The biggest problem that isn't really accounted for in high cap ships is in a given fight, they die faster than low cap ships, which means their DPS drops quicker. So when comparing a low cap ship to a high cap ship, the high cap ship needs better effective DPS. This often comes somewhat in the form of lower individual damage values which results in less overkill. Let's compare Space Planes and Zenith Reprocessors. At high caps, they are 344 vs 16 respectively. Let's look at the damage they do with no bonus, and against optimal targets: Heavy armor.
Space Planes
DPS: 273,671.1 (no bonus), 875,747.5 (vs Heavy x3.2)
Zenith Reprocessors
DPS: 179,200.0 (no bonus), 1,433,600 (vs Heavy x8)
So Planes are +52.7% DPS with no bonus, but Reprocessors are +63.7% DPS against bonus targets. Note also that Planes cost more than twice the Energy per cap, take twice as long to build a cap, and cost 61% more resources per cap.
This comparison is somewhat flawed because Space Planes have Radar Dampening, but I wanted to compare a high and low cap ship against the same armor type, and both of these have cloaking so that's a wash. But if it weren't for Radar Dampening, the Planes would suffer much faster lose of DPS due to attrition than the Reprocessors (they have 15.7% the health individually, and 33.8% the cap health).
Hmm, Micro Fighters are probably a better example as they are straight inferior to Reprocessors. Amazingly, high cap ships have really hefty cap build times. It takes more than x4.24 as long to rebuild Micro Fighters as Reprocessors. Anti-Armors take x5.76 as long!
I haven't really crunched all the numbers, but I'm pretty certain Micro Fighters and Ether Jets need a DPS boost. Several others too, but I really need to examine them better.
No offense, but I think you're missing the point here.
I may be a newbie when it comes to
AI War, but I'm not new when it comes to strategy games as a whole, and this analysis of high-cap versus low-cap units is very,
very shallow, and doesn't actually cover the reasons why someone would want to use one over the other.
No one who supports the use of high-cap ships (or, to widen the category slightly, cheap, spammable units in any game) is going to argue that they're going to be more powerful than a group of high-level, expensive units. The only case in which low-level units are going to be able to keep up with high-level ones in terms of DPS is if they can be well and truly spammed, to the point where they outnumber the enemy five to one or so (see: Zerg rush).
Let's go back to my original analogy: that high-cap units are analogous to the Imperial Guard Conscripts in
Warhammer 40,000. For those who don't play the game, the Imperial Guard is the "standard human" army in 40k. It has two main things that it can use to its advantage: cheap, spammable infantry, individually weak but which can be brought to bear in crushing numbers, and awesome,
awesome tanks.
So Guard armies usually fall into one of two categories: infantry armies, which might have some light mechanized support but which rely on numbers to win, or tank armies, which have few infantry (and thus have trouble holding objectives) but can bury their opponents under massive waves of firepower.
Infantry armies in the Imperial Guard actually have three types of basic infantry to choose from: Guardsmen, Veterans, and Conscripts. Standard Guardsmen are as flimsy as wet paper, miss half the time, and have a 50% chance, if they come under stress, to break and run. Veterans are more powerful in all respects, but are more expensive.
And then you have Conscripts. Conscripts are possibly the
only unit in 40k easier to kill in melee than standard Guardsmen (except maybe Tau Fire Warriors, but that's beside the point). Come to that, they're possibly the easiest-to-kill unit in the game
period. Beyond that, they're practically
guaranteed to break and run if they come under fire, miss a full two-thirds of all shots they take, and... well, you get the point. Basically they suck at everything, forever, compared to
everything else in the game.
And yet there are still top-level Guard players who will swear by the Conscripts and run huge blobs of them in all their Guard foot armies. Why? Because
the amount of damage-dealing potential they have isn't the thing that makes Conscripts worth taking.
Even standard Guardsmen are highly spammable, costing only 5 points apiece (and games of 40k usually consist of 1500 or more points per army). Conscripts cost even less, and come in squads of twenty rather than ten. They can't shoot worth a damn, they won't hold their ground against even the lightest attacks, and they fold like wet paper if anybody even looks at them wrong. But there are a hell of a lot of them, and they can still stand on the objective point and say "YAY, WE'RE CONTRIBUTING" while your more powerful units get the real work done. Your opponent still has to go through them if he has to win.
Which wouldn't really be a problem, because, y'know, Conscripts aren't exactly durable. Except... well, every shot directed at a blob of Conscripts is a shot that's
not hitting something that can actually hurt you. And if you ignore the Conscripts entirely, they actually can do some damage, or get dug into a fortified position in a critical area. Examine their stats and they suck. Use them on the tabletop, and there's no end to the utility they offer, whether it's cheap bodies to sit on a backfield objective just so you can say you have it under your control at game end or acting as a meatshield for your more important units.
Beyond that, a special Guard unit called Commander Chenkov can be used to make Conscripts
respawn, so even if your opponent guns them down at one point, he's never going to be able to keep them off the table entirely. They'll always be there, gumming up the works with cheap, expendable bodies.
That's what high-cap, low-cost, fast-building ships are good for. They cost you next to nothing, both in time and resources, and they still manage to make your opponent's life hell. And if they die? They'll be back just a few seconds later.
You don't use them for DPS. You use them for their flexibility and expendability.
