This is true.
On the other topic, the CL is undeniably much more effective per hardpoint, per credit, and per unit weight than any other weapon. A CL nerf doesn’t necessarily mean that the CL becomes useless–it just means that the CL (in pairs) will take over the role of the individual CL.
If we bring CLs into line with the other short-range weapons in the game and add some mechanism by which we can order ships to attempt to keep their distance, I think we’ll have a better game because of it.
The easiest and lamest way to beat CL spam, is make the same ship than your opponent and replace speed with defences.
Or make the same ships with tribe hulls.
Well, there aren’t many other short range cruiser weapons in that category to compare it to. The QB is just a particularly terrible weapon, even worse than it’s frigate counterpart, the rapid fire laser.
The rest are race-specific like the howitzer (with costs the same or better as a QB) and the extremely scary rad cannon.
I’d feel comfortable leaving CL’s close to the way they are now if only to preserve the incentive to close distance. If ship AI gains the ability to avoid each other, the effective short range ships will already have to be shedding defenses for speed and some of their offense for longer range pursuit weapons as is.
The incentive to close distance is, by my reckoning, a bit too strong already. In addition to having some fantastic close-range weapons (CLs, backed up by pulse lasers or CBLs for armor penetration) you have the advantage of getting inside the range of a lot of short-range weapons. Too, I’m not sure that any cruiser is maneuverable enough to actually make a ‘keep distance’ order useful for avoiding a CL spam fleet.
I do agree that short-range weapons should be better in some way than their longer-ranged brethren, but I don’t think that per-slot they should be anything close to twice as good.
In the interests of trying some other things, I gave high-speed missile cruisers a try, set to Keep Moving and Attack Cruisers (range 2000). They work pretty well, supposing they’re in dense formation and have fighter target painter support, but there are a few problems:
If it weren’t for #2 this one would actually work.
As for other things, I have an Alliance cruiser design with enough armor to be effectively immune to all the weapons that can be mounted. I’m going to try a line of those, supported by a line of missile cruisers well back. Hopefully the CL cruisers will engage my nearly-invincible tank cruisers and get killed piecemeal by the missile cruisers.
Armor tanks play all sorts of havoc on CL cruisers. Not so much because of the weapon immunity, it’s because the driver can’t free itself of a target until it dies, and that’s doom for a short ranged unit. If those CL cruisers were smart (or lucky) they’d just drive straight past into the vulnerable units and wreck house while the 3k armor blocks sit useless. Same for fighters, really - I don’t hold a high opinion of overly ‘selective’ defenses, but they certainly work.
I’m surprised you didn’t have much luck with retreating cruisers, usually their fault is retreating from the wrong target. Perhaps they were too fast?
Nope–outrunning wasn’t the problem, but rather the fact that the DPS just wasn’t there. My setup was Imperial Centurion cruisers, speed .41, with 6 MW missile launchers. The target selection worked pretty well, if I properly packed my cruisers in–they’d pick something being painted by the fighters, and they’d kill it.
Again, they would have actually worked, had it not been for the map edge (though losing the painter fighters was a pain, and happened pretty quickly every time): I averaged about 95% to 65% by the time I hit the map edge. From there, my cruisers turned and the CL cruisers caught up, getting inside the minimum range of the MW missiles, and I think my best overall result was a loss with some 50% of the opposing force left.
Maybe smaller cruisers would’ve worked better (that is to say, non-Imperial ones), but on the other hand, I dunno if I could’ve made a .41 speed, 6 MW missile cruiser on any platform besides the Centurion, without completely forgoing defense.
Well, I’m saying .41 might be an overinvestment in engines, rather than more weapons or defense, but that of course depends on the map. If you’re hitting the edge of the map anyway, the extra speed probably isn’t doing you any favors. Why MW missiles and not fast?
For retreat, beams work pretty well as they are generally lightweight, high tracking weapon systems, provided shields are being downed in a timely fashion. Empire gets a 860m range beam, which seems to complement things nicely.
Certainly I’ll try some other things, but the issue is that there are simply too many opposing targets to defeat before they get to close range, whether from map edge or from simply catching up, and once at close range they rip through my cruisers (underdefended, compared to the norm, because of the speed) due to their higher DPS and smaller minimum range.
Then you may want to set up a few fake ships, to get the missile cruisers to go forward. And when the fake ships are destroyed run away cowardly.
And as said, you don’t need to be so fast. For example, against 0.42 CL spam cruisers. 0.31 missile spam can be enough. They will get catch at some point, but they will be close to the edge anyway.
Also specifically, in the above example, since CL spamers will try to get at short range and more or less be able for that, a few cruiser target painters are ideal.