Awakened Empire help

[Masqias]

First post, looking for some tips to help me with an Awakened Empire in my first play through. I've read all I can on Reddit and the steam forums (and enjoyed the research) - but have failed. I've sunk many many hours into the game and I love it, have never played beyond normal speed and am now at 2430 - and don't want to give up and start again yet.

One of the 2 FEs on my borders awoke quite a few decades ago, before I knew how much of a challenge they were, and before learning that the best chance you have is to strike early. I own 25% of the galaxy, am the the 2nd most powerful force after the AE and am in a fed with a couple of strongish neighbours so I thought I'd have a chance.

They fought weaker enemies for quite a while while I tried to strengthen, but eventually they attacked one of my federation allies - bringing me to war not as the main defender. I had a fleet power of roughly 150k, a mixed bag of ships from my previous wars (mainly gauss / kinetic, PD and lasers) with new ships thrown in to counter them (flak cruisers and plasma disrupter corvettes). My federation allies added another 60k when I took point.

I built a fortress flower to lure them into and felt pretty prepared until their doomstack arrived at 430k (!) They are a spiritualist type running plasma, and after they landed they absolutely destroyed our fleets, my allies FTL retreated v quickly, I lost well over 2/3rds of my ships and I did the same. They had been reduced to around 410k, a ridiculous mismatch.

I then changed tack and split my remaining fleets - thinking I was being clever - and attacked a number of their planets supported by armies. However, the AI then did something I wasn't expecting and split their doomstack up into the exact number it needed to deal with my forces and wiped me up in a second. My save game was entitled 'f*cking disaster'.

So... I have a save game 20 years (I think, may be more) before their attack, and I want to know how I should set myself up for what's coming as best I can. I'm no expert on the best attack / defence combos with fleets, but using the grand fleet edict I could get up to a 1500 capacity. I do not have Arc emitters unfortunately - only T lances and giga cannons - but I have everything else, including Jump drives I've been too scared to use. What are the best setups for countering AE plasma?

Anyway, sorry for the wall of text. Not sure if anyone will be bothered to reply, but thanks in advance to anyone that does.

Big, big fan of this game!

 

[Alblaka]

In my current game, I won the war in the heavens as leader of the neutral powers by sieging the AFEs vassals. There was never even a confrontation between my and their fleets (mine being at ~100k, thus able to take on a single, but not the combined fleets of the AFE). I feel like warscore in War in the Heaven needs some serious adjustments, it's easier to win then a straigth up Federation vs 1 war against FEs with their heavy turtle turrets.

 

[Masqias]

This AFE has no vassals, has just expanded its empire by taking planets

 

[Foefaller]

If you have Leviathans and found a merchant Enclave, you can in theory support an EC deficit equal to double your mineral income by trading for Energy Credits just when you're about to hit your mineral cap. Since you want to bank Energy for when you actually have to leave port, a deficit of about 1/3 of your mineral income w/ an enclave nearby should be your hard cap on your navy size, not what your Fleet Cap is (though still take any and all ways of boosting that so your ships will be cheaper to maintain and you'll have more fleet cap for the Federation fleet)

While it is true that trade between friendly empires will give you better rates (and if you have a federation ally that never seems to run out of EC, you should do figure that in when deciding how far into the red you can go) the Enclave has no limit to how much it can trade, whereas empires still have to balance budgets like you do, and can't trade more than what they have on hand, nor will they accept more minerals than they can hold (the deal will stop being more favorable if any more minerals you give them will go over their cap)

As for how to design your ships to fight the FE in question, General rule of thumb is to swarm, with most of your firepower in destroyers and Energy Torp Corvettes, as FE weaponry tends to be on the large side (The ultimate example being the Titan Laser, which will 1-shot pretty much any anything you can field that was actually built at a spaceport, but is slow to fire) Spiritualists in particular, on the other hand, tend to have very little in long-ranged weaponry (the titan Laser and double Arc Emitters on their battlecruisers, and that's about it) so some Battleships and Cruiser with Giga Cannons and Kenetic Artillery should be able to land some shots before the distance is closed... just don't expect them to last the battle, unlike most battles against non-FE Empires where the corvettes are where most of the casualties are. Their Titan-class ships also rely pretty heavily on missiles for anything they can't hit with their Laser, and both Titans and battlecruiser carry strike craft, so make sure your PD is up to snuff even if your biggest concern is the Plasma, which should be countered with a higher-than-average investment into shields and shield capacitors. Since their smallest ship type, Escorts, are basically Destroyers with more weapon slots, you don't need to carry much in the way of small or high tracking weaponry either.

Finally, depending on how far back that save is (and how far you are willing to go back) Is there a still-sleeping FE that's close to your borders? Taking their worlds will give you a massive boost in resources, and salvaging their stuff will go a long long way in putting you on equal footing with future FEs. Just be aware that taking an FE world will all but ensure that any and all other FEs in your galaxy will awaken fairly soon.

Oh, and the Unbidden became more likely the moment you researched Jump Drives, even if you never put them on your ships, so you might as well use them now that you got them.

 

[Masqias]

If you have Leviathans and found a merchant Enclave, you can in theory support an EC deficit equal to double your mineral income by trading for Energy Credits just when you're about to hit your mineral cap. Since you want to bank Energy for when you actually have to leave port, a deficit of about 1/3 of your mineral income w/ an enclave nearby should be your hard cap on your navy size, not what your Fleet Cap is (though still take any and all ways of boosting that so your ships will be cheaper to maintain and you'll have more fleet cap for the Federation fleet)

While it is true that trade between friendly empires will give you better rates (and if you have a federation ally that never seems to run out of EC, you should do figure that in when deciding how far into the red you can go) the Enclave has no limit to how much it can trade, whereas empires still have to balance budgets like you do, and can't trade more than what they have on hand, nor will they accept more minerals than they can hold (the deal will stop being more favorable if any more minerals you give them will go over their cap)

As for how to design your ships to fight the FE in question, General rule of thumb is to swarm, with most of your firepower in destroyers and Energy Torp Corvettes, as FE weaponry tends to be on the large side (The ultimate example being the Titan Laser, which will 1-shot pretty much any anything you can field that was actually built at a spaceport, but is slow to fire) Spiritualists in particular, on the other hand, tend to have very little in long-ranged weaponry (the titan Laser and double Arc Emitters on their battlecruisers, and that's about it) so some Battleships and Cruiser with Giga Cannons and Kenetic Artillery should be able to land some shots before the distance is closed... just don't expect them to last the battle, unlike most battles against non-FE Empires where the corvettes are where most of the casualties are. Their Titan-class ships also rely pretty heavily on missiles for anything they can't hit with their Laser, and both Titans and battlecruiser carry strike craft, so make sure your PD is up to snuff even if your biggest concern is the Plasma, which should be countered with a higher-than-average investment into shields and shield capacitors. Since their smallest ship type, Escorts, are basically Destroyers with more weapon slots, you don't need to carry much in the way of small or high tracking weaponry either.

Finally, depending on how far back that save is (and how far you are willing to go back) Is there a still-sleeping FE that's close to your borders? Taking their worlds will give you a massive boost in resources, and salvaging their stuff will go a long long way in putting you on equal footing with future FEs. Just be aware that taking an FE world will all but ensure that any and all other FEs in your galaxy will awaken fairly soon.

Oh, and the Unbidden became more likely the moment you researched Jump Drives, even if you never put them on your ships, so you might as well use them now that you got them.

Foefaller you legend. Thanks for all that. Not quite sure of your first section on trade, I started my game a few months ago so I think I'm running 1.3 and don't recognise merchant Enclave or anything like that.

I'll take your advice on ship design, boost shields, run kinetic battleships and spam corvettes with proton torps. Last question - what should I put on my destroyers? Autocannons?

I have another FE on my southern border which I will think about attacking too.

 

[zanaikin]

I have two suggestions. They have completely different approaches though so you'd have to decide early which one to take:

1. I've always considered the spiritualist empire to be the weakest of the FE/AEs, because of their Arc Emitter arsenal. Sure, they're great at ignoring both shields and armor, but they're terrible at combining with other weapons. The Arc Emitter has too low base DPS and is only good at one thing really: destroying corvette/destroyer swarms who rely on evasion. The same thing could be said for their many swarm missile batteries which have good tracking but no armor/shield penetration. So my answer is to build a fleet composed entirely of CAs and BBs armed with only four types of weapons: tachyon lance, plasma cannon (both for breaking thru armor), kinetic artillery (for dealing with shields + some hull damage), and flak (vs strike craft). Draw them into your snare fortress as early as possible and hope you come out on top in that decisive battle.

2. Build artillery destroyer fleets with LOTS of armies. Split your fleet up from the start (avoid that initial decisive battle which greatly reduced your forces) and invade them from 5 diff directions. Declare wargoal focused on planets that they've conquered. Unlike their core systems, those planets shouldn't be protected by multiple FE fortresses. Run your fast DD fleets away whenever they chase after you. Split off more DD fleets as needed to make sure your number of fleets > theirs. Make sure to leave a heavy garrison on each planet you capture so they can't take it back without a major fight.
Basically, you're to wage a guerrilla warfare campaign focused on running away from their fleets while seizing planets as the opportunity arises.
Gale-Speed and Trickster admirals make this strategy better.

Make sure your wargoal is to liberate planets - because an empire liberated from the FE/AE has their technology, and would make a powerful tech-sharing vassal while the peace treaty buys you time to prep for the next war.

Honestly, I would not bother with the nearby FE. The earlier you can be ready for a confrontation with the AE, the better.