Unbidden advice

[krios41]

It's the year 2431.
I own roughly 1/8 of the galaxy with 41 planets under my rule.
The benevolant interventionists and the Jingoist reclaims are at war for a few decades now.
The benevolant Interventionist have lost their fleet in an attempt to strike me down a few years back.
Fleet power is 89.6K and consists out of:

• 60 corvettes
• 50 destroyers
• 40 cruisers
• 20 Artillery class Battleships
• 20 Carrier class Battleships

The unbidden have spawned in my system with a fleet roughly double my size.
I forgot how to beat them and i never beat them before either.

Can i have some advice please?

Spoiler: my corvettes

Spoiler: my Destroyers

Spoiler: my cruisers

Spoiler: my Carriers

Spoiler: My artillery

Those large gaus cannons will be replaced with Kinetic artillery when i have it

​

 

[ORCACommander]

amass and assualt the dimensional anchors with a follow up on the portal. the swifter you pursue this the easier it will be

 

[Secret Master]

The Unbidden are very dependent on shields. At the tactical level, you need weapons that either completely bypass shields (bombers, arc emitters) or ones that do bonus damage to shields. Their armor is crap, so once the shields are down, their ships die easily.

Secondly, they don't really employ missiles or strike craft, so point defense is worthless against the Unbidden. (The Prethoryn, on the other hand, are the opposite.)

Third, the Unbidden do not actually attack planets with ground troops, so while the Unbidden are around, you might as well not waste time researching or building armies. They just bombard a planet until it has no shields, then eat all the POPs (or harvest their life force, I suppose).

Be careful making a direct run straight for their portal. They got smarter at some point, and now will move fleets back to that system to cover it if sometimes.

 

[The Founder]

Entirely Shield Reliant, no Armor. So Anti-Shield or Shield skipping weapons. Note that torpedoes and bombers are actually suboptimal - they got no armor to skip, but do less base damage because they can do just that. So while they counter the shield all right, thier base damage might be too weak. Same for Arc Emitter (except it also counters Evasion, so even worse base damage).
Kinetic Weapons and pure Anti-Shields in particular can be quite deadly, but they do recover shields in combat.

Offensively they rely on Matter Disintrigrators. The rule for those is: The bigger the slot/weapon size, the better at fighting large ships. While they do skip 50% Armor and Shields, that means as long as you have some shields you only take 50% of the damage.

 

[forfor]

I disagree on bombers. They do twice as much dps as a large slot of most weapons before repeatable tech. (That may be per bomber but the tooltip isn't clear) Add in that bombers get double effect from repeatable techs (+10%) and the shield pen, and they are great against the unbidden. There is balance weight from armor pen, but there's much more weight in the opposite direction because point defense. The unbidden have no point defense, so bombers are incredibly good against them.

The best setup I've found is 50/50 giga cannon battleships, and carrier battleships. The unbidden wreck everything that's not a battleship in seconds, and have an inherent bonus to tracking which makes corvettes next to useless.

 

[Secret Master]

Note that torpedoes and bombers are actually suboptimal

I just looked in the actual game, and with no repeatable techs, bombers have more DPS listed than any large weapon mount.

With a carrier mount on a battleship (2 hangar slots in the core), I can squeeze out more overall DPS with the 2 hangar slots and 2 small mounts than I can with 3 large mounts. That's raw DPS, before we factor in whether shields or armor is involved.

Normally, point defense would neutralize bombers, but the Unbidden have no point defense (or not enough to matter), so the bombers should do fine.

 

[The Founder]

I just looked in the actual game, and with no repeatable techs, bombers have more DPS listed than any large weapon mount.

With a carrier mount on a battleship (2 hangar slots in the core), I can squeeze out more overall DPS with the 2 hangar slots and 2 small mounts than I can with 3 large mounts. That's raw DPS, before we factor in whether shields or armor is involved.

Normally, point defense would neutralize bombers, but the Unbidden have no point defense (or not enough to matter), so the bombers should do fine.

There is still the factor of both weapons working "past" one another, rather then helping one another.
A weapon that skips shields, does not drop them for the other weapons that do not skip them. Can those 2 hanger slots actually outperform 3 Kinetic Artillery that also Synergize well with the rest of the weapons?

 

[forfor]

Well you also get several small/medium slots, so yes.

 

[Secret Master]

There is still the factor of both weapons working "past" one another, rather then helping one another.
A weapon that skips shields, does not drop them for the other weapons that do not skip them. Can those 2 hanger slots actually outperform 3 Kinetic Artillery that also Synergize well with the rest of the weapons?

Well, I can run with 3 hangar slots by putting a hangar on the bow, which leaves me a just a large in the back and the smalls and mediums. Given how range seems to work, those medium and small mounts aren't working well with anything that has a long range regardless of whether it skips shields or not. Put whatever tickles your fancy in those slots.

The large mount in the aft section can run whatever makes sense with your current tech, or you can swap it for mediums I suppose.

If you want a weapon that synergizes with bombers, you'd put arc emitters in an X mount up front. It doesn't give a damn whether you have shields or not. It doesn't hit as hard as either another bomber wing or something like the Giga Cannon, but it also can start shooting at targets the moment they get into range, as opposed to bombers that need to fly to the target.

You could back those battleships up with corvettes and cruisers with space torpedoes on them. The Unbidden have no point defense, so the regular space torpedoes that ignore shields work just fine.

The real disadvantage of a bombers/torpedoes approach is time. You can put afterburners on the cruisers and corvettes to get them into firing range sooner, but torpedoes and strike craft take time to reach their targets.

There's also the issue of overkill with missile weapons, but I don't know if that applies to regular space torpedoes.


Personally, I think it pays to be flexible with crises regardless. The Unbidden can be defeated using several approaches, because several types weapons work well against them. If you have focused on strike craft, it's time to run bombers. If you are running energy weapons, see if you can dig up disruptors. You never know where you will be technologically when a crisis unfolds, so it makes sense to know all the options.

 

[forfor]

Also it depends on how you build the fleet. If you build around the concept of shield pen, well why wouldn't you want to ignore 1/2 to 2/3 of an enemies health bar?

 

[forfor]

Giga cannons and bombers synergize really well. The spinal mounts do a lot of pre-battle damage, and then the carriers do huge dps once the real battle starts. On top of that the carrier ships get a lot closer to the fight so they tend to get targeted so you only ever have to replace the carriers which tend to be a bit cheaper.

To put that in perspective an 80k fleet of 50/50 of the the ship types (battleships only) will take out 100k of unbidden and maybe lose 3-4 ships. (Personal experience)

 

[krios41]

Giga cannons and bombers synergize really well. The spinal mounts do a lot of pre-battle damage, and then the carriers do huge dps once the real battle starts. On top of that the carrier ships get a lot closer to the fight so they tend to get targeted so you only ever have to replace the carriers which tend to be a bit cheaper.

To put that in perspective an 80k fleet of 50/50 of the the ship types (battleships only) will take out 100k of unbidden and maybe lose 3-4 ships. (Personal experience)

How do you rate my current fleet for this?
Should i wait until i have Kinetic Artillery 2? (i will need to wait 13 months for this)
Do i need to build more ships? wich ones should get priority?
I kind of want to rush in before the unbidden eat my territory but i'm also anxious to go in and face two stacks of 57K at once.

 

[GloatingSwine]

Giga cannons and bombers synergize really well. The spinal mounts do a lot of pre-battle damage, and then the carriers do huge dps once the real battle starts. On top of that the carrier ships get a lot closer to the fight so they tend to get targeted so you only ever have to replace the carriers which tend to be a bit cheaper.

To put that in perspective an 80k fleet of 50/50 of the the ship types (battleships only) will take out 100k of unbidden and maybe lose 3-4 ships. (Personal experience)

Giga Cannons synergise really poorly with strike craft. The Giga Cannon will spread their damage around shielded ships, preferring to shoot at shields to hull because they have shield damage bonus. Since shields don't affect strike craft a lot of damage from the Giga Cannons is wasted because the bombers kill the target before the GC brings its shields down and gets to do anything real.

Arc Emitters synergise well with strike craft, because both ignore shields, but all other weapons on the ship are functionally useless at that point because they won't have enough damage to get through the shields before the target dies.

 

[forfor]

On the other hand when I use them the way I do, the giga cannons take out at least 10-20k power before the fight even starts. I originally did use arc emitters for the exact reason you said, but found giga cannons a lot more effective because they have way more actual damage output. This may be because I was primarily relying on them for pre-fight power to reduce casualties rather than in-fight dps. At some point I'll have to test an all-carrier fleet to see if that's better, but I'll need to find some unbidden first.

 

[The Founder]

On the other hand when I use them the way I do, the giga cannons take out at least 10-20k power before the fight even starts. I originally did use arc emitters for the exact reason you said, but found giga cannons a lot more effective because they have way more actual damage output. This may be because I was primarily relying on them for pre-fight power to reduce casualties rather than in-fight dps. At some point I'll have to test an all-carrier fleet to see if that's better, but I'll need to find some unbidden first.

You can somewhat simulate the Unbidden using Voidclouds. So much so, I am thinking that maybe the voidclouds are actually Unbidden Scouts....

 

[Secret Master]

Arc Emitters synergise well with strike craft, because both ignore shields, but all other weapons on the ship are functionally useless at that point because they won't have enough damage to get through the shields before the target dies.

I decided to take a look at raw DPS (obviously, other factors are worth looking at, too) to see what DPS looks like with hangar craft versus shooters. Given that you are right abut "all other weapons are functionally useless," I was curious to see just how much DPS you lose.

So, I grabbed all non-repeatable techs via console and build three battleships for comparison. The hanger ship has no other weapons, so the DPS is just the shield-ignoring bombers.

The bombers have less DPS overall, but since they ignore shields completely, I'd say it's not too shabby.

Again, there are other factors in play (flight time and so forth), but that's not too shabby for fighting the Unbidden.

 

[GloatingSwine]

Did you actually test those in live fire exercises? DPS numbers are not to be trusted, not just because they don't capture the effect of shield and armour damage bonuses, but also because they don't account for focus fire (which is why all-arty ships tend to lose faceoffs of more than 1v1, because they don't focus fire properly).

You'll probably find the bombers win in those specific matchups as long as your fights are more than 1v1 (I tend to test battleships at fleets of about 25-30 because I can't be bothered to spawn the 100 I'd use in a real fleet). They'll lose to Lance/Arty/Plasma even without flak, and they'll lose to Arc/Bomber, (Because Arc emitters also ignore all armour not just half of it an arc emitter is better than another hangar).

Without flak Arc/Bomber is a very good combo, but if the enemy fleet has even a mild amount of flak the bombers die too fast. (because there are two sources of attrition working on them, strike craft get deleted when their mothership dies and when they themselves are shot down).

 

[Secret Master]

You'll probably find the bombers win in those specific matchups as long as your fights are more than 1v1 (I tend to test battleships at fleets of about 25-30 because I can't be bothered to spawn the 100 I'd use in a real fleet). They'll lose to Lance/Arty/Plasma even without flak, and they'll lose to Arc/Bomber, (Because Arc emitters also ignore all armour not just half of it an arc emitter is better than another hangar).

Without flak Arc/Bomber is a very good combo, but if the enemy fleet has even a mild amount of flak the bombers die too fast. (because there are two sources of attrition working on them, strike craft get deleted when their mothership dies and when they themselves are shot down).

Well, yes, but we're just talking about facing the Unbidden here. Their dependence on shields and lack of armor (and their lack of point defense or any real counter to bombers and arc emitters) is what I care about.

Of course these ships might lose to Lances/Plasma/whatever.

The only thing I wanted to show was that even if you remove all other weapons besides the bombers from a battleship, it should still kill the Unbidden at comparable rate compared to shield chewing builds. The lack of synergy with the other weapons on the ship is irrelevant when the shield penetration DPS is at this level.

The point The Founder was trying to make was that the shield penetrating weapons stack poorly with non-shield penetrating weapons. Yes, shield penetrating weapons stack poorly with non-shield penetrating weapons. In this case, thanks to the unique nature of the Unbidden, it doesn't matter. The raw DPS is sufficient to remain competitive with kinetics.

Against a real empire using shields and armor and point defense and flak and fighters and sharp sticks, well that's a whole other game entirely.

 

[krios41]

bump
Stil require (more) advice on how to beat them
Doing t safe since i only get to have one shot at it, i cannot afford to wait more then a in game year or two