Stellaris II: I, For One, Welcome Our New Robot Fungus Hivemind Overlords

[tonberrian]

So I accidentally awakened a Fallen empire. Having done so in previous games, I thought I could handle it when they declared war.

What surprised me this time was a massive fleet of 40 battleships and 80 cruisers, for a total of 280k fleetpower. Which is a lot. Too much for me, in fact. I reverted back to a previous save.

[Olinser]

So I accidentally awakened a Fallen empire. Having done so in previous games, I thought I could handle it when they declared war.

What surprised me this time was a massive fleet of 40 battleships and 80 cruisers, for a total of 280k fleetpower. Which is a lot. Too much for me, in fact. I reverted back to a previous save.

That's not even that much for an Awakened Fallen Empire. I've seen some of them have multiple 400k+ fleets after Awakening.

If you can't beat them 1v1 then what you can do is sit near their border, wait for them to attack an AI, immediately declare war demanding 1 or 2 of their key core planets for relatively small cost, and immediately rush for 2 of their planets, bombard and planetary assault. Most Fallen Empires only start with 5-8 worlds so occupying 2 of them should be enough warscore to win and then you've got 2 Fallen Empire planets and 10 years to build up a fleet to fight them 'fair'.

[tonberrian]

I reverted back to a previous save, then built up and gutted the suckers before they could awaken. Slim pickings on the worlds, though, only two with FE tech and one's only size 15. Still, that's enough to buck up my minerals to take on another empire.

[GloatingSwine]

Y'know, there's usually something of energy consequence for running 9 planets over your core.


Not when they're full of pops you're rendering for energy though. Still +700/month...

[LuckGuy]

I've been playing for about a week, and I guess I still don't understand the combat at all.

My first few empires all died because I expanded too fast, didn't focus on tech buildings, and so ended up with low tech fleets that got crushed by any aggressive neighbors. In my latest game, though, I figured that out and stayed with 3 planets until they were all developed with Level 4/5 tech buildings. I then expanded to 2 more for a total of 5, plus about 1/8 of the galactic map with frontier stations and associated mineral and research wealth. I had great incomes, multiple completed traditions, and high tech ships.

I fought a small neighbor and won handily, 13k vs 13k. At the end of the battle it was 12k me to 6k when it ran, and I finished up my war goals with success.

Later on, as I figured would happen, I have two neighbors who are much bigger than me but also lower tech. I saw a chance to take out 28.8k of fleet with my 25k of fleet, which I thought was in the realm of doable.

When the battle started the enemy had some level 1 disruptors, level 3 missiles, level 2 torpedoes, level 3 shields and level 3 armor (and level 3 reactors, if that matters). My ships had level 5 lasers, level 5 missiles, level 3 bombers, level 3 point defense, and level 5 shields, armor, and reactors with the protection being about 2:1 shield/armor. The enemy had 3 times the ships I did, so logically my ships were much stronger per unit. The enemy fleet was about even between all four ship classes, I had 1/3 cruisers and 2/3 battleships.

I got totally crushed! The bar for the combat started about 9/10 red, but I thought that couldn't be right so kept fighting. Sure enough, I hit retreat at 13k me 28.5k him, then he followed and wiped the rest with no loss. What happened? Is having more hulls the only way to victory, and the tech advantage means little? It was so backwards to the times I got wiped out with a big low tech fleet.

Your tips are humbly requested. Thanks.

[Olinser]

I've been playing for about a week, and I guess I still don't understand the combat at all.

My first few empires all died because I expanded too fast, didn't focus on tech buildings, and so ended up with low tech fleets that got crushed by any aggressive neighbors. In my latest game, though, I figured that out and stayed with 3 planets until they were all developed with Level 4/5 tech buildings. I then expanded to 2 more for a total of 5, plus about 1/8 of the galactic map with frontier stations and associated mineral and research wealth. I had great incomes, multiple completed traditions, and high tech ships.

I fought a small neighbor and won handily, 13k vs 13k. At the end of the battle it was 12k me to 6k when it ran, and I finished up my war goals with success.

Later on, as I figured would happen, I have two neighbors who are much bigger than me but also lower tech. I saw a chance to take out 28.8k of fleet with my 25k of fleet, which I thought was in the realm of doable.

When the battle started the enemy had some level 1 disruptors, level 3 missiles, level 2 torpedoes, level 3 shields and level 3 armor (and level 3 reactors, if that matters). My ships had level 5 lasers, level 5 missiles, level 3 bombers, level 3 point defense, and level 5 shields, armor, and reactors with the protection being about 2:1 shield/armor. The enemy had 3 times the ships I did, so logically my ships were much stronger per unit. The enemy fleet was about even between all four ship classes, I had 1/3 cruisers and 2/3 battleships.

I got totally crushed! The bar for the combat started about 9/10 red, but I thought that couldn't be right so kept fighting. Sure enough, I hit retreat at 13k me 28.5k him, then he followed and wiped the rest with no loss. What happened? Is having more hulls the only way to victory, and the tech advantage means little? It was so backwards to the times I got wiped out with a big low tech fleet.

Your tips are humbly requested. Thanks.

You got crushed because cruisers and battleships can't hit corvettes for crap and you wasted a huge amount of fleet power in point defenses, especially if you were rolling with just large and medium weapons. So they were focus firing your big ships and you were trying to hit their tiny ships with high evasion.

Bombers are terrible, don't build them. They're way too slow so a fight is half over before they even get in range, and they simply don't do enough damage.

Point defense is empty power - it doesn't do damage to an enemy fleet and is useless if they don't have any fighters or missiles. It's worth having in end game fleets but you should build a cruiser frame exclusively for point defense/fighters and keep that at only about 10-20% of your total fleet.

Tech advantage does matter but individual levels aren't really that significant a power buff, the only real big offensive power buff to fleets is when you get Kinetic Batteries/Artillery, which is a huge damage upgrade.

Also the computer calculations for fleet power are hilariously bad when comparing fleets. End game I've literally killed fallen empire fleets of the 'same' power as my own and lost less than 10% power.

You waited a really long time to expand. You need to balance expansion and fleet power. Sitting on just a couple colonies you're going to get steamrolled by the AI. You don't need to always keep a max fleet power fleet, but you should keep a reasonable pace of building more ships.

[GloatingSwine]

You got crushed because cruisers and battleships can't hit corvettes for crap and you wasted a huge amount of fleet power in point defenses, especially if you were rolling with just large and medium weapons. So they were focus firing your big ships and you were trying to hit their tiny ships with high evasion.

Eh, not so much.

Corvettes can only meaningfully damage armoured ships with torpedoes, and they aren't all that good. There's a reason I use cruiser monofleets.

More likely, the combination of bombers/lasers/missiles isn't particularly shiny. If you're going to use missiles, go ham on missiles. They're better than lasers at everything and the more of them you have the more breaks through the point defence.

Also, being small is bad. Tech isn't so useful, there's only something like a 60% difference between tier 1 and tier 5. So get huge, make sure you have a max tier spaceport on every planet (new spaceport techs and fleet expansion techs are about the most important in the early game), and fill your fleetcap.

Start with missiles, switch to 1L/2S missile destroyers as soon as you unlock them, then tech switch to 2L/2M plasma destroyers with one large mass driver and as much armour as you can strap on. (Standard ones now not Kinetic Artillery).

[Silverraptor]

Hey, I'd like some help. So I've built my first Dyson sphere, and it's in the process of being upgraded to the next stage. Now I want to build a science nexus and sensor array in 2 other systems, but can't figure out how to do it. Can I only work on 1 megastructure at a time? Do I have to wait for my Dyson Sphere to finish upgrading before I can start construction on my science network and Sentry Array?

[ShneekeyTheLost]

How do people feel about Shields?

On the one hand, seems like a sucker's bet. Not only does it take up a space that could be taken up by armor, but it also eats up energy, which means more engines, which means less armor or shielding.

On the other hand, shields renew pretty decently, so you can press your military advantage without needing to repair as often. Basically, unless you end up researching a tech you absolutely have to upgrade all your ships with, you won't need to bring your fleet back in nearly as often, which is really useful when dealing with large Federations that have multiple systems you need to take.

Also, there seems to be two different types of point defense systems: flack from Engineering and... something else in the physics tree? But the flack just seems innately superior to me. Does the other one have like extra research options off of it or eventually come out ahead or something?

I like to have a cruiser-heavy doctrine myself, with some destroyers for swarm-swatting, and a few battleships. I do have a point-defense carrier build, but I only use it when I'm dealing with people shooting missiles at me, and I don't need very many in my mix to do the job. Battleships, I have two configurations, depending on what I am dealing with. Typically, I use them as siege and L or X class weapons to counter big nasty things and to support troop invasions. However, if I want to use most of my cruisers for pounding the hell out of things, I can run a few battleships as point defense/carrier with fighter squads. Fighter squads are actually pretty good at swatting corvettes and even destroyers, and the PD can thicken defenses if opponents are using missiles. Granted, it's typically a waste of a battleship hull to worry about little guys, but it's an option.

Missiles just never seemed worth using to me, but I almost always end up near people that use missiles and counter-missile systems heavily, so it just seemed better to exploit the fact that they had less armor/shielding. Which do people tend to prefer: energy or ballistic? Or do you switch up depending on how much shielding you run into?

[Sian]

Unless you specificly tune your fleet to counter your opponent, Armor is best, true ... but only up to the soft cap of 75% (after which the efficiency lowers to half) and beyond that Shields are superior IMO ... and remember, Armor are hard-capped at 90% so if you got it that high, there would be absolutely no gain from going even higher

[Olinser]

Hey, I'd like some help. So I've built my first Dyson sphere, and it's in the process of being upgraded to the next stage. Now I want to build a science nexus and sensor array in 2 other systems, but can't figure out how to do it. Can I only work on 1 megastructure at a time? Do I have to wait for my Dyson Sphere to finish upgrading before I can start construction on my science network and Sentry Array?

You can only work on 1 Megastructure at a time, that includes Ring Worlds, Dyson Sphere, Science Nexus, Sensor Array (Habitats are not considered Megastructures and you can build as many as you want).

Its one of the reasons that Megastructures besides Habitats are still total crap.

[GloatingSwine]

Unless you specificly tune your fleet to counter your opponent, Armor is best, true ... but only up to the soft cap of 75% (after which the efficiency lowers to half) and beyond that Shields are superior IMO ... and remember, Armor are hard-capped at 90% so if you got it that high, there would be absolutely no gain from going even higher

Remember, 75% armour is 4x effective HP, 90% armour is 10x effective HP.

There might be a softcap at which it gets (a bit) harder to add more protection, but protection from armour is exponentially effective as well.

Armour is better than shields in all situations where the enemy is not set up specifically to counter armour.

Also, there seems to be two different types of point defense systems: flack from Engineering and... something else in the physics tree? But the flack just seems innately superior to me. Does the other one have like extra research options off of it or eventually come out ahead or something?

Flak gets nerfed a bit in 1.8.1. The intent is that Flak should be superior against strike craft but standard point defence superior against missiles. In 1.8.1 that seems to be reasonably true (whirlwind missiles are highly effective at distracting PD from shooting other missiles and less so at distracting flak from shooting bombers).

A Large Missile/Hangar/Whirlwind missile cruiser is highly effective against targets other than fallen empires which tend to pack enough PD and fighters to protect themselves.

[Grytorm]

Well. Been playing maybe a bit to much. Got into my typical 4x habit of restarting often. But in my latest game Im getting the hang of it. But thats partially because I have been a bit min maxy and got lucky with a system that provides about 35 minerals from four mining bases. I mean monsters spawned but they dont actually seem to move.

For my custom race I went fanatic authoritarian, spiritual, slaver guilds and efficient buerarcracy.

My first real attempt at war isnt going to well round one failed because a station could match my fleet. Round 2 I rebuilt my fleet, discivered that space stations boost fleet limits, destroyed a space station and lost my fleet when their fleet showed up. Preparing for round 3, rebuilt my fleet again, will probably hold back till I upgrade to better shields.

Everything would be going a lot better if I remembered the Trickster ability before I lost almost everything.

[Grim Portent]

Spoiler: What has Science done?!

Show

I think I can die happy now that someone made this.

[Silverraptor]

Spoiler: What has Science done?!

Show

I think I can die happy now that someone made this.

That is easily the best modified thing about this game I could have ever seen!

[Aotrs Commander]

Spoiler: What has Science done?!

Show

I think I can die happy now that someone made this.

So, the dreams I never before had until this moment of playing as Bob the Goldfish from La Planeta de Agua (Arriba!) can be realised now!

[GloatingSwine]

My first real attempt at war isnt going to well round one failed because a station could match my fleet. Round 2 I rebuilt my fleet, discivered that space stations boost fleet limits, destroyed a space station and lost my fleet when their fleet showed up. Preparing for round 3, rebuilt my fleet again, will probably hold back till I upgrade to better shields.

It takes about 40-50 corvettes to knock over a spaceport (you will take more casualties if it is armed with missiles).

Large Missile Destroyers, however, are very effective against them.

And yes, spaceports boost fleet limits. Always have the highest level spaceport available at all your planets.

[Silverraptor]

And yes, spaceports boost fleet limits. Always have the highest level spaceport available at all your planets.

Within Energy Credit reason of course.

[Grytorm]

Good to know. Played some more. Ultimately got a white peace in the war, I would have kept going but the fanatic purifiers had gotten into the ballgame and I wasn't willing to try and figure out how to take over a planet being invaded. Took a while to build up my economy again and got a few thousand minerals saved.

After my neighbor lost their war I declared on the purifiers in order to liberate the former neighbors planets. They have a bigger fleet unfortunately. Started at 5000 to 4000 and ended up at 4000 to 2000. I guess the force estimates are fairly reliable. Somewhat surprised, my tech had a decent lead on them.

For my ships, currently I am using tier 4 Kinetic Weapons but I could switch to tier 3 Explosives. For defense I am using tier 3 shields because it is hopefully better than tier 1 armor. Only have Corvettes and Destroyers.

[factotum]

They have a bigger fleet unfortunately. Started at 5000 to 4000 and ended up at 4000 to 2000. I guess the force estimates are fairly reliable. Somewhat surprised, my tech had a decent lead on them.

You need to build your ships rock-paper-scissors style to counteract what your enemy is deploying. For instance, if your enemy is heavy on the lasers, you need shields, because lasers do bonus damage to armour but reduced damage to shields. Kinetics and missiles, on the other hand, generally do bonus shield damage, so armour is better against those. This also means that using lasers as your own weapons is suboptimal if the AI is heavy on shielding.

[GloatingSwine]

Within Energy Credit reason of course.

There is no energy credit reason when it comes to spaceports. They don't increase in upkeep as you upgrade them, and with solar panels which should always be your first physics research they're free.

If you find yourself unable to pay for a fleet of your maximum size, build more power plants or just emergency build it at war and eat the deficit until you win. (Especially early game when you can expect casualties to be high anyway, just overbuild and let natural attrition take you down to sustainable levels).

Also early game spaceports are a major combat asset. A 5k enemy fleet vs. half its size plus a spaceport is going to take a lot of beating and probably be seen off.

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

The sooner you can get to Cruisers, the better. I always rush to them, because Destroyers and Corvettes just don't hold the same amount of firepower that you need.

[LuckGuy]

I applied the suggestions and had a good battle. At first, it was my missiles and armor vs his lasers, bombers, and point defense. The swarm missiles meant that a lot of regular missiles were getting through but I was still losing. So I retreated, retooled my destroyers from large missile to point defense, added 50% shields, and re-engaged, driving out the enemy fleet and winning the war.

Then the benevolent interventionalist next door said Join or Die, so I joined. Not sure where this is going, but I'm excited to find out! It's like the Uplift books, where me and my 5 species just got added to an older patron line, newly active on the galactic scene. About 40% of the Galaxy is held by a species that eats everything, so the showdown should be epic.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

What about the viability of Destroyer-based torpedo spammers to supplement your fleet against megastructures and other ancient horrors who like to use big guns that are hard to hit destroyers with?

[The Glyphstone]

If I purchase a DLC, will its content be integrated into a save-game currently in progress? Or does it have to be available from the start of game, assuming the simple presence of said DLC doesn't invalidate the file.

[GloatingSwine]

What about the viability of Destroyer-based torpedo spammers to supplement your fleet against megastructures and other ancient horrors who like to use big guns that are hard to hit destroyers with?

I presume you mean corvettes. Destroyers don't have evasion or torpedoes.

Torpedoes are categorically shut down by point defence weapons, their low fire rate means they can't saturate enemy PD without help that torpedo firing platforms usually can't give.

Also, evasion just isn't any good any more, medium weapons, which most big ships will have a few of, are pretty effective against corvettes.

A corvette has 68% effective evasion at endgame (Thrusters and sensors cancel out so I discounted them), and the worst medium weapon for shooting them, plasma, has 80% accuracy/20% tracking. That means that in an even situation, medium plasma hits a third of the time (32%). But wait, it's not an even situation, because later on in the game you build ships from a fleet academy, whcih means that hit rate goes up to 38%. And if you're using cruisers (Which you are) they go up to 42% chance to hit. Even the worst medium weapon for shooting corvettes hits four out of ten shots. Medium missiles hit corvettes 80% of the time.

Corvettes also become very cost inefficient very quickly, up to about tier 3 weapons and don't bother with any defences.

If I purchase a DLC, will its content be integrated into a save-game currently in progress? Or does it have to be available from the start of game, assuming the simple presence of said DLC doesn't invalidate the file.

Ascension perks might be, but most other things have to be included from galaxy generation.

[Olinser]

If I purchase a DLC, will its content be integrated into a save-game currently in progress? Or does it have to be available from the start of game, assuming the simple presence of said DLC doesn't invalidate the file.

No, it will not.

I'm not certain if buying and installing DLC will actually invalidate current saves, but a lot of the DLC is only generated at the start of a game, so you've already missed the triggers for most of the DLC content.

Leviathans, for instance, are all spawned at the generation of a galaxy, so if you download the Leviathan pack and go back to a previous save its not suddenly going to generate them in the galaxy. Synthetic Dawn lets you play as AI races, but you can't suddenly change your race in the middle of a game.

If you're interested in DLC unless you are planning on immediately starting a new game I'd probably recommend finishing your current game and then getting the DLC.

[The Glyphstone]

Sad but expected. I had discovered Megastructure Engineering as a rare tech, but after researching it I got nothing. Turns out megastructures are in a DLC.

[Silverraptor]

There is no energy credit reason when it comes to spaceports. They don't increase in upkeep as you upgrade them, and with solar panels which should always be your first physics research they're free.

If you find yourself unable to pay for a fleet of your maximum size, build more power plants or just emergency build it at war and eat the deficit until you win. (Especially early game when you can expect casualties to be high anyway, just overbuild and let natural attrition take you down to sustainable levels).

Also early game spaceports are a major combat asset. A 5k enemy fleet vs. half its size plus a spaceport is going to take a lot of beating and probably be seen off.

Oh! I thought the station increased in maintenance each time your upgraded it.

[Olinser]

Oh! I thought the station increased in maintenance each time your upgraded it.

Upgrades to the station level do not increase maintenance, HOWEVER, most of the modules require maintenance.