When do you tend to fight Fallen Empires?

[LordMagus]

So, I'm planning to do more battleship and cruiser testing against fallen empires. But before I proceed with that, I need to know when people tend to fight them.
What I mean by that is, do you personally tend to have access to strategic resources (garanthium, neutronium, lythuric gas and teldar crystals) when you fight them? And perhaps even more than that, Tier 1 repeatable tech?
Post your opinions/experience below

 

[Qilue]

When my total feet strength is at least 3 times their's. 4 times larger is better though. Last two games, my xenophobic neighbour started the war, but both times I knew the war was coming.

I admit I cheat using 'observe' at the start and note which systems not to enter until I'm ready for a fight.

 

[LordMagus]

I think that using a good ship build, you can defeat them with half their fleet strength. Just interested if people have strategic resources and repeatable tech when they pull the trigger and attack the FE, or when the FE awakes and you have to attack then or much much later.

 

[Pchang]

When my fleet strength is about 80K or when I get Kinetic Batteries (whichever comes first). I do not have repeat techs and I may or may not have teldar, garanthium, or Lysuric. Usually, I have 2 out of those 3.

 

[Qilue]

Also, last two times were all cruiser fleets using your optimum cruiser design although with one plasma weapon replaced with a flak battery. Once the FE fighters are exterminated, the remaining ships aren't nearly as powerful. I don't remember what strategic resources I had, but I was using Enigmatic shields and power plants with shield battery and enigmatic decoder in accessory slots.

It was overkill, but it's war, not a football game.

 

[LordMagus]

Also, last two times were all cruiser fleets using your optimum cruiser design although with one plasma weapon replaced with a flak battery. Once the FE fighters are exterminated, the remaining ships aren't nearly as powerful. I don't remember what strategic resources I had, but I was using Enigmatic shields and power plants with shield battery and enigmatic decoder in accessory slots.

It was overkill, but it's war, not a football game.

Yeah cruisers are pretty sweet, though the last time I tried using them, for some reason I had more casualties than if I used battleships. If you check out the builds the FE uses, they do have 2 XL slots sure, but the rest of the stuff on their battleships are all medium slots (except the xenophobes cheat and put 2 kinetic artillery in medium slots) and their escorts have 1 large weapon and the rest is small.

 

[foxboy73]

I usually wait until diplo screen lists us to be of equal fleet strength, of course it doesn't always work that great (there is a very large gap in what the game considers equal and what i think is). I usually try and have at least kinetic batteries, and three fleets comprising of 10 battleships, 20 cruisers, 30 destroyers, and 50 corvettes. War with a Fallen empire is the only time all my fleets are in the same system. I also don't really pay much attention to the strategic resources, i research them but i don't go out of my way to get them before a brawl with the Fallens.

 

[LordMagus]

Okay, as some people have previously indicated that you can't always get neutronium before you get pushed into a war with the FE I'll test without neutronium. But will be using garanthium, lythuric gas and teldar crystals.

 

[Alblaka]

I would recommend running the tests with AND without strategic ressources.
Not necessaryly all possible combinations of yes/no, just two all/none tests would suffice (people can extrapolate from there).

 

[LordMagus]

I would recommend running the tests with AND without strategic ressources.
Not necessaryly all possible combinations of yes/no, just two all/none tests would suffice (people can extrapolate from there).

I've tested against the Xenophobe FE, using strategic resources but without neutronium as some people may not have it by the time they have to fight the xenophobe FE. Results are in https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...ip-endgame-lordmagus-demiare-larknok1.999613/

 

[AndragonLea]

It really depends. If one of them is close by, I usually tend to attack it as soon as my fleet or the combined fleets of my allies/federation buddies reaches the 60 k mark naturally. I usually know what type of ship they have by then and will wait for both my energy and minerals to max out after reaching max navy upkeep, before then queueing up as many ships as I can afford, waiting for them to be done and then declaring war. This causes me to go far above my sustainable limit, but since Fallen Empires tend to produce a lot of casualties unless you overkill them, that isn't an issue for long.

I do this both for the technology available in the wrecks and to gain the nearby advanced resource buildings and space (there are usually quite a lot of nice planets blocked by Fallen Empire borders).

If they are far enough away that ethics divergence would make converting/integrating them hard to impossible, I usually simply don't do it at all. Sure, having access to their tech is nice, but it isn't essential enough to warrant the type of losses I would take in the war if I can't also get the planets reasonably productive and happy. This obviously depends on my government and ethic quite a bit, though. (If I can purge or have enough options to raise happiness and ethics divergence I might still be tempted ^^)

 

[Beagá]

When they are near to be awakened by big fleet strength and I have quality torpedoes and strike Craft.

Being fanatic militarist also helps, as well as that insane anomaly that gives more evasion. So damn good.

Then it's all a matter of getting the home world system. Without It both fallen/awakened empires are dead, and can be finished off whenever you want.

 

[Diezy]

Xenophobic usually takes a bit more to beat.

Usually the crushing victories involve the maxed Ship AI+Admiral with Cautious for range and Kinetic Artillery. They can win with as low as 50-60k if they haven't awakened.

After awakening, things take an odd turn. There seems to be a tipping point in terms of firepower, where even outnumbered, you can crush them, and it's something that doesn't stay in proportion. Their proportionately doomstacked 1vs2 fleet becomes weaker and weaker, the bigger both our doomstacks get, while keeping things 1vs2.

Using Kinetic Artillery+Tachyon Lance, with armor above 80% and rest into shields, Crystal Hulls and Garanthium, things looked like this:

A 50k vs a 100k is a close call.
150k vs ~300k wins handily.
200k vs ~400k was an overwhelming victory, with almost negligible losses.

I suspect we greatly outDPS them with instant damage from Kinetics and Tachyons, while they use Carriers. We get a lead, and the bigger the initial firepower our fleet has, the bigger our lead on them gets before their strike craft get to us.

Cautious looks like the best trait, paired with good, long range weapons. If there's Aggressive and Unyielding, they're also good, and your ships hang around DPS-ing for longer.

Cruisers equipped with nothing but Flak Cannons, charging into their strike craft and mowing down many of them is a very powerful trick for crushing them too, but they seem to come up late. I wonder if there's better anti-Carrier alternatives.

 

[AndragonLea]

Yeah, the flight time of missiles and strike craft has always been one of the main reasons they aren't viable. There is just no way to balance a weapon that allows the enemy to shoot several salvos (each killing one or more of your weapon platforms) before you even get in range. Once you finally do, probably having lost several ships already, you still have to get past their PD to do any appreciable damage.

Add to that that (last I read) overkill with missiles consists of one salvo killing the ship and the next two salvos sailing off into empty space and fighters/missiles disappearing when their carrier/platform does and you have a recipe for suck.

I like using cruisers with fighter hangars and medium slots with flak to counter heavy missiles and strike craft - not only are they usually between bombers and their targeted battleships to take them out, the fighters usually build a cloud that takes enemy missiles and strike craft out all along their route and then orbits the enemy and takes the following salvos out as they're shot - anything they miss gets mopped up by the approaching cruisers and the flak, which then proceeds to shoot at any corvettes that may be present.

I can really imagine artillery taking out enough ships to just snowball into victory that way.

 

[LordMagus]

When they are near to be awakened by big fleet strength and I have quality torpedoes and strike Craft.

Torps and strike craft are completely unnecessary and will see you take way more losses.

We get a lead, and the bigger the initial firepower our fleet has, the bigger our lead on them gets before their strike craft get to us.

Yep, alpha damage at work I've noticed by observing the battles, that most of the losses you sustain to your fleet are caused by their battlecruisers. So the faster you alpha them down, the less ships you'll lose over the rest of the entire fight.

 

[Beagá]

No, they aren't (talking about the late game Physics torps). They ravage shields and while having decent output on their own. Torpedo cruisers are excellent battleship support and will ravage all battlecruisers and stations.

Strike craft are needed to shoot bombers more effectivelly, I do agree that bombers are meh, but still have their uses versus capital ships and titans since they partially ignore armor. I'm not pulling this out of nowhere, beat even awakened with those weapons.

 

[AndragonLea]

Nobody is saying bombers are an instant loss condition - I'm just quoting people that spent hours of their time testing various fleet compositions against each other and that report that bombers perform worse than any other weapon you could possible slot into the same hull segment.

Said people tested bombers vs fleets with fighters, PD or no PD at all and they still performed worse than non-hangar ships that otherwise have the same design.

Due to their slow flight speed, propensity for flying in the wrong direction (sometimes attacking a station and taking half a month to divert to the enemy fleet if you're unlucky, but I've also seen them flock towards empty space in the opposite direction of the enemy for no practical reason) and vulnerability to point defense weapons which can make the hangar slot useless long before their carrier dies there is simply no reason not to use a direct fire weapon instead.

They do damage, but not anywhere near the same amount of damage as other weapon types. Add to that that they don't behave like fighters do in numerous other games (where they benefit from research in explosive weapons/plasma weapons or what have you research so you don't have to decide between buffing your bombers or buffing your other ships) and there is simply no contest.

I sometimes use them for RP reasons despite knowing that they're inferior in performance, but that's pretty much it.

 

[Beagá]

Thing is, you buff bombers, you buff FE/AE as well...

The way you say makes them almost look useless which I really don't think they are, compared to missiles (blergh). I'm aware of their speed so maybe increase It a bit and fix their behavior, apart from that they are fine

 

[Qilue]

Have you done a test of whirlwind missles vs flak cannons? Say one cannon per ship. They're supposedly designed to overwhelm PD.

 

[LordMagus]

Have you done a test of whirlwind missles vs flak cannons? Say one cannon per ship. They're supposedly designed to overwhelm PD.

Never tested it, due to the prevailing sentiment that missiles are a waste of time in general. But I would be willing to test Beaga's apparently great torpedo cruiser design.