Why can't Titans and Battleships use G slots?

[RhysTheT00n]

Given that battleships have a form of torpedo that can they can be fitted with, and they are the biggest combat ships in the game besides Titans thus would be more likely to have room for missiles I think the only obvious reason for preventing Battleships from using G slots is because of how overpowered they would be if they could use Scourge missiles, since they fire 3x faster than Large Neutron Launchers and only narrowly do less the a third of the damage, and they ignore shields and maintain the same damage buff to both hull and armour making them a VERY good weapon choice for pretty much any enemy, including point defence since they have high health, speed and evasion. Yeah, with how resilient battleships areI think that's the only reason they've taken away the ability to equip them with missile slots. Anyone have any other answers?

 

[Slickbawsmcgraw]

Battleships don't need guided systems because their primary targets are battleships and titans, who basically have no evasion stat. Battleships should mainly be used as an artillery gunline to decimate the enemy fleet before it gets in cruiser range. Once you're up that close, it's everything else that's doing the fighting. Having guided missiles on battleships would make them too overpowered because there wouldn't be a lot stopping from them from overwhelming corvettes and other small ships that only really have the advantage of evasion. Keeping it this way still allows for small ships to be viable in end-game rather than just battleship mono-fleets with a titan flagship.

 

[RhysTheT00n]

Battleships don't need guided systems because their primary targets are battleships and titans, who basically have no evasion stat. Battleships should mainly be used as an artillery gunline to decimate the enemy fleet before it gets in cruiser range. Once you're up that close, it's everything else that's doing the fighting. Having guided missiles on battleships would make them too overpowered because there wouldn't be a lot stopping from them from overwhelming corvettes and other small ships that only really have the advantage of evasion. Keeping it this way still allows for small ships to be viable in end-game rather than just battleship mono-fleets with a titan flagship.

So yeah, that was pretty much what I thought. If they could use missiles, they would be the best ship for any encounter.

 

[RhysTheT00n]

Battleships don't need guided systems because their primary targets are battleships and titans, who basically have no evasion stat. Battleships should mainly be used as an artillery gunline to decimate the enemy fleet before it gets in cruiser range. Once you're up that close, it's everything else that's doing the fighting. Having guided missiles on battleships would make them too overpowered because there wouldn't be a lot stopping from them from overwhelming corvettes and other small ships that only really have the advantage of evasion. Keeping it this way still allows for small ships to be viable in end-game rather than just battleship mono-fleets with a titan flagship.

Actually, you know what I just realized? The logic about Guided systems actually isn't very accurate for 2 reasons:
1. Guided systems actually have the worst tracking of all weapon types minus X mounts making them the least viable against small ships.
2. Fallen Empire and Endgame Crises ships can use Guided systems on their Battleships which, like I said, makes them excessively overpowered.

Speaking of Fallen Empires, with the changes made to fleet combat in 2.2, Fallen Empires and Awakened Ascendancies are actually way too overpowered. Small ships are completely useless against any of their ships because of their tracking nullifying their evasion stat plus the fact that their weapons are heavily damaging which doesn't bode well for ships with such low health. With evasion completely out the window the only other viable option would be Battleships with point defense. Not only is it the ship with the most health, you also have the X mount which if you pick the focused arc emitter completely ignores all shield and armour (very useful for Awakened Ascendancies... I would imagine at least, still need to test that.) Combine that with the point defense, at least putting a dent in the amount of missiles being fired at you.

 

[Slickbawsmcgraw]

Actually, you know what I just realized? The logic about Guided systems actually isn't very accurate for 2 reasons:
1. Guided systems actually have the worst tracking of all weapon types minus X mounts making them the least viable against small ships.
2. Fallen Empire and Endgame Crises ships can use Guided systems on their Battleships which, like I said, makes them excessively overpowered.

Speaking of Fallen Empires, with the changes made to fleet combat in 2.2, Fallen Empires and Awakened Ascendancies are actually way too overpowered. Small ships are completely useless against any of their ships because of their tracking nullifying their evasion stat plus the fact that their weapons are heavily damaging which doesn't bode well for ships with such low health. With evasion completely out the window the only other viable option would be Battleships with point defense. Not only is it the ship with the most health, you also have the X mount which if you pick the focused arc emitter completely ignores all shield and armour (very useful for Awakened Ascendancies... I would imagine at least, still need to test that.) Combine that with the point defense, at least putting a dent in the amount of missiles being fired at you.

What I usually do for Fallen Empires is use a mixture of Cruisers and Battlehips. My cruisers will basically act like a screen, and I kit them out with full plasma. Battleships behind with 2 designs - one is full kinetic artilley with Gigacannon and the other design is a carrier with fighters, bombers and point defense. Your fighters will also intercept missiles and can fight the enemy strike craft, bombers do heavy damage to their bigger ships. Kinetics will wipe out their shields from range by the time your plasmas get in range and then they should have an easier time taking out the escorts. But with all that said, Fallen Empires are *VASTLY* more powerful than they were in 1.7. They've finally grown some teeth in 2.2 and can wreck you if you're not careful.

 

[RhysTheT00n]

What I usually do for Fallen Empires is use a mixture of Cruisers and Battlehips. My cruisers will basically act like a screen, and I kit them out with full plasma. Battleships behind with 2 designs - one is full kinetic artilley with Gigacannon and the other design is a carrier with fighters, bombers and point defense. Your fighters will also intercept missiles and can fight the enemy strike craft, bombers do heavy damage to their bigger ships. Kinetics will wipe out their shields from range by the time your plasmas get in range and then they should have an easier time taking out the escorts. But with all that said, Fallen Empires are *VASTLY* more powerful than they were in 1.7. They've finally grown some teeth in 2.2 and can wreck you if you're not careful.

The problem is that there power comes from the fact that they can equip literally twice as many weapons and shield/armour slots than you can possibly have. Even in 1.7 they were very powerful, the only way I ever managed to survive against them was if I avoided getting on their bad side

 

[Slickbawsmcgraw]

I would eat Fallen Empires for breakfast in 1.7. They really weren't that difficult to deal with, even on the hardest mode. In 2.2 though, they are much tougher, even more so because of the new fleet size limits. I play on Grand Admiral exclusively though, so there's also that to consider.

 

[RhysTheT00n]

I would eat Fallen Empires for breakfast in 1.7. They really weren't that difficult to deal with, even on the hardest mode. In 2.2 though, they are much tougher, even more so because of the new fleet size limits. I play on Grand Admiral exclusively though, so there's also that to consider.

You know what? No matter how many of ASpec's videos I watch on the matter, No fleet build is ever as effective in my games as it seems to be in everyone elses. People keep telling me to use a screen of torpedo corvettes yet my 90% evasion corvettes get completely wiped out (the entire fleet) after a single volley from a FE, and I'm on normal difficulty

 

[Slickbawsmcgraw]

I've never found any real use for corvettes or destroyers, if I'm being honest. They're only really useful early-game for zerg-rushing your opponents and scoring early victories. For actual war, I rely on cruisers and battleships mainly in the configurations I mentioned. I also like to do super fast tech-rushing and outclass all the AI as quickly as possible. When I play, my real enemies are Awakened Empires and the End-Game Crisis - everything else is just fodder. Once you figure out just how inept the AI is, the game very quickly becomes mind-numbingly easy and the only way to get a real challenge is just putting the difficulty up. I'm not saying I'm amazing at the game, but once you've got a solid tech-rush build figured out then the AI just can't compete.

As far as tech goes, Fallen Empires have 10x repeatables (all repeatable techs) so they've got some crazy bonuses to their weapon damage, armour, shields, firing speed... The whole spectrum. That's what makes them so scary if you're behind on tech. I like to rush so I can match them on tech and then just out-class them on numbers. It's a lot easier and quicker to get to those really crazy levels of research on PC because of the features it has over the console edition just now, such as relic worlds and specialised habitats, so I wouldn't pay *too* much attention to Aspec's tips. A lot of them simply don't transfer well from PC to console while the two versions aren't at parity. But no matter what system you're on, I've found that the most overpowered thing you can do is rush those researches to a ridiculous level. I can get well into the repeatables by 2300 normally - or by 2270-ish if I get a good start, good planet spawns and optimise well. Play tall, stay within your empire sprawl and bully your neighbours into becoming tributaries and focus your planets solely on research and alloy production so you can advance quickly and build plenty of ship. Do that and you can't go far wrong.

 

[RhysTheT00n]

I've never found any real use for corvettes or destroyers, if I'm being honest. They're only really useful early-game for zerg-rushing your opponents and scoring early victories. For actual war, I rely on cruisers and battleships mainly in the configurations I mentioned. I also like to do super fast tech-rushing and outclass all the AI as quickly as possible. When I play, my real enemies are Awakened Empires and the End-Game Crisis - everything else is just fodder. Once you figure out just how inept the AI is, the game very quickly becomes mind-numbingly easy and the only way to get a real challenge is just putting the difficulty up. I'm not saying I'm amazing at the game, but once you've got a solid tech-rush build figured out then the AI just can't compete.

As far as tech goes, Fallen Empires have 10x repeatables (all repeatable techs) so they've got some crazy bonuses to their weapon damage, armour, shields, firing speed... The whole spectrum. That's what makes them so scary if you're behind on tech. I like to rush so I can match them on tech and then just out-class them on numbers. It's a lot easier and quicker to get to those really crazy levels of research on PC because of the features it has over the console edition just now, such as relic worlds and specialised habitats, so I wouldn't pay *too* much attention to Aspec's tips. A lot of them simply don't transfer well from PC to console while the two versions aren't at parity. But no matter what system you're on, I've found that the most overpowered thing you can do is rush those researches to a ridiculous level. I can get well into the repeatables by 2300 normally - or by 2270-ish if I get a good start, good planet spawns and optimise well. Play tall, stay within your empire sprawl and bully your neighbours into becoming tributaries and focus your planets solely on research and alloy production so you can advance quickly and build plenty of ship. Do that and you can't go far wrong.

I've been playing as a Devouring Swarm for a while and no matter what I do, playing tall isn't an option since if I don't build enough ships quickly, the galaxy will just end me as soon as possible, and there's no way I can get the minerals for an Alloy economy unless I expand quickly. Research complex's themselves require a boatload of minerals so I don't know how to do that and sustain my energy and food without expanding quickly. Also, without repeatable tech my Empire Sprawl will increase to a point beyond control very quickly, even with government civs and traits. I made a strong effort in 1.7 to follow all the 1.7 tall playthrough tips I could find (just to see if a Devouring Swarm could play tall) and my empire was killed within the first hundred years

 

[Slickbawsmcgraw]

Devouring Swarms don't really like to play tall. They're more "go wide quickly and brute force research and economy with sheer numbers." Which can work if you optimise well, but I find it a pain to manage so many different planets. I generally go for a Fanatic Materialist + Militarist build and try to rush down the robot techs so I can do synthetic evolution early. Totally eliminates the need for food which lets you reassign some of your districts to something useful. As I said before, making neighbours into tributaries is a good way to balance your economy too - the AI will be forced to give you a quarter of all their income until they die or win their freedom, which means you can roll back districts again and use something more useful. I also don't like to colonise my first world until well after I have the expansion tradition tree completed and all the related colony ship techs for faster development speed. Limiting myself to one planet for longer is a risky move early on but it pays off better in the long run because I get a leg up on research and unity over my enemies. If you put well-equipped bastion stations on your chokepoints, there's no reason you can't get greedy for the first 50 or so years because the AI just won't want to attack. Keep your fleets at capacity as well just as a deterrence to attack and focus on establishing your own planets and the enemy usually won't bother you if you're a normal empire. Trouble with a Devouring Swarm is that *everyone* is your enemy from the get go, so you're not doing yourself any favours early on and you just invite attack - same goes for Fanatic Purifiers (except they're way better than DS) and the Determinated Exterminators or whatever the synth version of it is called. Total War empire types are fun and really good to RP, with a lot of flavour but they're also pretty difficult if you haven't got optimised builds or get a bad start.

 

[RhysTheT00n]

Devouring Swarms don't really like to play tall. They're more "go wide quickly and brute force research and economy with sheer numbers." Which can work if you optimise well, but I find it a pain to manage so many different planets. I generally go for a Fanatic Materialist + Militarist build and try to rush down the robot techs so I can do synthetic evolution early. Totally eliminates the need for food which lets you reassign some of your districts to something useful. As I said before, making neighbours into tributaries is a good way to balance your economy too - the AI will be forced to give you a quarter of all their income until they die or win their freedom, which means you can roll back districts again and use something more useful. I also don't like to colonise my first world until well after I have the expansion tradition tree completed and all the related colony ship techs for faster development speed. Limiting myself to one planet for longer is a risky move early on but it pays off better in the long run because I get a leg up on research and unity over my enemies. If you put well-equipped bastion stations on your chokepoints, there's no reason you can't get greedy for the first 50 or so years because the AI just won't want to attack. Keep your fleets at capacity as well just as a deterrence to attack and focus on establishing your own planets and the enemy usually won't bother you if you're a normal empire. Trouble with a Devouring Swarm is that *everyone* is your enemy from the get go, so you're not doing yourself any favours early on and you just invite attack - same goes for Fanatic Purifiers (except they're way better than DS) and the Determinated Exterminators or whatever the synth version of it is called. Total War empire types are fun and really good to RP, with a lot of flavour but they're also pretty difficult if you haven't got optimised builds or get a bad start.

Yeah, I figured that, but I just wanted to test it out to see if it would work. In order to aid my research gain, I'm trying to set up a system where each planet has an Advanced Research Complex instead of a Nano-Alloy Plant and build more Habitats which have Nano-Plants to make up for it (don't worry, I have the Ecumenopolis planet with 21 Alloy Districts so my alloy economy won't die straight away), hopefully that way I can reduce the growth in research requirements which will help me with these repeatables. Plus I've finally got Dark Matter and Crystal-Forged Plating and I've completed the Enigmatic Event chain so I now have all possible T5 upgrades for all ships (minus PSI stuff because I'm a DS, so... yeah), I'm currently finishing off the rest of the Awakened Ascendancy's dominated empires with my Neutron Sweep Colossus, soon it will just be me and them, and they will be the first Awakened Ascendancy I've ever beaten. The War In Heaven will come to an end soon and I will be all that remains.

Sorry, got a bit carried away there.

 

[Fubar iow]

What I usually do for Fallen Empires is use a mixture of Cruisers and Battlehips. My cruisers will basically act like a screen, and I kit them out with full plasma. Battleships behind with 2 designs - one is full kinetic artilley with Gigacannon and the other design is a carrier with fighters, bombers and point defense. Your fighters will also intercept missiles and can fight the enemy strike craft, bombers do heavy damage to their bigger ships. Kinetics will wipe out their shields from range by the time your plasmas get in range and then they should have an easier time taking out the escorts. But with all that said, Fallen Empires are *VASTLY* more powerful than they were in 1.7. They've finally grown some teeth in 2.2 and can wreck you if you're not careful.

Why use cruisers at all? Missile slots or not it seems that battleship fleets are meta, you can purpose build battleships to perform the same screening role? In an earlier thread I put the question for good ideas for different ship types. I didn't get a solid suggestion, I've tried to incorporate other ship types, with missile slots. In my experience however nothing beats a mono-bs fleet, accepting the addition of the larger ship types.
If anyone has a suggestion to try, please add to my earlier post on ship design.

 

[RhysTheT00n]

Why use cruisers at all? Missile slots or not it seems that battleship fleets are meta, you can purpose build battleships to perform the same screening role? In an earlier thread I put the question for good ideas for different ship types. I didn't get a solid suggestion, I've tried to incorporate other ship types, with missile slots. In my experience however nothing beats a mono-bs fleet, accepting the addition of the larger ship types.
If anyone has a suggestion to try, please add to my earlier post on ship design.

What earlier post? Are you sure you're on the right thread?

 

[Fubar iow]

What earlier post? Are you sure you're on the right thread?

My apologies, I meant to say thread.
Here it is:

Fleet builds for console

As soon as I get battleships, I phase out all other ship classes. I use variations of BS designs in my fleets to cover all roles, versatile enough for all threats. My question is does anyone have any viable variations? I'm particularly...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

 

[Slickbawsmcgraw]

Why use cruisers at all? Missile slots or not it seems that battleship fleets are meta, you can purpose build battleships to perform the same screening role? In an earlier thread I put the question for good ideas for different ship types. I didn't get a solid suggestion, I've tried to incorporate other ship types, with missile slots. In my experience however nothing beats a mono-bs fleet, accepting the addition of the larger ship types.
If anyone has a suggestion to try, please add to my earlier post on ship design.

Two very good reasons - 1) Cruisers are cheaper. 2) Cruisers create faster.
Having battleship monofleets is just throwing alloys away and then a lot more time to replace any losses. You feel the loss of each and every battleship in battle, but a cruiser is really just like a late-game corvette in that I don't mind losing them if they're keeping my battleships protected. Also, don't knock the firepower of a cruiser. They may not have the same hull points as a battleship, but they can pack one hell of a punch. They're also really versatile and can be set up however you like, and lemme tell ya... Having a big ol' block of cruisers kitted out with 6 x Medium Plasma will wreck someone's day.
As for Battleship Mono being the meta, I have to disagree. I've played a reasonable amount of online with my friends and I cream their battleship monofleets with my build. The only time I support using a full monofleet is against the Unbidden End-game crisis (Not that it ever seems to actually appear on console anymore) because the best way to deal with them is with a strong kinetic alpha strike due to their short range weapons. But for every other crisis, I'm taking cruisers as an escort.

 

[Fubar iow]

Two very good reasons - 1) Cruisers are cheaper. 2) Cruisers create faster.
Having battleship monofleets is just throwing alloys away and then a lot more time to replace any losses. You feel the loss of each and every battleship in battle, but a cruiser is really just like a late-game corvette in that I don't mind losing them if they're keeping my battleships protected. Also, don't knock the firepower of a cruiser. They may not have the same hull points as a battleship, but they can pack one hell of a punch. They're also really versatile and can be set up however you like, and lemme tell ya... Having a big ol' block of cruisers kitted out with 6 x Medium Plasma will wreck someone's day.
As for Battleship Mono being the meta, I have to disagree. I've played a reasonable amount of online with my friends and I cream their battleship monofleets with my build. The only time I support using a full monofleet is against the Unbidden End-game crisis (Not that it ever seems to actually appear on console anymore) because the best way to deal with them is with a strong kinetic alpha strike due to their short range weapons. But for every other crisis, I'm taking cruisers as an escort.

I'm definitely going to have to try that, all my earlier experiments with BS/Cruiser builds was too greater losses in crusiers even in engagements where I had the numbers advantage. Crusiers getting sniped early in the engagement I think. The BS only, I can run a large engagement and not take a single loss.
I admit I gave it all up early, just because of the BS success. Hence why I started the thread for alternatives, I even asked about cruisers particularly.
I'll definitely give this a try, what sort of ratio do you use, and rough set up? You may want to post this in a separate thread, mine would be helpful for me to find, as this is a bit off the original topic.

 

[Slickbawsmcgraw]

I'm definitely going to have to try that, all my earlier experiments with BS/Cruiser builds was too greater losses in crusiers even in engagements where I had the numbers advantage. Crusiers getting sniped early in the engagement I think. The BS only, I can run a large engagement and not take a single loss.
I admit I gave it all up early, just because of the BS success. Hence why I started the thread for alternatives, I even asked about cruisers particularly.
I'll definitely give this a try, what sort of ratio do you use, and rough set up? You may want to post this in a separate thread, mine would be helpful for me to find, as this is a bit off the original topic.

My ratio varies depending on my enemy but I *usually* like to have 3 - 5 cruisers for every battleship. I go full medium plasma on them and advanced afterburners to get them in fast. I tend to lean heavier on armour rather than shields but again that depends on my enemy. If they're using energy weapons, I go heavier on shields.

For battleships, I go artillery type (gigacannons, 4 x L kinetic artillery) and I back those up with carrier types with 2 x bombers, 1 x fighters, point defence and a lot of flak. I usually do a 3 artillery to 1 carrier ratio.

You will lose cruisers, but their purpose is to act as a screen and engage quickly while your battleships destroy shields and do the heavy lifting on bigger ships. The main reason I have the cruisers besides a screen is to deal with smaller ships because battleships can have problems eliminating corvettes and destroyers due their evasion and poor tracking on the large kinetics. If I'm not up against a Fallen Empire and don't really need the flak and fighters, I'll have the carrier type switch to full energy weapons. Tachyon Lance, 4 x L plasma cannon.