Armor or shields vs Unbidden?

[Demon of Elru]

Which is better against the Unbidden? Building up to fight them now.

[Exanthos]

If I remember right, their weapons ignore shields entirely, and a large part of armor.

[Demon of Elru]

Well ♥♥♥♥.

[IIpocTo urpok]

Their weapons ignore 50% of shields and armor.

[Nova225]

Their weapons are shorter on the range side, so a good fleet of long range focused ships can melt them down quickly.

In terms of weaponry though, anything anti-shield is great. They're heavy on the shielding side with very little in armor.

[Azunai]

use kinetic artillery.

don't worry too much about the defense systems on your ships. if you have enough artillery, their fleets will be dead before they can even shoot back.

[Demon of Elru]

Originally posted by Azunai:

use kinetic artillery.

don't worry too much about the defense systems on your ships. if you have enough artillery, their fleets will be dead before they can even shoot back.

I have a destroyer and 2 battleship classes that use kinetic artillery. Plus Giga Cannon.

[Darkaiser]

Originally posted by Demon of Elru:

Originally posted by Azunai:

use kinetic artillery.

don't worry too much about the defense systems on your ships. if you have enough artillery, their fleets will be dead before they can even shoot back.

I have a destroyer and 2 battleship classes that use kinetic artillery. Plus Giga Cannon.

The one issue you might have is accuracy. In a MP game I saw a friend's sniper BBs missing the smaller enemy ships quite a bit. Make SURE you have as much Tracking as you can manage and you might want to include a horde of small, cheap Corvettes with anti-shield weapons. You might also want to build the last section of BBs with something for smaller ships, or escort them with other ships (cruisers are good for this).

[Shahadem]

You don't really need anti-shield ships for Unbidden. They are more hp than shields. From what I remember shields only account for 20-25% of their total hp so focusing on shield destruction is folly. Railguns with 30% bonus to shields and 50% armor penetration are perfect. Corvettes armed with the torpedoes that have the same bonus are pretty good as well. Bombers are somewhat useful since those also have the right bonuses and the Unbidden have no PD.

[Spirit]

unbidden lack point defense systems and have 0 armor ... use torpedoes and strike craft + kinetic weaponry and phase disruptors to chew them down

[Knight.R]

As far as my experience with the unbidden are concerned I realized they chew corvettes like crazy and and crusiers (to a point) as well.

[TSP]

Originally posted by Knight.R:

As far as my experience with the unbidden are concerned I realized they chew corvettes like crazy and and crusiers (to a point) as well.

The latter might be because you get in range of their 100% armor penetration weapons. Using Kinetic Artillery (Not railguns!) you can keep your distance. On the battlecruisers you'd also want the Giga Cannon.

[Knight.R]

Put torpedos on the corvettes but i imagine the "swarm" combat ai might be the cause here.

[Demon of Elru]

Which torpedoes? Neutron or Devastator?

[TSP]

Originally posted by Demon of Elru:

Which torpedoes? Neutron or Devastator?

Devastator ignore shields and therefore go straight to hull damage. The Unbidden do not have point defenses or flak which makes Devastator a viable choice.

However, Devastator becomes weaker the more other weapon types you use. (even in the most ideal "They don't have ways to deal with missiles!") Because they ignore shields, other weapons still have to pave through those shields.

This makes Neutron torpedoes very good because they deal +200% shield damage. And while they indeed do need to go through all the shields, it does make them a very good complimentary weapon to your other arsenal weapons, Unbidden are especially weak against:

Small ships with Neutron torps
Large ships with Kinetic Artillery + Giga Cannon

And combining those is the best match you can likely have.


It's also worth mentioning that putting Devastator and Neutron torps on large ships cause those ships to become medium-range specialized, and Unbidden are absolutely terrifying in medium-short range because of their 100% ignoring weapons that are also medium-range. Therefore the combination I listed above is a clear "I have paper while you have rock" scenario. Just hope you bring enough paper with you to envelop the rock, or boulder in the Unbidden's case.

[Demon of Elru]

Im going to be declaring war on some 2 planet empire just to get my 10 member federation to rally fleets near me withh the allied fleet command. Combined federation forced should exceed over 400k in power.