War - I never understand it...

[Lazerus Artificial]

I mean...even when the diplomacy window shows them as "equivalent" with a much smaller bubble than i have...when i attack them they usually have a much larger fleet that destroys my fleet while a smaller fleet of them conquers my planets.

am i missing something here?
im pretty much used to micromanaging fleets, which isnt possible here.
im also a player who uses a lot of intel, scout the enemy, see what he has and where he has it...which isnt possible either.

so...how does war work? how can i be victorious?

 

[GC13]

War isn't that complicated. Build up a well-designed fleet (basically don't use missiles) until your fleet power is high enough for theirs to say Inferior, declare war on them, smash their fleet, then occupy planets until they cry uncle. There's not a whole lot for you to mess up while actually fighting the war if you brought a bigger fleet to it. Just don't get into war with a weaker fleet.

 

[Meneliki]

War isn't that complicated. Build up a well-designed fleet (basically don't use missiles) until your fleet power is high enough for theirs to say Inferior, declare war on them, smash their fleet, then occupy planets until they cry uncle. There's not a whole lot for you to mess up while actually fighting the war if you brought a bigger fleet to it. Just don't get into war with a weaker fleet.

Yeah. That sounds about right.

Avoid missiles, match (or preferably exceed) their fleet strength. Profit.

 

[ColZimin]

More importantly, HUH
What is it good for?

But yeah, concur with previous posters. For now, avoid missiles. Micromanaging is basically impossible since you can't control individual ships in combat.
Push for quick colonization to get more territory => more resources and spaceports => more ships.
And/or push for research into 1) upgraded spaceports 2) upgraded weapons (Plasma seems to be optimal, personally I like kinetic weapons) 3) shields and/or armor.

If you can, get some allies too. Most of the strategy in Stellaris (as in other PDX strategy games) lies in deterrence: make yourself scary enough that you don't look defenseless, and/or get scary friends. Then you can pick your battles.

As for spying on fleets, if you ever catch an enemy in your sensor radius you can select their fleet and check their ship design. Certain admiral traits and the Observatory spaceport upgrade help to extend your sensor range.

 

[Talanic]

Equivalent is bad. Equivalent means the fight's not certain, and could be catastrophic based on the values of the three variables being used to equate your fleets. Mouse over the word "Equivalent" and you'll see the breakdown - if they have superior numbers, that beats superior tech most of the time. Fleet cap doesn't mean that much because you (or they) can exceed the cap when as needed; you'll pay more maintenance but it can be handy for cracking a particularly defended system early game. Especially if you know you're going to lose ships in an upcoming assault, feel free to build past the cap.

Mind that you CAN beat a fleet that has higher fleet strength than yours does, but only if you've got some concrete advantage - like tons of point defense against a fleet that's packing only missiles. Or they've got a fleet of large-weapon cruisers versus you with tons of high-evasion corvettes.

In general, early-game warfare is best fought on the defensive: Starbases are overwhelmingly powerful for their cost, and won't be irrelevant until at least cruisers are in play. Plop a defensive platform next to one for the FTL snare and enemies are unable to bypass the base, effectively protecting everything else in the system. If you have to, you can often lure an enemy to such a system using a small fleet (or lone corvette) invading their territory then retreating while none of your other ships are in their territory.

If you're up for mods, try Fox's Sensor Mod. It doubles sensor ranges at all levels, making scouting bases worthwhile for keeping an eye on rival and neutral systems. If you're not, keep in mind that enemy AIs don't usually focus on science or construction ships. They're not that cheap but so long as you're at war or borders are open, you can send them in to look around. You don't have to assign a researcher to the science vessels for this, and probably shouldn't, as these ships are only there to scout and should probably be decommissioned afterwards.

 

[The Founder]

War isn't that complicated. Build up a well-designed fleet (basically don't use missiles) until your fleet power is high enough for theirs to say Inferior, declare war on them, smash their fleet, then occupy planets until they cry uncle. There's not a whole lot for you to mess up while actually fighting the war if you brought a bigger fleet to it. Just don't get into war with a weaker fleet.

The only thing I have to add is that Corvettes perform abysmal vs Spaceports. 30 Corvettes can kill a lone spaceport (no Fleet support) under heavy casualties only.

So you will likely not be able to engage spaceports with less then 30+ Corvettes or about 20+ Destroyers. Consider that for your wargoal planning ahead of time. Try for lower wargoals like "make tributary" that can be aquired by rushing new colonies:
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/tributary-rush.998199/

 

[CuddlyKitten]

The only thing I have to add is that Corvettes perform abysmal vs Spaceports. 30 Corvettes can kill a lone spaceport (no Fleet support) under heavy casualties only.

So you will likely not be able to engage spaceports with less then 30+ Corvettes or about 20+ Destroyers. Consider that for your wargoal planning ahead of time. Try for lower wargoals like "make tributary" that can be aquired by rushing new colonies:
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/tributary-rush.998199/

Just to add on about how important having more stuff is.
Every advantage you have over the enemy gives you about 4x less casualties.
Every casualty you take delays your next expansion and lets the next enemy build their strength, weakening your comparative advantage.

So instead of fighting someone who will maul your fleet even if you win either wait until your advantage is just a little bigger or choose another enemy.
This goes only for expansion. Sometimes you go to war for other reasons (survival, breaking a strategic enemy, fallen empires, end game crisis) and then it's obviously a different matter.

But in general in the early game it's far better to wait to have 50 corvettes and ruin the enemies day and take his planets with minimal casualties instead of fighting a few years earlier and winning but loosing well over half your fleet in the process.

 

[TwiceAHuman]

War... War is never understood...

 

[Rorin_yt]

But dude, war never changes.

 

[Promethian]

One aspect of note is weapon systems favor targeting what they are more effective against. Plasma is very popular because it favors unshielded targets which is effectively focus firing damaged targets for elimination. Combine with long range shield busters for good effect.

 

[Sheriff Godwin Law]

I mean...even when the diplomacy window shows them as "equivalent" with a much smaller bubble than i have...when i attack them they usually have a much larger fleet that destroys my fleet while a smaller fleet of them conquers my planets.

am i missing something here?
im pretty much used to micromanaging fleets, which isnt possible here.
im also a player who uses a lot of intel, scout the enemy, see what he has and where he has it...which isnt possible either.

so...how does war work? how can i be victorious?

Well designed ships can give you a distinct edge. I've killed fleets with a 50% supposed fleet power lead, while taking minimal losses, simply by having better ships.

2 rules of thumb. Shields are great on Corvettes, okay on Destroyers, once you get into Cruisers and Battleships you get more mileage from ignoring shields and just stacking armor plates.

Mix and match weapon types that have bonuses against shields and armor as a default. But when a war actually starts, you can see what the enemy fleet is comprised of and you can redesign your ships to specifically counter. If the enemy is using missiles, rework a group of destroyers or cruisers with point defense. If the enemy has heavy shields, keep your disruptors or mass drivers, if they only use armor, swap those out for beams or plasma.

 

[WandererRTF]

Blast from the past...

Couple of notes regarding wars, especially early on. As long as no one has developed PD guns the missile armed corvettes will tear other corvettes apart. Just in last game an AI declared war early on and literally wiped the floor with my corvette fleet despite that i had both superior numbers and fleet strength. Problem is that tables are quickly turned when PD/Flak armed ships are introduced. Also you may be able to destroy opposing stations even with corvettes by using somewhat 'questionable' tactics even early on like using 'portable hangars' & scouts.

As to the weapons & stuff. With larger fleets and capital ships (i.e. cruisers & battleships) it is often better to go with M/L plasma (but not necessarily S) since shields regardless of their strength will not last long - certainly not long enough to make all that big difference. Blink and they are gone. While you may be able to drop enemy's shields couple of heartbeats faster using disrupters and mass drivers the armor will have much larger effect. Given how (at least the unmodded) game invariably turns towards the use of doomstacks that is just how it is - with smaller fleets the correct weapon & equipment selection is important (bringing a fleet with nothing but armor to face an enemy packing nothing but plasma and tachyon lances may not yield the optimum result).

 

[Cipher3]

More importantly, HUH
What is it good for?

You beat me to it and I'm so upset.

Remember that war does not make winners, only widows.

 

[Foefaller]

I mean...even when the diplomacy window shows them as "equivalent" with a much smaller bubble than i have...when i attack them they usually have a much larger fleet that destroys my fleet while a smaller fleet of them conquers my planets.

am i missing something here?
im pretty much used to micromanaging fleets, which isnt possible here.
im also a player who uses a lot of intel, scout the enemy, see what he has and where he has it...which isnt possible either.

so...how does war work? how can i be victorious?

The power strength descriptors can be pretty broad. I've had wars with empires that said they were "Equivalent" but had 2-3k more fleet strength than me, and that's not even going into whether that's overall power rating or just the rating of Fleet Strength. It's best to wait until you get an "inferior" rating before going to war, or, baring that, making sure you have a loadout that counters what you've seen from them.

Unfortunately right now the only way to see what kind of ships another empire has is to have their ships in sensor range or in a system you has stations in, after you've made first contact. You can inspect a ship in their fleet by selecting the fleet and clicking the icon on one of the ships in their fleet list. Depending on how relations are, it can be difficult to impossible to see what sort of weapons they are using before the war starts, because they're behind your lines in territory you have no access to. Supposedly, each of the AI types have specific weapons and loadouts they start out with and prefer over the coarse of the game, but the AI has to deal with the same deck-based system as you do, so much of that goes out the window by the time you reach the point warfare is the last major avenue left for you to expand.

As a simple rule of thumb, however, Kinetics are the best early game, even when noone has shields, though eventually you'll want to get a mix of long-range kinetics (particularly Kinetic Artillery) to peel off shields and plasma to finish them off as they are unprotected. You shouldn't even both until you can field a fleet that has at least 2-3k strength with destroyers (otherwise you're never going to be able to destroy any of the orbital staitions protecting their worlds), and if you want to start conquering early, find someone who also hates whoever you have in mind, befriend them, and then ask them to come to war with you. Ideally you want to stick together so you can take out the enemy fleet (there is a button on your fleet card that will have any friendly empires in a war "try" (and I mean try) to follow that fleet.) but even if you can never get together in time, simply having another target for the enemy to chase can be all the cover you need to blockade and invade enough world to get a win out of the war (even if it isn't exactly the win you wanted.)

 

[scaper12123]

As the game progresses, the difference between fleet sizes that the interface will actually mention increases. In the late game when you have fleet sizes of around 100k, it usually goes in increments of 25k. That's probably where you're going wrong: you're going at a fleet of 124k using a 101k fleet. Having a well built fleet also helps, although in the late game it's hard to predict what fleet will do good against what. Max level plasma and kinetic artillery on everything usually does the job though.

 

[Riftwalker]

War isn't that complicated. Build up a well-designed fleet (basically don't use missiles) until your fleet power is high enough for theirs to say Inferior, declare war on them, smash their fleet, then occupy planets until they cry uncle. There's not a whole lot for you to mess up while actually fighting the war if you brought a bigger fleet to it. Just don't get into war with a weaker fleet.

also look around for planets without stations or nearby mining stations etc, and then just sent like 20 assault divisions to take it, they'll drill through the max fortification just fine.

 

[Slynx]

.even when the diplomacy window shows them as "equivalent"

if you hower on it you'll see that it consists of "fleet power" fleet capacity" and "technology" so equivalent can be "superior\equivalent\inferior" for example. and it'll explain why you see bigger numbers

im pretty much used to micromanaging fleets, which isnt possible here.

you can split the fleets to alter their behavior. you can use different designs for defferent purposes

im also a player who uses a lot of intel, scout the enemy, see what he has and where he has it...which isnt possible either.

send 1 ship to the enemy. adjust accordingly. (or use sensors to do it without losses)

how can i be victorious?

in wars? by scoring more points then your opponent sometimes you don't even have to fight his fleet

Build up a well-designed fleet (basically don't use missiles) until your fleet power is high enough for theirs to say Inferior, declare war on them, smash their fleet, then occupy planets until they cry uncle.

it may be hard on higher then normal difficulty though

30 Corvettes can kill a lone spaceport

never really used this exact number...but 40 corvettes with a right design(3s ac+shield+thrusters for example) can sometimes kill enemy's space port and defending fleet if you have a tech advantage and good general (+attack speed or +evasion)

 

[GC13]

it may be hard on higher then normal difficulty though

Higher difficulty doesn't make the AI smarter, so it's still conceptually the same. It's just that the AI will have built-in advantages that require either more ships or more cheese to compensate for.

 

[Slynx]

Higher difficulty doesn't make the AI smarter, so it's still conceptually the same.

ai - yes. but with bonus 50\100 production they can build bigger fleet or get better tech faster. and it'll compensate for the crappy autodesign

 

[GC13]

ai - yes. but with bonus 50\100 production they can build bigger fleet or get better tech faster. and it'll compensate for the crappy autodesign

Still, all you're doing is trying to show up with a stronger fleet than the other guy. Still nothing fancy.