General Class Fleet Composition

What is your opinion on what ships to build as a fleeter? I have recently returned after being gone a decade or so, and perhaps some of my thinking is pretty dated (Though my thinking was different than most 10 years ago, too.).

I've always been a huge fan of Battlecruisers, and mostly disagree with the benefits of building fodder. I currently have zero fighters, and have no plans of building any at all. If I need fodder ships, I consider that to be cruisers. Fighters slow down my fleet significantly, and usually guarantee I will have losses, whereas in most cases a large capital ship fleet nets me 0 losses. Sure, fodder is hands down superior in certain engagements - The problem is that most of my engagements are not of that type. Clearly my opinion on this is probably not widely accepted, seeing as almost every fleet I have crashed since I've returned has consisted of heavy fodder (Which I have had no trouble beating with minimal losses, and usually no losses at all.).

But then with the changes to the bomber, and the new reaper, I am kind of on the fence on whether they are worth it or not. The reaper seems like an absolute monster, and is awesome against BCs, but I can send like 4.5 BCs for the same deut cost as a single one. And the reaper, though not exactly slow, is still pretty noticeably slower, especially once your speed is teched up high. Speed matters quite a bit to me, since a significant amount of my attacks have to be recalled because I didn't get there fast enough. It also opens up more ACS and ninja opportunities.

Admittedly, I'm not nearly high enough ranked to hang with the big boys yet, and feel free to flame my way of thinking. What are y'all thoughts on fleet comp as a raider/fleeter?

That's my issue with fodder, though. When are you getting into even battles? And what about speed? When crashing fleets, speed is often the most important factor.

How often are you making hits on people, where the fleet comp is even enough that the fodder really helps you? I don't know about most people, but 99.9% of my hits are only done when I massively outgun the person, so is the fodder really necessary?

And when it comes to defense, fleet comp maybe matters .1% - fleetsaving is 99.9%. If I am relying on fleet comp for defenses purposes, as a fleeter, I am doomed to lose it.

That's my way of thinking on the matter, at least. Sooooo many reports that I see, every day, have so many unnecessary losses because they brought fodder, even though they massively outgun the person. If they had brought a fleet of BCs, it would have resulted in XXXX (-0), instead.

My biggest issue with fodder, is really the speed reduction. Being able to get in and out super fast, not only makes your hit more likely to succeed, but gives you more opportunities using phalanx, and probably even more important - you are much harder to phalanx crash, because your fleet is so darn fast!

One thing I was thinking that might make Reapers worthwhile to me, though, is for hitting people with heavy defenses. Not people that I am fleet crashing, mind you, but people who I am raiding for their resources alone (Gotta steal deut too, after all.). I really like that they have so much capacity, which means I can gnab resources in battles where the cargo ship losses would otherwise make it cost prohibitive.

Just as a quick example, based on your scenario of 2k BC and 100k LF vs. 10k BC.

Instead, I gave the attacker 20k BC and 40% higher combat techs, to reflect a more realistic scenario. The attacker would not lose a SINGLE BC in this case. Certainly it's not an even fight, but as I said before - How often are you attacking people when the odds aren't majorly in your favor?

In fact, I even ran the sim with double the LF, so 200k LF and 2k BC vs 20k BC, and the attacker lost only 5 ships.

Sure, this is not exactly a typical fleet composition scenario. But I think it does reflect how overrated fodder is.

I've been simulating Reapers against a lot of the turtles I've run across, and my findings have been that, as a raiding ship, they are only worthwhile for their cargo capacity.

Even against heavy plasmas, BCs have no problems obtaining 0 losses (Assuming you bring enough. But your deut costs will still be much less than Reapers.) But, assuming you are raiding for resources, then a mix of BCs/Reapers seems ideal. For this reason, I think I might build a few, as glorified cargo ships, essentially.

I just completed my largest fleet crash yet, and my force consisted of all BCs and BS. I'm building BS for moonshots, so I figure I might as well use them!

Their fleet was strong enough compared to mine that it was still a draw (I killed about 70% of their fleet.), but my losses were quite minimal nonetheless. I ran the sim with me having the equivalent cost of LF instead of the BS, and my losses were 4 times as much.

Now, ideally, I wouldn't even have the BS, and would have ample BC making the hit, but I am too new to the Uni for that yet (Soon!), and therefor the fodder would have meant an even greater loss ratio. But this really shows why I don't like fodder. Yes, I know it has its place - But in 99.9% of the hits I personally make, it would simply slow me down and get me more losses.

What I like about BS, is they aren't so crystal heavy, cost no deut, and are as fast as a BC. I super duper love BCs, but damn do you deal with a lot of extra metal when building fleets of them. Though that usually just means more weapons/armor tech for me...

At this point, I haven't been hitting any fleets where I needed cruisers, but at some point I plan to build them as fodder, for sure. Interestingly, my BC/BS are faster than my cruisers, but that's only because I've been pushing Hyperspace Drive research like a mofo.

The main problem with BS is they get obliterated by BC, which are not exactly uncommon.

But they have good structural integrity for the cost, so they can survive pretty decently.

They are not my favorite ship, but they are cost friendly, and can have little to no losses when in great numbers, and are just as fast as a BC, with more cargo capacity.

If bombers had more cargo capacity, I'd very seriously consider them for raiding. It has always baffled me that they don't have more cargo capacity than other warships, when it only makes sense for them to.

Well, even lanxing fleets, speed can be super duper important.

And since pretty much everyone and their uncle builds mass LF (Even more so with the Discoverer debris field exploit.), cruisers are a wonderful counter, as your fodder. And obviously they are fast.