SE Warfare II: Destroyers Are Better Than Cruisers 

As a Battletech nerd, this is what I call "Succession Wars Syndrome", where constant cycles of strategic warfare without sufficient pause for recovery result in a mutually degrading industrial base, causing a kind of forced de-escalation where both sides end up using less advanced but more logistically sustainable weaponry

I love the fact that you talk about actual real-world naval analogies. Came for the cool spaceships, stayed for Jutland.

I'm sad I have yet to see any faction invest in an Aircraft Carrier. I understand the fact that due to the speed cap that small grid is basically useless in a battle like this but I thought a formation of 1 AC and 3 Destroyers or 4 Frigates would have been awsome.

I think you have hinted at it a bit, but I would love to see a breakdown of how the KE has absolutely dominated this season, they seem to have tore through the CDF and Rider fleets. Would love to see a tour of their ships to see how they did that

note that might give a slight bit of favour to cruisers: taking more hits to kill also means it likely takes more time, which can be very valuable in a battle that can take only a few minutes to half an hour. being able to survive a few blews and rendevouz can be useful to let the vessel survive or if it's still mostly operational fight back with a counter-push

Might just be my perception, but seems like Gary has a crazy amount of additional thrusters, far more than the other cruisers. If so, explains its slipperiness.

"If a ship is a box with thrusters..." zooms in on an actual box with thrusters.

Given what I'm hearing here, it seems like the Naval ship classification system (not mentioning your server's weapon limitations) isn't structured for how Space Engineers works. For example, your description of the Cruiser and it's actual function seems much more like a light battleship, not a cruiser.

A Cruiser is great if you have a Cruiser.

It sounds like the loss of a destroyer is not as significant as as it should be.

The way I set it up, a cruiser is a more versatile ship. With dedicated hangar bay, production, and a more versatile array of armament, but in doing so makes it less potent pound for pound against large warships. Destroyers sacrifice a hangar, production and basically anything else not mandatory to gain speed and firepower, and has almost no point defense weapons, instead gaining a devastating artillery array to gun down large foes. So cruisers will still always have a purpose as a good general jack of all trades ship that can fights when needed. But when shit gets real, a destroyer hunting pack will kill almost any major threat.

Love your videos man. Your talk about faction wars and all that space ship thing made me interested in space engineers again, trying to learn simple stuff like ho to make hovers and bases.

Just got back into Space Engineers and Love these type of roleplay servers, definitely checking it out.

I remember when we first figured this out with Starmade in 2014. Was enlightening to realize cheap mass produced drones were vastly superior to ships with inordinate amounts of firepower and shielding. Nice to see the tradition continues to this day. =)

Torpedo boat destroyers are also mainly used to/good for screening heavier ships from, well, torpedo boats. Hence the name. Later they added torpedoes because the hero lives long enough to become the villain.

I don't play this game, but the fights going on the the video are mesmerizing lol. And I guess some of what you're talking about can be used in the book I'm writing.

Special weapons were also a big part of WW2 and WW1 destroyers mainly the depth charges which made destroyers some of the only and best anti submarine counters

Cruisers, in my mind, are meant to do just that. Cruise.

The U.S has a naval doctrine of accuracy by volume. That's why we have so many destroyers and cruisers per carrier and did away with battleships. I like to play with the komdo 2 destroyer . Guided missiles we with 5km range (vannilla) are amazing.

I like your videos a lot. It's nice to see SE combat being realised. But even way back in the day when it was broken af there was a fairly obvious diminishing return on increased mass vs effectiveness. When you factor in logistics/cost. In that the most efficient ship is the smallest "big" class of vessel. Aka destroyer. As you go up in size/class they for sure get more powerful, but they also get less efficient