Small ships mid/late game (2024)

I tend to find destroyers, frigates & corvettes die really quickly once cruisers & battleships come along.

Naturally they are smaller ships & will die in larger numbers but they seem soooo fragile I wonder if it’s worth building them towards mid-game?

Am I missing something or is that just the way it is? Do people bother with them much?

Generally-speaking, bigger ships are stronger; if you use small ships thoughtlessly, you'll lose them regularly. However, they do have their purposes!

-Small ships are better at shooting small targets, due to smaller weapons; carriers are a useful alternative, of course.

-Smaller ships are better at close-range, particularly if they're fighting big ships and you have torpedoes. If you can jump in or ambush a fleet with a bunch of angry Destroyers at a jump point (e.g 'coming around a corner' to catch an enemy fleet off-guard), then you'll prevent the biggest advantage of big ships- that big guns can shoot you and neutralise your ships at range before you even think of doing damage.

-Small ships are better at stealth. This ties into the previous point; if you can appear on top of an enemy fleet out of nowhere, you bypass their range advantage, and they'll have an unpleasant day. (This can require setup, such as taking their detection starbase first, but it's very satisfying when it works. Consider Privateers/Criminal Megacorp if you want to try out this strategy.)

-Small ships are faster. If you're still primarily relying on sublight speed to reinforce your fleets, then they can catch up faster with their faster sublight speed.

-Small ships have various other specialist roles; picket ships can intercept enemy missiles before they reach valuable ships, corvettes are great for anti-piracy, and so on.

You'll generally want a majority of the biggest ship type you have available as the backbone of your fleet, rather than trying to do an even mix of ship types or something, but a few specialist fleets (e.g an ambush fleet with stealth and close-range weapons) or specialist roles can be fun to play around with. There's various Youtube videos that give more detail on how to use what, which I'd recommend watching if you want to play around with fleet builds.

Especially corvettes are useful for late game.
But as pointed out above me they are mostly used against large or as a distraction.

I personally follow the 1/3 "rule."
1/3 of my fleets are Corvette fleets, the other 2/3 Battleship fleets. (I run a mix of 1/3 carrier and 2/3 artillery)
The only small ship I find useless late game is destroyers, they have uses against corvettes, but in single player they are not something I build after I have access to Battleships.

Cruisers are wonderfull for the torpedo slots and are fast and powerful enough to be used as a harrasment force behind enemy lines.

GrandEurypterid said:

-Smaller ships are better at close-range, particularly if they're fighting big ships and you have torpedoes. If you can jump in or ambush a fleet with a bunch of angry Destroyers at a jump point (e.g 'coming around a corner' to catch an enemy fleet off-guard), then you'll prevent the biggest advantage of big ships- that big guns can shoot you and neutralise your ships at range before you even think of doing damage.

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Vanilla Destroyers can't use Torpedoes, are you thinking of Frigates?

Cruisers seem to be pretty great at delivering Torpedoes, even better than Frigates, so for Torpedoes there might not be a small-hull advantage.

HMS Enterprize said:

I tend to find destroyers, frigates & corvettes die really quickly once cruisers & battleships come along.

Naturally they are smaller ships & will die in larger numbers but they seem soooo fragile I wonder if it’s worth building them towards mid-game?

Am I missing something or is that just the way it is? Do people bother with them much?

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You should always have some maxed evasion corvettes in a fleet. 20 or so is good.

Because every shot at one of them is a shot that's not at something slower and more expensive to replace.

HFY said:

Vanilla Destroyers can't use Torpedoes, are you thinking of Frigates?

Cruisers seem to be pretty great at delivering Torpedoes, even better than Frigates, so for Torpedoes there might not be a small-hull advantage.

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Frigates are needed for small torpedo boats, indeed, but IIRC destroyers with big guns at close range did have a per-cost advantage over artillery battleships in at least one of the prior patches.

GrandEurypterid said:

Frigates are needed for small torpedo boats, indeed, but IIRC destroyers with big guns at close range did have a per-cost advantage over artillery battleships in at least one of the prior patches.

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Many big guns don't work at close range.

What does your artillery destroyer look like if it's compatible with close range?

HFY said:

Many big guns don't work at close range.

What does your artillery destroyer look like if it's compatible with close range?

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It's possible/probable that the meta's changed since then, or that it's medium guns; it's probably worth a double-check.

I can't help myself, I have to build escorts and screens for my capital ship, even if there is no mechanic in the game that requires it....even if it makes my fleet actually less effective to do so, it just seems counter intuitive not to.

Corvettes are alone in their own fleet. I RP them as scouts, but again, no mechanic really requires scouting in the game. Still the vettes have their role as fast reaction forces while defending or to grab lightly defended systems on the offensive. And in the event of an impending major naval engagement, they can be "attached" to a main fleet to attack at the same time.

Frigates are the biggest question mark in the game. Far too slow and not near maneuverable enough for their intended purpose. Only two ways to use them IMO. 1. With regular torpedoes grouped together in a fleet by themselves, sitting right on top of system entrances so that they can fire a full spread of torps the second an engagement starts. 2. With neutron launchers and artillery computers as escorts in a main fleet. They want to be an offensive weapon but they are really more suited to defense.

Destroyers are my main escort ships even in the late game. Have two main designs. The picket design with S weapons and Flak or PD thrown in to counter frigates, fighters and missiles respectively. And an artillery version with a kinetic battery and swarmer missiles.

CocoCincinnati said:

I can't help myself, I have to build escorts and screens for my capital ship, even if there is no mechanic in the game that requires it....even if it makes my fleet actually less effective to do so, it just seems counter intuitive not to.

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Having a "brawler" skirmish group mixed in with your stand-off artillery group makes perfect sense.

They don't screen in particular, but they do distract everyone from closing in on your X-slot ships.

I often use a bunch of Cruisers for this, but I'll happily add some Corvettes if I need to reinforce during a war.

CocoCincinnati said:

Frigates are the biggest question mark in the game. Far too slow and not near maneuverable enough for their intended purpose. Only two ways to use them IMO. 1. With regular torpedoes grouped together in a fleet by themselves, sitting right on top of system entrances so that they can fire a full spread of torps the second an engagement starts. 2. With neutron launchers and artillery computers as escorts in a main fleet. They want to be an offensive weapon but they are really more suited to defense.

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Anything a Frigate can do, can be done better by a Cruiser.

EXCEPT stealth. Frigates can stealth when Cruisers can't.

But you can't really rely on stealth outside your owned systems so it's not necessarily worth much.

maitue said:

Missile everything. M slots out the wazoo, and torpedos too. I tend to run mostly cruiser swarms, half missile artillery computers and the other half torpedos. I also get a couple of carrier battleships, but they make up a tiny amount of my fleet compared to the cruiser swarms. I never use other ships once I get cruisers teched.

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I thought going all missiles was sub-optimal because the AI is programmed to automatically go hard on PD if more than half your firepower came from missiles. Did the moderate combat rework change this meta?

Fulgrymm said:

I thought going all missiles was sub-optimal because the AI is programmed to automatically go hard on PD if more than half your firepower came from missiles. Did the moderate combat rework change this meta?

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(I cringe internally every time at the way Stellaris-speak uses the word "meta"...)

Anyways, back on topic, things are totally different since 3.6 with respect to combat. With 3.6, I typically use something like this for a "general purpose" fleet :

20x Destroyers
10x Cruisers
1x Titan
remainder (as fleet capacity grows - i.e. typically starting at 10 and increasing) Battleships.

Where the Destroyers are PD/missiles (S-slot missiles aren't very good, but what else can you put there?), Cruisers are Disruptors/Torpedoes, Battleships are X-slot Arc Emitter/whirlwind missiles (hangar mid section), and the Titan for its aura.

Whirlwind missiles in particular take a lot of PD to neutralize them so they are pretty good at getting through.

The Destroyers definitely take the most casualties, but I find that once that "screen" gets eroded away, a lot of other losses quickly start mounting, so it's important to keep reinforcing those.

The Cruisers provide fairly effective "knife-fight" capability.

Battleships fulfill their usual artillery function.

Note that with that fleet makeup, for example, every weapon is shield piercing (barring any shield hardening), save for the very unfortunate case of the Titan. In my experience, that "general purpose" fleet design does pretty well against nearly anything that the AI will send against it. I don't claim it to be strictly optimal though.

The youtuber Tachyon Lance just released a video analyzing corvettes in the mid to late game in PvE and PvP.

He advocates for a few screening fleets of PD/flak corvette pickets to neutralize torpedoes and strikecraft.

As pure PvE player I've found that economy >> fleet composition, but he's convinced me to at least try out a few corvette picket fleets in my next late game.

Most of my fleets mid game consist of:
1 titan
10 battleships
15 cruisers
5 destroyers
10 frigates

Each group has a couple of different ship types within each category (eg: the DD are pickets and a missile boat type) but thats the basic layout.

Most battles I find the pickets and the frigates die.

Any recommendations on changes to this?

Yeah, cut the Destroyers and Frigates.

Consider:
1 Titan
15 Battleships, split 4:1 between Artillery and Carrier
20 Cruisers (Torpedo)
Fill the rest of your cap with Corvettes with 90% evasion and Disruptors.

Not optimal, but it works fine.

HMS Enterprize said:

Most of my fleets mid game consist of:
1 titan
10 battleships
15 cruisers
5 destroyers
10 frigates

Each group has a couple of different ship types within each category (eg: the DD are pickets and a missile boat type) but thats the basic layout.

Most battles I find the pickets and the frigates die.

Any recommendations on changes to this?

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Frigates slow down your fleet too, less of a problem if there is a hyper relay but they are slow as f*ck.
Some mix can be good as other point out.

If you don`t want to run pure fleets I would sugges this.

Battle fleets
1 titan
20 Battleships: 14 Art 6 Carrier
60 Corvettes: PD and missile / disruptor

Raiding fleets
50 torpedo Cruisers: S slots for the rest, all missiles.
60 Corvettes: PD and missile / disruptor

Keep adjusting this by fleet limit, but try to keep the same ratio.
Destroyers are not really that good to use I feel, everything they do can be done better by the other classes.

GloatingSwine said:

You should always have some maxed evasion corvettes in a fleet. 20 or so is good.

Because every shot at one of them is a shot that's not at something slower and more expensive to replace.

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Which wouldn't be a thing if we had proper weapon slot prioritization on ship builds.... T/X/L/G slot weapons should be prioritizing (IE shoot first if available) heavy vessels/targets (IE Stations [slot different sized ones as necessary] Titans, Battleships, Cruisers, Destroyers, Frigates, Corvettes in that order). M/S/H/P slots should be targeting Fighters/Propelled weapons [extra priority for fighters and PD slots] Corvettes, Frigates, Destroyers, then Cruisers, Battleships, Titans.