Here comes Cetana-claus right down Maginot lane~

[FizzyElf]

So... Cetana is here... and everything is exploding.

A bit of context, I have a mod that makes cetana into cortana when you defeat her so she basically becomes an advisor and companion for the player once her crisis ends, I also decided that it would be a grand idea to spawn her at the start of the game and then use console commands to auto complete her story line so I could just run around with her from the start. 5 years and 6 real world hours later, she has eaten a fallen empire, caused 3 advanced empires to literally cease to exist, and I mean gone, there planets, their ships, their stations, everything just Thanos snapped out of existence, no fight, nothing, she simply decided to revoke their rights to existing on this plane of reality. And 2 normal empires are dead despite a valiant 20k vs 14.5m fleet battle. So um... things are really bad right now and it's getting worse.

Her fleets, come to find out, don't care about borders or hyperlane registries or any form of travel restrictions, I found that out because my Maginot system (16 Maginot instalations, 20 attack moons and 60 juggernauts) suddenly had 14.8m extra fleet power all of a sudden without any warning and when I went to check, the fleet vanished and another one appeared, traveled about a third of the way into the system and then started hopping from one system to the next making a bee line for the fallen empire on the right side of the galaxy (all the fallen empires spawned in a triangle, the evil one on the left being cat people who's leader was literally named Cattin (they died if you aren't well versed in the subtext of the word "was"), the other evil one on the right and the annoying one who touches the galactic center and won't stop calling me.) showing zero regard for a system I built literally to fight and kill her fleets with over 800m fleet power as she can simply bypass everything on her way to body-slam the angry old man who is constantly complaining about all us young space fairing races playing on his front lawn.

Please help.

Also she is spawning mini Cetana's and I don't know how, they have no fleet power or anything, there is just a random Cetana system that won't connect with the rest of the faction and has instead formed it's own mini faction within Cetana's area of space. I know Cortana was a bit of a pain in the butt to get into the hands of Master Chief but sweet cheese and crackers this is making Reach look like a good time, at least things there made sense.

[FizzyElf]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3351772357
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3351772935
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3351773244
Also that clipping mass of metal in pic 1 is 60 giant ships who really love each other.

[FizzyElf]

And......... she killed a space whale. Not even the wildlife is safe anymore.

[Sabaithal]

Her fleets use lasers almost exclusively -> Go full shields on your ships

- Small ships are weak to disruptos and arc emitters due to their low hull strength
- battleships are mostly shields and hull, with only (relatively) weak armor -> Use torpedos or HEAVY kinetics (shield bypassing is better than not).
- Cetana itself near as I can tell primarily relies on hull regen -> Stormfire autocannon SPAM (like a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥) to kill her if you are able

You really do have to minmax to kill this crisis, and even then you might lose. There is a mod on the workshop to disable it if you don't want it in future sessions.

[FizzyElf]

Originally posted by Sabaithal:

Her fleets use lasers almost exclusively -> Go full shields on your ships

- Small ships are weak to disruptos and arc emitters due to their low hull strength
- battleships are mostly shields and hull, with only (relatively) weak armor -> Use torpedos or HEAVY kinetics (shield bypassing is better than not).
- Cetana itself near as I can tell primarily relies on hull regen -> Stormfire autocannon SPAM (like a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥) to kill her if you are able

You really do have to minmax to kill this crisis, and even then you might lose. There is a mod on the workshop to disable it if you don't want it in future sessions.

No amount of minmaxing is going to help year 5 AI empires, especially when my attempt to quarantine Cetana ended with Cetana just flying through my systems without firing a shot including a system with 16 maginot installations which are specifically designed to stop normal interstellar travel and force an invasion which Cetana would be really bad at.

Oh and she kicked the old man and his fallen empire fleet so hard in the balls that they are now on life support so... things are going "well".

[FizzyElf]

Originally posted by Sabaithal:

Her fleets use lasers almost exclusively -> Go full shields on your ships

- Small ships are weak to disruptos and arc emitters due to their low hull strength
- battleships are mostly shields and hull, with only (relatively) weak armor -> Use torpedos or HEAVY kinetics (shield bypassing is better than not).
- Cetana itself near as I can tell primarily relies on hull regen -> Stormfire autocannon SPAM (like a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥) to kill her if you are able

You really do have to minmax to kill this crisis, and even then you might lose. There is a mod on the workshop to disable it if you don't want it in future sessions.

Also absolutely yes, for anyone fighting her normally, I suggest planning a fleet comp in advance which provides high DPS to overcome the insane regen that her ship comes with and then leave it on the back burner until the crisis shows up, that way you already have a decent design and don't have to rack your brain to quickly come up with something last minute.

[Sabaithal]

I went with cosmogenesis and was sort of able to fight her when I properly equipped my fleets.

But I was building myself to get to "stupidly overpowered" by endgame from the start (I was already stronger than awakened empires). For people not doing that, you lure her fleets away from the core, then hit the core as hard as you possibly can, with as many allies as you can. The outcome of the crisis is decided on that one battle in essence.

[FizzyElf]

Originally posted by Sabaithal:

I went with cosmogenesis and was sort of able to fight her when I properly equipped my fleets.

But I was building myself to get to "stupidly overpowered" by endgame from the start (I was already stronger than awakened empires). For people not doing that, you lure her fleets away from the core, then hit the core as hard as you possibly can, with as many allies as you can. The outcome of the crisis is decided on that one battle in essence.

Though you do have to be at war with her to do it so you can have a combined fleet power in the 10.0G range and it won't matter until her event proceeds far enough for conflict to begin between the player and the crisis which is one of my biggest annoyances with her story line as at least with the Scourge or something you can attack them from the day one. I made a test galaxy with 25 stars and 5 empire to try and mess around with her to see if there was a way to speedrun it but she seems to be inactive without there being 2 fallen empires and the that map size only supports 1 fallen empire so the tests haven't gone anywhere so far though I did find a wierd bug where you can get negative fleet power to push a 1G fleet into -1G by jump driving them and combining them with a ship that has a fleet power of 1 (which is what you normally see when the fleet/ship is too strong) and that caused the one of the empires to freak out and declare war on me lol.

[NixBoxDone]

Cetana is a bad end game crisis to have when you're trying to play Galactic Nannybots because it doesn't start out hostile or even antagonistic.
Up until very close to the end it is entirely possible to stay on a positive note with her and AI empires are really, REALLY bad at doing the necessary steps to "unlock" meaningful hostilities.
Cetana also fully ignores your borders while still managing to close her own to you until YOU unlock hostility and, like all crises, absolutely doesn't respect the relationship status of the rest of the galaxy with the L-Sector while having full access to any and all wormholes that happen to be around.

The fleets behave wonky until you get far enough into the event that the game decides you ought to be allowed to fight her, too. Lost several admirals by having them get yeeted into the warp by advanced nannite shenanigans until the game decided I had "achieved parity".

Beat her using Cosmogenesis myself, though it isn't necessary - all you need is arc furnace and the knowledge to beeline for megastructures fuelled by the easy alloys from said arc furnace to get stronk early and snowball.

Your best bet vs. Cetana is to rush the events and anomalies that allow you to actually fight her and then stomp her out ASAP. AIs either won't help or will actively hinder you by cooperating with her, advancing her crisis timer and closing borders to you, forcing you to either cloak or declare war to get access to any mission-critical stuff that may have spawned in or behind their systems.

It is worth noting that Cetanas Titan is disgustingly strong and usually hangs out in a system that has several million fleet power in starbases plus whatever fleets happen to be nearby.

Also of note is that, if you ambush a convoy (which is usually very weak to make exactly that possible), any guard fleets that happen to join the fight will join the "convoy" special faction for the duration of that fight.
The convoy faction doesn't get end-game bonus stats, which means that fleets of 2 mil plus fleetpower get nerfed to closer to 700k while aiding the convoy.
They turn neutral again and regain their fleet power once the convoy fleet dies, but depending on how many ships you took out while that happened, they might be weak enough to be taken off the map entirely.

I found it easiest to simply ambush her fleets as they left her systems enroute to the closest L-Gate until I had most of them down, then rush her. If you're a shroud-empire, you can learn something from the shroud that lets you take her titan out of play, making the entire core system fight about 10 times easier.

TL. DR. is that you can't bottle her up easily until you progress her events far enough so your best bet is to rush them and stomp her ASAP.

[Sabaithal]

It should be noted following her event line unlocks huge damage boosts against her ships specifically.

There's also a sort of "false intimidation" factor when she first appears and wipes the fallen empires. She gets a massive damage boost against fallen empires, and the fallen empires in question have a -90% damage malus. So she isn't as OP as she appears.

[FizzyElf]

Originally posted by NixBoxDone:

Cetana is a bad end game crisis to have when you're trying to play Galactic Nannybots because it doesn't start out hostile or even antagonistic.
Up until very close to the end it is entirely possible to stay on a positive note with her and AI empires are really, REALLY bad at doing the necessary steps to "unlock" meaningful hostilities.
Cetana also fully ignores your borders while still managing to close her own to you until YOU unlock hostility and, like all crises, absolutely doesn't respect the relationship status of the rest of the galaxy with the L-Sector while having full access to any and all wormholes that happen to be around.

The fleets behave wonky until you get far enough into the event that the game decides you ought to be allowed to fight her, too. Lost several admirals by having them get yeeted into the warp by advanced nannite shenanigans until the game decided I had "achieved parity".

Beat her using Cosmogenesis myself, though it isn't necessary - all you need is arc furnace and the knowledge to beeline for megastructures fuelled by the easy alloys from said arc furnace to get stronk early and snowball.

Your best bet vs. Cetana is to rush the events and anomalies that allow you to actually fight her and then stomp her out ASAP. AIs either won't help or will actively hinder you by cooperating with her, advancing her crisis timer and closing borders to you, forcing you to either cloak or declare war to get access to any mission-critical stuff that may have spawned in or behind their systems.

It is worth noting that Cetanas Titan is disgustingly strong and usually hangs out in a system that has several million fleet power in starbases plus whatever fleets happen to be nearby.

Also of note is that, if you ambush a convoy (which is usually very weak to make exactly that possible), any guard fleets that happen to join the fight will join the "convoy" special faction for the duration of that fight.
The convoy faction doesn't get end-game bonus stats, which means that fleets of 2 mil plus fleetpower get nerfed to closer to 700k while aiding the convoy.
They turn neutral again and regain their fleet power once the convoy fleet dies, but depending on how many ships you took out while that happened, they might be weak enough to be taken off the map entirely.

I found it easiest to simply ambush her fleets as they left her systems enroute to the closest L-Gate until I had most of them down, then rush her. If you're a shroud-empire, you can learn something from the shroud that lets you take her titan out of play, making the entire core system fight about 10 times easier.

TL. DR. is that you can't bottle her up easily until you progress her events far enough so your best bet is to rush them and stomp her ASAP.

How do you rush the events? I tried using console commands but they failed to do anything to her, outside of spawning her in of course as that was the one thing that did actually work lol.

[Willem]

Cloak a whole bunch of Torpedo Frigates above her Flagship (Like a couple of thousand), Declare War on her, Decloak the Frigates and Alpha Strike her to Death? Don't know how much Cloaking Detection she has, but if she does not have it all that high, that could be a way to do it.

[FizzyElf]

Originally posted by Willem:

Cloak a whole bunch of Torpedo Frigates above her Flagship (Like a couple of thousand), Declare War on her, Decloak the Frigates and Alpha Strike her to Death?

How? you can't do that to a crisis faction like her. The idea would work on normal empires so long as their detection is poor but Cetana is immune to that unless you are willing to leave that frigate armada over her titan for a couple of years while you wait for her to fight the player.

[Willem]

Originally posted by FizzyElf:

Originally posted by Willem:

Cloak a whole bunch of Torpedo Frigates above her Flagship (Like a couple of thousand), Declare War on her, Decloak the Frigates and Alpha Strike her to Death?

How? you can't do that to a crisis faction like her. The idea would work on normal empires so long as their detection is poor but Cetana is immune to that unless you are willing to leave that frigate armada over her titan for a couple of years while you wait for her to fight the player.

I don't know where in the game files you can check how much Cloak Detection Each Crisis has, but only the Extradimensional Invaders have Perfect Cloak Detection according to the Wiki.

[FizzyElf]

Originally posted by Willem:

Originally posted by FizzyElf:

How? you can't do that to a crisis faction like her. The idea would work on normal empires so long as their detection is poor but Cetana is immune to that unless you are willing to leave that frigate armada over her titan for a couple of years while you wait for her to fight the player.

I don't know where in the game files you can check how much Cloak Detection Each Crisis has, but only the Extradimensional Invaders have Perfect Cloak Detection according to the Wiki.

Cetana can't be attacked unless she allows the player to attack her, she doesn't need to detect the ships, she already renders them useless until the day she starts fighting the player which can take a while to occur.

[NixBoxDone]

Originally posted by FizzyElf:

Originally posted by NixBoxDone:

Looks like you brought a wall of text to a snip fight, pardner

How do you rush the events? I tried using console commands but they failed to do anything to her, outside of spawning her in of course as that was the one thing that did actually work lol.

I wouldn't know how to console wizard my way through the events, unfortunately (though you may consult with the sages on Reddit, some crusty old researcher probably has the exact sequence on a napkin in a drawer somewhere).

When I say "rush", what I mean is use or build a science ship per project spawned, send them all out ASAP (the projects ain't dangerous), grab your ships and "ambush" all of the convoys until you get a pop-up telling you that you can now hide your shenanigans from Cetana, then send your fleets to stomp her outposts by doing the projects on the sun with them (doing the project turns the outpost hostile but apparently also hides the activity from Cetana).

If you do that, the game will eventually tell you you're strong enough to fight Cetana, then you can declare war and actually make it stick. Apparently that also makes her attackable for everyone else.

If you try before doing that, at the very start every ship you send into her space just gets turned into environmentally friendly nannite dust (TM) and after that every fleet action her ships are involved in will have one of your fleets yeeted month. I THINK she kills them, but emergency FTL makes it so any ship that makes the save gets sent to FTL instead.
I had admirals and fleet doctrine set for emergency FTL so I'd only lose a third of my fleet or so, but I lost several admirals when they fumbled their saving throws.