How powerful are the crisis fleets in 2.2?

[Leylos]

Crisis fleets have a really good strength. What they are currently lacking for is the logic behind their construction ships.

The AI wastes an enormous amount of time since it doesn't build starbases close to each other but rather follows some stupid random pattern.

 

[Justafan]

I've had two ironman runs so far on default settings, in both I got the Prethoryn, and in both I was sorely disappointed.

In my first go, they spawed right between two fallen empires and got ground into dust before I even got the chance to fight them. But not so bad, since it was just bad RNG for them.

The second time though, well, my Megacorp had lived up to the name, and I was able to rush their vanguard before the main fleet arrived, leading to this funny little victory screen. So yeah, technically they had a somewhat lacking total fleet size of 387 in that game.

 

[mammothhunter]

Had unbidden spawned for me in a small 2.2.1 galaxy by some crazy random chance, crisis strength 2,5. After coming out of the portal they got stuck for several years. I was stuck too trying to upgrade my ships changing 3 guns and combat computer per battleship, which had to proceed for 1800 days. Eventually they noticed a planet withing their portal system, ate it and moved on. By the time I equipped all kinetic they took some space. Recieving two fleets with each anchor they get stronger with time. They need to bomb a planet to 100% devastation now however before it turns terraforming candidate which slows them somewhat. They also had their weapons range improved and now engage you from range 120. With my 4 fleets a little under 1000 fleet power I took losses, had to reinforce fleets all the time. Took 17 years to get to the portal.

I had a matter decompressor, ring world half populated, science nexus and full Fen Habbanis. Matter decompressor and ecumenopolis are two most valuable assets. Dyson can help. Ring world is so so slow to populate and will take 200 admin cap on completion. I actually stopped building anything some 20 years prior to 2450 and was building fleets for all alloys income.

 

[Jman5]

It's harder to assemble a big fleet than it used to be but I've had 150k ready for the L-cluster at ~2300-2310.

You have 150k fleet by 2300 in 2.2? How on Earth are you guys managing that? I have an ecumenopolis pumping out monstrous amounts of alloy and I can barely squeak out a 15k fleet in 2288. Even if I directed all my starbases to anchorage I couldn't support 150k fleet.

Have you just rolled over 2/3rds of the galaxy? Or are you running some funky settings/mods?

 

[EdGreyfox]

Depends on the crisis. In both my games since the change I've had the war in heaven kick off before the crisis, and each time I was facing awakened empires with around 4 80K fleets sitting right on my borders. Resigned the first game since I didn't have a big enough fleet or stockpile of materials to have any hope of fighting them off. The second is ongoing and I'm kicking butt because I had 4 120K fleets ready and waiting, but the game has slowed down so much that it's virtually unplayable, even with the beta patch that was supposed to have improved performance. Before anyone says I need to upgrade my rig/drivers, it's only a month old and has these specs:
I7-8700 processor
Nvidia gtx1070Ti graphics card
16GB Ram

This is a rig that can run VR with no problem, so it shouldn't have any issue with Stellaris at all. Game ran fine until the War in Heaven started, but as soon as it did performance tanked.

 

[Siri]

You have 150k fleet by 2300 in 2.2? How on Earth are you guys managing that? I have an ecumenopolis pumping out monstrous amounts of alloy and I can barely squeak out a 15k fleet in 2288. Even if I directed all my starbases to anchorage I couldn't support 150k fleet.

Have you just rolled over 2/3rds of the galaxy? Or are you running some funky settings/mods?

It's been a while since I was in that game but I probably had about a quarter to a third of a medium galaxy, ~40ish planets I believe.
No mods and everything but difficulty settings on default iirc, but was playing a devouring swarm so had a minor increase in fleet power per ship (25% hull doesn't do much for the listed power that far in) and a significant reduction in ship construction cost. I did have the naval cap increase but I wasn't using my whole cap either way and could very easily have supported the upkeep if going above it. Unless I picked things that were terrible on purpose I'm pretty confident I could hit 100k as anything if that is what I wanted to do, I generally prefer playing a more peaceful style and develop things other than military.

Just out of curiosity, what is a "monstrous amount of alloy" to you? I don't have a screenshot from 2300, but I do have one from 2337 and I know I stopped developing pretty much entirely while I was fighting the tempest, and also after, because I was just waiting for my interstellar assembly to finish for the achievement. At that point I had 519 alloys per month (minerals at almost +1000 so I could have been at almost 1k alloys monthly presumably), while supporting a 241 naval cap fleet, which was made up entirely of torpedo corvettes. I believe the total naval cap used to achieve the 150k was 270, and that I just didn't rebuild after I defeated it.

I just wanted them to like me

 

[Gratak]

You have 150k fleet by 2300 in 2.2? How on Earth are you guys managing that? I have an ecumenopolis pumping out monstrous amounts of alloy and I can barely squeak out a 15k fleet in 2288. Even if I directed all my starbases to anchorage I couldn't support 150k fleet.

Have you just rolled over 2/3rds of the galaxy? Or are you running some funky settings/mods?

Hive minds are pretty OP in 2.2.2 IMHO. They have:
1. Incredible amounts of unity without ever needing a dedicated unity building.
2. Much higher pop growth than other organics
3. Much easier science, since their upkeep is only minerals, which they can get in insane amounts via hive worlds. Same for pop upkeep.
4. (though that does not apply to DS): Can offset their energy weakness (for having no trade routes) via the broken galactic market.

 

[Jman5]

It's been a while since I was in that game but I probably had about a quarter to a third of a medium galaxy, ~40ish planets I believe.
No mods and everything but difficulty settings on default iirc, but was playing a devouring swarm so had a minor increase in fleet power per ship (25% hull doesn't do much for the listed power that far in) and a significant reduction in ship construction cost. I did have the naval cap increase but I wasn't using my whole cap either way and could very easily have supported the upkeep if going above it. Unless I picked things that were terrible on purpose I'm pretty confident I could hit 100k as anything if that is what I wanted to do, I generally prefer playing a more peaceful style and develop things other than military.

Just out of curiosity, what is a "monstrous amount of alloy" to you? I don't have a screenshot from 2300, but I do have one from 2337 and I know I stopped developing pretty much entirely while I was fighting the tempest, and also after, because I was just waiting for my interstellar assembly to finish for the achievement. At that point I had 519 alloys per month (minerals at almost +1000 so I could have been at almost 1k alloys monthly presumably), while supporting a 241 naval cap fleet, which was made up entirely of torpedo corvettes. I believe the total naval cap used to achieve the 150k was 270, and that I just didn't rebuild after I defeated it.

OK, you being Devouring Swarm answers some of my questions. Especially not having to worry about Consumer Goods. Still, 40 worlds by 2300? That seems like a lot! Is this from conquests or were you just constantly pumping out colony ships? I think I'm just not expanding fast enough if you have that many worlds after just 100 years. I have basically been plopping down 1 expansion until I hit 10 pop and can upgrade it, then I send out another one. In retrospect, this is probably much too slow.

 

[Siri]

OK, you being Devouring Swarm answers some of my questions. Especially not having to worry about Consumer Goods. Still, 40 worlds by 2300? That seems like a lot! Is this from conquests or were you just constantly pumping out colony ships? I think I'm just not expanding fast enough if you have that many worlds after just 100 years. I have basically been plopping down 1 expansion until I hit 10 pop and can upgrade it, then I send out another one. In retrospect, this is probably much too slow.

I colonise very aggressively most of the time, as non-hive too but especially as a hive, because the drawbacks for doing so are lessened as a hive mind. Unless I am a Fanatic Egalitarian I also often keep building slots open on planets so that I can quickly resettle pops from them (without ruining buildings) to new colonies to get over the new colony threshold at 10. I did conquer a bit but not all that much. I can't rightly remember how early it was but I did absorb two other empires, probably both before 2260. Neither of them was very big. I think there are a lot of people who do it the way you do it. Me, personally, think that that is too slow. I've found expanding very quickly to work out much better for me.

Hive minds are pretty OP in 2.2.2 IMHO. They have:
1. Incredible amounts of unity without ever needing a dedicated unity building.
2. Much higher pop growth than other organics
3. Much easier science, since their upkeep is only minerals, which they can get in insane amounts via hive worlds. Same for pop upkeep.
4. (though that does not apply to DS): Can offset their energy weakness (for having no trade routes) via the broken galactic market.

1. Is this referring to synapse drones? They replace administrator jobs which are just much better.
2. Yet they have less than any organic empire starting with mechanist, and also less than regular organic empires once they get a bunch of migration treaties rolling. Yes, the latter takes a while to get going but this coupled with points about needing more pops in number 3 takes away from the actual growth bonuses hive minds get.
3. There is a counterweight to this, and that is that while they don't need to use GC for this, they also use an absurd amount of raw minerals in exchange. They use 6 minerals in exchange for 4 science, whereas regular empires uses 2 CG that is made from 2 minerals (less in practice because modifiers apply to the extra production step) for the same gain. They gain by not having to use pops for that extra step, but they need more pops on the base job in exchange. Not having to use GC is great, but they use a lot of extra minerals in order to do it that way, and while Hive Worlds are great to solve this, they don't start with them. They also don't have access to a Mining Guilds equivalent, nor generate value through trade or trade agreements.

While they have their benefits they also have their drawbacks. Their amenity generation is absolute trash in comparison to regular empires so they have to dedicate more pops to it. The lack of happiness also means that their pops will generate more deviancy than most regular empires generate crime, and as thus need more pops on jobs that reduce that. They also don't get the production bonuses from stability for free in the way regular empires often do because they don't generate incidental amenities. Having only two stops in the production line (miner -> scientist) rather than three (miner -> artisan -> scientist) means that their modifiers only get applied twice rather than three times, so they scale worse into the late game.

Don't get me wrong, I very much consider their upside. People in general completely gloss over the negatives though, which is problematic because the negatives are very real.
4. Anyone who does that is just blatantly cheating. If that's something you want to take into account then the only thing that matters is how fast you can tech and how many shipyards you can have.

I think hive minds are good, but excluding devouring swarm I don't think hive minds are better than tuned regular empires. Devouring Swarm is very strong, but if they are 50% stronger (not actual data, just thought experiment) than a regular empire I don't think that's unreasonable. Being as strong as one and a half non-genocidal empire feels about right to me with all the drawbacks and ganging up that comes with it.

 

[Felidae]

Just had the Unbidden spawn in my 1000 star galaxy with 1.5x crisis strength at 2470 or so. They had regular fleets of just a hair under 100k strength, some smaller fleets that were a bit over 60k, and their gate fleet was around the mid-200k.

...didn't help them much against my 330k Federation fleet, supported by two 110k regular fleets, though (for a total of 5 titans, 1 dreadnought, and about a 100 battleships). The only real losses I took were against the gate fleet, who took down 1 titan and 7 battleships.

I was stuck too trying to upgrade my ships changing 3 guns and combat computer per battleship, which had to proceed for 1800 days.

Split your fleet into multiple pieces, and upgrade them in parallel at bases with multiple shipyards - I think you only see the % counter of your top fleet tick up, with the rest saying 'waiting to upgrade' or something, but they actually are being worked on. Results in much shorter upgrade times. I usually just hit the split in half button 3 times for 4 equalish fleets, but if truly desperate, you can manually split a fleet into 6 equal parts, and get the fleet back in action in a sixth of the time.

Also, while I have no direct evidence, FAE and the weapon you get from the clouds might be more efficient against the Unbidden than kinetics. Especially since (at least for me) energy weapon repeatables tech tends to be higher than the kinetics repeatables.

 

[Jman5]

I colonise very aggressively most of the time, as non-hive too but especially as a hive, because the drawbacks for doing so are lessened as a hive mind. Unless I am a Fanatic Egalitarian I also often keep building slots open on planets so that I can quickly resettle pops from them (without ruining buildings) to new colonies to get over the new colony threshold at 10. I did conquer a bit but not all that much. I can't rightly remember how early it was but I did absorb two other empires, probably both before 2260. Neither of them was very big. I think there are a lot of people who do it the way you do it. Me, personally, think that that is too slow. I've found expanding very quickly to work out much better for me.

I had a mid-game Crisis spawn in the 2280s and I only barely survived because I had the money to hire 3 Mercenary Fleets. I'll try it your way next time I play because I think you're probably right that it's better to rapid expand and just eat the colonization growth penalties in the early game. I actually didn't realize it until checking just now, but the colony sprawl penalty by themselves is actually really tiny (+2 per colony).

 

[Siri]

I had a mid-game Crisis spawn in the 2280s and I only barely survived because I had the money to hire 3 Mercenary Fleets. I'll try it your way next time I play because I think you're probably right that it's better to rapid expand and just eat the colonization growth penalties in the early game. I actually didn't realize it until checking just now, but the colony sprawl penalty by themselves is actually really tiny (+2 per colony).

I feel that it is at least, starts out a bit slower but catches up and surpasses before all that long, as long as you can manage your economy just as well as you would with fewer colonies. Yes, the penalties are really small. The colony uses 2, and each district on the colony adds another 1. Colonies are cheap and systems themselves are expensive in terms of sprawl. I think a lot of people are excessively afraid of the sprawl penalties too. I happen to remember the numbers here because I used them in another thread about the admin cap somewhere. I know that at one point towards the end I was at 12 times my admin cap, but my tech penalty was only around 300%. When the numbers look like that, my colonies don't have to be particularly developed to outpace the penalty (not for unity either, which would be a 500% penalty). This was also while still building outposts in bad systems just because I hate leaving holes for aesthetic reasons, but if you powergame which systems you place outposts in then it looks even more favourable.

 

[Gratak]

1. Is this referring to synapse drones? They replace administrator jobs which are just much better.
2. Yet they have less than any organic empire starting with mechanist, and also less than regular organic empires once they get a bunch of migration treaties rolling. Yes, the latter takes a while to get going but this coupled with points about needing more pops in number 3 takes away from the actual growth bonuses hive minds get.
3. There is a counterweight to this, and that is that while they don't need to use GC for this, they also use an absurd amount of raw minerals in exchange. They use 6 minerals in exchange for 4 science, whereas regular empires uses 2 CG that is made from 2 minerals (less in practice because modifiers apply to the extra production step) for the same gain. They gain by not having to use pops for that extra step, but they need more pops on the base job in exchange. Not having to use GC is great, but they use a lot of extra minerals in order to do it that way, and while Hive Worlds are great to solve this, they don't start with them. They also don't have access to a Mining Guilds equivalent, nor generate value through trade or trade agreements.

While they have their benefits they also have their drawbacks. Their amenity generation is absolute trash in comparison to regular empires so they have to dedicate more pops to it. The lack of happiness also means that their pops will generate more deviancy than most regular empires generate crime, and as thus need more pops on jobs that reduce that. They also don't get the production bonuses from stability for free in the way regular empires often do because they don't generate incidental amenities. Having only two stops in the production line (miner -> scientist) rather than three (miner -> artisan -> scientist) means that their modifiers only get applied twice rather than three times, so they scale worse into the late game.

Don't get me wrong, I very much consider their upside. People in general completely gloss over the negatives though, which is problematic because the negatives are very real.
4. Anyone who does that is just blatantly cheating. If that's something you want to take into account then the only thing that matters is how fast you can tech and how many shipyards you can have.

I think hive minds are good, but excluding devouring swarm I don't think hive minds are better than tuned regular empires. Devouring Swarm is very strong, but if they are 50% stronger (not actual data, just thought experiment) than a regular empire I don't think that's unreasonable. Being as strong as one and a half non-genocidal empire feels about right to me with all the drawbacks and ganging up that comes with it.

Don't get me wrong. I don't want a general nerf hammer to hit them. Rather a few other empires need a serious buff since getting the economy to run of them is extremely frustrating, while it is pretty easy on hive minds.
1. I haven't checked the details, but I got my traditions filled faster using ONLY capital buildings than as spiritualist using lots of temples.
2. Possibly, but except for when I got insane amounts of refugees while nanites where destroying the galaxy, hive mind growth always felt faster
3. Don't know about you, but for huge durations of the game I am swimming in minerals, no matter the race. (though that might be cause I'm always playing with few habitable planets)
4. Hard to avoid that... I mean I won't refuse to sell stuff when I'm at cap because of that bug... And I won't build more generators when I'm at energy cap because of that...

 

[Siri]

Don't get me wrong. I don't want a general nerf hammer to hit them. Rather a few other empires need a serious buff since getting the economy to run of them is extremely frustrating, while it is pretty easy on hive minds.
1. I haven't checked the details, but I got my traditions filled faster using ONLY capital buildings than as spiritualist using lots of temples.
2. Possibly, but except for when I got insane amounts of refugees while nanites where destroying the galaxy, hive mind growth always felt faster
3. Don't know about you, but for huge durations of the game I am swimming in minerals, no matter the race. (though that might be cause I'm always playing with few habitable planets)
4. Hard to avoid that... I mean I won't refuse to sell stuff when I'm at cap because of that bug... And I won't build more generators when I'm at energy cap because of that...

The floor for regular empires is lower, that much is true. I wouldn't mind seeing the worse ones get some help, but the good ones are well off already.
1. Something else must have been different, maybe a civic that replaces an administrator with something that doesn't provide unity? It shouldn't end up that way at least.
2. It does vary a bit from game to game since it actually requires empires that are willing to form treaties with you but in the average game with 10+ AI empires I don't feel it's terribly difficult to get 5-6+ pop growth a month from immigration alone provided you play along with the system. While you normally wouldn't want to build up a planet much past what you are using, it is still a consideration for immigration purposes. Having a lot of surplus jobs (+5 pull per free job I believe) and housing (not as good as free jobs) provides a good boost to immigration pull which is helpful for getting up to that 5 immigration pre-modifiers a month. It costs a bit of energy in maintenance to have more than you need but the benefits are substantial. Of course, this is a benefit that takes a bit to get rolling since you need to find other empires first, and before then hive minds will outpace non-mechanists, at least until they get robots or start being able to pay for the planetary decision.
3. I'm usually not. Because when I am, I reassign production so that I consume more minerals. Swimming in minerals is not particularly useful outside of constructing an ecumenopolis so I try not to.
4. When you said broken, I figured you meant the bugged way in which you could trade the same thing back and forth and end up with more than you spent. I think the market is fine if you don't exploit that little flub. If you just meant selling things I think it's fine. It just helps them cover for the lack of trade, it doesn't make up for it. It's not such a big deal early but it's a very big deal later on and selling things on the market doesn't begin to make up for the lack of trade value, especially not if you could be getting good commercial pacts with other empires. A single commercial pact can result in hundreds of energy, late game it could be above a thousand. (Granted, the AI is not stellar at providing you with good commercial pacts so you're probably not going to get a thousand unless it's another player!)

 

[Gratak]

4. When you said broken, I figured you meant the bugged way in which you could trade the same thing back and forth and end up with more than you spent. I think the market is fine if you don't exploit that little flub.

Have you played the beta? Minerals and food rise to more than 3 energy per unit...

 

[Riftwalker]

When the crisis started, I think the large fleets were 20kish together with a number of smaller fleets that seemed to be between 6k and 10k. I'm not sure if these fleets combined into the 30k fleets, or whether the fleet sizes were beginning to swell because of conquered territory.

The Khan was particularly devastating because I had just opened up the L-gate, and there just happened to be an L Gate next to his territory, so he was able to spread all across the galaxy instead of being localised, and because all AI empires were so uselessly weak he had territory everywhere very quickly.

There was a chance that I could have assembled a 30k fleet by hiring mercenaries from the other raiders together with my own, and I had close to enough economic power to actually (almost) maintain the mercenary costs. If I had just had a little more time, I could maybe have got a fleet powerful enough to beat the Khan's 30k fleets one at a time, and because he was so spread out I maybe could have finally got the best of him.

I might have pulled this off, but then he seized my main generator world with a 36k fleet, which means I wouldn't have any energy to pay the mercenaries who were the real backbone of my fleet. At that point I had only about 26k, but I spent every last available exotic resource I had to pump all my weapon and shield stats using edicts, and I actually managed to beat his 36k fleet.

And then I got some bug where even though I had destroyed the outpost, I couldn't land my troops to recapture the generator planet because "an enemy space station is preventing your troops from landing." :/

But I probably would have ultimately lost anyway, so I threw in the towel...

why didn't you consider bending the knee?

 

[Siri]

Have you played the beta? Minerals and food rise to more than 3 energy per unit...

Yeah, I've been playing the betas ever since they came out. The price does indeed go quite high. I don't think I've seen 3 in my own games but around 2 often enough, which I don't think is high enough to call broken even if it is a really good deal. Don't think it makes up for the lack of trade value either way, just because trade value isn't just energy but can also be CG or Unity, which is essentially more pops and more minerals.

 

[Objulen]

Raiders really do need to be weakened, given how much harder it is to assemble large fleets until late-game Forge worlds.

 

[Danny Pockets]

why didn't you consider bending the knee?

You know it never even occurred to me in that play through, I'd forgotten how the mechanics for him worked (I hadn't played Stellaris for a long time prior to 2.2, and this may have been my first play through). I was thinking that for the Khan to die he had to be killed in battle, and that this was not going to be possible because of the power imbalance. Then in a subsequent game I saw an empire do as you suggest and just ride it out until his natural death and I thought, "Oh... I see..."

 

[westamastaflash]

Raiders really do need to be weakened, given how much harder it is to assemble large fleets until late-game Forge worlds.

Also mercenaries. The energy cost for the fleets is pretty cheap mid game and they can provide a massive boost to your fleet without any alloy cost at all.