How do you survive late game on large maps?

[Doom Sayer]

I keep getting destroyed. Not even close to winning. I take a whole corner of the system, massive fleets, massive tech, massive defesces, massive culture, them poof all topples within like 20 minutes. Is game broken? I am starting to ask myself this question. Should I just rush super weapon because its broken and unbalanced? Beyond that are carriers useless? I lost to a force that used none. I think i destroyed zero of their ships. This is second loss in a week at this point I am going to assume:
1: Carriers are useless
2: You should never make pacts with other players/ai
3: super weapons are broken.

Issue is I dont really know if thats what i did wrong. From my perspective it just went wrong for no apparent reason. I lost my fleet because enemy fleet was invincible. No ships were taking dmg to shields it just replenished instantly. Should i even BUILD a titan. It seems weak and useless vs generic units. The whole culture mechanic is also ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ since it removes any possibility of turning around a loss. Even then it doesnt explain WHY THEIR UNITS WERE INVINCIBLE.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2603285920
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2603285879
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2603285845
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2603285805
I guess maybe I just need to pretend titans dont exist since all they do is cost lots and die achieving nothing. Also gonna stop using starbases and hangars since they cant defend anything. All they do is delay and it takes too long for fleet to save it. I really dont understand how your supposed to play large maps. From what i can see defesces are giant waste of resources since i invested a ♥♥♥♥ ton into it and got nothing in return. 5+ hangars each planet, starbase each planet, gauss cannons each planet, etc etc etc. All flattened like nothing.

At this point I cant really be bothered anymore because i have other ♥♥♥♥ to do that than lose is in this again wasting enough 20 hours.

[McMuffin]

Don´t know if you just want to rant or actual help but I will try either way:
Most (if not all) titans have really strong AoE abilities that can kill whole fleets. So much in fact that titans are better at killing smallfry than fighting capital ships. There are also capital ships with AoE abilities which result in great combos.
My standard fleet with Advent is one titan, two battleships, two motherships and three carriers. As soon as the titan is level three and the capital ships level six they can beat anything the AI can throw at me.


Defences are incredibly durable and especially TEC with the double starbase or Vasari with the most OP starbase can easily defend a system against a 1.000 point fleet if not more. In combination with other defences or a bit of backup even 2.000 points fleets (which is the maximum in a standard game) are no problem .
Which upgrades do you use for your starbase and in what position do you place the other defences?


As for superweapons I have to say that you should not complain when playing TEC :D
Advent can spread culture, Vasari can create a wormhole for their fleets and TEC straight up nuke the enemies homeworld and win the game by default. So if you have trouble winning just focus on defense on a chokepoint, build three of four Novalith cannons and GG.


EDIT:
In your screenshots I only see a titan and small carriers. Is that all you use? If so it is to be expected to get completely destroyed. Bombers are stupid and take a lot of time to do damage. They are great and alpha striking important targets or pursue fleeing enemies. They are by no means enough to win battles.
And for the point of "invincible enemies". They are not. I can see that the enemies support cruisers are almost out of antimatter. They have a skill to instantly replenish shields of allied ships so it might seem they are.

[Rozarria]

My fleet against Ai is mostly carriers, supported by a long range frigates. With the proper numbers they take down max upgrade starbases and max level titans in a few passes. Less durable capital ships die in a single pass. This requires you to use your entire fleet with almost maxed logistics though, a doom fleet.

From you screenshots I see 2 Dunov Battlecruisers. It has a "shield restore" ability. They restore a massive amount of shields. They also have an ability that massively reduces anti-matter cost of abilities, so they can spam that shield restore all day long. And there are 3 Hoshiko Robotics Cruisers, they repair damage to hull (I assume the AI started with more and you destroyed some). They are the healers of the fleet and as such are priority targets.

My fleets normally comprises of 30-40 light carriers (aside from the fleet carriers). They can handle most fleets the ai normally uses, even those supported by Dunovs and other "healers". If there's something a fleet can't handle I just combine fleets.

Here's a screenshot of my typical fleet. It's super late game and Vasari but the fleet composition is typical even if I play Advent or TEC.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2603445430

[Doom Sayer]

Originally posted by McMuffin:

Don´t know if you just want to rant or actual help but I will try either way:
Most (if not all) titans have really strong AoE abilities that can kill whole fleets. So much in fact that titans are better at killing smallfry than fighting capital ships. There are also capital ships with AoE abilities which result in great combos.
My standard fleet with Advent is one titan, two battleships, two motherships and three carriers. As soon as the titan is level three and the capital ships level six they can beat anything the AI can throw at me.


Defences are incredibly durable and especially TEC with the double starbase or Vasari with the most OP starbase can easily defend a system against a 1.000 point fleet if not more. In combination with other defences or a bit of backup even 2.000 points fleets (which is the maximum in a standard game) are no problem .
Which upgrades do you use for your starbase and in what position do you place the other defences?


As for superweapons I have to say that you should not complain when playing TEC :D
Advent can spread culture, Vasari can create a wormhole for their fleets and TEC straight up nuke the enemies homeworld and win the game by default. So if you have trouble winning just focus on defense on a chokepoint, build three of four Novalith cannons and GG.


EDIT:
In your screenshots I only see a titan and small carriers. Is that all you use? If so it is to be expected to get completely destroyed. Bombers are stupid and take a lot of time to do damage. They are great and alpha striking important targets or pursue fleeing enemies. They are by no means enough to win battles.
And for the point of "invincible enemies". They are not. I can see that the enemies support cruisers are almost out of antimatter. They have a skill to instantly replenish shields of allied ships so it might seem they are.

Everything died thats why thats all thats left in screenshot.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2603699426
Thats closer to what i had. I had a bit more in fleet. More carriers, more corvettes, cobalt frigates, 20+ robotics centers.... Answer on rant vs help its both lol. I had a lot of fun previous loss but this one actually angered me since I had actually bothered to build massive infrastructure in eco, tech, defeense and all just poofed in extremely short period of time through multiple causes.
1: My social planet was taken out.
2: Lead to me losing ones around it.
3: Dark fleet titan appeared far away from my fleet destroying a starbase and like 10 hangars and couple gauss cannons, trade thing, orbital refinery etc.
4: Enemy who was 20 min before a ally flew their fleet right in middle of what was my territory which is what killed my entire fleet. (I had been trying to reverse back around to retake territory, and of course this created death spiral since i lacked economy for my fleet + super weapons randomly destroying other planets.

Next save I do im going to be extremely aggressive and stop playing defensively. I think one mistake is i couldnt find the long range ships on the TEC and forgot to make them. I still have a lot of trouble finding tech and such. What I might do is try to find funnels in the map and stop pushing at funnels until defenses are built idk.

[Rigger]

Any decision should be made depending on your enemies.
Please, clarify, about what lategame we are talking.
It is PvE matchup? Or it's PvP? If PvE, what's the difficulty of AI?

Because it seems like we are playing different game. Like, it's not SoSE or the SoSE that I know.

[Doom Sayer]

Originally posted by пауза:

Any decision should be made depending on your enemies.
Please, clarify, about what lategame we are talking.
It is PvE matchup? Or it's PvP? If PvE, what's the difficulty of AI?

Because it seems like we are playing different game. Like, it's not SoSE or the SoSE that I know.

Yeah I think im good now. It was combination of not aggressive enough and not being used to large maps and the tech trees. I think I will win my current pve. I cant imagine how a even bigger map would work than large one im playing.

[McMuffin]

Ok, makes sence that everything died :D

Originally posted by Doom Sayer:

Next save I do im going to be extremely aggressive and stop playing defensively. I think one mistake is i couldnt find the long range ships on the TEC and forgot to make them. I still have a lot of trouble finding tech and such. What I might do is try to find funnels in the map and stop pushing at funnels until defenses are built idk.

That is the same strategy I use most of the time. Find a nice chokepoint and defend it until capital ships are strong enough to push out.


Enemy superweapons killing your planets is indeed a really bad mechanic but if you have the economy to back it up you could build a starbase over every planet and just build the upgrade that you can´t lose the planet as long as the starbase is alive. (Or just deactivate superweapons in the game options :))


The last thing to see is mainly your fleet composition.
You should use more different capital ships because they all have different skills to help out in battle. Like Je t'aime said above Dunov Battlecruisers can replenish shields and the lvl six skill Flux Field reduces antimatter cost for all ships around it => More shields restored, more repair from your cruisers and so on.
Akkan battlecruisers can increase range and accuracy and can disable enemy ships.

The long range ship you wanted is the Javelin which you get with rocket research. Also think about Kodiak heavy cruisers. These are the biggest non-capitol ships you can build and in my experience the only ships that can withstand a late game AoE burst.

Just to give you an idea what I mean with AoE-Burst to understand it a bit better:
As an advent player I use the Eradica titan and the Radiance battleship for this.
The titan has a skill which deals 500 damage on level one with a 20 second cooldown and the Radiance gains a huge laser at level 6 that deals 2000 damage over 8 seconds to anything close to the laser.
Just with one titan shot and two lasers your fleet would lose 15-40 corvettes depending on the positioning in 8 seconds. After 20 seconds and the second shot of the titan ALL your smallest corvettes are dead and a bunch of mediums too. After 60 seconds of combat and the third or fourth titan shot everything below cruiser is dead => all you got despite the carriers.
This example is really simlified and there are far more factors that count into it but that is roughly how I fight the AI (and your fleet in this case). I don´t know the skills and combos of the TEC since I haven´t played them in almost 10 years tho :D

[McMuffin]

Originally posted by Doom Sayer:

Originally posted by пауза:

Any decision should be made depending on your enemies.
Please, clarify, about what lategame we are talking.
It is PvE matchup? Or it's PvP? If PvE, what's the difficulty of AI?

Because it seems like we are playing different game. Like, it's not SoSE or the SoSE that I know.

Yeah I think im good now. It was combination of not aggressive enough and not being used to large maps and the tech trees. I think I will win my current pve. I cant imagine how a even bigger map would work than large one im playing.

Seems I took to long to write it xD
Good luck then and if anything else comes up just ask again.

[Doom Sayer]

I guess I missed Dunov Battlecruisers then lol. I just tend to pour into whatever has the most pew/armor to win. I did make titan but im gonna delay more than previously from now on.