How would I defend against a fallen empire if one attacked me?

[Jaxanine The Gnome Queen]

There is a fallen empire right next to me with more than 100k power fleets, how would I ever be able to compete and get a navy that big?

[Jenshae]

Alloy factories -> Ministry of Production.
Research maximum naval capacity.
Unity achievements -> higher administration
Unity achievements -> more damage to fallen empires.

[Valerian]

Originally posted by Jenshae:

Alloy factories -> Ministry of Production.
Research maximum naval capacity.
Unity achievements -> higher administration
Unity achievements -> more damage to fallen empires.

And also equip your ships only with weapons that completely bypass both shield and armor

[John]

It's easily achievable once you get to the endgame with sufficient research. A full fleet (230 command limit) can reliably reach ~80k if you have all the top tier components and probably 200k with some repeatable techs or even 400k depending on how crazy you go with research.
You can also increase your naval power by having multiple fleets - as long as you have the economy to build and sustain them. You pay more for ship maintenance if you go over the Naval Cap (1% more expensive for 1% over the cap), but you are not hard-capped.
There are myriad combat bonuses that will increase the strength of your fleets as well - War Doctrines, Edicts, Ascension Perks, etc.
I don't recommend picking the Galactic Contender perk unless you plan to rush down a fallen empire and know exactly what you are doing. An additional +33% is not that big of a deal otherwise.
In short, you can get a navy that big and you can absolutely compete with or surpass FEs. It's all in the game, just play the game.

[Jaxanine The Gnome Queen]

Thank you 3 for these tips! very helpfull for me.
are there any specific types of ships that I should focus on building more then others?

[Jagothegamer]

1) Don't piss them off and thy won't attack you.
2) There's a late game event that causes Fallen Empires to "Awaken". This only occurs usually in the late game and has an increased chance of happening if another Fallen Empire has been defeated by a regular empire, or if another Fallen Empire has already waken up, which if you have leviathans may result in a "War in Heaven".

But basically, don't piss them off.

[Red Dox]

Originally posted by jaxanine:

Thank you 3 for these tips! very helpfull for me.
are there any specific types of ships that I should focus on building more then others?

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=911980839

[Jaxanine The Gnome Queen]

Originally posted by Red Dox:

Originally posted by jaxanine:

Thank you 3 for these tips! very helpfull for me.
are there any specific types of ships that I should focus on building more then others?

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=911980839

thank you for this, helped me learn how i should build fleets for certain ship types.

[Dahak]

Originally posted by Valerian:

Originally posted by Jenshae:

Alloy factories -> Ministry of Production.
Research maximum naval capacity.
Unity achievements -> higher administration
Unity achievements -> more damage to fallen empires.

And also equip your ships only with weapons that completely bypass both shield and armor

Why use bypass weapons? When I looked over the hull/armor/shields levels of the FEs the armor and shields aren't so massively over the hull values to make that really effective. All the bypass weapons (excluding fighters and missiles which only bypass shields) have really low damage when compared to top tech standard weapons. From what I can see, it is more effective to just burn through their defenses and wreck the hull with high DPS standard weapons unless you have an enemy where the combined hull/shield values are more than 3 or 4 times the hull value. Stations in particular need regular weapons to beat because those have such insane hull values compared to their shields/armor. Against stations I prefer plasma really since the bonus versus armor/hull gives you the best overall DPS considering their relatively low shielding. The disrupters and lightning arcs just have so little DPS that you might as well be shooting a BB gun at them.

A mixed setup isn't very effective either since taking DPS off for penetration won't net you any returns since it will just take that much longer for the standard weapons to start hitting the hull. Not to mention the crazy short range of the M and S sized penetrating weapons means those don't even start doing damage until later in the fight. The only one I ever find useful is the X sized variant and that one just for its ability to oneshot smaller ships through armor/shields. Its damage range is too wide to be much use against the big battlecruisers or stations.

[tempest.of.emptiness]

Originally posted by Dahak:

Why use bypass weapons? When I looked over the hull/armor/shields levels of the FEs the armor and shields aren't so massively over the hull values to make that really effective.

Hull damage lowers the damage a ship deals. So the advantage of bypass weapons is that they start hindering the opponent's DPS sooner than non-bypass weapons, which give the enemy the entire time that they are chewing through shields and armor to fire back at full strength. The more hull and armor the enemy has, the better bypassing them starts to look.

You don't have to use bypass weapons to fight FEs, but they are one of the opponents in the game that are tough enough to make up for the disadvantage (low dps) of bypass weapons.

[Valerian]

Originally posted by Dahak:

Originally posted by Valerian:

And also equip your ships only with weapons that completely bypass both shield and armor

Why use bypass weapons? When I looked over the hull/armor/shields levels of the FEs the armor and shields aren't so massively over the hull values to make that really effective.

My bad, I'm just coming back to Stellaris after maybe more than a year and from what I remembered bypass made sense before, the shield and hull of FE was much higher than their hull, but maybe it has changed or I didn't remember well.

[ColorsFade]

Originally posted by tempest.of.emptiness:

Hull damage lowers the damage a ship deals.

That is good to know. I had no clue.

[Brughe]

Until late game, if a Fallen Empire asks/tells you to do something: Do it.

Give you a few billion of my people to populate your human zoo? OK!

Destroy that colony that unknowingly settled on your holy ground, nevermind that you have abandoned it for eons. OK!

Let you inject my ENTIRE population with your untested vaccine? OK!

Of course, some of the friendlier Fallen Empires reward you for being a suck-up.

[John]

FE fleets have a heavy focus on strike craft and flak, and have rather high shield and armor. It is advised that you don’t employ strike crafts or missiles even they can bypass shields (because they will likely be intercepted and their mothership may die before they achieve anything) but instead use heavy kinetic weapons and some flak yourself.
(BTW it is really important to manually design your ships.) Battleships with a slight focus on kinetic weapons (Spinal Mount Tachyon Lance + Kinetic Artillery) and Destroyers with picket function (Flak Artillery + Stormfire Autocannons/Gauss Cannons) work well together against FE fleets. You can also slap in a Titan with the -20% enemy shield aura for good measure. I personally find the picket Destroyers very important, they get killed a lot, but better them than your Battleships, since they are much cheaper and faster to build.

[MaceX]

Fallen Empires normally won't attack you or expand unless you do something to anger them and they normally give you a message first. So just listen. A lot of the time you will be rewarded for listening They do not normally attack early game unless you attack them.

As for ship load out, It is hard to have a solid go to for that as they can be different and change per version. But as you can do with any enemy, look at what their fleet load out is and then build your fleet to counter it.

Normally using a large fleet of corvette only with MAX evasion normally works well for most things. You will take losses but they are cheaper to replace and build a lot faster than other ships.

[vkobe]

Originally posted by jaxanine:

There is a fallen empire right next to me with more than 100k power fleets, how would I ever be able to compete and get a navy that big?

reload old save and avoid to upset fallen empire ^_^