Tips and Strategies for defeating Awakened Empires?

[Kribble]

To start off i'm not complaining about the difficulty of them or anything like some people. I just know some better players have ways of slapping AEs and i was wondering what fleet comps/strategies people are using. I understand the best strategy is the destroy them before they awaken but even then FE fleets are extremely powerful. I just want to know how i can counter and possibly beat their fleets. I don't want to cheese the AI because thats stupid I just want some pointers on how i can kill AE and actually be decent against them. I don't want any tips like "oh use galactic contender" because i want to be able to accomplish this regardless of how i decide to play my empire. If i want to focus on mega structures and becoming robots i don't want to waste a whole ♥♥♥ ascension perk on fighting AEs

[Meewec]

if you have powerful starbases you can bait them into those to give a bit of a boost to your fleets that are fighting them.

if you want to design your ships to counter them here's the designs each one uses.
https://stellaris.paradoxwikis.com/Fallen_empire#Ships

[Nightmyre]

I hate to say this, but the answer really is "just get better" - the best way to see the Awakened Empires is as a miniature version of the endgame crisis. And the solution to beating the endgame crisis, especially on harder difficulties, is to just get stronger fleets with better endgame repeating research.

You can design your ships specifically to beat them, as Meewec indicated, but at the end of the day, more firepower just wins. You'll want to use exclusively battleships with long-ranged weapons, to avoid taking losses, and unfortunately as compared to the endgame crisis, fallen empire fleets also use long-ranged weapons, so you'll really want to make sure you can wipe them out on the very first volley, so you'll need to have fleets that are fairly powerful.

Otherwise, there's no special tactics to beating them.

[Ragnarok]

There is one. If you have a fleet of mixed BB types (mostly brawlers and arty with a couple carriers thrown in for PD and lulz) and park it right on the entrance to the next system you can bait the AE into a close-range fight that benefits you. You'll lose fewer ships than you would in a straight artillery duel.

[Kribble]

Originally posted by Meewec:

if you have powerful starbases you can bait them into those to give a bit of a boost to your fleets that are fighting them.

if you want to design your ships to counter them here's the designs each one uses.
https://stellaris.paradoxwikis.com/Fallen_empire#Ships

Yeah makes sense, I'm looking more for like fleet on fleet tips but yeah baiting them into a powerful fortress would work. I've been thinking about putting a bulk of cruisers in to tank their shots while I have a swarm of Corvettes and destroyers with large weapons and after burners to help them evade fire.

[Ragnarok]

Originally posted by Kribble:

Originally posted by Meewec:

if you have powerful starbases you can bait them into those to give a bit of a boost to your fleets that are fighting them.

if you want to design your ships to counter them here's the designs each one uses.
https://stellaris.paradoxwikis.com/Fallen_empire#Ships

Yeah makes sense, I'm looking more for like fleet on fleet tips but yeah baiting them into a powerful fortress would work. I've been thinking about putting a bulk of cruisers in to tank their shots while I have a swarm of Corvettes and destroyers with large weapons and after burners to help them evade fire.

Do you...not have battleships?

[Nightmyre]

Long-range really is better than trying a duel. You want to wipe them out in a single volley before they can even fire, so you want an admiral that has the range booster, as well as the war strategy that gives you a range boost. You'll get to shoot before them, since they won't have those, and you'll wipe them out before they can get their shot - or at least weaken them enough that they can't kill your ships.

[Ragnarok]

Originally posted by Nightmyre:

Long-range really is better than trying a duel. You want to wipe them out in a single volley before they can even fire, so you want an admiral that has the range booster, as well as the war strategy that gives you a range boost. You'll get to shoot before them, since they won't have those, and you'll wipe them out before they can get their shot - or at least weaken them enough that they can't kill your ships.

At which point do you have enough of a tech and/or industry advantage to actually do that?

[pipo.p]

It might me worth to stay aware of any mistake like letting a transport fleet or a colossus without any escort, and be ready to prey on them. Have a fast fleet (cruisers + corvettes + destroyers?).

Also, early on, don't be too much reluctant to loose some ships if this allows you to get valuable technologies to research from their wrecked ships. Once you get those Dark Matter techs, the only difference between they and you is the number of repeatable techs. You'll actively search them while they forgot how to search them since long (and time will play for you, then).

[Nightmyre]

Originally posted by Ragnarok:

Originally posted by Nightmyre:

Long-range really is better than trying a duel. You want to wipe them out in a single volley before they can even fire, so you want an admiral that has the range booster, as well as the war strategy that gives you a range boost. You'll get to shoot before them, since they won't have those, and you'll wipe them out before they can get their shot - or at least weaken them enough that they can't kill your ships.

At which point do you have enough of a tech and/or industry advantage to actually do that?

Tech only lets you use smaller fleets to accomplish the same objective. The range you get early enough that it isn't really tech-dependent.

Industry is relatively easy to scale up. Just drop a whole pile of alloy factories instead of your research. The bigger challenge is naval cap, and for that, you'll need some dedicated fortress habitats.

Beyond that, you just need lots of fleets. Usually you'll want somewhere around 2x their fleet strength in combined fleets, so if they're usually ~100k, you'll want something like 3-4 full battleship fleets of at least 50k to beat them without taking damage.

[Ragnarok]

Originally posted by Nightmyre:

Originally posted by Ragnarok:

At which point do you have enough of a tech and/or industry advantage to actually do that?

Tech only lets you use smaller fleets to accomplish the same objective. The range you get early enough that it isn't really tech-dependent.

Industry is relatively easy to scale up. Just drop a whole pile of alloy factories instead of your research. The bigger challenge is naval cap, and for that, you'll need some dedicated fortress habitats.

Beyond that, you just need lots of fleets. Usually you'll want somewhere around 2x their fleet strength in combined fleets, so if they're usually ~100k, you'll want something like 3-4 full battleship fleets of at least 50k to beat them without taking damage.

Ohhhh you're talking about beating them up with massively OP fleet strength concentrated in a few systems.
My wars with AEs have largely been the AE ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ off to fight literally anyone else since they can't beat my fleets and me having to split up and hunt them down with a roughly-at-parity force while keeping some superheavy fleets to crack open their citadels. Hence my recommendation of arranging a brawl: I can't get enough force concentration to vaporize the bastards and so need to squeeze out as much advantage as I can from positioning.

[Nightmyre]

@Ragnarok - given the OP is asking for advice on how to survive, I don't think he's in a state where he's trying to optimise how to most quickly wipe them out.

[Ragnarok]

Originally posted by Nightmyre:

@Ragnarok - given the OP is asking for advice on how to survive, I don't think he's in a state where he's trying to optimise how to most quickly wipe them out.

Point.
For survival, the 'suck them into a close range brawl' tactic still applies. But a war with an AE is won by having more ships, not better ones, so make sure you have a robust alloy production and a lot of naval cap.
Also keep an eye out for the doomstacks that'll eventually be put together, usually around 250-280k fleet power. Those things are a pain.

[Kribble]

Originally posted by Ragnarok:

Originally posted by Kribble:

Yeah makes sense, I'm looking more for like fleet on fleet tips but yeah baiting them into a powerful fortress would work. I've been thinking about putting a bulk of cruisers in to tank their shots while I have a swarm of Corvettes and destroyers with large weapons and after burners to help them evade fire.

Do you...not have battleships?

I do but I find them overly costly just so they can get pelted by the fallen empires extremely powerful weaponry. I notice my battle ships tend to get sniped first

[Kribble]

Originally posted by Nightmyre:

@Ragnarok - given the OP is asking for advice on how to survive, I don't think he's in a state where he's trying to optimise how to most quickly wipe them out.

Actually I am asking more on Total destruction, I'm decent enough at the game to survive AEs but I know some crazy mofos are so good at it they literally mod just so they can have more FEs and AEs because they know they can beat it. Essentially what are the strategies people are using

[Nightmyre]

Originally posted by Kribble:

Originally posted by Nightmyre:

@Ragnarok - given the OP is asking for advice on how to survive, I don't think he's in a state where he's trying to optimise how to most quickly wipe them out.

Actually I am asking more on Total destruction, I'm decent enough at the game to survive AEs but I know some crazy mofos are so good at it they literally mod just so they can have more FEs and AEs because they know they can beat it. Essentially what are the strategies people are using

If you're asking what the fastest way to destroy them is, the answer will be different from what the most efficient way is.

I play on 5x crisis strength, and have my endgame date set to the minimum possible (2250), and my entire gameplay is focused around being ready for the endgame crisis. As such, I don't actually even bother with the awakened empires, I just ignore them, since their strength is pitiful in comparison to the endgame crisis.

My strategy is quite simple. Have my fleet strength strong enough to avoid getting bothered by my neighbours, then pump my economy up until I'm producing a healthy amount of resources, then focus exclusively on research to start my repeatable techs going. As long as I can get a decent number of them by the time the endgame crisis hits, I'm all set for just switching to producing my ships when they show up.

Of course if they decide to spawn inside my empire I'm screwed, but if that happens, then oh well.

So to your specific question, I would still recommend going to battleships. If your ships are getting sniped first, you're probably missing one or both of the key components I described earlier - an admiral with the Cautious trait (+20% range) and the Rapid Deployments war doctrine (+10% range). Together, they should let you get your shots off before you get shot at.