Help a failing noob please

[Damphair]

Hello, I'm gonna start with a vent but I really need some help/expertise from the veterans of this community.

So I started as a custom slaving warrior nation. I went supremacy early in order to deter and raid my neighbours. I successfully managed to get good diplomacy, struggled with economy and tech early game but had a massive navy.

in midgame I was one of the strongest nations in the galaxy, with a seat in the galactic senate. I joined a federation in order to catch up to my tech and economy issues which were quickly solved.

When I was just about to go conquer half the galaxy, hordes attacked our federation which were swiftly put down. Right before I could re-colonize what the horde occupied, a third dimensional threat spawned and ravaged the whole galaxy. It took years to muster up a capable defense, including spending all surplus resources I had to bribe and gain favors withing the galactic community to focus on the threat. Eventually we were largely successful and the threat were getting pushed into non-existance. Before I could make my final strides however an Awakened Fallen Empire attacked our federation, and this time I had no chance at all.

At the time they invaded, I had researched most possible non-repeating tech, I had Titans and massive Battleship fleets, including a heavy torpedo Corvette scout/tank fleet. But it didn't matter, I could only muster up to about a third of what the fallen empire threw at me.

My fleet was double over my naval capacity, didn't know how to build my fleet since I had no intel on my enemy, I could muster up around 200k military power at most with my combined fleets, the awakened empire strolled around with several 200-300k fleets. I have no idea how to counter them or how to build my fleet stronger since I already have all the available ship tech. I quit the game when I saw that they had taken over around half the galaxy.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2518549114

So the big question is, how to win against ancient empires?

[Elitewrecker PT]

Tech harder. Repeatables, repeatables, and more repeatables.
Or get rid of them before they awaken.
As for their ships in particular, piercing weapons (arc emitters, disruptors, etc.) are good against them because they have a lot of shields and armor but low hull.

[mss73055]

The horde empires are like a checkpoint. There's a chance for them to go conquest 150 to 200 years into the game. Single fleets are about 32k , but they may group up.

If your empire is broad and wide and barely sustaining itself then the horde is but the first one to lay waste to whatever you accomplished. It gets worse from there, as you have seen :)

Keep an eye out for ecological mismatch, unhappiness, corruption. A large fleet doesn't pay itself, your slaves pay for it and they really don't want to :)

[talemore]

Drag them out and blitz the planets with [Insert ridiculous army mechanic] too many armies to occupy the solarsystem.

[Big mean bunny]

That was a good run if you are new to the game, you should not wright it off as bad but something to build on. If that was a game with little experience then you will quickly be able to deal with similar challenges if you persist.
Key early game boosters are pop growth and tech with unity tree perks running a close third.
I nearly always go expansion for the growth perk then flip to exploration to speed up the fog of war. If you are a fan of early conquest which can get you a great early boost then spend your unity on fleet perks instead but harder difficulty's will make that option very challenging.
Repeat techs are essential for taking on fallen empires I think they are gifted with a base X10 on all repeat techs so there fleets hit really hard and fast.
Fallen empires can be worse than the main threat event and the only way a smaller fleet can do real damage to their empire is by busting thee home world when they are busy bashing someone elses.

[NixBoxDone]

Stellaris is all about increasing your numbers.

If you're falling behind, it's usually happening due to one thing. You're wasting resources to stuff that doesn't pay off.

Wasting resources happens due to losing ships in fights that don't benefit you as well, so those are usually a double whammy. What you want to look out for is to use what you have to optimum advantage.

Investing a few hundred alloys into planets is almost never a bad investment. The new empire sprawl mechanism makes it so this only ever bites you if you fail to hire enough pencil pushers to keep your government happily afloat on an ocean of paper.
So you wanna keep colonizing, trying to keep an eye to a balanced investment in science and alloys (the two big ones, one unity planet is plenty).

Keep investing your alloys into ships. If you run out of fleet capacity, fill your station capacity with anchorage stations (best done over colonized systems, that way you can use the free station building slots for orbital farms and black sites/transit hubs).

You'll eventually unlock habitats, which are amazing for a couple of reasons. Build one in each border system over a mineral or credit deposit. Build the credit/mineral districts, fill the building slots with fortresses and 1 planetary shield generator.
Instant cork for enemies even if they manage to destroy your starbase, have fun bombing 2k armies down on a habitat that also produces 100 + energy/minerals.
Those systems are also priority 2 for gateways (right after your shipyard system/s) for instant overwhelming reinforcements.

Build another 1 or 2 habitats over colonized worlds to fill with pencil pushers.
By the time you're done with this, you should have megastructures and can comfortably shift to using alloys for a science nexus.

You build the science nexus and abstract art museum to beef up your tech and unity generation, then use those two to further improve productivity in your empire.
Funnel alloys into building ships, switch to more megastructures once the fleet is full, use megastructure resource output to increase fleet and naval cap, the cycle of knifes continues.

By the time you get Galactic Wonders, you'll probably have 2k alloys or more in income per month and can afford to run the megastructure unity ambition and keep 2 or 3 megastructure constructions going while also building habitats and gateways where appropriate.

At that point the limit is really just how much micro you can be arsed to do. Repeating tech from your tech planets (and ringworld segments, eventually) should improve your ship statistics 1 to 2 times per 12 month period, making each ship stronger.



Now, this is for when everything goes right or at least not terribly wrong. If circumstances conspire and you got pooped on by RNG and bad decisions, you may still find yourself in a situation where you can't beef with an Awakened Empire directly.

What you do then is simple: split your fleet into 2. 1 fleet must be strong enough to destroy conquered starbases with little trouble, the other must be strong enough to threaten AE starbases at the very least.
Both fleets either need admirals with the repair trait, regenerative hull tissue or repair titans so they're not dependent on regular returns to allied starbases for repairs.

Park the first fleet, which we'll call the "Happy little Accidents" fleet somewhere safe where it can escape in multiple directions, not too far from allied empires and your own systems.
Have an army of at least 4k strength accompany it.

The second fleet we'll call the "Door to Door Salesmen" fleet. It also needs a 4k strength army (at least, but probably more thanks to how they beefed up AE garrisons).
You send this fleet out to lurk near the AE core systems.
You wait for the AE to go on a rampage elsewhere and then you attack a system of theirs with 2 or more hyperlanes.
The goal here is for this fleet to take starbases away from the AE, potentially invade planets. This should cause the AE fleet to race back to defend their systems.
While they do, your Door to Door salesmen get the HECK out of there to lurk nearby again.

Your Happy Little Accidents fleet exists for one reason and one reason only: to invalidate all the time the AE just spent conquering allied systems while it is busy taking back the system the Door to Door Salesmen took from them.

The AE can't really be everywhere, nor can it really keep suppressing an entire galaxy's worth of independent empires. The empires will tech up, research and build more and better ships and eventually even winning fights will cost the AE ships it can't afford to lose because there's no time to dock and repair between fly swattings.

Your job is to make sure that the AE doesn't get anywhere until this happens by taking back systems they occupied with the home fleet and causing it to rush back home so you CAN take them back undisturbed with the attack fleet.
Prioritize your own systems to take back if the AE took them so you keep your resources stable, of course.
If they're rocking a colossus, that thing needs to die first if at all possible. Lurking near the current AE target to ambush it while the AE fleet is busy a system over is very much an option, to the point of building a huge torpedo corvette fleet for the sole purposes of shanking it if necessary.

Either fleet will move heaven and earth to not be in the same light year as the AE fleets unless they're literally on their last breath. Just run and live to annoy the crap out of the AE another time - alloy efficiency is key and dead heroes and chunked ships won't win you this fight until the last big battle. Until then getting caught is waste.

You just keep doing that while you build your own economy until you feel you've grown enough to destroy the AE.

A federation fleet helps a lot in this regard because it can be much larger than any of your own fleets and costs no upkeep, so building, maintaining and leveling up a nice federation goes a long way towards making this process quicker.

Disclaimer: this obviously works best in galaxies that aren't the size of a shoe box. If you're knife-fighting in a milk carton, hit and run or stalling don't really work so good.

[Damphair]

Wow, didn't expect to get such detailed responses, thank you all.

First thing I'm gonna do is running in 600+stars, I get what you mean by knife-fighting in a milk carton. I also think my largest mistake which decided the fate of my empire was going man-to-man with AE fleet, hoping RNG would save me like in EU4 combat rolls.

So what I've understood, always, always, always prioritze tech>alloy>unity, don't overproduce if you don't need the resources. Hit and run against stronger empires, don't delusion yourself with thinking your balls are bigger.

I have just one more question regarding fleet compositions, first replier mentioned piercing weapons. So if I understand correctly, if I kill the hull of a ship before their shield and armor is down they die? If so shouldn't piercing weapons always be superior to going balanced shield--//++armor or full armor piercing/shield piercing?

[Elitewrecker PT]

Problem is piercing weapons have either below average damage or low ranges, so they're not as useful against more standard ships (with more similar shield to armor to hull ratios). Against those, the alpha strike meta wins - kill from afar with the longest range weapons.

[PyroMancer]

Most piercing weapons are a trap. The Disruptor and Cloud Lightning often get high praise but the Neutron Launcher is actually the best Large weapon in the game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63qV3AKV9TY

I recommend Montu's videos as he actually test things verse a lot of opinions people state in the forums as to which is better. In my years of playing both solo and Multiplayer I found that how you build your ships matters far more than the Military strength number as two equally ranked fleets can have drastically different results and I get games with people who use poorly designed ships whining that their 3K fleet lost to a 2K fleet.

Learning about the economy and improving things for your empire is great an all but I've taken down larger empires many times with superior tactics and better ship designs.

Some basic rules of ship combat is bigger is better. I hear people trying to talk about mixed fleets and even play against some who use them but in the end I build only Battleships and Titans. The Titan's for their effects and BS because their crush all other ships.

Disengagement chance is a huge thing and it's something you want as much as possible. What it does is increase the chance your ships warp out before being destroyed. This means that even if you lose a fight odds are more of your ships will survive and thus you will need need less alloys to maintain your military while you drain the enemies forces which is important against larger empires.

Even without Disengagement chance you can do hit and run tactics as a bunch of BS with the high alpha strike power of the Neutron Launcher can take out several ships in the first few rounds of battle. Then wait for the retreat timer to spring and hit retreat. Odds are you will have destroyed far more enemy ships than you lost and didn't hang around for their larger force to deal massive damage to your smaller fleet.

Using bottle necks to your advantage can be huge as well. If you don't have a planet in a bottle neck system build a Habitat and fill it would fortresses. This will create an FTL blocker so they enemy can't pass and a large number of troops which need to be destroyed before the enemy can capture the habitat and continue further into your area.

Other than special enemies like the Crisis most foes need to land troops on your planets and the AI, along with many players, will leave these troop transports undefended as they come in from behind the main fleet. If you can intercept them by taking alternate lanes around their main force or use jump drives then you can seriously halt the enemy advance especially if they need to capture a world with FTL blocker on it.

Baiting players and AI is a lot of fun and very handy thing to do. Your ships need to travel to the side of the system where the lane is in order to move there. So to save time it can be handy to park your fleet on that spot without actually jumping in. If you have say a 5K fleet and 2K station with an enemy that also has a 5K fleet you often want to have them attack you on the more well defended location rather than going to them.

When this happens people often make the mistake of parking their fleet right over that station. This is a mistake because most players and AI will see this disadvantage and simply wait until they have a larger fleet to attack. However if you move your fleet one jump away and sit next to the hyperspace lane they are more likely to attack. When they do warp in you send your fleet to join the fight and hammer them.

This baiting tactic also works with fleets, especially against the AI. Say you have a 6K fleet and the enemy only had a 4K fleet but is parked over a 4K station. So your seriously out gunned and can't advance. Instead you spit your fleet into 2K and 4K fleets. The 2K sits in the far side of the system while the 4K fleet is parked one jump over next to the closest lane the enemy will enter from.

The enemy sees your weak 2K fleet and sends in the 4K to destroy it. Unlike with SB though this one you need to reel them in. As once the enemy gets to about the middle of the star system you jump your 4K fleet in and order both fleets to engage to enemy. With your fleet warping in from either side of the enemy you can cut off their retreat which they will often do. If you jump in too early you'll see the enemy fleet turn tail for the lane in order to flee which they might do successfully if your ships can't close the distance which is why you want to lure them in a bit first.

With superior tactics and ships that take fewer loses you can win out against superior foes. Since most wars in Stellaris aren't total wars that capture as soon as things are taken you can rely on attrition tactics to force superior forces into white peace or even win against them outright. Against races like swarms ground defenses are even more important when your Navy is lacking.

Regardless of the foe it's best to pick your battles to ensure victory on all fronts. I play with several other players who fail to consider this an often lose badly because of last stand tactics. They will throw away 6K against a 10K fleet saying they had to or else the enemy would take all their stuff. Well no they didn't "have to" and after their 6k fleet is swatted like the bug it is against the 10K fleet they have NOTHING and what's left of the 10k fleet simply conquers them anyway.

Instead they should pull back and try to build up more on their fleet so it's a closer match. Wait for the enemy to do something dumb like split that fleet and then intercept the smaller of the fleets. Fortify worlds with troops so they enemy can't get past their FTL blocked systems as easily. Wait for the enemy to retreat back for repairs and then reclaim as it does.

For all the talk of economics people do I find it is great to produce over 2 alloys to every 1 the enemy produces, and I often do. But it's also so much better to make them lose over 2 alloys worth of ships for every 1 you lose. This frees up the economy to make more megastructures, which means even more production. ;)

[PyroMancer]

Originally posted by PyroMancer:

In my years of playing both solo and Multiplayer I found that how you build your ships matters far more than the Military strength number as two equally ranked fleets can have drastically different results and I get games with people who use poorly designed ships whining that their 3K fleet lost to a 2K fleet.

I realized after my long post I left something out and figured highlighting it separate would be better than tacking it on at the end.

That is there are clearly some universally better designs as can be scene in Montu's videos. They might not be perfect and be less effective against some counters but less effective than utterly dominating is still pretty effective. The video makes a great case for Neutron Launchers so I won't revisit it much here.

There are several other videos like Corvettes vs Destroyers and Corvettes vs Battleships. While they are recent videos they show what I've have been trying to convince my fellow players that keep asking who I constantly dominate what I'm doing. And the simple answer is Battleships as everything smaller sucks. Mixed fleets are a joke and the joke is on the enemies I crush.

In the video he took several loadouts of Battleships against Corvettes and against they typical all Large weapon Neutron Battleships common in the meta the corvettes did fairly well. But against other load outs to counter them is was a slaughter with the Battleships easily winning. Upon further testing he showed a mixed fleet of Large weapon Battleships with a few Anti-Corvette Battleships mixed in was more than enough to decimate their ranks.

This potential weakness against corvettes I had encountered in the past and given the hassle of maintaining mixed fleets I have long since settled on a universal design which handles everything I come across quite nicely.

Front Mount is X size Arc Emitter as it's the only piercing weapon with high damage potential and once their hull is gone the ship is gone. Thus it can one shot smaller ships in the opening round and with enough repeatables it can even one shot battleships.

Middle Mount is all Neutron Launchers for that sweet alpha strike to again take out as many foes in the first rounds as possible. While the Back mount I ended up changing to Medium weapons in order to handle corvette swarms rather than trying to manage a mixed fleet.

I use a mix of half shields and half armor on the ships so I don't need to worry about being countered by specific weapon specs which AI rarely use and even against players it gives them no easy way in. Though it does lure some into the trap of trying to go all piercing weapons like cloud lightning and distrupters.

The modules depend on what I need. Better tracking if enemy seems to be using lots of smaller ships. Afterburners if I have a large amount of space to cover without any gates/wormholes to help cover the distance. Repair modules if I'm going to be deep in enemy space for long periods without ability to get to station to repair. And so on.

The weapons however remain the same and have yet to see any compelling examples of a better load out. If I did I'd happily switch as I want the best ships while also not having to worry to much about what strengths/weaknesses the enemy has because I have an empire to run with dozens of fleets and armies to manage. I don't have time to worry that my ships are strong against the empire to the north but vunerable to the ships in the southern empire. Refit is expensive after all.

[Elitewrecker PT]

What do you mean "verse a lot of opinions people state", the usual is exactly what you mentioned.

[PyroMancer]

Originally posted by Elitewrecker PT:

What do you mean "verse a lot of opinions people state", the usual is exactly what you mentioned.

Well primarily referred to people who think Cloud Lightning is good which Montu shows is not the case in his video. Along with few other things less experianced players think are good ideas.

But yeah you are right most of the Meta revolves around similar setups like Neutron Launchers which veteran players know is the best.

[NixBoxDone]

Originally posted by Draglord:

Wow, didn't expect to get such detailed responses, thank you all.

First thing I'm gonna do is running in 600+stars, I get what you mean by knife-fighting in a milk carton. I also think my largest mistake which decided the fate of my empire was going man-to-man with AE fleet, hoping RNG would save me like in EU4 combat rolls.

So what I've understood, always, always, always prioritze tech>alloy>unity, don't overproduce if you don't need the resources. Hit and run against stronger empires, don't delusion yourself with thinking your balls are bigger.

I have just one more question regarding fleet compositions, first replier mentioned piercing weapons. So if I understand correctly, if I kill the hull of a ship before their shield and armor is down they die? If so shouldn't piercing weapons always be superior to going balanced shield--//++armor or full armor piercing/shield piercing?

Yes, all that matters for the death of the ship is the hull points, so using a combination of missiles and strike craft or a full disruptor/cloud lightning/Arc emitter setup will allow you to ignore part or all of the enemy ship's defenses.

If I can get my hand on the cloud lightning large slot weapon obtainable by killing void cloud neutral enemies, I always go full disruptors, cloud lightning and arc emitter.
These weapons are all energy weapons, so I can completely ignore ballistic, explosive or strike craft repeatable techs.
They completely ignore enemy armor and shield points (so both of those + armor regen effects become worthless) and have very high accuracy, partially ignoring evasion as well.

It's a very valid strategy. Maybe not best, but it works for sure.


As to overproducing: that's actually completely fine, the only thing you need to make sure is that you actually USE the resources.
Every resource can be traded to energy credits and energy credits can buy you anything but research or unity (well, and strategic resources you don't have access to, but that's a matter of luck).
Overproducing is only an issue if it's ridiculously much, otherwise you can just sell 5k to 10k of whatever you produce in exchange to other empires or the market in exchange for whatever else you may need.
Just don't put more pops and resources into producing more of something you already produce in excess, as the market has diminishing returns (selling a lot of something will drastically lower its price for a while, so if you produce like 4k extra minerals a month, at some point they start becoming worth very little on the open market).

Above poster is correct btw, mixed fleets are kind of bad for general use.
You may meet specific enemy fleet and ship setups where a smaller hull would be of more advantage, but generally big ships have three advantages:


1. They outrange the enemy. This means they get one or two free salvos to kill enemy ships. A mixed fleet against a large fleet will lose a lot of its bigger ships to overwhelming X and L slot disadvantage and any advantage the evasion of the smaller ships may have is made up by the fact that the mixed fleet will lose thousands of alloys to attrition before those smaller ships can even get in range or make the evasion matter.
Battleships are the be all end all here because they're the only regular ship type that can mount X slots, taking that range advantage one step further.

2. They have much higher hull, armor and shield point values, so it takes a lot more to completely destroy a battleship and take its weapon slots out of the battle. Corvettes may be less value loss per ship, but each ship killed or forced to retreat reduces their damage output and that quickly snowballs to a point where you stop losing battleships.

3. Emergency FTL. The way emergency FTL works, every hit below 50 % hull points has a chance the ship will decide to withdraw from the fight and escape. However, if the hit actually puts the hull points to zero, it's directly destroyed and can't even roll for a chance to escape.
Smaller ships have much lower max hull points, so a hit from an X slot or L slot weapon has a decent chance to just destroy them outright, leaving them no chance to escape.
A battleship has much more hp, so there's a lot more leeway for it to get further damaged (letting it roll for escape) as opposed to destroyed outright, especially against a lot of S slot weapons.
So even if a battleship and (numbers pulled out of my arse) 5 corvettes have the same DPS on paper because the corvettes have a lot more shots per in-game day, if the battleship deals enough damage with a hit to outright destroy a corvette from 30 % hp and the corvettes have to hit it 30 times, the battleship gets a lot more rolls to escape while the corvette, if hit past a certain threshold, will just get destroyed outright.
This is a bit of a double-edged blade though, as this also means that a battleship may escape early and deprive you of the DPS it could've contributed due to skeedaddling.

Big ships are just straight up better for a general purpose fleet due to this, unless we're talking some specialized menacing corvette or destroyer cheese swarm build or something (this is just speculation, I haven't seen any math that makes them more viable).

Originally posted by PyroMancer:

Originally posted by Elitewrecker PT:

What do you mean "verse a lot of opinions people state", the usual is exactly what you mentioned.

Well primarily referred to people who think Cloud Lightning is good which Montu shows is not the case in his video. Along with few other things less experianced players think are good ideas.

But yeah you are right most of the Meta revolves around similar setups like Neutron Launchers which veteran players know is the best.

I think it's mostly the aesthetic. Neutrons may be better and still allow you to go full energy, but I want the enemy ships to die with their armor and shields intact, dammit.

It also still works... Just not as well. >_<

(edited for the extra response)

[Magma Dragoon]

Disruptors are only really good when your opponent has many repeatables for shield and armor strength. Against the AI this should never be an issue, better to use gigacannon with neutron launchers. Cannons take down shields from long range, then neurons take care of the remaining armor and hull. Throw in a titan with tracking aura and give about 1/4 of the battleships carrier core to deal with corvettes.

[Big mean bunny]

I have found the biggest fleet survival chances are to get a trickster admiral and level them, have your fleet tactics on hit and run and increase the hull points when ever you can through research and crystal plating.
Ap weapons work two fold (lowering hp before shields and armour lowers enemy attack value) but as stated have less range after the one X slot option. They are great if you are not running full BB . If you are just harassing or need a fast travel and fast built fleet to deal with annoying targets/ plug a hole. Using lightning/ crystal armour destroyers or torp AP corvettes can be very successful as they are very cheap and quick to make.
But neutron torps with targeting modules are about the best at the moment once you can afford the alloys for full battleship/titan. Just don't forget to feed the admirals and give them jaunty jokers hats.

[legion248]

Yeah BB is best, unless your playing become the crisis. Because well a 2 aux corvette for base 300 mins and 30 days to build is sillyness that can swamp the galaxy.

Stacking up all the bonuses means you can put out a Menace Corvette for a paltry 270 mins in about 10 days. At that point you can vomit out whole full cap fleets in a few months. oh and upkeep is just piddly flat .3 energy, and .2 min. Normal ships are 1% of build cost in energy and .33% cost in alloy for the hull, and .83% energy/.15% on components The amount of over cap you can afford with menace is ridiculous. Particularly cause you can divert all your alloys into extra megastructures which in turn pay for even more overcap/ production rate.

Being able to 16 to 1 every battleship of a rival with equal shipyard slots while spending less resources to do so is really powerful. Not to mention the equivalent of a 2 skill captain evasion bonus, and 50%(the equivalent 10 sets of repeatable) of extra damage just for leveling up.

Edit: i did some math and it's actually possible to hit and sustain the ship hard cap of 9999 cp with menaces with the resources in a 600 star galaxy. Admittedly you need basically the whole galaxy, but it is ludicrous that the hard cap is even possible.