optimal weapons to fight contingency fleets

[Pånøs]

Apologies cause I understand this is a topic that has popped up in reddit, steam and other places but after having tried a lot of different combinations I cannot make a dent to contingency fleets.
Economic wise I m doing OK, i control 7-8 planets i have alloys, minerals etc etc but my problem is every time I engage one of their fleets i cannot destroy NOT even a single of their ships. NOT EVEN ONE!
I tried with corvettes and i tried with battleships but in all cases it was a failure. I have a save that I keep playing the same battle over and over and they keep kicking my ***. They come always with a 20-10 attack scheme and I first tried with 40 battleships equipped with energy weapons and fully equipped with shields and then I tried with corvettes both with energy weapons and also with devastator torpedos. In my latest try I sent 75 corvettes and 3 destroyers (my attack weapons were devastator torpedos and phased disruptors).

OK I clearly suck at this and this is my first playthrough (out of many i hope) but i would love some strategy tips on how blow to smithereens those annoying ******es.

[Elitewrecker PT]

Why do you go from 40 battleships to only 75 corvettes?
Arc emitter and cloud lightning battleships
Or spam corvettes with disruptors and maybe point defense for the drones.

[Storm]

Try full arty kinetic battleships.

[ScreamCon]

science.... reach the 50k techs or better by the time you get 350 year in. Build 1 or 2 lab per planet.
7-8 planet?
You want like 30 built up at least to fight crisis events. You can never get enough alloy or research desperately enough.

Max production districts to what your resource districts can strain. Start with 1 production district per world and scale from there.

Also, get very high alloy and starbases everywhere so can rebuild fleet on a dime to better fight the fleet layout your fighting.

Know how energy weapons and non work on armor, as you can see its like rock paper scissors on equip, hence you need quick fleet adaption.

Finally. Try not to use only energy shields in systems where the shields are negated. Pulsars and like? That will surely lead to demise. You may already know this.

[Elitewrecker PT]

On the other hand, tachyon lances and neutron torpedos on pulsars would also make short work of contingency or FE ships.

[Jakethesnake12124]

Originally posted by Pånøs:

Apologies cause I understand this is a topic that has popped up in reddit, steam and other places but after having tried a lot of different combinations I cannot make a dent to contingency fleets.
Economic wise I m doing OK, i control 7-8 planets i have alloys, minerals etc etc but my problem is every time I engage one of their fleets i cannot destroy NOT even a single of their ships. NOT EVEN ONE!
I tried with corvettes and i tried with battleships but in all cases it was a failure. I have a save that I keep playing the same battle over and over and they keep kicking my ***. They come always with a 20-10 attack scheme and I first tried with 40 battleships equipped with energy weapons and fully equipped with shields and then I tried with corvettes both with energy weapons and also with devastator torpedos. In my latest try I sent 75 corvettes and 3 destroyers (my attack weapons were devastator torpedos and phased disruptors).

OK I clearly suck at this and this is my first playthrough (out of many i hope) but i would love some strategy tips on how blow to smithereens those annoying ******es.

Contigency fleets are made up of roughly even shield/armor/hull. They also prefer to use lasers, and as such are bad against shields. Make your fleets lean more heavily towards shields, but with a healthy mixup of armor as well. Im pretty sure that contigency fleets dont have strike craft, only their stations.
Fleet stacking is a must against the Contigency, and depending on what level your playing, they will one shot every ship you have. Range is crucial to your ships. Each individual fleet you have should be rolling with a titan to assist with range, and have your battleships equipped with strike craft to keep them occupied.
The most important fact about the contigency however is how their Sterilization hubs work, destroying a hub permanently weakens the contigency ghost signal, and after you destroy all four the real one will reveal itself. Most contigency fleets are stupid and won't defend the home system, so if you can get a collosus in fast, you should be able to jump out before you get caught. Avoid wormholes for ambushes, and use the l gates to get from hub to hub and you should be fine. When the main world gets destroyed all contigency fleets will despawn.

[Pånøs]

Originally posted by Elitewrecker PT:

Why do you go from 40 battleships to only 75 corvettes?
Arc emitter and cloud lightning battleships
Or spam corvettes with disruptors and maybe point defense for the drones.

I thought of switching cause i saw many people saying that corvettes are better cause they have evasion... after the last few tries i dont believe evasion makes a difference...

[Storm]

Originally posted by Pånøs:

Originally posted by Elitewrecker PT:

Why do you go from 40 battleships to only 75 corvettes?
Arc emitter and cloud lightning battleships
Or spam corvettes with disruptors and maybe point defense for the drones.

I thought of switching cause i saw many people saying that corvettes are better cause they have evasion... after the last few tries i dont believe evasion makes a difference...

It does not.

[Pånøs]

thank you all for your suggestions - just finished working so the rest of the day, i ll try all your suggestions

[Pånøs]

Originally posted by ScreamCon:

science.... reach the 50k techs or better by the time you get 350 year in. Build 1 or 2 lab per planet.
7-8 planet?
You want like 30 built up at least to fight crisis events. You can never get enough alloy or research desperately enough.

Max production districts to what your resource districts can strain. Start with 1 production district per world and scale from there.

Also, get very high alloy and starbases everywhere so can rebuild fleet on a dime to better fight the fleet layout your fighting.

Know how energy weapons and non work on armor, as you can see its like rock paper scissors on equip, hence you need quick fleet adaption.

Finally. Try not to use only energy shields in systems where the shields are negated. Pulsars and like? That will surely lead to demise. You may already know this.

I know, i know - remember this is my first play, i am mainly learning how mechanics work and i have done a lot of mistakes and did not expand as much as i should... but before trying a new game i would like to learn the fleet battle mechanics and kick some contingency assssss

[ScreamCon]

Yea big ships are always better. More damage per hit, more dpm, higher tech more high tech equip fitting.

The reason people are saying small is better? Its not, the small is just there to support the big ones late game.

The reason the big ones are better as they cost MASSIVE amount of alloy to upkeep. That is upgrade rebuild etc. But are worth it if your industry can sustain.

Some geeks on forum are unusually sentimental about their corvets.

[NixBoxDone]

With the advent of pencil pushers, restricting yourself to just 7 or 8 planets really isn't necessary anymore.
You should, instead, fill a habitat or two with desk jockeys and just continue to build habitats and colonize planets to create more science, alloys and naval capacity.

The reason big ships are better is primarily due to range.
If all your ships are large size, you have an overwhelming advantage during the first few salvos before the enemies smaller ships can get into range.

I. e. for the first 10 or so days of the fight, it's essentially the enemy's handful of capital ships fighting your entire fleet.
By the time the smaller ships get into range, the bigger ones are often already destroyed and you end up fighting only part of the enemy's fleet vs. almost your entire capital ship fleet.

Even if the small ships that are left are reasonably effective, they'll fight at a huge number disparity.

People have done the tests and the only way battleships lose vs. corvettes is with dedicated anti-battleship designs... Designs the AI doesn't build. And that's if the entire fleet consists of those corvettes and the battleships are artillery designs.
Against the AI, that won't be the case.
They'll have battleships and cruisers with them that they'll lose on the way in, so you're basically gonna be fighting half or two thirds of their fleet at a time at most.

[Elitewrecker PT]

Originally posted by Pånøs:

Originally posted by Elitewrecker PT:

Why do you go from 40 battleships to only 75 corvettes?
Arc emitter and cloud lightning battleships
Or spam corvettes with disruptors and maybe point defense for the drones.

I thought of switching cause i saw many people saying that corvettes are better cause they have evasion... after the last few tries i dont believe evasion makes a difference...

I mean, you can make anything work, provided you send enough, what I was asking is, 40 battleships is over 600 corvettes worth of capacity, so why only 70.

[ScreamCon]

Originally posted by Elitewrecker PT:

Originally posted by Pånøs:

I thought of switching cause i saw many people saying that corvettes are better cause they have evasion... after the last few tries i dont believe evasion makes a difference...

I mean, you can make anything work, provided you send enough, what I was asking is, 40 battleships is over 600 corvettes worth of capacity, so why only 70.

You can go over your capacity. Example 50% I often do. the 50% increase is not that bad if your teching up alloy production and energy.

Plus putting high filled worlds into marshal law also increases capacity to offset negative of going over. Speaking of which if you manage to reach 9999 capacity by late game, your fleet is already strong enough likely to crush anything. +100% overcapacity of 10k is 20k fleet.

1 alloy upkeep becomes 2, 6 is 12.

[Elitewrecker PT]

Yes but I was just comparing the capacity he was spending on the battleships compared to his corvette attempt. To be a similar attempt it should be using the same amount of capacity.
You're not gonna compare 70 corvettes to 40 battleships.

[ScreamCon]

Ah I see