That's right. Under the current damage formula, the star based base and defense facilities appear very fragile. In the past, the VASARI interstellar base could defend the player's planet with good positions, allowing the player's fleet to have the ability to do other things. But now players need to cooperate with the main fleet to achieve this, considering that there must be more evil AI fleets than players, this seems very inappropriate.

(Sorry, my native language is not English either)

For the graph based on this Post at section Durability and Penetration Calculations (simplified):

https://forums.sinsofasolarempire2.com/525851/the-art-of-war-update---sins-of-a-solar-empire-ii

https://www.geogebra.org/graphing/akkaqkaz

For my personal suggestion:

https://www.geogebra.org/graphing/yg9wdvvz

In both cases you get the damage modifier applied to DPS

if you want an overview of how the original with scale 1 looks like i made a spreadsheet here:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1D3YD_-X8nutUqzEdv299slAN9HziBEqYor3btErQZ9I/edit?usp=sharing

Keep in mind thats data only based on the coding shown in the patch notes and not the final damage you see applied in game as I assume there are some hidden modifiers. E.g. scalar could change depending on the fighting pair, or bonus damage is applied heavy ship vs light ship etc.

Ok i Updated my Spreadsheed i linked above with the charts. You can make yourself a copy and click the Ships in original or my suggestion as you like.

As you can see on this chart the DPS per Supply cost is straightforward and is missing a choice between dedicated specialists per Durability

The lesser dps per Weapon size doesn't work as it seems.

On weak ships autocannons are more cost effective but as the heavy cruiser is more DPS per Supply and more DPS per Cost there is no reason to choose the light frigate (offense stats only)

I try to implement the rest of the ships as well and try to create a DPS per HP graph soon.

Glad to hear you don't think the game is just a reskin anymore!   

I'm confident that someone will come along and mod the game to your expectations at some point. We're paying attention to all feedback and we're incorporating what we can as it makes sense to our goals.

I've directed our balancer at this thread, and I'm glad someone did point out that the missile spam concern does get countered by point defense. I've seen this play out in a recent internal playtest myself where someone tried to maximize their med missile damage and got totally countered by having a chunk of Defensors in the oppossing fleet. The new simulation is very complex, much more so than the previous game. There is a lot to account for and we appreciate everyone digging into it and trying to understand how it works!

Hi again,

to prevent misunderstandings i want to clear up my opinion. I crunched some additional numbers and got this graph:

DPS of the specific Ship * Durability logic modifier / specific Fleet support cost

What I think I'm seeing is that all ships have the same trend. Good vs light Durability bad against heavy. What I'd like to see is having each ship type its own peak. Excel at destroying heavy medium or light ships but mediocre or bad at other ship types like this(oversimplified):

Let's say: 

Missile Cruisers are good against Heavy Tagests but really bad against Light representing RED

heavy cruisers are good against light but bad against heavy ships representing Blue

Light ships are effective against med ships but not against light or heave representing yellow.

Whatever combination you choose or how you implement it i´d like to see a distinctive rock paper scissors system where specialicing gets rewarded significantly until you get countered and have to adept. If you choose to build a mixed fleet from the beginning the damage has to be as much reduced to lose to any specialized fleet there is of the same size. Only then it makes sense to specialize in the first place.

It's true you can tweak the same with Supply cost, but i prefer Supply be a nuance not a major tweak

Cost should have a mediocre impact on fighting capabilities but I do see the interesting gameplay and strategies you could switch on to stay at supply cap for an extended period of time as a reward for a good economy.

I love the ability to shoot down fighters and Missiles with PD and it is really interesting in the game. But at the moment it feels like Rock and scissors but missing the paper. And to be honest i don't really have an idea what the paper could be (something like fighters?)

In the end i like to express my gratitude for some good opinions and concerns!

If someone want additional data just post what you want to have calculated in which way and i can give you some Graphs or sheets,

Going to preface my comments here that while I'm a dev on Sins2 I'm not the one balancing units, so fret not if someone doesn't like my personal opinion here. Echo does a really good job of weighing the feedback he gets.

I have the same reaction as Erebus. I'm not a fan of monochromatic fleets or single damage type fleets. Creating a system that encourages pivoting from one monochromatic fleet to another is unappealing to me. That sort of design strategy may feel better in terrestrial RTS games, and I've seen folks complain about the viability of those kinds of fleets in Sins 1, but Sins 2 is a game where the focus is about fleet strategy and tactics. If your opponent has created a fleet that is best countered by something very focused, I think that should be viable to do, but I think building out a combat system that encourages that kind of play leads to very boring matchups and wastes the game's setting in futuristic space combat.

My preference is a holistic approach to fleet design where you have a variety of ships and the numbers of each class change based on what your opponent is building and where you're at on the research tree. There is countering happening, but you're not literally building a rock fleet to counter your opponent's scissors fleet. I'm in favor of encouraging a design that rewards treating a fleet as an integrated system of systems where all units work together to complete the task at hand, adapting as the match progresses and the battlefield changes.

I don't really approach this with numbers like supply, DPS or damage modifiers. Not to say those are irrelevant; I just don't think in that manner. To try & answer you're question though, this would be my thought process (note that I haven't put much work into compressing this, so apologies for trying to build the context I assume is needed for my answer).

Context:

1. Establish ship classes as having several roles; a primary (ship main purpose) & then the secondary (ideally some kind of redundancy to an existing function, just not as 'good' as something dedicated)
   1. Note, my own philosophy is that "mother nature loves to disguise weakness as strengths"
2. Smaller ships are less durable, but have high mobility. Larger ships are more durable, but have low mobility
3. Logically, war is a conflict that is influenced by the following
   1. luck - skill & capabilities don't matter if you're wrong place, wrong time. Sins2 uses random events to simulate this, I think
   2. number of troops - quantity has more impact than quality. Not to say quality can't "win", but having fewer numbers means any losses are more severe. For Sins2, I think this is why the weapon/armor/effective-health upgrades don't really amount to much. You aren't likely to hold out if the supply difference is greater than 300-ish? (I need many more games to build confidence on this though). This being said, in my vasari exodus games, I like to play as capital ships + titans + starbases only.
      ~Without the starbase alongside my fleet and with my ship levels being 5+ as well as all ships equipped with items - the exodus fleet seems to hold out well against enemy AI fleets with twice the supply.
      ~That said, an enemy ragnorak does alot of damage against this. If the enemy AI wasn't so keen on retreating they could severely maim my fleet. Sure, cap ships are strong, but high burst damage like that floating railgun is VERY good against all-cap fleets. New cap ships don't come with an abundance of levels either..
   3. technology - tools are important. For Sins2, the components & various ship classes are unlocked, ideally giving you more options to hold your ground or take some from an opponent
   4. resources - Equipment & people don't randomly phase into existence.
   5. production capability - If you have the resources, you still need to be able to apply them
4. Strategies (from game perspective)
   1. Strikecraft/corvette focused fleets - basically, the idea is to amass something cheap as fast as possible & not care about the losses. If larger ships like cruisers/caps/titans are set to be not as effective against a horde as they are against each other then you can just overwhelm them. For me, this is just cool to watch. Reminds me of the Formic from ender's game.
   2. strike fleets - fleets with a single purpose in mind.
      1. Could be something like a bunch of planet bombers sent in to knock out the planet before the starbase shields are online.
      2. Could be a bunch of heavy cruisers intended to knock out all of the civilian infrastructure to weaken opponents economy.
      3. Could be a bunch of missile frigates intended to overwhelm a starbases PD.
      4. Could be a bomber fleet intended to snipe high level enemy capital ships/titans.
   3. Anchor fleets - basically the default, well-rounded fleets that are adaptable. Most ships stick nearby each other to cover each others weaknesses
5. Counters
   1. larger ships can be swarmed by smaller ships. So between abilities & components they can either do AOE damage (which is more effective against smaller things) or increase their survivability. These larger ships may have abilities that can "clear" out large numbers of little ships, but the thing with the little ships is that they are easily/quickly replaced. Larger ships aren't intended to combat these little ones directly. Their AOE damage/survivability abilities are meant to buy time to react. If they stay where they are, they'll eventually get overrun. They could use the reprieve to retreat, or they could use the reprieve to attack the source of those little ships (they're coming from somewhere). If the game is set up to my liking, large cap ships can't indefinitely clear away swarms (flak bursts could be set as components with usage limits)
   2. strike fleets are really good against their targets, but presumably weak to anything else.
      1. planet bombers - planet shields, defensive structures, garrisons, hangar defenses & nearby fast ships like corvettes should be able to reach the frigate planet bombers and knock them out or thin them out long enough to get the planetary shield online.
      2. heavy cruisers - likely weak to strikecraft/corvette swarms. They can also just sit & bash on each other too
      3. missile frigates - reduced effectiveness with PD sources around. fast little ships or strikecraft can be used to engage them as they typically outrange the structures they counter
      4. bomber fleet - reduced effectiveness against PD sources & fighters/corvettes. Or destroying their host ships could work too. AOE damage sources from items/abilities
   3. anchor fleets are where the numbers game comes into play. They don't have any particular weakness, so you just want to overwhelm them. Research upgrades to damage/effective-health can come into play here too. Anchor fleets aren't going to be fast and they can't be everywhere. So strike fleets can hit where they aren't.

The above was meant to help provide some insight on how I approach things, apologies if it didn't help.. I'm not sure how to simply explain all of that yet..

The Advent still think they're being sneaky and haven't really revealed themselves in the game yet. Most of the ship abilities (for non capitals/titans) haven't appeared yet. We have alot of variation potential from the asymmetry of each faction - some factions will have an easier time doing particular strategies (vasari exodus is probably best suited for a heavy fleet, considering its mobile nature, whereas TEC Rebels are more inclined towards strikes fleets I think, especially once Insurgency is up. TEC are probably better for swarmy fleets with their economy and the sovas serving as anchors in a strikecraft/corvette attack fleet. Vasari are probably better bomber fleets, considering they don't seem inclined to use fighters).

Map size & the number of players will make a difference too. Tiny 2 player maps won't see much of what the races offer. Massive 10 player maps will likely have most players with fully researched tech trees and large, established empires. Planet bonuses & artifacts are probably going to impact specific cases.

At this point in the game's development I don't really concern myself with picking the numbers that much, mostly because I can just tweak things to be more to my liking (I'm part of the PvE crowd, so mod compatibility isn't much of an issue for me). The kinds of strategies/counters I'd want to see are listed above but they aren't all inclusive. Defensive structures are a thing and I'm hoping to make some personal mods that would expand on the "Exploit" aspect of 4X, which would make owning particular planets better for some factions than others - which would impact the balancing at least slightly.