no XL slot available on my battleship

[DJI_DUDU]

Hi All, I have a question related to the XL slot on a battleship.
I use vanilla version of the game (no DLCs, no mods).

I am a beginner player, I always lose to the end crisis, not matter how weak they are. 200k fleets are way too strong for me.

I've checked a few guides on how to fight contingency and I've noticed ppl had many recommended builds, most revolving around arc emitters, cloud lightning, missiles, strike crafts and shields.

Arc emitters and cloud lightning are not available for me as I've noticed I dont have access to the XL slot (I dont have spinal mount available). I am pretty sure I've researched the required technology, yet I must be missing something (I've have never used ship designer before).

Any tips would help a lot, as I need to start my game all over (contingency destroyed me again). Thank you.

[DJI_DUDU]

nvm, it seems I haven't even researched the technology, apparently I am worse at this game than I even thought xD

[Bumc]

You have to research any XL weapon (i.e. said arc emitter) to have it being an option in ship design, that's it. Double check the techs researched if you still have the save.

[Kufesska]

cloud lightning+arc emitter is an outdated build, cloud lightning is kinda useless now, at least mid-late game
shields are worse than armor now also
missiles are good against common AI empires, i think crisis and FE have a lot of point-defence
carrier or artillery battleships can be effective against crisis(carrier may have bug with Combat Computer that make them go in close combat instead of trying to kite enemy, not sure if they fixed it or not, removing any weapon with less than 100 attack range may help)
torpedos cruisers are strong too i think

you need a lot of research and go for repetables techs, while having a lot of pops for all those good jobs to be strong

[CrUsHeR]

^

You just need to manually replace the Carrier Computer with the Artillery version.

I think it is since the Machine Age DLC, where the auto-upgrade button always replaces the artillery with the carrier one. Since the last update, it also likes to remove Afterburners even with sufficient power.