Are escorts good for anything?

[WCG]

ORIGINAL: Spacecadet

- Because the Escort is normally dealing damage rather than receiving it, there is a chance that the attacker will have to flee due to low Shields.

That sounds very logical, but my experience (in just my first game, note) makes me question whether that would work for me.

I'm playing an empire in the Age of Shadows, and the pirates have ships with massive shielding. Even one pirate ship is usually a challenge for a fleet (and even after playing for awhile, I've still got two pirate factions with three times the number of ships I've got and three times the firepower).

In small numbers, my ships never even get close to eliminating the shields on one pirate ship. (And pirates normally go after my mines and other facilities, so I don't think a lone escort would even catch their attention.)

Because of this problem, I keep my ships in large fleets, and I've designed escorts to be large ships with rail guns, which bypass shields, and with lots of shields and armor themselves. (I don't know why, but I was surprised to find these pirate ships largely armed with rail guns, too, which means that my whole fleet usually needs repairs after an engagement.)

I'm also using carriers, which seem to be pretty nice. But the AI design for destroyers and cruisers seems to make them rather useless, except to sop up damage. (However, it's such a pain to keep manual designs up to date, that I've stayed with the auto-designing for everything but escorts.)

This has been working with the closest pirate factions, so far. But I'm just hoping the two big factions don't start attacking me. And I had one pirate faction with a capital ship which I thought was going to wipe me out all by itself. It took out a small spaceport, then moved on to a resort base. I thought it was going to destroy everything I owned in my home system, but I apparently drove it off (somehow - maybe my rail guns?).

And it never returned. That's another weird thing, because usually pirate vessels just keep coming back and coming back. Well, so far, so good. [:)]

Bill

[invaderzim]

It seems that small ships aren't good for much if you look at the numbers. They typically cost around 2000 or 1/3 the cost of the cruiser but die much more easily. With 3 escorts you have to pay for extra extra engines, hyperdrive, command center etc. but you wind up with a more fragile force than 1 cruiser. I've been thinking about using escorts for specialized support roles though.

Later on you could have one cheap escort that has fleet ECM, fleet targeting, long range scanning, proximity scanning, etc and maybe one long range weapon. Give it average shielding and tell it to evade both weaker and stronger enemies (I think this allows them to still attack at maximum range). By assigning one per fleet, you can free up some room on your big ships for some more guns and shields at the cost of some micro.

Another idea would be to have medium sized fast escorts with hyperdeny and scanners that you can use to chase down fleeing enemies and prevent them from escaping.

I like the idea of long range escorts that harass the enemy too at the cost of minimal micromanagement. It should work against other empires but I don't know if it does much against pirates since they like to just charge at the planet you are defending and raid unless the AI get tangled up in attacking you.

[Plant]

ORIGINAL: Spacecadet

I tend to view the Classes more as a Mission type platform more than anything else.

That said, I design my Escorts to be quick, so they're on the small side.
I set them up with Missiles or Long Range weapons only, and adjust vs Stronger & Weaker to be Standoff.
Last change is to set Flee when Shields are 50%, because one Shield at 20% most likely won't give you time to flee.

Escorts set up this way can really delay an attacker:
- Generally they can stay out of range while shooting into the following/chasing attacker.
- Since it is being chased, the Escort weapons essentially have a better range (the attacker is running into them).
- Because the Escort is normally dealing damage rather than receiving it, there is a chance that the attacker will have to flee due to low Shields.
- While all of the above is going on, you are buying time for other assets to come into play to deal with the threat.

Designing for being quick would make your ships larger, not smaller.
Everything you have written about your escorts would be better done by making them larger.

The larger a ship is, the faster it is, because speed is dependent on the amount of thrust per size.
The space efficiency gained from needing only one of command center, hyperdrive, proximity array, scanner, damage control, countermeasures, targetter, means that you got more relative space devoted to everything else, including engines. This doesn't even include the fact that larger ships are just simply less likely to be destroyed by to smaller amounts of damage. If you take to designing ships, you should realise that as long as its purpose is combat, larger is better in every respect that can be though of.

I can think of uses for ships that don't have to be as large as possible to be as well designed as possible, but those aren't combat ships.

[turtlefang]

Spacecadet and I have a similar philosphy - design mission specific ships.

Early in the game, pirates have a major technology advantage over the player, and his ships will simply cut through yours with minimium losses. The best bet is pay off the pirates until you can get to larger ship sizes (300+) and at least rail guns, a good beam weapon and a good long range torpedo/missile combination and at least the second level of shields and a few pts of armor. At that point, unless the pirates have found a capital ship or strong cruiser, you should be in decent shape. I usually keep ships in groups of six to ten anyway. Sometimes, you just run into a giant and lose the whole fleet regardless. And grav weapon or rail gun pirates early are simply difficult to manage.

Escorts. I view escorts as having one of two missions 1) setting three ships or so around a spaceport on permanet defense duty. These ships start at 230 pts and mine usually increase in size to about 300 in size. I heavy up on shields, weapons and don't usually worry about a lot of speed for these types of ships. 2) I usually use Frigates for this, design these as single ships to partol bases or trade lanes. These ships have to be big enough to fight off most single ships or two small ships. These average about 400 in size, use the calisto drive (if that is the fastest one, don't have the game in front of me), realtively fast, and carry a mix of beam and close end weapons plus anything I stick on it to enhance targeting or stop targeting.

These need to cost efficient enough to allow to enough of them to be build to cover the a wide area. And these aren't that useful when the big ships start fleet fighting.

Destroyers. I usually use these as my armored and gunned up scouts used with fleets. I put a long range sensor on these, then as many shields and weapons as possible. I assign one or two per fleet for eyes and ears.

Crusiers. These are close to the largest size I can build. The ships are very fast, heavily armed, have very long range, and as many shields as I can put given the other requirements. I use these in mid to late game as deep penetration and spaceport killers deep in enemy territory.

Capital Ships. As big as I can make them, not as fast or having the same range as a cruiser but more shields, more weapons, and designed as the mailed fist of a main battle fleet. Virtually always supported by carriers.

I just haven't found the smaller ships to have the range or the firepower needed for deep raids - although I haven't played the new expansion enough to know if capturing frieghters is worth the effort or not.

This works for me. Other people use other approaches but it gives me my guidelines for building my ships and how I design them. As a note, the designs end up very different, with different missions.

Early in the game (until you have size 400 or so) all the ships look the same or close to it. I try to keep the numbers in each class to what I think I will need long term - although capital ships and cruisers will be just about as many as I can manage.

[Trifler]

ORIGINAL: Spacecadet

I tend to view the Classes more as a Mission type platform more than anything else.

That said, I design my Escorts to be quick, so they're on the small side.
I set them up with Missiles or Long Range weapons only, and adjust vs Stronger & Weaker to be Standoff.
Last change is to set Flee when Shields are 50%, because one Shield at 20% most likely won't give you time to flee.

Escorts set up this way can really delay an attacker:
- Generally they can stay out of range while shooting into the following/chasing attacker.
- Since it is being chased, the Escort weapons essentially have a better range (the attacker is running into them).
- Because the Escort is normally dealing damage rather than receiving it, there is a chance that the attacker will have to flee due to low Shields.
- While all of the above is going on, you are buying time for other assets to come into play to deal with the threat.

This tends to be my design philosophy when it comes to Escorts as well. I will also add that they can make good support ships. The key is not to worry about their travel range.

In Pre-warp I find I need a Warp Bubble drive before they're useful. Without at least that, there can be no reinforcements.

[Sithuk]

Ship Classes: Escort, Frigate, Destroyer, Cruiser, Capital.
Ship Size: Only limited by tech level and other race related bonuses. Any Ship Class can have any Ship Design assigned to it up to the maximum build size at that point.

For the purposes of how the AI operates,
1. What are the differences in how the AI uses the current Ship Classes?
2. What, if any, reasons are there to apply an arbitrary ship size limit to the Ship Designs used for the current Ship Classes?

We can all play on manual using designs for roles as we like, but resolving the issues with the AI control will benefit the AI races and lead to a more challenging play environment.

[invaderzim]

1. What are the differences in how the AI uses the current Ship Classes?
2. What, if any, reasons are there to apply an arbitrary ship size limit to the Ship Designs used for the current Ship Classes?

1. As far as I can tell, there aren't really any. I like to let the AI run my empire for a while when I get tired of managing things. So I think I might build one general purpose combat ship and just tell the AI to build lots of these.
2. I don't think there are any. As long as your thruster tech can keep up to prevent your ships from becoming impossibly slow. With low thrust to size ratio, you'll reach a certain point where more engines will slow the ship down.

You can probably still win most of your battles with big slow ships that are armed to the teeth, but it takes forever for them to dock when refueling or repairing. This is pretty annoying problem though as it can take months for a really slow ship to crawl up to a spaceport after arriving. I try to maintain at least a cruising speed of 15 to 20 for this reason.

[Bingeling]

ORIGINAL: Sithuk

1. What are the differences in how the AI uses the current Ship Classes?

Build ratios, fleet composition, and it probably tries to put higher ship classes at higher value objectives if they are not in a fleet.

[paShadoWn]

The main difference between escorts and the rest is that AI doesnt put them into fleets as often and they tend to loiter around bases. Which makes their role quite obvious: to delay enemies until nearby task force arrives. Thus lots of engines and long ranged weapons, standoff/evade and fighter bay. Or tons of shields and ion cannons.

[Fenrisfil]

I think escorts can be useful, but they are certainly not something I would want to rely on. For pirates escorts are almost like civilian ships, they form an important part of your economy, but you can mostly just ignore them and let them go on their way under automation. Pirate escorts can happily carry out raids on weaker planets and maintain influence. They can also capture civilian ships and in larger groups can capture bases.

For a normal empire they are of limited use. They can deal with pirate escorts well enough and if you have a tech advantage they can be a bit more of a threat. They can also be used to take out undefended mining stations and the like, something they are especially good at if equipped with long range weapons (though sometimes this can take a long time). Basically they are best at generally annoying your enemy and prodding them lightly into submission. If I'm attacking an enemy colony or taking on a fleet I wouldn't even consider bringing these guys. Usually I try and keep my escorts as cheap as possible, fitting them into 1 life support/hab modules worth of space and so far it hasn't made them any less useful (or more useless perhaps).

[Plant]

I don't think you understand, turtlefang and Trifler.
If you have ship design automaton off and ship building off, you have no explanation to do anything you have written.
Turtlefang for instance, claims that he designs mission specific ships, but he gives no logical explanation to why he would restrict his unit sizes to the preconcieved notions of ship class sizes.

ORIGINAL: Sithuk

Ship Classes: Escort, Frigate, Destroyer, Cruiser, Capital.
Ship Size: Only limited by tech level and other race related bonuses. Any Ship Class can have any Ship Design assigned to it up to the maximum build size at that point.

For the purposes of how the AI operates,
1. What are the differences in how the AI uses the current Ship Classes?
2. What, if any, reasons are there to apply an arbitrary ship size limit to the Ship Designs used for the current Ship Classes?

We can all play on manual using designs for roles as we like, but resolving the issues with the AI control will benefit the AI races and lead to a more challenging play environment.

1) Escort ships are not included in Automated Fleet. Every other ship can be included.
All ships can patrol and escort and attack, but Cruisers and Capitals are likely to be included in Fleets automatically, and so don't do so.

There is supposedly design templates for each ship type for every race somewhere in the Distant Worlds Files. It is deifferent for every race, but they all follow the same broad guidelines.
Destroyers tend to be designed as the starting point of containing troop transports, Cruisers tend to be designed as to the start of having Fleet Countermeasures and Fleet Targetting component and fighter bay component, and Capital Ships tend to be designed with the recharging shield component. As you go up the ship types, they are deliberately designed to use less engines relative to their size, so they become slower as well.

2) For any ships intended to have a combat role, there doesn't appear to be one, no matter what those saying that they design smaller faster ships say, since the larger the ship, the faster it can be. The space efficiencies of being larger makes them faster. The fact that there are people who consistently think otherwise is bizarre.

For pirates, there is a good reason why you may want your raiding ships to be no bigger than a certain size, since you usually don't need mroe than a certain amoutn of boarding pods, and being able to subdivide your raiding amount is a good idea.

I think smaller ships may have a bigger evasion chance, but I am not sure.

Simply put, if you can design ship types or choose which ships to build, there is no reason to build Escort style ships, (ignoring Pirates who raid, but they funnily enough start off with a decent Escort design, becuase it is larger than normal and raiders effieciency is different.)

ORIGINAL: paShadoWn

The main difference between escorts and the rest is that AI doesnt put them into fleets as often and they tend to loiter around bases. Which makes their role quite obvious: to delay enemies until nearby task force arrives. Thus lots of engines and long ranged weapons, standoff/evade and fighter bay. Or tons of shields and ion cannons.

Except that you just denied the reality that Escorts are infact, not designed with long range weapons at all, or shields, or ion cannons. Not to mention, if they were designed with that that style, they would be bad at escorting, which is what the Ai make them do more than any other ship.

[turtlefang]

Plant -

Reread my post. I don't restrict my ships to preconcieved stats. The escorts I quoted were 300 pts in size which is twice the size of a "recommended" escort.

I have just found a use for 300 pts size ships, escort frigates for trade lane protection, specialized combat scouts (which I didn't list a size for but I build as big as I am able), and then crusiers and battleships.

The 300 pts ships protect bases and trade lanes where I don't need a 1000 pt ship crusier or battleship.

So the explanation is simple - I have found a use for two or three small ships in the 300 pt range protecting spaceports. And I keep the pirate population off my cargo ships by using 400 pt frigates - and I don't need to waste the money, resources or time in building a 1000 pt ship to do that.

If you want to put 1000 or even 1500 pt convoy escort duty, feel free to do so. I have just found it to be highly inefficient use of resources. By that time in the game, a 400 pt ship can handle virtually anything a pirate can throw at it unless hit by a fleet - and I just haven't seen those in the mid to end game.

[Plant]

Turtlefang-

Reread my post. Or not, your choice. 300 size is twice the size of recommended escort, is still your preconcieved notion of escort size and role. Why have 2 or 3 smaller ships, and not make a ship 3or 2 times bigger for protecting your starports? You are wasting money, resources and time precisely because you are building a smaller ship to protect a starport. 1 or 2 ships with a chance of arriving a second faster is not going to offset the survivability of a lager ship costing just as much as the 2 or 3 ships protecting that starport. You are being cost inefficient, wasting your money, resources and time precisely because you are building larger numbers of small ships to protect a starport.

As for convoy escort duty, there is no need to assign any ships to do so. That's your problem. Escorting isn't useful in general. Freighters can only be under attack in system. One ship per system is all you need, making them small will just incure losses.

That's just one role. Why bother making cruisers almost as big as you can make them? Your role intended is a combat role, just like you said for capital ships. There is no reason for not making them use up all the space that they can.

[turtlefang]

Plant -

A 300 size escort isn't a preconceived notion of an escort size. It has been determined by experimenting with the game that this size works best for this role. Mid to late game pirate ships and raiders simply fail against this type of defensive force.

Go back and test the game. Patrol/attack stances are NOT working as reported in multiple post. Multiple ships in a system increase the chance that at least one of them will react. Having only one ship in a system decreases the chances of a reaction to an pirate incursion and boarding party invasion. Test it out in the editor. You will see that having multiple ships gives MUCH better results than a single, large ship.

Ships set on patrol right now DO NOT STAY in the area. Again, test it out. See other post. It has been reported by many other people. Having multiple ships in the area strongly increases the likelihood that one or more of the ships will be around when something hostile arrives. The ships wander off. Then wander back. Right now, that is the way the game works.

And one ship cannot handle multiple pirate ships within a system at one time attacking from different directions. It means that troops will land on the planet. It is really that simple. And letting pirates land mean one thing - lost revenue. Either troops die, or population dies defending against the pirates, or, worse case, the pirates take the planet. And you will see that a single, large ship doesn't provide the protection that three smaller ships do. Test it in the editor.

Multiple smaller ships are better than one large ship over the long haul. If Matrix fixes the Patrol stance issue, that may change. But that is NOT the way the game works right now. TEST IT OUT, SEE FOR YOURSELF.

As far as building cruisers the same size as capital ships, reread my post. I use that class for deep raiding and design them differently. It is convenient to use the cruiser class for that purpose and the capital ship class for another. It makes it easier to retrofit and upgrade.

Re escorting. Yes, I know that freighters can only be attack in system. But I also know that I don't have a spaceport in every system so I need escorts for those systems where I don't have spaceports. Not really hard to understand as I don't want to assign a ship guard to every mining station - or potential trading location. It is not economical. So escorting is useful. In general, one escort for every three to four mining stations will decrease freighter losses substantially.

And economically, your better off by protecting these freighters. The protection more than out weights the "freighter loss replacement benefit" when the private sector buys a new freighter to replace the loss. Nearly always, the loss in revenue from transporting and selling resources at spaceports is greater than the purchase price of a new freighter due to the delay in getting the freighter PLUS the time in making it first round trip. You actually benefit TWICE from resources mined. Once when the freighter picks them up from the mining station commerce center, once from the commerce center of the spaceport when they are sold. This more than makes up for the freighter replacement cost and covers the overhead of the escorts.

And if you replace those escorts with, say, with a 1000 pt ship, the economics doesn't work out as well. You then have a smaller economy overall. And if you don't escort, you have a smaller economy overall. So yes, escorting actually pays off. And it pays off rather well. And that payoff actually INCREASES as the galactic population increases and the demand for goods goes up. Either the number of units of each good sold is increased or the price goes up. Either way, you win. The game has a built in inflation model in the economy until major war breaks out and trade breaks down. And then, you will need the resources to rebuild your fleets. Which means, you still need the freighters but even more raiders appear to attack them.

The game's only partially about combat. The bigger side of the game is economics to pay for the stuff that is fun - ships, troops, colonies, and all the rest. And you have to understand what drives the economy. Claiming only big ships work best in all cases doesn't maximize your economy.

So that is why you bother to make multiple size ships and why different sizes have different roles.

As the FBI says, follow the money.

[Plant]

ORIGINAL: turtlefang

Plant -

A 300 size escort isn't a preconceived notion of an escort size. It has been determined by experimenting with the game that this size works best for this role. Mid to late game pirate ships and raiders simply fail against this type of defensive force.

Go back and test the game. Patrol/attack stances are NOT working as reported in multiple post. Multiple ships in a system increase the chance that at least one of them will react. Having only one ship in a system decreases the chances of a reaction to an pirate incursion and boarding party invasion. Test it out in the editor. You will see that having multiple ships gives MUCH better results than a single, large ship.

Ships set on patrol right now DO NOT STAY in the area. Again, test it out. See other post. It has been reported by many other people. Having multiple ships in the area strongly increases the likelihood that one or more of the ships will be around when something hostile arrives. The ships wander off. Then wander back. Right now, that is the way the game works.

And one ship cannot handle multiple pirate ships within a system at one time attacking from different directions. It means that troops will land on the planet. It is really that simple. And letting pirates land mean one thing - lost revenue. Either troops die, or population dies defending against the pirates, or, worse case, the pirates take the planet. And you will see that a single, large ship doesn't provide the protection that three smaller ships do. Test it in the editor.

Multiple smaller ships are better than one large ship over the long haul. If Matrix fixes the Patrol stance issue, that may change. But that is NOT the way the game works right now. TEST IT OUT, SEE FOR YOURSELF.

None of the above applies to me, I just select nearby ships and attack. Easy. 1 in system is better than 3 in the same system. I don't know what is up with your assumption that I haven't noticed basic gameplay issues, nor with the assumption that the only force that you will ever have to protect against are pirates, which by the way, by late game, 2 or 3 size 300 ships will not be adequate for.

ORIGINAL: turtlefang

As far as building cruisers the same size as capital ships, reread my post. I use that class for deep raiding and design them differently. It is convenient to use the cruiser class for that purpose and the capital ship class for another. It makes it easier to retrofit and upgrade.

And yet you consistently fail to reason why yo would make cruisers close to as large as possible as opposed to as large as possible except for role playing reasons. Roleplaying is fine, passing them off as effective decision making is not.

ORIGINAL: turtlefang
Re escorting. Yes, I know that freighters can only be attack in system. But I also know that I don't have a spaceport in every system so I need escorts for those systems where I don't have spaceports. Not really hard to understand as I don't want to assign a ship guard to every mining station - or potential trading location. It is not economical. So escorting is useful. In general, one escort for every three to four mining stations will decrease freighter losses substantially.

Escorting is rarely useful, as most time is spent in hyperspace, where the ships cannot be attacked anyways. Costructor ships are few enough that you can guard in system patrolling, or if by escorting, there are few enough that you wouldn't want to use many smaller ships to escort each constructor ship.

ORIGINAL: turtlefang

And economically, your better off by protecting these freighters. The protection more than out weights the "freighter loss replacement benefit" when the private sector buys a new freighter to replace the loss. Nearly always, the loss in revenue from transporting and selling resources at spaceports is greater than the purchase price of a new freighter due to the delay in getting the freighter PLUS the time in making it first round trip. You actually benefit TWICE from resources mined. Once when the freighter picks them up from the mining station commerce center, once from the commerce center of the spaceport when they are sold. This more than makes up for the freighter replacement cost and covers the overhead of the escorts.

Economically,you are better off not escorting those freighters, safe up the fuel and maintenance costs for ships elsewhere, increase combat cost efficiency by not assigning ship uselessly. No idea why you are talking about the benefits frieghters can bring, as if I ever said that they were not. You beneifit from frieghters without wasting resources by escorting them.

ORIGINAL: turtlefang

And if you replace those escorts with, say, with a 1000 pt ship, the economics doesn't work out as well. You then have a smaller economy overall. And if you don't escort, you have a smaller economy overall. So yes, escorting actually pays off. And it pays off rather well. And that payoff actually INCREASES as the galactic population increases and the demand for goods goes up. Either the number of units of each good sold is increased or the price goes up. Either way, you win. The game has a built in inflation model in the economy until major war breaks out and trade breaks down. And then, you will need the resources to rebuild your fleets. Which means, you still need the freighters but even more raiders appear to attack them.

The problem is that you either left ship production automated, or ship automaton on or something. I don't, and is using my resources and protect my economy far more efficiently than you. You argue that if escort, then that size is effective, I argue that there is no need for escorting, therefore I your argument is invalid.

ORIGINAL: turtlefang

The game's only partially about combat. The bigger side of the game is economics to pay for the stuff that is fun - ships, troops, colonies, and all the rest. And you have to understand what drives the economy. Claiming only big ships work best in all cases doesn't maximize your economy.

So that is why you bother to make multiple size ships and why different sizes have different roles.

As the FBI says, follow the money.

Snide remark to imply that I don't understand the economical side the the game at all, because I can articulate clearly about "fun" combat. I never claimed big ships work best for all cases, if you bothered to read my posts, only that for ships intended for combat, which are your ship designs we were discussing.

As the I say, I am Plant.

[Bingeling]

ORIGINAL: turtlefang

Re escorting. Yes, I know that freighters can only be attack in system. But I also know that I don't have a spaceport in every system so I need escorts for those systems where I don't have spaceports. Not really hard to understand as I don't want to assign a ship guard to every mining station - or potential trading location. It is not economical. So escorting is useful. In general, one escort for every three to four mining stations will decrease freighter losses substantially.

One escort for every 3-4 mining stations? That is almost nothing.

Shadows have shaken things up a bit with the pirate raiding business. Once the initial pirates are beaten (which should be a tad easier with armor working), it is mostly back to the same old stuff. The odd raid on a mining station from weak pirate factions.

When has escorting freighters been needed? Not in my games. I see them attacked going to independents in Shadows. It is not a bright idea of them to go there, and the attacks are not something a couple of escorts will stop while independents are not yet part of empires. Other freighters attacked are usually caught up in war and blasted by a base aoe or something.

Constructions ships? I never escort them, and have not noticed losing them. It has probably happened, but not frequently enough for me to notice. And from Shadows I know that construction ships can be hard to kill until ships are quite powerful and either fast or long ranged.

I don't play a lot of games, but my impression is that in Shadows, you need to protect your colony systems as long as the system is subject to pirate raids. That is usually until the colonies there are powerful and well protected (so that pirates no longer consider them targets), or the pirates are dead/far away. Once that is over it is probably back to the same old business. A small fleet in every sector or thereabouts. And some larger ones within some sort of striking distance. In addition I have some proper mobile defenses, but that is fleets of 15 large ships, not a few escorts.

Any attack larger than "2-3 pirate frigates" is not trivial to stop. Enemy strike fleets are larger, as can pirate fleets be in shadows. I very much doubt a few escorts make a difference when those happen. I hazard a guess that if I play a Shadows game far enough, and don't have the original early days defensive fleets still present due to not bothering to disband them, my lineup with AI designs would look pretty much like it did at the end of the Yor AAR in legends (when I was probably the stronger empire).

The end lineup was: 41 destroyers, 110 cruisers, 55 carriers. Capitals were not available when the game ended.

Which I think was deployed as:

10 fleets of 4 destroyers to give some border protection from pirates, and some mine busters during war. There are always "small jobs" to do during wars, and the major fleets can't do all of them.
2 large fleets of 20 cruises and 10 carriers to bust colony defenses.
7 fleets of 10 cruisers and 5 carriers to fight normal battles and defend colonies during war.
And 1 destroyer leading the invasion fleet that otherwise had only troop transports.

Escort duty? I usually send a fleet ahead of colony ships until the game matures and I don't bother anymore. Automated ships? If pirates are annoying in a very mature game.

[DarkThug]

Numerical min-max speaking, there is none. Distant world suffer the same fate as most, if not all, space 4X game out there. Once you get the bigger ship there is no real reason to look back to smaller one any more.

Larger ship will beat smaller ship, period.
When going into battle with either 1 cruiser or 4 frigates. You may end up with a heavily damaged cruiser or 3 dead frigates (or some stranded which you will scrap them anyway)

Offensively speaking, just like Plant said, there is no real reason to bring smaller ship at all.
Matrix games should applied some sort of Escort-to-Capital ship ratio fleet bonus already !! [;)]



Defensively speaking, however, Is there any use for smaller ship ?, Hell YES !!

When you have 50 colonies and 200 mining stations to defend,
You don't need 250 LARGEST ships in your arsenal at every stations.
You simply need 250 BIG ENOUGH ships to fend off pirate threats.

The "big enough" can be vary. It can be 160 size early game, it can be 300 mid game, it can be 500 or even 1000 late game. Frankly speaking, I have yet to see pirate progress that far. They usually falling behind normal empire technological-wise after sometime. This conceivable size of mine didn't come from groundless assumption. It came from my experience. It may not be perfect and can be improved in many ways but making every single ships into largest size possible is not one of them. Economically at least.

With Automation on, you can bring the number down to 100 ships all over the empire.
With care and micro management, you can even down it to 50 ships and archive the same result with even less cost.
That is how the world work. Micro management will always yield better result than automation.
Unless DW AI is so godly which we all know we aren't there yet [:D]

Moreover, when you have 100 systems to take care of, Pause the game to react to every single one of attacked notifier can quickly be tiresome.
This can easily take away what you suppose to get from this game, Enjoyment (Not Efficiency). If you enjoy doing it, that is fine as well. However, I believe we are playing Distant worlds here and setting up automaton is also part of the game.

Now to current DW automation, I experience the same thing as turtlefang, The ship automation is quite retard and slow to react.
If you entrusted system defense to AI, rather than having a single size-1200-cruiser protect a system, having 4 size-300-Frigates give you better chance that one of them will actually react to the threat in time.

This is why My empire have hundreds of Frigate class in service (A minimally big enough ship that can actually beat something class) I might as well call this class a destroyer or a smaller cruiser or a not the biggest capital ship. This is the beauty of DW you define what a class be.
All of them will be put into fleets and assign to all my important systems in defend the sector fleet posture. When the need arise, These frigate fleets can respond and do any "small" job need to be done in war as well. During peace they will go back to their Home Base and stay on automation there.



Back to OP topic : Now to the Escort class itself (A tiniest ship with minimal weapon and armor class), do I have the use of them in my game ? well, I do. I will admit though that it's mostly for decoration. It make my Empire lively [:D]. Seeing ships running about doing their own business give me joy, Civilian and Military alike. There is a design I think work quite well. A tiny missile boat, 100ish size 2 missile 1 shield 1 armor 40+ cruise speed, with standoff, standoff, flee when 50% shield setting. Its job isn't to actually kill something but to harass enemies, to distract them, to "escort" until the target get away or to buy enough time until reinforce arrive and it does its job well. I let all of them roam freely outside fleet. When enemies pop up at one of my station, there are usually 1-2 Escorts flying around. They will proceed to shooting at and kiting enemies, distracting some firepower away from the station itself. Usually long enough for my frigate fleet to move its ass and arrive the scene without losing the station. With range and speed, It will always fight at maximum range. It can outrun any other ships. So I don't lose one so often. (I'm considering changing setting to flee when attacked as well)

One joy of Distant Worlds is to click at one of attacked notifier and see that the AI have already take care itself without my interference. [:)]

[invaderzim]

Numerical min-max speaking, there is none. Distant world suffer the same fate as most, if not all, space 4X game out there. Once you get the bigger ship there is no real reason to look back to smaller one any more.

Small ships were very viable in Master of Orion since you could build them cheaply and because they had dodge bonuses that would be further boosted with the latest engines and evasion systems. So you could choose between slow powerful ships that would probably survive a battle or fast cheap expendable ships that you might lose a few of each battle.

However escorts in DW aren't cheap for the amount of firepower you can field. You could try to build very fast escorts that could dodge better, but it would probably come at the cost of being able to mount a reasonable number of weapons. Also those escorts would have to pack so many engines they would be too expensive to be cost effective.

[paShadoWn]

When playing a pirate, escorts make the bulk of your forces, fitted with pods and tractors and left on auto they do raids and capture occasional ship here and then.

[Icemania]

I really like the fact the game allows players flexibility to follow their individual philosophies.

That said, if I used Automation, I'd probably want to understand more about the design intent and algorithms used, but since I don't use Automation, I'm not fussed.

Personally I never use escorts. I never use Classes. I simply have a single Military attack ship design, which is always based on the largest available size. They are organised primarily into fleets with some left outside of fleets for manual defence early to mid-game only. Typically the number outside fleets is no higher than 40.

I design my private ships so they are relatively fast, and past the early game, they are able to escape when attacked. There is no need to escort them as losses are rare.

With constructors, for debris fields I'll clear space creatures first, then generally leave then unescorted. There is no need to escort them as losses are rare.

For constructors relatively early that are building say Super Luxuries that are not close to home, I'll normally station a fleet until the base is built, then some manual ships for defence. Due to their economic value, and typically frontier location, some good additional defence is essential.

I upgrade all of my bases regularly during the game. After the early game they will typically have 10 Shields and 10 Torpedoes of the latest design. I try to play a "compact" game early to ensure they are relatively defensible.

I'll have some ships set-up to defend any system or base that is likely to be attacked and then defend those attacks manually. I'll ensure I have plenty of mining bases to meet resource requirements, but normally this is 40-60 mining bases mid-game only, and again they stay "compact" in space early wherever possible.

As soon I'm able ... I'll have an increasing number of Pirate Extermination Fleets doing the rounds, initially to clear the local area, then a wider ring around my territory, then the entire map. The Pirates will normally chuck a hissy fit during the local area clearing, and those Manual defence ships will be often needed, and sometimes a Fleet or two also. But after that it becomes quieter and my bases will also be getting strong enough to defend against the majority of Pirate attacks (e.g. Meridian Shields with Plasma Thunderbolt). I'll tend to keep a few Manual ships around in Frontier systems only while bases are being built.

Certainly by the time I have 50 colonies or 200 mining bases ... or sizes available beyond 650 ... the Pirate Threat is normally long gone.

With this philosophy I rarely take ship or base losses, Pirate raids are only successful very rarely and economically I find it very affordable. As I play large maps it's also important to keep the level of micro-management to a level that remains "fun" which this philosophy achieves, for me anyway.

But hey, each to their own.