Fleet and ship compositions in 4.0

[Kingman]

Whats the current best composition?

I normally prefer balanced ships but carrier style configurations were always my favorites in fiction

Are carriers worth it?

And for battleships whats the meta too?

 

[Ishyro]

The current meta is range + sublight speed.
Some computers let ships stay at their max range, and shoot at the ennemies while they can't fight back.
This is especially true for carrier computer, and also true for artillery computer in most cases (Sometimes the computer doesn't select the right weapon for the range check and you end up too close).

So the best weapon, in no particular order, are missiles, strike craft and X-slots.
Concerning X-Slots, arc emmiters are better 90% of the time (the 10% left are Cetana and multiplayer).
Concerning missiles, go for the S-Slot archeology ones if you can, M slot otherwise (The standard S slots have more damage than M Slot, but are far weaker against PD).

Carrier will be stronger than everything else most of the time. When the enemy has a lot of PD's or strike craft of his own, you might prefer X-Slots (against fallen empires or Gray Tempest for example).

Concerning fleet composition, I prefer mono fleets. I am sure you can mix ships without issue, but I don't think you would get any benefits by doing that.

 

[HFY]

For early conquest (not early-rush but pre-midgame) I like carrier Cruisers: [MM + H2p + M] where M = Whirlwind missiles and computer is Carrier.

For battleship carriers I like [LL + H4M + MM] where M = Whirlwind and L = Kinetic Artillery. They're not as good alpha as Focused Arc Emitter (X-bow) but they at least can fire their bow weapons while maintaining distance.

 

[Kingman]

Thanks guys. I have two follow up questions:

What about very late game? I mean the very when you are using repeatables

And why are arc emitters normally better 90% of the time?

 

[HFY]

And why are arc emitters normally better 90% of the time?

Because hull damage reduces enemy rate of fire.

So you win faster and take less damage while winning.

Space Torpedoes are also great -- if I'm investing in artillery battleships (with Arc X-bow) then I'll screen with some Torpedo Cruisers.

 

[Ishyro]

And why are arc emitters normally better 90% of the time?

Also they have better accuracy, and their DPS are not that much lower than the other weapons. As long as the enemy doesn't have shield/armor hardening, they will do the job without issue (and even then, since they don't have malus against shield or armor, they are not that bad).

For late game with repetables, energy weapons will be better than kinetic or explosive because of the bias towards physics research (it is far easier to produce more physics than the other sciences).
Strike craft also have 10% repetables instead of 5%, but there was a bug than might have not been fixed where only the initial fighters got the bonus.