best fleet design to beat FE's?

[treb]

I want to take on a FE and take their ring world, what is a good fleet composition to beat them.

 

[PawnTheS]

I usually use a full BB fleet in the early of the war to do chip damages/hit&run on their fleets and when I feel enough confident I use a large screen of corvettes with my BBs.

 

[treb]

if you dont mind me asking , what is a BB?

 

[PawnTheS]

Battleship

 

[Mr.Tusk]

Navy code for Battleship

 

[LordMagus]

Battleships and cruisers with heavy armour. Full armoured does better than full shield, even against the keepers of knowledge. If you're using a lot of battleships, it's very important to start the battle at max distance.

 

[Agamemnic]

Corvette spam is superior. FEs are laden with heavy weapons and struggleagainst evasion. FE weapons chow through BBs. Honestly dont know how other posters are managing with BBs

 

[LordMagus]

Corvette spam is superior. FEs are laden with heavy weapons and struggleagainst evasion. FE weapons chow through BBs. Honestly dont know how other posters are managing with BBs

Heavy armour, can win with 50k worth of battleships. Corvettes also cause a lag fest.

 

[Kat Tsun]

Corvette spam is superior.

Absolutely untrue.

 

[LordMagus]

Will have to wait until i get back to testing, to confirm just how good corvette spam is.

 

[Agamemnic]

Heavy armour, can win with 50k worth of battleships. Corvettes also cause a lag fest.

Ah well that's where my view was off. I generally never attack an FE with anything above 40k cos it might trigger an awakening. And at a 40k cap....I'm running 10 BBs max with everything else in corvettes, cruisers n destroyers

Absolutely untrue.

Ok to be fair I mix all the other ship types in. BBs always die first and my corvettes and cruisers do the rest. More accurately, my corvettes soak up damage while my cruisers kill. 35k fleet with +100 corvettes > any FE

The only time my corvette-heavy fleet fails is versus FEs with arc emitters

 

[LordMagus]

Ah well that's where my view was off. I generally never attack an FE with anything above 40k cos it might trigger an awakening.

Defeating the FE will probably trigger an awakening. No point in worrying about upsettting them, just build your 100k fleet and wreck that awakened empire.

 

[The Founder]

I want to take on a FE and take their ring world, what is a good fleet composition to beat them.

That depends on the FE in question, as all have different designs.
Since you talk about a Ringworld, this should be the keepers of Knowledge:
http://www.stellariswiki.com/Fallen_empire#Keepers_of_Knowledge

The general weakness is small ships. They simply have next to no small/high tracking weapons Xenophobes are a bit worse here, spiritualists a lot better. KoK's do however bring additional Fighters to the battle.

My usual advise is a fleet off:
3 Small slot Covettes
1 L, 2 PD or 1L 1 Flak Destroyers.
Leave the destroyers home when there are no fighters to swat.

 

[Agamemnic]

Defeating the FE will probably trigger an awakening. No point in worrying about upsettting them, just build your 100k fleet and wreck that awakened empire.

Yeah Im just avoiding waking up my target FE. Once their fleet power doubles that's more time and resources required from my end

 

[LordMagus]

Destroyed the awakened empire as soon as they awoke. They immediately declared war on me as i wouldn't surrender my freedom to research what I wanted. Their empire was within my borders, so I jumped straight into their system and annihilated them. Blitzkrieg was necessary, or you could enjoy the decades long war.

 

[zanaikin]

Corvette spam is superior. FEs are laden with heavy weapons and struggleagainst evasion. FE weapons chow through BBs. Honestly dont know how other posters are managing with BBs

Which outdated version of FE did you fight?

Kinetic-focused FEs (xenophobes?) have BCs each loaded with 4 flak batteries (60% tracking) and CLs with autoguns (65% tracking), they completely massacre anything smaller than a cruiser. Though they also have giga-cannons and KA for a capital ship fight.
(Bring max-armor ships, because even the giga-cannon has only 50% armor piercing)

Energy-focused FEs (materialists?) are a little less capable, but even there, all of their ships carry at least a handful of laser mounts. Escorts have quad S-lasers with 60% tracking, and BCs have quad M-lasers with 30% tracking.
(Bring high armor ships with a decent chunk of shields. Sure, Tachyon lances ignore 90% armor, but their equipment is full of disruptors and lasers which have little or no armor piercing).

Then there's the mixed FE (spiritualists?) who have BCs equipped with arc emitters (100% tracking) and whirlwind missiles (70% tracking). Terrible in a capital ship fight but will simply carve through swarms of smaller ships like hot knife thru butter.

Combine this with the fact that all FE capital ships have 2 hangars, and corvettes can't equip PD anymore..


Note:
There is a huge boon to keep in mind for defeating a FE early (despite increasing awakening chances): if you liberate an empire from the FE, they become a normal empire that researches but also have all the FE techs (including repeatables)! Liberate + vassalize + tech sharing and you just got a huge research boost.

 

[The Founder]

Kinetic-focused FEs (xenophobes?) have BCs each loaded with 4 flak batteries (60% tracking) and CLs with autoguns (65% tracking), they completely massacre anything smaller than a cruiser. Though they also have giga-cannons and KA for a capital ship fight.

PD Weapons do not deal relevant damage to ships. They fire at them - but that is it. They often even got a -100% damage to shields. With regenerative shields, you can effectively ignore point defense weapons entirely. That is even true for Leviathans that have point defense.
I do not know wich size the "CL" is. But unless it is a small or at least medium weapon, the tracking will not be that high.
The escorts are the ONLY ship to carry ANY small guns.

 

[The Founder]

PD Weapons do not deal relevant damage to ships. They fire at them - but that is it. They often even got a -100% damage to shields. With regenerative shields, you can effectively ignore point defense weapons entirely. That is even true for Leviathans that have point defense.

I jsut checked:
Flak_2: 75% Accuracy, 50% Tracking, 4.41 DPS
Small_Autocannon_2: 83% accuracy, 65% Tracking, 3.53 DPS. But you can put in TWO for every medium slot you do not have instead.
4.41 DPS to 7.06 DPS with higher accuracy and tracking. I do no consider the Flak guns to be a huge danger.

 

[Qilue]

I do not know wich size the "CL" is. But unless it is a small or at least medium weapon, the tracking will not be that high.

CL = Cruiser Light
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hull_classification_symbol

I think he's referring to the escorts.

 

[jdrou]

Yes, the FE 'Gamma' escorts seem to be basically small cruisers with 1L + 4S + 2PD weapons.