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Raenir Salazar
Nov 5, 2010

College Slice

Aethernet posted:

You should get intel from researching wreckage. It's weird that you don't tbh.

This. I think fighting ships in combat should give some sort of intel about their capability, but it shouldn't be precise; like "Some sort of Laser weapon???" and then scanning the wrecks gives more specifics.

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Staltran
Jan 3, 2013

Fallen Rib

Cease to Hope posted:

can you tagswitch to the crisis?

Pretty sure you can. There's a bunch of weird tags after regular empires and FEs.

Requiring Intel to see ship loadouts is a dumb change, and it's ridiculous you need 100 (I think?) intel for it. Even if you didn't know all the details you should at least have some idea of the loadout with lower intel. Like maybe you'd know a corvette has kinetics and lasers, but not if they have 1 laser 2 kinetics or the converse.

Honestly I've never really liked ship designs in Stellaris. It all just seems so forgettable, and it's kinda buried in the UI too. Even in your own fleets distinguishing between ship types (of the same size) can be a pain. I played MOO1 for the first time a couple years back and I was surprised by how easily I recognized enemy designs. A part of that is that MOO1 weapons and ships had more variety (and battles are frankly more legible), but I think it's mostly because you had a limited amount of designs at a time and deleting one scrapped all ships of that design too, as well as no upgrades. You don't really see either the AI or a player keep a bunch of obsolete ships around since refits are so cheap, aside from transitioning to cruisers from corvettes or battleships from either of those, but the vanilla AI always uses mixed fleets so that doesn't happen in SP either.

Raenir Salazar
Nov 5, 2010

College Slice
What I've done is indirectly infer the loadouts of the enemy.

1. Hover over their ships during a battle; it tells you their Hull/Armor/Shield HP.
2. Dig into the "Damage Dealt" section and hover over it; it broadly tells you what their damage types are.

I've started bothering with this less once my wars were less touch and go and started snowballing; but I feel like it had a hand in not losing any ships when I was turning that war up above around.

Now I'm losing ships a little bit at a time since I've switched back to a more balanced loadout but my advantage is stark enough now to not matter.

alcaras
Oct 3, 2013

noli timere
Is there a good tl;dr on correct 3.0 ship outfitting? (I haven't played since 2.2 or something ancient and have also forgotten what the meta was then in any case)

Gort
Aug 18, 2003

Good day what ho cup of tea

Cease to Hope posted:

can you tagswitch to the crisis?

You sure can, and even play as them.

ZypherIM
Nov 8, 2010

"I want to see what she's in love with."

Raenir Salazar posted:

I won some more wars and pushed out my borders a bit but its really annoying to retake systems you lose as a FP because I don't want to risk pockets forming if I get forced peaced. I even managed to get 25k fleet power to launch a punitive expedition against the Marauders and took one of their systems but I lost some ships and needed to repair/rebuild a little.

No one is dowing me anymore, I think my fleet power must be ahead of any one power near me.

Yeah winning that war the screenshots were from was a LOT easier once they stopped stacking their stuff; but its still a bit of a problem with a large empire to defend multiple fronts especially now that star bases aren't really good speed bumps anymore.

My main issue now is that my economy is struggling to keep up with alloys, I can't seem to get above +80 to +110 alloys a tick when I need like +250 alloys to keep pace with these wars I want to do.

Fleet capacity is also an issue, I'm up against 260ish fleet cap now and need closer to like 350 or 50k fleet power total if I want to be able to watch my borders while pushing into someone.

I have the Grunur relic which is neat, just colonizing 40-50% habitable worlds and clicking the button; but it competes with the +30% speed relic since it makes traversing my fleets across my empire faster.

So there are a couple options for each issue that you could consider.

There are 2 perks that increase fleet cap. The cheaper option is galatic force projection, which adds just a flat +80. I don't believe it gets modified by any multipliers, but I haven't taken it for a while so I could be wrong. This tends to be stronger earlier, and the big advantage it has is not costing you any more resources/time. The other option is grasp the void, which gives you +5 starbase capacity. This translates into 180 fleet cap from anchorages, but it costs you the time and alloys to turn those into anchorages. Outside of those keep an eye on your green tech for more starbases, tech and space owned are your main 2 sources of those.

A minor option to consider that might help your defensive line: fortress habitats. Basically, in your border/choke spots you build a habitat (or two), and just fill it with every fortress and other defensive structure you can. Even if you don't have upgraded habs, it makes a pretty potent choke point since the upgraded fortress building has a warp inhibitor on it, forcing the enemy to take it or bypass the system. With a planetary shield and the adaptability tree you've got -75% orbital bombardment damage (and you can get more reduction from tech), and each fortress adds 4 soldiers and each soldier adds 4-6 (with tech) naval cap. You can also turn on martial law after you're done growing/filling it with pops for another 2 soldier jobs. Each soldier job gives 3 defense armies, so even 2 fortresses with martial law is 30 defensive armies they have to deal with. If you upgrade to advanced habitats you get another 4 building slots which is another 48 defensive armies.

Basically they can take it, but its going to take them a really long time to do so and they're not getting past until they do, giving you the time to respond. Once you get gateway tech you can connect your fronts letting you essentially run 1 defensive fleet while the rest of them are used on offense.


To fix your alloy problem, convert a planet to a forge world. Ideally it'll be good sized (15+) and not have too many production districts (<5 of each) so you're not giving much up by using it, though any world will work just fine. First, and most importantly, you need to change the designation of the planet from "auto" (the little robot cow icon on the right side of the planet info screen) to "forge world". Not only does this gives you improved industrial building time and reduced maintence cost, it more importantly makes industrial worlds give 2 alloy jobs instead of 1 alloy 1 consumer goods. You can make a consumer goods world by picking industrial world instead (giving 2 consumer goods jobs) just fyi. Now throw down and upgrade the forge building and stack up as many industrial districts as your have pop for, along with probably 1 entertainment building and anything you might have that gives stability (psi corps, noble estates, etc). If you have a bunch of influence and worlds with clerks and stuff consider making them pack up their bags and get to work. If that doesn't boost you enough, make another one!

If you have nemesis, become the crisis is still really strong because menancing ships are built with straight minerals (and half the build time), and you get a ton of other bonuses to fighting that are super useful (especially the -war exhaustion, you can basically keep a war going as long as you want). Basically you can poo poo out corvettes instantly, letting you create cheap raiding fleets or replenish the screens for your expensive battleships.

Kaal
May 22, 2002

through thousands of posts in D&D over a decade, I now believe I know what I'm talking about. if I post forcefully and confidently, I can convince others that is true. no one sees through my facade.

alcaras posted:

Is there a good tl;dr on correct 3.0 ship outfitting? (I haven't played since 2.2 or something ancient and have also forgotten what the meta was then in any case)

Small fleets: Interceptor Corvettes / Picket Destroyers
Large fleets: Carrier Cruisers / Artillery Battleships / Targeting Titan
Amplifier Juggernaut
Missile and Hangar Platforms

Some folks like cutting out parts of this, but overall it'll work just fine. Keep your kinetic / energy weapons balanced unless you have a reason to emphasize one over the other.

Kaal fucked around with this message at 19:46 on Jun 2, 2021

Warmachine
Jan 30, 2012



ZypherIM posted:

A minor option to consider that might help your defensive line: fortress habitats. Basically, in your border/choke spots you build a habitat (or two), and just fill it with every fortress and other defensive structure you can. Even if you don't have upgraded habs, it makes a pretty potent choke point since the upgraded fortress building has a warp inhibitor on it, forcing the enemy to take it or bypass the system. With a planetary shield and the adaptability tree you've got -75% orbital bombardment damage (and you can get more reduction from tech), and each fortress adds 4 soldiers and each soldier adds 4-6 (with tech) naval cap. You can also turn on martial law after you're done growing/filling it with pops for another 2 soldier jobs. Each soldier job gives 3 defense armies, so even 2 fortresses with martial law is 30 defensive armies they have to deal with. If you upgrade to advanced habitats you get another 4 building slots which is another 48 defensive armies.

Basically they can take it, but its going to take them a really long time to do so and they're not getting past until they do, giving you the time to respond. Once you get gateway tech you can connect your fronts letting you essentially run 1 defensive fleet while the rest of them are used on offense.

These are very good, and can also help with the naval cap problem once you have the tech that makes your soldiers produce naval cap. Naval cap is, in my opinion, more important than fleet cap until Titans show up. As nice as a doomstack is, you can also just make separate fleets to do the same thing, with the added bonus of being able to cherry pick admirals. You can then give your corvette fleet a trickster/gale speed admiral and your battleships a cautious/aggressive admiral.

There's no limit to the number of individual fleets you can make, and I suppose my hot take is that smaller fleets with specialized leaders are more efficient than a single large fleet.

ZypherIM
Nov 8, 2010

"I want to see what she's in love with."

Kaal posted:

Small fleets: Interceptor Corvettes / Picket Destroyers
Large fleets: Carrier Cruisers / Artillery Battleships / Inspiring Titan
Targeting Juggernaut
Missile and Hangar Platforms

Some folks like cutting out parts of this, but overall it'll work just fine. Keep your kinetic / energy weapons balanced unless you have a reason to emphasize one over the other.

This for sure is a really stable starting setup, and what I generally use. Though I tend to separate out carrier and artillery fleets into fleets that are just carriers/artillery. I'll sort of make battle groups (you can hotkey multiple fleets together with ctrl+1, etc) of 1 interceptor+destroyer and 1 or more large fleets.


If you like to do a bunch of carrier stuff they synergize well with disruptor fleets, since both ignore shields. Strike craft have to chew through the armor first, but get 150% dmg to do so. Disruptors ignore both.

zonohedron
Aug 14, 2006




I wish I could sync up my star bases so V.I.R. only announced their successful update of a thing once; failing that, so he sounded excited or annoyed or bored with successive announcements...

The Cheshire Cat
Jun 10, 2008

Fun Shoe

zonohedron posted:



I wish I could sync up my star bases so V.I.R. only announced their successful update of a thing once; failing that, so he sounded excited or annoyed or bored with successive announcements...

Or just have it not do an announcement for this at all because like, who cares that a defense platform finished upgrading. I stopped thinking about it the second I clicked the button.

zonohedron
Aug 14, 2006


The Cheshire Cat posted:

Or just have it not do an announcement for this at all because like, who cares that a defense platform finished upgrading. I stopped thinking about it the second I clicked the button.

Or that, yes. I would much rather it verbally inform me about things my leaders are doing or not doing, like dying or becoming paranoid or whatever, than hear "ships upgraded" and think "wait, what fleet did I upgr...... oh. right."

Quorum
Sep 24, 2014

REMIND ME AGAIN HOW THE LITTLE HORSE-SHAPED ONES MOVE?

alcaras posted:

Is there a good tl;dr on correct 3.0 ship outfitting? (I haven't played since 2.2 or something ancient and have also forgotten what the meta was then in any case)

If you manage to get Cloud Lightning from killing Void Clouds, you can run Battleships with 1x Arc Emitter/Cloud Lightning in all other slots. Because those all bypass armor and shields and have amazing tracking, you'll chew through fleets before they have a chance to respond. The downsides are lower overall DPS than a normal artillery Battleship and a harder time dealing with high-hull targets like starbases or the scourge. On the plus side, you can do lots of things to buff your energy weapon damage and fire rate, and you'll murder most AI fleets. Throw in a couple of carrier Battleships to help cover your bases and I find it's a good setup to use as a default, before refitting into something more specialized if necessary. If only it didn't require a specific, easily missable technology.

Horace Kinch
Aug 15, 2007

alcaras posted:

Is there a good tl;dr on correct 3.0 ship outfitting? (I haven't played since 2.2 or something ancient and have also forgotten what the meta was then in any case)

A mix of armor/shields and kinetic/energy will do you just fine, favoring energy. Plasma is infinitely better than Lasers.

Staltran
Jan 3, 2013

Fallen Rib

Kaal posted:

Small fleets: Interceptor Corvettes / Picket Destroyers
Large fleets: Carrier Cruisers / Artillery Battleships / Targeting Titan
Amplifier Juggernaut
Missile and Hangar Platforms

Some folks like cutting out parts of this, but overall it'll work just fine. Keep your kinetic / energy weapons balanced unless you have a reason to emphasize one over the other.

Why cruisers for the carriers instead of battleships?

Also in the late game I'd definitely prefer having more Neutron Launchers than Kinetic Artillery, unless I was fighting something like the Unbidden with a lot of shields.

Phosphine
May 30, 2011

WHY, JUDY?! WHY?!
🤰🐰🆚🥪🦊

Staltran posted:

Why cruisers for the carriers instead of battleships?

Also in the late game I'd definitely prefer having more Neutron Launchers than Kinetic Artillery, unless I was fighting something like the Unbidden with a lot of shields.

Cruisers are more strike craft per naval cap I think. So instead of half carrier half murder battleships, you do half carrier cruisers and half murder battleships and get more total carrier? Didn't double-check so I might also be wrong.

Poil
Mar 17, 2007

Phosphine posted:

Cruisers are more strike craft per naval cap I think. So instead of half carrier half murder battleships, you do half carrier cruisers and half murder battleships and get more total carrier? Didn't double-check so I might also be wrong.
Unless something has changed it should be the same with cruisers having 1 hangar for 4 cap while Battleships have 2 for 8.

Phosphine
May 30, 2011

WHY, JUDY?! WHY?!
🤰🐰🆚🥪🦊

Poil posted:

Unless something has changed it should be the same with cruisers having 1 hangar for 4 cap while Battleships have 2 for 8.

Oh! No idea then. Maybe cost?

Gato The Elder
Apr 14, 2006

Pillbug
Do non-empire (amoeba, mining drone, skull boys, etc) factions still have their fleet makeup perma-hidden by the new intelligence system? I’ve played this game too much and so mostly have those stats memorized, but it still feels like an oversight.

Gato The Elder
Apr 14, 2006

Pillbug
Oh also, rushing 200k fleet strength is a strong mid game play for absorbing a FE capital. Those buildings are nuts and I had somehow never noticed 😶

Cease to Hope
Dec 12, 2011

alcaras posted:

Is there a good tl;dr on correct 3.0 ship outfitting? (I haven't played since 2.2 or something ancient and have also forgotten what the meta was then in any case)

early game fitting is a mix of energy and ballistic, favoring ballistic. it's generally worth it to use up your power cap on shields, but armor's more of a question, since the production cost for more armor is significant. in this corvette/destroyer phase, torpedoes are absurdly strong (although other missiles are useless), but countered fairly hard by ams. if you're playing against AI, the AI will usually run at least some AMS. you can use destroyers or stick to corvettes; destroyers are a little bit better but go totally obsolete, while corvettes will never go totally obsolete and are better at running down enemies. you're kinda eating whatever you find on the ground at this point, though, because there's only two techs worth beelining at this point unless you are going for a hyperaggression corvette spam initial rush. (i'm not really super great at early game rush but zypherIM wrote a good guide to that.)

the techs you really, really want are cruisers and strike craft. strike craft are absurdly strong early in the game against corvette spam or the AI's mix of random crap. you want them early on, even before you get cruisers, because you can put them on stations. you'll want to do that, whenever you're defending a choke point, so the station can send its fighters to back up whatever fleet you're scrounging up. carrier cruisers will dunk on anything smaller unless your opponent goes very heavy into flak (and the AI will not do this), and you can just leave their point defense hardpoints empty unless you are getting into big carrier fights. (your fighters will clown on anything with torpedoes.) cruisers with guns should probably run a mix of medium energy and ballistic, like you've been doing before.

once you have battleships, there are four main fleet builds. regardless of the fleet build, any BS fleet can benefit from one titan with a nice aura. (i like FTL inhibitor.)

chaser corvettes, usually with torps but sometimes with disruptors or some other weapon you're running mainly as a situational hard counter. you're mainly using these because of their speed on the map, so don't mix in any slower ships into their fleets. i like to have some of these just to run crippled fleets down or force fights, but you should always look at them as ablative, because they will take casualties even on a good fight. torp builds clown on bases that are not running all fighter bays (the AI will not run fighter bays) and does fine against artillery BS but eats poo poo going up against carriers. these wreck the unbidden but do not match well against cybrex. they can do work against praethoryn but should be running AMS and plasma or disruptors instead of torps.

carrier battleships. use the arc emitter lance if you can, and these don't really need PD or much in the way of defenses since they should be leaving any fight where they're going to take damage. these sweep away smaller ships like gnats (so they're nice against AI fleets) but the need for their fighters to fly to the target means they're vulnerable to artillery or cloud lighting BB. they're very good against unbidden and merely fine against the other crises.

artillery BB, also occasionally called alpha fleets. these run kinetic weapons, and, once you research them, kinetic batteries. put lances on these, not arc emitters. they sweep carriers and cruisers right off the field and are basically a hard counter to carriers, but can get bogged and overwhelmed by corvettes. this fleet benefits from taking favorable fights or having another fleet to engage first so they get more time before it turns into a brawl. fallen empires absolutely eat poo poo to alpha fleets, and they match well against the big fat contingency fleets. they don't really like praethoryn swarms of things but they can always do work if they're the second fleet into a fight.

cloud lighting / arc emitter BB. these are basically the same unit as artillery BB, and outperform artillery BB against anyone who isn't running crystal plate (or skimping on defenses just to have more ships). they're much better against starbases (although by this point starbases aren't a big problem), and tear through the fallen empires and crises. their main downside is that you're not guaranteed to run into the void clouds to unlock cloud lightning. you shouldn't bother with shield/hull ignoring weapons unless you can build these, though, or unless you're up against the crises.

Cease to Hope fucked around with this message at 21:55 on Jun 2, 2021

The Cheshire Cat
Jun 10, 2008

Fun Shoe

Phosphine posted:

Oh! No idea then. Maybe cost?

I think it's less that cruisers are better carriers than battleships, but rather they are better at being carriers than they are at anything else, wheras battleships are better at artillery so by making them carriers you aren't getting the most out of them.

Gato The Elder
Apr 14, 2006

Pillbug
Adding on to weapon chat, Null Voir Beams are actually pretty decent in small numbers. I was running something like a 4:1 ratio of plasma/neutrons to void beams and it was v effective. They tend to have the same range as a weapon one size category larger, so they go nicely in the e.g medium slot on an artillery cruiser or battleship.

Also seconding everything people have said about strike craft and adding that Amoeba Flagella are basically tier3 strike craft you can get in like the first 20 years. They’re so so so good (and they look hilarious in fights)

Kaal
May 22, 2002

through thousands of posts in D&D over a decade, I now believe I know what I'm talking about. if I post forcefully and confidently, I can convince others that is true. no one sees through my facade.

Staltran posted:

Why cruisers for the carriers instead of battleships?

Also in the late game I'd definitely prefer having more Neutron Launchers than Kinetic Artillery, unless I was fighting something like the Unbidden with a lot of shields.

The Cheshire Cat posted:

I think it's less that cruisers are better carriers than battleships, but rather they are better at being carriers than they are at anything else, wheras battleships are better at artillery so by making them carriers you aren't getting the most out of them.

That's exactly it. Cruisers are best used as carriers, whereas Battleships are best used for artillery (both of the kinetic and energy variety). You can make a battleship into a carrier, but there's no good reason to. You're basically trading two missile slots (that will synergize with your fighters) for a spinal mount, which implies you didn't really need that carrier in the first place. And ultimately I like finding a good role for cruisers rather than consigning them to the dustbin. Of course people are free to disagree - Stellaris combat is fundamentally about economic warfare rather than strategy.

Also I like putting Mega Cannons on my Battleships because their high range means they'll be hitting those shields first, while the Neutron Launchers follow up on the armor.

Kaal fucked around with this message at 22:40 on Jun 2, 2021

a fatguy baldspot
Aug 29, 2018

Pretty lame that you can’t become the crisis as an inward perfection empire!!

Kaal
May 22, 2002

through thousands of posts in D&D over a decade, I now believe I know what I'm talking about. if I post forcefully and confidently, I can convince others that is true. no one sees through my facade.
Oh also I just realized that once you're a federation leader you can just keep changing the succession term duration and it gives you a fresh term every time. That's some real Roman poo poo, Ceasar would be proud.

Dirk the Average
Feb 7, 2012

"This may have been a mistake."

a fatguy baldspot posted:

Pretty lame that you can’t become the crisis as an inward perfection empire!!

You could probably use the worm to become militaristic, and then from there jump into the crisis? You already have xenophobe as part of inward perfection.

Cease to Hope
Dec 12, 2011

Kaal posted:

That's exactly it. Cruisers are best used as carriers, whereas Battleships are best used for artillery (both of the kinetic and energy variety). You can make a battleship into a carrier, but there's no good reason to. You're basically trading two missile slots (that will synergize with your fighters) for a spinal mount, which implies you didn't really need that carrier in the first place. And ultimately I like finding a good role for cruisers rather than consigning them to the dustbin. Of course people are free to disagree - Stellaris combat is fundamentally about economic warfare rather than strategy

IIRC this is more production to put less fighters into play, and i'm not sure but i'm relatively confident that an arc emitter is gonna contribute more than those missile slots.

Dirk the Average posted:

You could probably use the worm to become militaristic, and then from there jump into the crisis? You already have xenophobe as part of inward perfection.

at that point you're not inward perfection any more though

a fatguy baldspot
Aug 29, 2018

Dirk the Average posted:

You could probably use the worm to become militaristic, and then from there jump into the crisis? You already have xenophobe as part of inward perfection.

That cancels the civic and wastes the slot since you can’t change out of it

Gort
Aug 18, 2003

Good day what ho cup of tea
Inward Perfection sounds like one of the better civics for Become The Crisis

ZypherIM
Nov 8, 2010

"I want to see what she's in love with."

Cease to Hope posted:

IIRC this is more production to put less fighters into play, and i'm not sure but i'm relatively confident that an arc emitter is gonna contribute more than those missile slots.
at that point you're not inward perfection any more though

Cruisers have better overall hull (might even out after techs but I think they're still ahead?), +5% evasion, +20 base speed, and +25% disengagement chance. Battleships get large sized defensive slots and that pushes them up a lot in terms of tanky-ness.

The main tradeoff is 2 missile slots or 1 hanger slot in the forward sections. Missiles do a better job of saturating enemy PD, especially if you've got like swarmers.

Overall I'd say they're pretty close in effectiveness, with the cruiser design better for a more interdiction style fleet and the battleships better in a larger fleet fight sort of setup.

a fatguy baldspot
Aug 29, 2018

Gort posted:

Inward Perfection sounds like one of the better civics for Become The Crisis

It would be, if it wasn’t a requirement to be no flavor of pacifist

Cease to Hope
Dec 12, 2011

ZypherIM posted:

Cruisers have better overall hull (might even out after techs but I think they're still ahead?), +5% evasion, +20 base speed, and +25% disengagement chance. Battleships get large sized defensive slots and that pushes them up a lot in terms of tanky-ness.

Only the hull matters in practice, I find. 5% evasion will almost certainly get eaten up by tracking, the base speed is meaningless unless they're in an all-cruiser fleet, and the disengagement chance is offset by the fact that large hits will be more likely to just jump past the disengagement window entirely.

I find cruisers are just a bad idea since you can't retool them into heavy weapon battleships when needed. It's fine to use up any carrier cruisers you still have laying around but I wouldn't build any more.

Horace Kinch
Aug 15, 2007

I make carrier battleships and support them with torpedo cruisers. That said if you have an excess of cruisers and no real clue what to do with them, set them all to medium slots with a line computer and load them down with some plasma and they'll function as diet-battleships.

Darkrenown
Jul 18, 2012
please give me anything to talk about besides the fact that democrats are allowing millions of americans to be evicted from their homes

Gort posted:

Inward Perfection sounds like one of the better civics for Become The Crisis

In a world where the devs had more time I would like to imagine less limits on the perk and more Crisis paths when you take it. The current one would stay for genocidal/militarist/xenophobe empires, but:

Inward Perfection? The engine is buildable right away, but costs a lot of basic resources. Dyson spheres/ Matter Decompressors have their limits removed so you can build more and they both can eventually eat their primary to harvest the Dark matter needed. When you ascend only your own systems explode, rest of the galaxy trundles along.

Driven Assimilators don't eat stars or ascend, they just want to assimilate the galaxy. Get to build multiple Colossi with the Assimilation beam. Gain bonuses from assimilating unique races, gathering Distinctiveness. Once they have enough data they are able to build the Engine and assimilate all life through their connection to the shroud. Basically that one Mass effect 3 ending.

Servitors build Pamper-planets, gain bonuses from the % of the galaxy's bio-pops they have on them, and harvest barren planets/pulsars/blackholes for resources. The engine ascends the bio-pops on those planets, but the robots hangs around waiting for new life to evolve to continue their work.

The Blorg alter the fabric of space, reversing the universe's expansion, and sucking everything back into a single point - the ultimate hug.

Sloober
Apr 1, 2011

A Carly Rae Jihad posted:

Oh also, rushing 200k fleet strength is a strong mid game play for absorbing a FE capital. Those buildings are nuts and I had somehow never noticed 😶

If You have no use for artifacts reverse engineering gives you a chance to be allowed to build a single one of them on a planet

Horace Kinch
Aug 15, 2007

A pacifist crisis should bubble the galaxy.

ZypherIM
Nov 8, 2010

"I want to see what she's in love with."

Cease to Hope posted:

Only the hull matters in practice, I find. 5% evasion will almost certainly get eaten up by tracking, the base speed is meaningless unless they're in an all-cruiser fleet, and the disengagement chance is offset by the fact that large hits will be more likely to just jump past the disengagement window entirely.

I find cruisers are just a bad idea since you can't retool them into heavy weapon battleships when needed. It's fine to use up any carrier cruisers you still have laying around but I wouldn't build any more.

This entirely depends on what ascension path you take. If you do psionics you get a default +15% evasion, which gets you into the areas where looking at some +5% bonuses will get you into the range of being active after tracking. The XL stuff has no extra tracking, large stuff only has 5%, medium tends to be 30%. Cruisers get more evasion off of engines than battleships as well (+3-4), and have the option to use the AI picket computer that gives another 10%. You could build up a pretty solid ~50% evasion cruiser without getting too crazy (and probably more like 75-85% if you did stuff like chosen one admiral and enigmatic evasion thingy).

After the 2 hull techs cruisers have 2800 hull and battleships 4600. This puts cruises outside of most any 1-hit things, but leaves them vulnerable to something like being chipped down to sub-2k and taking an XL hit. Of course, the battleship is only getting 1 or maybe 2 chances of not having the same happen. I agree its a bit of a wash overall, but if you do have some decent evasion it makes that scenario much less likely. Overall power of the fleet during the fight stays roughly the same, since losing a cruiser either way is half as bad as a battleship.


Again, my point is the role of the cruiser carrier is more of an interdiction fleet or something you use to sweep out stations with minimal fleet (that corvettes would take more attrition to). It'll be significantly faster than a battleship fleet and outside of artillery battleship fights more survivable (though in artillery battleship fights carrier battleships suck too).

Raenir Salazar
Nov 5, 2010

College Slice
What do you need to make Carrier cruisiers, I can only give them a Hangar vs Carrier module?

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ZypherIM
Nov 8, 2010

"I want to see what she's in love with."

Raenir Salazar posted:

What do you need to make Carrier cruisiers, I can only give them a Hangar vs Carrier module?

You want the mid section that has a fighter/hanger module (don't remember the name off-hand) and the nose section with a guided/missile module. On a battleship you have fighter/hanger module slots in both the nose and middle sections.

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