Unbidden

[Praetorian]

How do you counter them? im stuck containing them but my fleets are getting demolished slowly after every encounter my fleets contains 30% corvettes 10% destroyers 20% Cruisers and 30% battleships with the additional Titan still i cannot keep up with the losses they just keep coming.going to their main entry point lures every nearby unbidden fleet to it

[Stormsong]

Anti-shield composition.

[Shinzor]

It is very likely that you were just not ready and will lose however that being said a lot of people swear by all battleships and I used to my self till updates came out and now I use a 2:1 ratio for every battleship I have 2 cruiser 4 destroyers and 8 corvest all geared to do more damage to shield but some for hull, my battleships have only large weapons(other than lance) my cruisers have large weapon on the front(Anti armor) mid section is the hangerbay for the point defence and back has medium weapon slot for my destroyers they have a large weapons(normaly anti shield) at the front with the point defence back and my corvets are done up with one anti armor weapon and two anti shield weapons

[Shinzor]

Just came to mind chokepoints that reduce shields to 0 will be very helpfull, I have my stations done up with 4 gun batteries and 2 hangers,the buildings are the one for +50% range, the comms jammers so they take extra losses, the super computer because you always want more room for ion cannons and then the hyperlane registry so you ships have a better chance to jump out, I also use the trickster admiral/the hit and run tactics along with Erudite for something like +88% chance to jump out instead of being blown up and I also end up with 5 Ion cannons since I take eternal vigil and make the command center asap(after science nexus always)

[corisai]

Lol.

1) First rule of Stellaris : mixed fleet is a crap.

2) Their weapons are weak against shields.

3) They have very powerful shields but luck armor. Is up to you, would you try electrocutting BB (arc + cloud lighting), they're less effective then vs contingency still, or full-antishield mix (kinetic artillery is the best approach, or mix NVB with plasma/NT).

You may shift X-slot from Lance to Giga. But if you have several energy repeatables it isn't worth it (as in that case NVB will deal with shields easily).

Missiles are good too, if your fleets is corvette-based. But IMHO it will lead to more loses then pure BB-route.

[corisai]

Originally posted by Shinzor:

I have my stations done up with 4 gun batteries and 2 hangers

Please don't advice such non-sense. Hangars are useless on battlefield (especially in unmodded game).

P.S.

Originally posted by Shinzor:

my cruisers mid section is the hangerbay for the point defence

*Facepalm

Please, don't continue. Your designs are completely opposite of "optimized and effective ship designs".

[Shinzor]

Originally posted by corisai:

Originally posted by Shinzor:

I have my stations done up with 4 gun batteries and 2 hangers

Please don't advice such non-sense. Hangars are useless on battlefield (especially in unmodded game).

P.S.

Originally posted by Shinzor:

my cruisers mid section is the hangerbay for the point defence

*Facepalm

Please, don't continue. Your designs are completely opposite of "optimized and effective ship designs".

They work vs crisis, hangers take care of pirates I have only had one spawn

[Praetorian]

yeah but upgrading fleets takes like 3-5 years and costs the same like building a new fleet which is a faster way 5 years is a very long time considering its the unbidden landing far from my borders, into my vassal empire the only way to reach them is a series of Gateways and wormholes which takes quite a long time especially when reinforcing

i think giving them a few years of a headstart is a bad idea which might let them have 20 systems or more

[corisai]

Originally posted by Shinzor:

They work vs crisis, hangers take care of pirates I have only had one spawn

They are not. Strike craft have :
1) Long-term bug that sometimes forcing them doing nothing (still not fixed in vanila).
2) Problems to deal their listed dps (moverment issues).

As result, many, many major releases strike craft is very ineffective in vanila Stellaris. So using it for combat is a stupid (carrier fleets are always lose to "normal" one).

And guns module will take care of pirates with same efficienty. When 6 guns will be not enough - your trade soon reach so high values, so you will be forced to build gateway network.

So no need to ruin frontier bastions with useless hangars.

P.S. You can use them, but only effective way to use hangars is to build special "trade defense" starbase in middle of your major trade route. If it will cover BOTH ways - it will be at least worth it's cost.

[JODEGAFUN]

Originally posted by corisai:

Originally posted by Shinzor:

I have my stations done up with 4 gun batteries and 2 hangers

Please don't advice such non-sense. Hangars are useless on battlefield (especially in unmodded game).

P.S.

Originally posted by Shinzor:

my cruisers mid section is the hangerbay for the point defence

*Facepalm

Please, don't continue. Your designs are completely opposite of "optimized and effective ship designs".

I think cruiser and destroyers are not good in late game, corvettes are good with 90% evasion, a corvette fleet will always win aigans a battleship fleet of same str, but in every battle you nearly lose some of them. Battleships have good firepower aigans large/and station targets. I had used kinetic artillery in my earlier game, but the neutron emiter (it looks like a torpedoe) is effective too. As corvettes i use torpedoe+ one small wapon, and they kill any big and small targets fast, and they absorb dmg from my battleships. My lategame fleet is a larger squad of torpedo corvettes+ artillery battleships and a titan (aura helps a lot, otherwise 3 battleships would do same dmg).
If i use destroyer in late game, a use max 10 of them as PD ships with some small wapons, they got the same battle computer like the corvettes and deal in front of my fleet with incoming missiles/ Fighters.
Sometimes i use only for estetical reason fighter section with one hangar on battleships, but this is (large ship should be carriers to, but fighter do not outgun several large guns) not as effective as a complete gun fokused battleship, as the fighter work not proper in this game (for example the attack range should be much higher, ore why do you think the carrier made the battleship obsolete? And they should be much faster. This issues together with the other issues makes fighter crap to use, so yes optimised fleets did not use them)

I personal see no use in cruisers in late game, before battleships are ready to build i use them like battleships aigans large, but after the invention of battleships they are not as good as battleships in any role (no x slot, and far less L slots,lower hp/shield and hull, but not enough evasion to survive this lack of defensive aigans battleships),

Overall Corvettes and Battleships are usefull the whole game, destroyers and cruisers most time not. The few PD destroyers i use only to have a direct view how much PD i have in my fleet as too much is not usefull (indeed one corvette has the same fleet str. as a PD destroyer)

[Jack1Tear]

Might be worth your while to focus on defense while building up your forces. Also designing ships yourself could help out miles, rather than specifying by class have several ships of each type. I.e. having 3 types of corvette, each optimized for different types of armor. So having a unit that can annilate shields and one that can devestate hull/armor can give you a major upper hand in most battles, and remember that tactics pays off more than anything.

[Danny]

Antishield and hull weapons are awesome against the Unbidden.

They don't have armour on any of their ships or stations

[corisai]

Originally posted by Reinvention7fold:

So having a unit that can annilate shields and one that can devestate hull/armor can give you a major upper hand in most battles, and remember that tactics pays off more than anything.

Until you will start to suffer loses and random decide to take away your anti-hull&armor ships...

No, different ship types in single class is exceptionaly wrong idea. Mix weapons on each ship - this is far, far more reliable.