How do I even beat an alien warfleet?

[Democratic utopia of Pakistan]

Ok, I'm way past the point of just picking off scout ships. All that's left are warfleets.
But no matter what technology I use, no matter what fleet composition I use, no matter how hard I try, no matter how much I cheat, I just can't beat the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ aliens.
I've tried everything: differnt Drives, armors, hull weapons, nose weapons, fleet sizes, and nothing works! I get obliterared Every. Single. Time.
This is the first game I've ever played, where I just can't win, even with cheating.
I've lost my interest in space entirely because of it. I've just resorted to doing a world conquest, as if it was HOI4. Way more useful, than sending wave after wave of years-worth of time fleets, only to die in a single alien salvo.
Maybe the problem is that I use AI control during battles. But ain't no way, I'm microing 15 differnt ships at the same time during the engagement.
Should've just stayed to HOI4, or Stellaris. This game is way too much.

[CG]

do you mean the alien station defense fleets?

if yes your answer is titans

weapons:
- 4 * 240cm green phaser laser (10 second firedelay acts as secondary PD before attacking)
- 1 heavy plasma battery mk2 (shreds alien ships)
- 2 * point defense phaser turrent

support
- 3 * advanced laser engine
- repair bay
- component armor
- ecm mk3
- heavy molten salt heatsink
- neutron spiker (optional - depends on the engine)
- non alien battery and radiator

- adamante armor 30/15/30 but you can go for double or tripple value, just eats into you range/travel time

as engine i use the neutron flux torch so they can get somewhere :D

i build fleets of 10 of them, fly to the alien station/fleet
if its a fleet you split yours in 5 each and attack at the same time so they cant run away
if its a station with fleet just attack the station, the alien fleets will not run away but fight

dont forget to bring a "colony" destoyer hull with you
built it with the same range as the titans + 1 outpost kit + 1 platfom kit
before fighting, split this ship off as a seperate fleet bc otherwise it will be destroyed
when you completed fighting just drop a platfom and build a spacedoc on it when deploying so after 30 days you can refill/repair your fleet and go to the next station

[Phraxas]

Basically, if you don't go for the exact tech the devs have decided you must go for right from the very beginning, you won't be able to defeat the aliens and they'll destroy whatever they want whenever they want.

[Democratic utopia of Pakistan]

Originally posted by CG:

do you mean the alien station defense fleets?

if yes your answer is titans

weapons:
- 4 * 240cm green phaser laser (10 second firedelay acts as secondary PD before attacking)
- 1 heavy plasma battery mk2 (shreds alien ships)
- 2 * point defense phaser turrent

support
- 3 * advanced laser engine
- repair bay
- component armor
- ecm mk3
- heavy molten salt heatsink
- neutron spiker (optional - depends on the engine)
- non alien battery and radiator

- adamante armor 30/15/30 but you can go for double or tripple value, just eats into you range/travel time

as engine i use the neutron flux torch so they can get somewhere :D

i build fleets of 10 of them, fly to the alien station/fleet
if its a fleet you split yours in 5 each and attack at the same time so they cant run away
if its a station with fleet just attack the station, the alien fleets will not run away but fight

dont forget to bring a "colony" destoyer hull with you
built it with the same range as the titans + 1 outpost kit + 1 platfom kit
before fighting, split this ship off as a seperate fleet bc otherwise it will be destroyed
when you completed fighting just drop a platfom and build a spacedoc on it when deploying so after 30 days you can refill/repair your fleet and go to the next station

Thanks.
I've just researched basic Plasma weapons, so I guess, I'll stick to Earth for now. From my understanding, there's no point in fighting the aliens, until I've got the right tech.

But what about other alien fleets?

[VoiD]

Early game missiles can trash aliens, even war fleets, if you aren't killing them you're not firing enough missiles.

Midgame missiles are still good (and the best weapon to 1shot the big ones) but coilguns are great, they can hit those big, slow alien warships, and armor won't save them, the big 4 slot hull coilguns or even the big 3~4 slot nose ones can often 1shot some alien ships, if they make it through the PD, which they can, if you bring enough of them.

Speaking of PD, lasers are not optional, either you have it and stop every single bullet and missile, or you lose your entire fleet, if you are getting hit by those you don't have enough PD lasers/particle beams, or even 240cm nose lasers (bad fire rate, longer range, can help cover other ships in the fleet)

Also, adamantane armor is a must, I've just played with naked 0 armor ships early in the game as it doesn't really matter, early armor is too heavy to be useful for anything, so I'd just make naked escorts/monitors with tons of missiles, their job is to start combat, turn around and flee spamming missiles, hoping they don't get 1shot by lasers. After Adamantane armor I've made some 100 frontal armor ships, and after some drive tech even something like 80/20/20 ones that can take a few hits and still be, sort of, mobile. Though your real defense is still PD.

Also, even early in the game I've destroyed a mothership by just having a few monitors with 40 rear armor (drifting towards them buttfirst) and battleships with 80 frontal armor. Their plasma is kinda nasty as it can't be stopped, but it doesn't do very well against high armor anyway, so those 4 ships have managed to facetank a mothership for several minutes until they were in range to spam missiles and take it down.

[Democratic utopia of Pakistan]

Originally posted by VoiD:

Early game missiles can trash aliens, even war fleets, if you aren't killing them you're not firing enough missiles.

Midgame missiles are still good (and the best weapon to 1shot the big ones) but coilguns are great, they can hit those big, slow alien warships, and armor won't save them, the big 4 slot hull coilguns or even the big 3~4 slot nose ones can often 1shot some alien ships, if they make it through the PD, which they can, if you bring enough of them.

Speaking of PD, lasers are not optional, either you have it and stop every single bullet and missile, or you lose your entire fleet, if you are getting hit by those you don't have enough PD lasers/particle beams, or even 240cm nose lasers (bad fire rate, longer range, can help cover other ships in the fleet)

Also, adamantane armor is a must, I've just played with naked 0 armor ships early in the game as it doesn't really matter, early armor is too heavy to be useful for anything, so I'd just make naked escorts/monitors with tons of missiles, their job is to start combat, turn around and flee spamming missiles, hoping they don't get 1shot by lasers. After Adamantane armor I've made some 100 frontal armor ships, and after some drive tech even something like 80/20/20 ones that can take a few hits and still be, sort of, mobile. Though your real defense is still PD.

Also, even early in the game I've destroyed a mothership by just having a few monitors with 40 rear armor (drifting towards them buttfirst) and battleships with 80 frontal armor. Their plasma is kinda nasty as it can't be stopped, but it doesn't do very well against high armor anyway, so those 4 ships have managed to facetank a mothership for several minutes until they were in range to spam missiles and take it down.

What kind of laser PD is the best and second-best? I don't even see my PD firing, but maybe not all lasers are visible. Or what I fear is that the PD doesn't fire at all, althou I don't know how that would've even been possible.
As for the Mothership. Early-on I had an even better encounter. I've killed it with just 6 Monitors using Riverjack Missiles, and only lost 2 lol
It was chasing my little fleet at full speed, so its PD had less time to act.

[fuzzymiles]

It seems like PD is NOT dorsal turret mounted, so it seems you have to go "broadside"-ish if you want to use your PD. Maybe I am missing something, but there ya go.

[VoiD]

Originally posted by czarek723:

Originally posted by VoiD:

Early game missiles can trash aliens, even war fleets, if you aren't killing them you're not firing enough missiles.

Midgame missiles are still good (and the best weapon to 1shot the big ones) but coilguns are great, they can hit those big, slow alien warships, and armor won't save them, the big 4 slot hull coilguns or even the big 3~4 slot nose ones can often 1shot some alien ships, if they make it through the PD, which they can, if you bring enough of them.

Speaking of PD, lasers are not optional, either you have it and stop every single bullet and missile, or you lose your entire fleet, if you are getting hit by those you don't have enough PD lasers/particle beams, or even 240cm nose lasers (bad fire rate, longer range, can help cover other ships in the fleet)

Also, adamantane armor is a must, I've just played with naked 0 armor ships early in the game as it doesn't really matter, early armor is too heavy to be useful for anything, so I'd just make naked escorts/monitors with tons of missiles, their job is to start combat, turn around and flee spamming missiles, hoping they don't get 1shot by lasers. After Adamantane armor I've made some 100 frontal armor ships, and after some drive tech even something like 80/20/20 ones that can take a few hits and still be, sort of, mobile. Though your real defense is still PD.

Also, even early in the game I've destroyed a mothership by just having a few monitors with 40 rear armor (drifting towards them buttfirst) and battleships with 80 frontal armor. Their plasma is kinda nasty as it can't be stopped, but it doesn't do very well against high armor anyway, so those 4 ships have managed to facetank a mothership for several minutes until they were in range to spam missiles and take it down.

What kind of laser PD is the best and second-best? I don't even see my PD firing, but maybe not all lasers are visible. Or what I fear is that the PD doesn't fire at all, althou I don't know how that would've even been possible.
As for the Mothership. Early-on I had an even better encounter. I've killed it with just 6 Monitors using Riverjack Missiles, and only lost 2 lol
It was chasing my little fleet at full speed, so its PD had less time to act.

Regular PD, then arc, then phaser works wonders, but like the above poster said, ships have firing arcs and if you lock in direction of your enemy they can't shoot incoming missiles and projectiles comming directly from the front.

Also, when a ship is big enough, like a dreadnought, even large coil batteries can't fire at targets if you're pointing 100% at your targets @ long distances, it's ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up, that's why I've made some heavily armoured DNs with 4 frontal lasers set to PD and 2 more PD batteries on the back, a few of these in a fleet help a ton of defenses.

[heh]

Missiles will always kill aliens, but you need humongous amounts of them for the later laser-heavy fleets, and your fleet can't engage in meaningful offensive actions since they're out of ammo after one battle.
Antimatter missiles (maybe a bug?) currently cannot be shot down, so they will destroy everything that can't dodge them.

Besides missiles, plasma is fast with long range and so is pretty good against smaller faster-moving ships, but it can't even scratch big ships like motherships because they don't do enough damage. Meanwhile, coilguns turn big ships into swiss cheese but can't hit smaller, faster ones at all.

Haven't had a chance to try out high-tier lasers yet. Low-tier lasers are garbage though.

[Mistfox]

Originally posted by 76561198022369703:

Haven't had a chance to try out high-tier lasers yet. Low-tier lasers are garbage though.

Point defence or as weapons? Weapons they are... kind of bad but as defensive PD, they are awesome. Got to keep an eye on the power though, it can run out early game. I've seen laser PD totally pick apart every missile and projectile the alien shot at an LDA from a 3 alien ship warfleet. They had to go to lasers to kill my station because nothing else got through.

[b...]

Originally posted by Mistfox:

Originally posted by 76561198022369703:

Haven't had a chance to try out high-tier lasers yet. Low-tier lasers are garbage though.

Point defence or as weapons? Weapons they are... kind of bad but as defensive PD, they are awesome. Got to keep an eye on the power though, it can run out early game. I've seen laser PD totally pick apart every missile and projectile the alien shot at an LDA from a 3 alien ship warfleet. They had to go to lasers to kill my station because nothing else got through.

Hey, you take that back. 7 superheavy UV Cannons is enough to wipe fleet of 20 ships leaving only dreadnoughts and motherships before it reaches you and you need to turn.
The big ones you just torpedo 3 nukes (or 1 AM) for dreadnoughts and 10 (or 3 AM) for Motherships
As for PD not hitting in the front? There is a little dropdown with formation at combat start. Just select Tight-high Wall. Each ship will be covered by at least 3 other ships PD systems

[Riftwalker]

you can also get point defense missiles for hull points and use your nose guns to deal with the enemy as they don't need a clear line of sight to start firing at enemy missiles.

[Mistfox]

Originally posted by Riftwalker:

you can also get point defense missiles for hull points and use your nose guns to deal with the enemy

For early game ships that can be a problem, they don't turn that well. Which is why I tend to use escorts as missile chuckers, the nose weapon ships tend to mount a laser on PD mode.

[[Volk]SpixTalon]

Originally posted by Riftwalker:

you can also get point defense missiles for hull points and use your nose guns to deal with the enemy as they don't need a clear line of sight to start firing at enemy missiles.

This needs to be debunked as I see it again and again and again on this forum. There is no LOS mechanic in this game.
This myth comes from the fact that PD on human ships was seriouly underperforming on release.

a) Damage too low
PD was coded in such a way that they woul only open fire if they could one shot inc projectyles. Which is bad if you got mag rounds and torpedoes headed your way which need multiple hits. This got fixed by now.

b) Range was too short.
I'll skip the ins and outs. Basicly laser lose damage over distance. Combine this with a) and you had situations where the killzone of PD Lasers was literally shorter than half the length of your ship. Which is bad if you placed them midships. This lead people to believe they have to broadside. You don't. This also got fixed after a fashion.

Oh and one last thing.
I highly reccomend you slow down time to either factor two or even one during the hectic "shoot everything down" phase of a space battle.
You will notice a much better performance of your PD when the battle is not running at max speed.

[Democratic utopia of Pakistan]

Can anyone provide screenshots of working designs? Because it seems to me, that I can't go on an offensive, until I get Titans, Anti-matter Drive, UV Lasers, and Plasma Weapons.

[Riftwalker]

Originally posted by czarek723:

Can anyone provide screenshots of working designs? Because it seems to me, that I can't go on an offensive, until I get Titans, Anti-matter Drive, UV Lasers, and Plasma Weapons.

depends, do you want the ships to come home or not?