How do you take down an awakened Fallen Empire?

[JasTiger]

I'm at a situation in a game where a fallen empire awoke near me. No problem, its fine I can build up.

But we're at this crazy stalemate where they have fleets of literally over 2M. My huge doom stacks cap out at around 140K. I'm just no match for this guy. I've had this game since near launch and i've never seen stacks that huge, that prolific, or that unbeatable before. Maybe I got lucky in all those other play throughs, but i dunno.

Well normally that wouldnt be a huge problem, except we are stalemated yet the war weariness ticker keeps going up and I'm just stuck in my space. They've laid claims to some pretty built up systems and normally i'd just surrender and be done with it, especially since the scourge just showed up, but if i do, I'll lose a lot of good systems for no real reason.

So every time I try to invade an edge system they control, my ships don't even get off a shot. They just get shredded by the starbases they have. So i post here to ask, what is the best way to counter thse star bases? I don't even think my lances can out range them, their kinetic artillery can fire across the entire system. Do I just need to bring in multiple millions of shrapnel to grind them down, or is there some weapon set up I'm just not familiar with? Would cloaking somehow work?

[Cinnamoon_dragon]

To put it quite simply, you need a lot of science points to buff your fleet and that's pretty much it. Spam Technical worlds full of computers, as many as your economy allows.

[JasTiger]

Which science items do i need though? I have all of the biggest ships and i'm close to just "more % dmg or fire rate" techs. Whats a good set up for that?

[Buzzard]

Also, what designs are the enemy ships using? Lots of kinetics? Lasers? Missiles/strike craft? Once you've got some idea of what they're using, you can figure on your defenses. Same deal with *their* defenses; once you know what they're running, you can adjust your weapons mix to better melt them.

Cloaking will let you observe them, as well as (maybe) get somewhat in position before kicking off a fight, provided that they don't have the means to detect you. Test the waters with a science ship or two, and set them to Active Surveillance to get more info on them. (Science boats are cheap, small, and the best shot at sneaking around)

With those fleets, backed up by a station, you may want to lure them into a grinder of your own, instead of trying to face-tank *their* meat-grinder of a system. A station, with LOTS of defense platforms (hand designed, not auto-designed. Auto-designs tend to stink), and your own fleets close enough to drop in at a moment's notice, makes a fine little trap.

[JasTiger]

Oh I may not have been clear, they don't have any ships. Its all defense platforms. They are using kinetic weapons that are able to open fire on me before i can even get into range to fire back. ALl smaller ships are instantly deleted, only battleships hang around.

The ships i have are usually lances and torpedos. Are those decent?

[Slayer]

Any mods?

[mss73055]

In this position 140k vs 2 M pledge fielty.
They will drag you into wars, what means you may be able to pick on a few neighbouring systems.

[JasTiger]

Originally posted by Slayer:

Any mods?

I'm running guilli's mods, the planet one and the technology one.

Originally posted by mss73055:

In this position 140k vs 2 M pledge fielty.
They will drag you into wars, what means you may be able to pick on a few neighbouring systems.

Well the Praethoryns just showed up so I'll probably have to surrender and just bite the bullet. THey also invated Termainal Egress where I had a combined fleet strength between me and vassals and starbases of about 3M. His 2.4M fleet killed all of it without a single casualty. I don't understand how I'm supposed to ever contend with this.

[Oakshadow]

It has to be a one of your mods. Because starbases even with maxed platforms in unmodded, will typically level out by end game in power scaling. While fleets continue to get bigger. So if you said the AE fleets were 3 million yea that would make sense. But their starbases shouldn't be anything special even with several levels of repeatables.

as for what to focus research on, you want to research any repeatable that increases damage or the appropriate defensive stat. Late game is all about alpha strikes or kiting. Either you're doing tremendous damage in the opening salvo, or you're providing continuous DPS from out of weapon range.
Against platforms you don't even need to use afterburners to do the latter. Just have to stack range modifiers. If there's no fleet to draw your artillery closer to the starbase and into firing range than simply being able to out-range their weapons should be enough to win.

(Of course that's assuming vanilla weapon stats. Given that you're modded you're going to need to look at the weapons on the platforms and starbase and figure out which strategy will work best.)

[JasTiger]

Yeah i checked it out and they are using some kind of kinetic artillery that is out ranging and out damaging my own lances. I'm putting fleets of just battle ships with lances and they are being out ranged and out gunned by the starbases, which is insane. It might be a situation where I'll just have to massively out product and out number them, which is frankly un fun and I just don't know what else to do.

What is the best counter to kinetic artillery?

[Terijian]

Kinetic artillery does extra dmg to sheilds so lots of armor would help.
seems like one of your mods is massively inflating their power tho. and I dont have weapon stats memorized but i feel like normally lances would outrange KA
I might normally suggest strikecraft to stay out of range but it seems like you dont have an out of range so idk... take point fleet stnce if you have any allies and use all edicts and policies that could add dmg

seems like a really unfortunate position youre in lol

[alangriffith]

Is there a reason you can't just take Status Quo peace? (or it they won't accept it, wait out warscore until it is forced - 100% warscore forces status quo after 2 years, not surrender).

If their insane stacks are all defence platforms then they can;t invade you, and if they don't control any of their claims then status quo peace won't give them any of your systems.

You can definitely status quo Fallen empires, and I'm pretty sure you can Awakened empires, unless in a war in heaven.

I know you said the Crisis have shown up, but if they're out of reach then the Crisis will either lose to the FE and other AIs, or eventually breach your borders and then you can fight the Crisis with that fleet you've been building up.

Aside from that suggestion for this campaign, I do agree with the others that you have some sort of mod problem, as FEs hardly even build defence platforms in normal games.

[JasTiger]

Yeah it must be the mods because I don't ever remember them getting THIS powerful at this point in the game.

As for status quo, I'm only able to surrender and if i click it, it wants to have me cede all systems that they have laid claim to which is quite a few :( I don't want to lose some nice systems simply becasue of this stupid broken stalemate we have going on since he can't invade me, I can't invade him, but he'll win the war and force a surrender, ya know?

Maybe I should do some kind of console fix to just take away the massive buffs they have because its ridiculous that his fleets can simply delete mine like that. I'm the strongest non FE military in the galaxy and I can't even dent him, its crazy.

[alangriffith]

Originally posted by JasTiger:

Yeah it must be the mods because I don't ever remember them getting THIS powerful at this point in the game.

As for status quo, I'm only able to surrender and if i click it, it wants to have me cede all systems that they have laid claim to which is quite a few :( I don't want to lose some nice systems simply becasue of this stupid broken stalemate we have going on since he can't invade me, I can't invade him, but he'll win the war and force a surrender, ya know?

So Status Quo is greyed out? Or not there at all? Or just the FE won't accept it?

Warscore/war exhaustion hitting 100% should force status quo after 2 years, not surrender. So you won't lose anything they don't occupy unless you're in some special war type without status quo, in which case warscore hitting 100% may just not end the war at all (try looking at the wargoal is and googling it to see if it is on wikis or anything - they might also tell you if it comes from a mod).

[JasTiger]

Well its compounded I think because they actually declared war on one of my vassals and do actually occupy some of their systems. They laid claim to a bunch of mine, but do not occupy them except now Terminal Egress, which pisses me off, and I don't want to lose that one either.

I'll log back in in a bit to see if i can just status quo , but if I remember right, its grayed out and the only option was surrender and my vassal would likely lose the relic and all those occupied systems.

[Terijian]

IIRC, which I may not, losing a war has no effect on relics. bombarding the capital planet has a very small chance to steal one, slightly increased I think by the raiding bombardment stance
(could be barbaric despoiler civic maybe but fairly sure its the raiding bombardment stance which you can get thru perks)