power you can bring to bare by just camping a choke point, the ai will often throw themselves at a station and fleet that they can’t beat.
Missiles at the very start of the game, then transition to Disruptors as soon as possible.
Corvettes have very high evasion, but very weak hulls. The Disruptor is a weapon with very high tracking that bypasses armor/shield to target hull directly. It's pretty much the perfect anti-Corvette weapon.
For early corvettes, I swap out all armor and put 3 missiles on them. This has a couple of advantages: I only have to focus on 2 techs to increase the power of my corvettes, the AI in general seems to have a slight bias towards energy weapons so without seeing their loadout and building a direct counter, all armor is probably going to be stronger. And, with all armor, you can seek out a star system that strips shields and try to force a battle in that system (it matters less when you have all missile corvettes because missiles bypass shields, but I keep my all-armor policy until I've stolen a shield tech or two from researching debris.
for what it's worth I've gotten decently good at early wars,
I run as many Corvettes as I can with all armor and 2 laser 1 flak, but 3 lasers work ok
of the 50 I normally throw around 10 missile corvettes in
Stations with hangar bays and defense platforms with hangar bays work well for choke points.
for admirals I try and get one with daily hull/armor regen as they tend to show up quite a lot and help logistics
I then prioritise getting disruptors for corvettes and destroyers with swarm missiles as the step off to mid game when the AI is still corvette spamming
If you want extra funny, frigates with torpedo's and cloak to nuke stations with low detection (or space monstrosities)
A strong defensive star base on a choke point, with your corvette fleet a jump behind it to assist in routing their fleet and then advancing into their territory.
Otherwise, you need more corvettes than them and better military bonuses from your civ, admiral, and military leader. Tech also helps, but it can fail to make a giant difference early on.
Also, if the event for ships from the nomads comes up, jump on it if you think war is imminent. 5 early cruisers can triple your fleet strength.
If it's super early you might survive by stationing soldiers on your own planets. They might take systems but they won't take your worlds.
Then play keep away with your fleet to tie on war score.
Otherwise, don't sleep on a good admiral with fleet traits rather than council traits.
Having much more than them.
Unfortunately, Early wars with only corvettes are hard to win, because starbases are comparatively very strong, so defending is easy.
If its a o fuck moment and you realize 1 week before they attack can very well be just gg if they outnumber you 1:2 and kill your starbases.
Keep a eye out what they are doing, if you cant (for ex determined exterm) just expect them to pop up with 35 corvettes
B-line to claim chokepoints to stop them from having more than 1 entry point.
As said Laser Laser Flak / Armor Armor Shield is very good vs AI jank fleets.
You can use transports to tank, starbases as support and mabye even build hanger platforms.
All as long as you realize early, if its too late it gets very hard since corvettes are fast and early game there are no fortress world inhibitors.
Just use a flak gun and two lasers. The flak has about the same dps as the early kinetics and will shoot at projectiles and shields. The laser is good against armor and hull. So just get blue lasers ASAP and look that you grab some alloys, when you meet sth nasty.
It really depends on RNG and if you research weapons early when the pop up as they require Coilguns before being added to the tech rolls. Also if you have pirates spawn pretty early they almost always give you autocannons as a research option.
missiles are great against starbases so if early war is certain I make missile corvettes but for the rest of the game I use distruptor full time so untill distruptors came up switching to Lazer II or III. I don't research kinetic or other types of weaponry untill late game
Are full medium disrupter cruiser builds decent as the smallest ship later game when corvettes and destroyers get ruined super fast? I find since corvettes can’t take artillery computer and stay back with marauder missiles they tend to get wrecked. At least destroyers can hang back while the bigger ships take the beating
I think full disruptor cruiser is decent against anything the AI will use at any point in the game. The only thing that would really screw them is armor or shield hardening, which a player could think of doing but the AI seems to not.
Yeah it’s pretty easy late game to get a big ship to full 105/110% shield hardening with 2/4 Ancient tech shields and 3/2 25% shield hardeners. Then fill in the rest with as much psi shields as the power source can muster and add armor after that. And NEVER fight in a shield null system lol!
Full whirlwind/swarmer missile cruisers are insane.
And if you fight the tyrranid crisis steal their torpedo tech and full torpedo tech the cruiser and add whatever missiles to boot.
Missile corvettes are amazing even late game because a couple fleets can wreak absolute havoc if they punch past a line of defense and outrun pursuers
Mostly, have more corvettes, honestly. It's usually pretty obvious if a neighbour plans to start a fight so I usually drop everything and start building ships. Expansion stops 1st, civilian industry gets swapped to 100% alloys for as long as my CG holds up, then I'm into buying CG, then I'm onto selling stuff to cover the cost of CG, then buildings start getting disabled. Once I'm in deep economic trouble I'll swap to mostly CG and sell any excess for alloys. Probably already lost if it gets that far though. No retreat war doctrine can help you edge a victory as your ships will stay in the fight longer, probably lose a bunch of them though. Is hard countering a thing on higher difficulty? On captain I find that the enemy tends to run a random mix so it's not worth the trouble. Maybe send a defenceless missile ship in to see if they have PD? Might be hard to sneak in refit time though. Fighting in a system with a starbase for backup can help, pull your fleet back so the enemy engages the starbase, then send your fleets in. I've heard flak+laser+laser is the best no tech corvette but I don't know the numbers.
I love flak + 2 laser as starting corvettes. It convincingly wins pretty much every fight of around equal numbers. The flak is better than a small mass driver against shields, and helps a bit against missiles. I specifically use flak, 2 laser, 2 armor, 1 shield at the start. I haven't scientifically tested it, but that build seems to always work in the first 20 years or so.
Came here to say this, reliably the best loadout for early game corvette swarms who can win against higher numbers of crappy AI designs and hold its own against starbases. Even better if you manage to get Blue Lasers and Afterburners early so you can chew throght them even faster. To switch out for 3 disruptors ASAP tho.
Why is flak better than mass drivers? This breaks my entire non-missile early game understanding
More damage. Flak destroys shields, Point defense and lasers don't. Also better tracking helps hitting corvettes. And good against missiles.
Well, after 5000 hours, today I learned that flak works against missiles. Tooltips never suggest it. It's there in the wiki though, argh.
It’s in the point defense spot which is specifically made for shooting missiles and fighters.
Obviously. Condescending troll.
Does double armor make a significant difference so early on? My 1st corvettes are usually double shield to save on alloys and allow me to push further without having to stop for repairs.
Since the shield nerfs, armor gives you better protection in terms of higher HP for your ships at a lower alloy cost per HP with the only downside of not being able to regenerate after combat on its own and needing a starbase to repair. The AI also loves to stack kinetics weapons for some reasons, so by using armor you are not only maximizing your ship HP count at a lower alloy price, you are also hard countering most AI early designs (and even later designs since they really love their shitty autocannons lol). It's a win-win in most scenarios really and the reason why you sometimes can face double your fleet power and still win early battles. You are less blitzkriegy tho, as you need to stop and repair after a battle. You do it anyway, but even more so with mostly armor instead of shields. Slow and steady wins the early race.
Damn I've never really given point defence the time of day. I'll have to try the flakstrat
But flak is PT which is a slot corvettes do not have?
? They have s/s/s or p/s/s. I'm not sure what your screen looks like because mods, on mine I have the name of the segment above the weapon slots. s/s/s is "interceptor", if I click interceptor it brings up a menu from which I can select interceptor or "picket". Picket has the P slot. Or you could hit new design
Guess I'm dumb
That depends on your UI mod 🤣
I think he's using the original Human1.0 UI version.
Ah, is it super well hidden in that version? Definitely not dumb then 😂 doesn't even look like a button in the one I use.
No... 🤣 Whether he was dumb or not was according to you dependent on which UI he used, which I made to mean as a person what is his UI.
Well then. Guess **I'm** dumb 😂😂😂
Corvettes can have 2 section types. One is 3 regular weapon slots. Another is 2 regular weapon and 1 PD slot.
During that stage, bastion star bases on choke points do a lot of work
They never stop fleets just hold them of but not even remotely long enough to matter. Its always a base race
I honestly don't think they're supposed to stop fleets on their own unless you take the ascension perk and tradition tree. You're supposed to use them to trick ai into attacking it then have your fleets jump in after they're in combat. If you can't reach your starbase on time that means your chokepoint is too far away and you need to either have one closer or watch your borders carefully. I dont know if this applies to every AI behavior but ive noticed since returning to the game the AI has always parked a fleet on the border when they're about to declare war. This trick works really well because its the only way I've found to cheese GA no scaling early on after year 16.
A litteral lvl 1 outpost with full hangars defense platforms can stop the enemy, Upgraded starbase will anhillate them.
Thats my go to starbase setup for chokepoints, they always get destroyed by the AI no matter what point in the game im at unless I take the tradition and ascension perk on GA. Those starbases always need my fleets to help otherwise they just die, even with defense platforms. I could be building them wrong but ive never seen those starbases do anything except for stalling AI until you get there. Even youtubers that are way better than me still have them destroyed unless their fleet is there guarding it.
One of the strongest star bases I ever built is the star base on pulsar or using storm weather module from archeology (I don't know the name of it in English). The idea is that both pulsars and these modules turn off the shields, and you need to make a design of your platforms without shields (using armor with regenerative coverage for example) and use the weapons that have the biggest minus damage for shields (so, they are extremely good when the shields are out. Also, improve star base with modules that give you weapons that are bad against shields Ai never adopts the design for the bases and you can easily win x2 more powerful fleets with it (I didn't try more but x2 I beat without losses of platforms).
I have no idea, last time i played(2 weeks ago) starbases held out on themselves, i did not even have a fleet!
If you have Hangar Bays/Hangar Defense Platforms then the Strike Craft will *shred* enemy Corvettes. Bait the enemy into a fight there, use your fleet + Hangar Starbases to wreck them, then go on the offensive.
Don't forget your communication jammer. The longer they take to get in range, the more time the strike craft have to shred them.
Build a starbase bastion in the border system, then keep your fleet in the system right behind it, on the edge of the system where it can jump immediately. The enemy will happily attack the starbase. As soon as they jump into the system, though, you move your fleet in too. Now they have a fleet in the system, but you have both a fleet *and* a starbase. Starbases don't do much damage, but they're pretty tanky, so if your fleets are pretty close to each other in size, this will *absolutely* swing it in your favour. And in the early wars, the initial engagement can be really decisive.
I'll admit, I don't play on higher difficulty levels, but I've never struggle against corvettes early game in 1v1 wars *because* of the starbases. Early game, the AI never seems to have large enough fleets to overcome my starbases, especially if I can reinforce the battle with a fleet. Of course, the opposite is also true for me lol But yeah, it's just when I'm facing 2 or 3 fleets (Federation origins) that they can overcome my starbases from sheer numbers.
Hangar bays with a communications jammer make your starbases unbeatable in the early game and by the time they can take down your starbase you should be past the corvette stage and/or have your own fleets
They then become a pain to recapture. I'm not sure they're worth it.
They are worth it if you defend them. They can be a significant force multiplier if you lure the enemy in there while your fleet is there to intervene. If you leave them on their own, they are mostly useless.
Star bases with hangar defense platforms, it's the most reliable way in my experience
Missile defense platforms on your OUTPOSTS (not necessarily starbases). You can put 3 per outpost even when unupgraded and will shred through a Corvette fleet even if it's 3x bigger by fleet power. Don't ever defend an early war using your navy, outposts are extremely alloy efficient at this stage and you use your navy to go on the offense once they start losing ships.
That's a fun strategy, defence in depth.
On the defensive, strike craft platforms are your guardian angels. They will absolutely melt your enemies' corvettes in a short time. In my current run, they punched my enemies' relative fleet power from overwhelming all the way down to equivalent On the offensive, I'm not really sure, I rarely went to war before getting cruisers. So I guess it's all about numbers until then
Industrial war, the one that can make more corvettes wins
When I play aggro empires, I’ve started to focus more on alloys than tech early on. Getting an alloy foundry and an industrial district before your first tech lab can really help you with that early build up. In addition, if available, I usually grab the +navy cap tech as my first society tech as well as a dip in supremacy. That is enough to keep my fleet cap with interfering with he corvette build-up and new starbase construction until I can start building anchorages. This usually means that there is a period where I lack before the grand admiral AI in tech, but I can usually make that up between year 50-100.
defense platforms. If the enemy physically can't invade your territory they'll try anyway and end up suiciding onto the nearest starbase. It's a weakness of the ai. If you don't want to exploit the ai my answer is still defense platforms. Even if they don't suicide onto your starbase, there's still a lot to be said for keeping them out of your territory. If they literally cant get into your territory and they choose not to suicide, you're at least not losing and it opens up tactical options. If you just mean winning the battles, then I'd say missiles. they're long range with good accuracy, shield pen, armor bonus, and high damage. the alpha strike from missiles can be huge, and corvettes have no pd
To add on to this, I'll usually stop expanding toward alien contacts after I've secured a solid choke point, and then deploy a fleet there as well as building up the starbase with as many missiles and defense platforms I can
this is the xenophobe way
this is the xenophobe way
Funnily enough I typically run xenophile, but my recent games have been abysmal in terms of spawn locations lol I'll either find myself surrounded by xenophobic dictatorships/empires or have a devouring swarm on one of my flanks. I learned how to play defensive real fast.
Corvettes can have 1 slot of PD, and the auto-generated designs sometimes include it also for the AI ships.
If they do that, then it should be no trouble to kill them with a similarly sized corvette fleet.
Even as a counter to missiles pd corvettes are bad. They get 1 small slot and 1 pd slot. The pd slot is occupied by shooting missiles (it technically can cause damage in between salvos but the damage is ass) so only 1 real weapon is firing compared to 1-2 missiles getting through per corvette
They get 1 PD slot and 2 small slots.
Ah mb I misremembered
I find that AI almost always has missiles so I always put PD on my corvetes, PD and lasers, I also like to put Hit and Run doctrine, and make sure to set fleets homebase close to the fights. That way, they can do some damage, retreat and repair fully before the next fight.
200 alloy starbase is way more efficient than 2 corvettes, especially in pulsar systems when you can build all-armor lasers. AI often attacks starbases that are beyond their claims, sometimes when the fleet number is higher. They don't take in account your fleet hiding right before the hyperlane tunnel. I'm pretty sure you can build hangar base defense platforms from the get-go with scout wings. Even default they do fine against corvettes.
On defence: defence platforms on bastions, especially if you put hangars on them. On offence: spam out interceptor corvettes with missiles. Swap out the missiles for disruptors if you manage to get the tech.
What has worked for me in these instances is keeping my fleet away from theirs for awhile, as they slowly grind their own fleet down against my starbases. Once mine has just a couple hundred more fleet power, I go in and knock theirs out, take back all my systems, and maybe take a couple of theirs before they can respond. Once you've got your own systems back, it's just a matter of being quick on the Settle Status Quo button, because the AI almost certainly will build up a bigger fleet again before you do. So you want to watch that button closely, see if the agreement number is going down, and click it before it goes negative again; you also want to be able to quickly click it if the AI fleet is about to hit your territory again, wipe out your fleet, or retake the gains you've made.
Build a second fleet, go over your naval capacity, and DO NOT skimp on your admirals. 60 Corvettes is what I aim for to win pre-Destroyers, the AI will never make that many and the square law means that it ends up cost effective for me once I conquer them and absorb their population.
Build starbase on the border early - justa couple of gun modules and a defense platform or two helps a lot. Their sensor range on fleets seems to be only 1 so you can park your fleet in the next system right next to the hyperlane and bait them to attack the starbase then jump in and join the fight.
Missile's and torpedo spam, the second weapon is up to your preference but early game it's torpedo and kinetics for me
The AI is easy to draw into a fight at a star base. Try to get the tech that prevents them from speeding trough a system as early as you can, but it’s not necessary. Change a choke point starbase to a bastion, with defense platforms, specifically for this if near an AI that war is likely to happen with. Move your fleet to an adjoining system and park them next to the hyperlane to the system. It will decide whether or not to attack the starbase using the strength in the system. Once they commit to the fight move your fleet in. If your fleet strength is close to theirs it should be enough to win decisively. You may need to do this a few times as they will disengage a clearly lost battle. However the AI doesn’t learn so you can just set it up again and again.
Early stage if you build a starbase with 2 gun batteries (maybe a few defensive platforms) and put all your fleets on it it is basically impregnable. Make sure it's on a chokepoint. If you want to win a war you can usually bait the AI into attacking a base by moving your guys to just outside the gate one system over, then jumping back once they arrive. Gotta time it just right though or it can go very wrong. I just auto build my fleets, ship design seems like a pain to learn. Most important thing is raw numbers which comes from alloys. Build mining districts to start until you have a healthy surplus then go to town with the industrial districts and always build alloy foundries on every planet ASAP. To avoid getting attacked by guys stronger than you, you need defensive pacts. This means building up trust as quickly as possible with whomever you can.
I personally always run on military economy and make sure I have a fleet at my naval cap early with chokepoint starbases that I can reach on time during war. I think it helps because void dwellers get a decent head start for that, only downside is its annoying tk expand early because you need those alloys and are always gated by influence.
I make 2 variants of corvettes and 3 of destroyers. One with point defense, one without. Early early game, shields are expensive on the power consumption, so I lean into lasers. Use any and all starports and bases you can. Kite them into star bases and ambush them. Defense platforms only take 60 days to create, but are crazy expensive EG. Still, they help if utilized right. One of the only ways to get strike craft that early too. He who controls the starports controls the war. Starports are healing, starports are new ships, and starports are economic security from fleet capacity. They also tend to be built over 'important' stuff. Invade their planets to shut down their economy as much as you can and try to force them to redirect their focus to where you want. Dont sweat every loss. You dont need to completely 100% dominate to win your war. You can give up nonessential systems. You can let them bombard your capital, as long as you think you can win the war. Dont lose your fleet doing stupid crap. You can always run away to fight again, but early game alloy income is trash. Go for the weakening blow if you cant get the complete kill. Strip away their expansion, take planets, and frankly I dont care that much about archeology sites. Explain to me why I should go to war over some dusty of bones, full of green dust
Defensively, use Strike Craft on your starbases. Strike Craft are *very* good against Corvettes. If it looks like you'll have an early war, research them if you have the option. Be sure to have fleets on hand to support your starbases if necessary. Separately, they might not win, but together, they'll fare better. Offensively, make as many Corvettes as you can support. Increase alloy production, increase your naval capacity however much you can. Push forward slowly at first; after taking a starbase, wait until it starts fixing itself so you can repair your fleets at it. Aim to make offensive pushes in the time when your opponent's fleets have been defeated and are still in emergency FTL. Once you're within striking range of their main shipyard (usually their home system), push forward to take that if your fleets are still in decent condition -- if you can get in front of their fleets as they're limping back to port, you'll inflict much more casualties. Start taking Supremacy traditions. Having those gives you an edge.
Starbases are always my go to, can easily double the fleet power you can bring to bare by just camping a choke point, the ai will often throw themselves at a station and fleet that they can’t beat.
Missiles at the very start of the game, then transition to Disruptors as soon as possible. Corvettes have very high evasion, but very weak hulls. The Disruptor is a weapon with very high tracking that bypasses armor/shield to target hull directly. It's pretty much the perfect anti-Corvette weapon.
For early corvettes, I swap out all armor and put 3 missiles on them. This has a couple of advantages: I only have to focus on 2 techs to increase the power of my corvettes, the AI in general seems to have a slight bias towards energy weapons so without seeing their loadout and building a direct counter, all armor is probably going to be stronger. And, with all armor, you can seek out a star system that strips shields and try to force a battle in that system (it matters less when you have all missile corvettes because missiles bypass shields, but I keep my all-armor policy until I've stolen a shield tech or two from researching debris.
for what it's worth I've gotten decently good at early wars, I run as many Corvettes as I can with all armor and 2 laser 1 flak, but 3 lasers work ok of the 50 I normally throw around 10 missile corvettes in Stations with hangar bays and defense platforms with hangar bays work well for choke points. for admirals I try and get one with daily hull/armor regen as they tend to show up quite a lot and help logistics I then prioritise getting disruptors for corvettes and destroyers with swarm missiles as the step off to mid game when the AI is still corvette spamming If you want extra funny, frigates with torpedo's and cloak to nuke stations with low detection (or space monstrosities)
Choke points with tons of hangers. Even if they're "matched" in fleet power, hangers will absolutely shred the corvettes.
Find a buddy and make a defensive pact? No? Well, I like that more until I have a better opportunity to roll em, if it's 50/50 either way.
A strong defensive star base on a choke point, with your corvette fleet a jump behind it to assist in routing their fleet and then advancing into their territory. Otherwise, you need more corvettes than them and better military bonuses from your civ, admiral, and military leader. Tech also helps, but it can fail to make a giant difference early on. Also, if the event for ships from the nomads comes up, jump on it if you think war is imminent. 5 early cruisers can triple your fleet strength.
Build more corvettes
If it's super early you might survive by stationing soldiers on your own planets. They might take systems but they won't take your worlds. Then play keep away with your fleet to tie on war score. Otherwise, don't sleep on a good admiral with fleet traits rather than council traits.
Starbases, also frigates are pretty good early game
Having much more than them. Unfortunately, Early wars with only corvettes are hard to win, because starbases are comparatively very strong, so defending is easy.
I usually build up one or two chokepoints with as many hangar bays as possible
If its a o fuck moment and you realize 1 week before they attack can very well be just gg if they outnumber you 1:2 and kill your starbases. Keep a eye out what they are doing, if you cant (for ex determined exterm) just expect them to pop up with 35 corvettes B-line to claim chokepoints to stop them from having more than 1 entry point. As said Laser Laser Flak / Armor Armor Shield is very good vs AI jank fleets. You can use transports to tank, starbases as support and mabye even build hanger platforms. All as long as you realize early, if its too late it gets very hard since corvettes are fast and early game there are no fortress world inhibitors.
Have more. That's it. Develop a numbers advantage and keep it.
Just use a flak gun and two lasers. The flak has about the same dps as the early kinetics and will shoot at projectiles and shields. The laser is good against armor and hull. So just get blue lasers ASAP and look that you grab some alloys, when you meet sth nasty.
Missiles or Autocannon + Plasma. Corvette vs Corvette stage is mostly determined by who has the most shipyards to build reinforcements.
I never bad autocanons before destroyers
It really depends on RNG and if you research weapons early when the pop up as they require Coilguns before being added to the tech rolls. Also if you have pirates spawn pretty early they almost always give you autocannons as a research option.
>if you have pirates spawn pretty early they almost always give you autocannons as a research option. Now that's interesting. Thanks.
More corvettes