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[Taricus]

Shields, and a mix of kinetics/plasma. Kinetics to cut through their shields and the plasma to deal with the armour underneath.

[Sirus]

Do they have point defense? If you can't get through their shields, ignore them; bombers and torpedoes would probably help quite a bit, bombers possibly more so since they also penetrate a goodly amount of armor.

[Tiruin]

Do they have point defense? If you can't get through their shields, ignore them; bombers and torpedoes would probably help quite a bit, bombers possibly more so since they also penetrate a goodly amount of armor.

What do you people suggest for hangar-type builds by the way? Close-combat cruisers/carriers? (since I've no idea what the range is for strikecraft, or what counters what kind of strikecraft, like do fighters act as PD too?) Do you outfit your battleships as carriers when they only all stay back? [Is there anyway to diversify the combat computer or ship Ai at all?]

[Paul]

Combination of battleships with spinal and large kinetic batteries combined with autocannon corvettes worked well for me against a fleet of plasma armed shield regening ships.

The corvettes quickly wiped out the enemy corvettes and fared well against the larger plasma guns thanks to evasion, and the battleships focus fired down their bigger ships.

I had a 12k fleet vs a 11k fleet (so I had the advantage there). I lost about 3k worth of corvettes but no battleships, and wiped out almost their entire fleet.

[Chiefwaffles]

Oh my god. I just had my 22k fleet vs their 20k fleet. The "tug of war" battle status indicator thing was heavily biased towards me at first but I still got crushed while doing almost no damage to their army.

I don't get it. They just have plasma throwers and an occasional missile (for which I have several PD boats to defend against) combined with well-rounded shields and armor. I've tried adapting my fleet but it just won't do anything. My ships are almost entirely shield-based, I have lots of kinetic artillery and autocannons along with a decent amount of disrupters and plasmas, but I just keep on getting crushed.

[IronyOwl]

Yes o_O
I dock my attack armies on the homeworld, equip them with the neoconcrete fortifications all, then attack a planet I'm at war with. The attachments don't seem to carry over when it's all blank, and despite winning (and getting the planet into friendly territory, meaning 're-equip'), I re-equip them with different attachments.

When I sally them forth back onto the homeworld, they're back to the original attachments. >______>

Bizarre. Is it possible it's just a graphical bug? Do their stats seem right/do they have the modifiers listed in their expanded mouseover text?

Do they have point defense? If you can't get through their shields, ignore them; bombers and torpedoes would probably help quite a bit, bombers possibly more so since they also penetrate a goodly amount of armor.

What do you people suggest for hangar-type builds by the way? Close-combat cruisers/carriers? (since I've no idea what the range is for strikecraft, or what counters what kind of strikecraft, like do fighters act as PD too?) Do you outfit your battleships as carriers when they only all stay back? [Is there anyway to diversify the combat computer or ship Ai at all?]

Strike craft are really long range, so no worries there. That said, they do have a relatively slow travel time relative to actual weapons fire, so it's pretty common for your carriers to take a few volleys before their strike craft arrive to retaliate. They exclusively target larger ships from what I've seen. Bombers are quite good at their job at first, but bleed off damage to PD relatively quickly. Fighters act as PD and thus shred through bombers pretty well.

I used to outfit my battleships as bomber carriers, which sort of worked and looked amazing. But I was up against fighter carriers, which meant they not only had a giant wave of PD, their hangar slots contained PD because there was nothing else to put there. The end result was that my fleet would take heavy spinal mount fire for a long time, my bombers would get decimated by their fighters but eventually push through, the surviving bombers would shred their battleships for a while but bleed out to enemy fighters/mounted PD, we'd both run out of strike craft, and our battleships would mill about slapping each other ineffectually for kind of a long while.

Oh my god. I just had my 22k fleet vs their 20k fleet. The "tug of war" battle status indicator thing was heavily biased towards me at first but I still got crushed while doing almost no damage to their army.

I don't get it. They just have plasma throwers and an occasional missile (for which I have several PD boats to defend against) combined with well-rounded shields and armor. I've tried adapting my fleet but it just won't do anything. My ships are almost entirely shield-based, I have lots of kinetic artillery and autocannons along with a decent amount of disrupters and plasmas, but I just keep on getting crushed.

Maybe it's ship type or behavioral issues, then? Their corvettes evading your battleships or... something? Have you noticed how the battles go on a smaller scale, what's targeting what and so on?

[Chiefwaffles]

Their fleet has a lot more battleships than mine. I have about 6 (4 artillery, 2 'general') battleships and they have 11 battleships all equipped with only plasma throwers. I have about 3x their amount of corvettes and a bit less cruisers. Destroyers are about the same.

It just seems like in battles their battleships simply melt whatever target they're aimed at, regardless of class or shields or armor. When my corvettes get into range, I start losing a bit less but still get crushed.

Though this battle was caused by an inderdicting military station, so it was in close proximity. I would have thought this should have given me an advantage thanks to my larger amount of corvettes, but nooope! And I don't really think this has something to do with it, but I also have ZBeautiful battles installed, which could theoretically impact battle outcomes, I suppose?

[USEC_OFFICER]

Plasma is pretty overpowered now and the fleet indicator doesn't take it into account. So if the AI has some kind of plasma-based fleet, being at roughly equal fleet power doesn't mean much. You either have to use Plasma yourself to even the playing field or use more ships to make up for your deficiencies. Checking what size of weapons they're using is pretty smart too. If they have a ton of Large weapons then going heavily into Corvettes makes sense. Less so if they have lots of Medium weapons but it might work. Just not as effectively.

[Paul]

If you're wanting to ambush them with a interdicting station, one option is to get a fleet of nothing but autocannon corvettes parked right where they'll pop out at, and a fleet of long range battleships parked at about their max range. That would let your autocannon ships immediately start work on them while your battleships stay out of range of their plasma for a bit. Since plasma is shorter range.

If most of your fleet is autocannon corvettes the ZBeautiful Battles mod might be altering the outcome. They're very short range, and that mod makes ships close slower and spread out more. I haven't personally used the mod though so I don't know.

[Chiefwaffles]

Yeah. I think I may uninstall ZBeautiful battles when I start my next game.
I did beat them in the end, though. I just focused all my production capabilities on Corvettes and Destroyers.

I thought Corvette spam was a thing of the past, but I guess not.

[Paul]

Corvette spam works good against plasma because plasma has reduced tracking compared to other guns, so their evasion works better. Shield heavy corvettes with high evasion is pretty much the counter to plasma. I would suggest standard rail weaponry on the corvettes (or plasma of your own, if you have it) so you're not so outclassed in terms of range and can start hurting them before they get you.

[TempAcc]

Cruisers and above aren't bad if you're using hangars, shield capacitors or regenerative hulls with armor. I only ever replace corvettes and destroyers now, as the cruisers and battleships just regen back by the time another serious battle comes up.

[Descan]

I just had a population on one of my planets genetically engineer themselves with the normal event dialogue, like 2 months after I unlocked the tech, into Synthetics. As in, the third tier of robots. They can grow as a normal pop but are otherwise identical to normal synthetics.

Keep in mind, I haven't even unlocked robots, let alone synthetics.

I didn't even know this was possible. Bug? Feature? I mean, turning yourself into a robot is a thing in Sci-Fi but you'd think it'd be more explicit that this is what happened...

[da_nang]

So... um... the lone neighboring xenophobic FE just woke up and asked for my enthrallment. I'm the biggest non-FE empire around, no allies and no pacts, sitting around with 20k-25k fleet. Autocannon III and Plasma II on most of my ships and the occasional railgun II, flak I on dedicated destroyers and cruisers though not many of those ships, particle lances on battleships. Shield capacitors and crystal plating galore, alongside Shields III and Armor IV.

I've got many early colonies that are not fully developed, colonies where frankly I am disappoint due to sector AI, and I'm already scraping the barrel with what I can field on a positive budget without an upkeep admiral. Oh and no defense stations. Not even the first ones.

Advised course of action?

[Chiefwaffles]

Don't Fallen Empires have fleets within the 100k+ range? Based on my near-complete lack of experience, I would just say accept becoming a thrall. Maybe conquer some other thralls to consolidate your power and eventually overthrow your alien overlords. Y'know, the usual.

But side question: Has anyone found defense stations effective? I just don't get them. The best ones you can get are something like 2k power. But with maintenance and the fact that you can't have a fleet of them, how are they effective at all at actual defense? The only real use I see for them is for FTL interdiction and the occasional homefield battle support.