Important note on the Contingency! You MUST either: a) Wait and only fight them after you have blocked the ghost signal. b) remove sapient combat computers from your ships. (Autonomous and psionic are fine, sapient gets a debuf from the ghost signal! Switch down to yellow if you have to.) The sapient computers on the contingency designs have left a fair few people confused so I wanted to add this!
I had the best moment in my life when, small galaxy, I was in a galactic war with the big three-faction conglomerate when unbidden showed up. In the middle of a transit system. My navy just flew by and I never had a clearer: "no stfu"-moment. Drive-by and unbidden was gone again.
Something to note about the Unbidden; they get 40% shield hardening in systems with a dimensional anchor. That was a nasty shock the first time I lost a bypass fleet to a fight I "should" have won.
I have gotten them twice in my home system with 600 hours played. I beat them in both cases but not without them crashing my economy from just destroying my homeworld.
I have a friend who is rather... crap at the game and didnt have many planets or systems and only survived by virtue of me and my friend being his neighbors. Then the unbidden spawned in his capital system, destroyed everything and broke him mentally for a time. That game was an immediate restart.
@@mlgsty8880 Back when the old ftl, tile, and border systems were still around, I played a pacifist empire and had barely any ships when the unbidden spawned right next to my capital. The only reason I was able to survive was that I spent insane amounts of influence to colonise a tiny, low habitability planet at the edge of the galaxy. I went down to less than 10 pops, slowly grinding out a habitat and claiming the last unclaimed patch on the side of the edge galaxy opposing the unbidden. Incredibly slowly I managed to scrape together the resources to make a few more habitats, and eventually start work on a ringworld. Roughly 80 years from the start of the crisis i was finally able to rejoin the struggle of the galaxy that had just barely been holding on thanks to the fallen empires. That was the first time I had ever beaten a crisis.
I prefer massed carrier builds myself. One thing you never mentioned, and I noticed, you had Sapient Combat computers on all your ships when going over the Contingency. Those suffer a -50% penalty at the start and only gradually weaken as you crack their worlds. So, either psionic combat computers or advanced combat computers should be used instead vs the Unbidden. Fun fact, Unbidden have 50% shield hardening. Or, at least that is what the tooltip says any rate once you can see the loadouts on their ships.
@@cheetahman2830 You can find it under "Empire Modifiers" in your main government window. Just click on your empire's flag in the top left corner of the screen, make sure you are showing "modifiers", and scroll to the bottom of the list. It will display the current "Contingency Signal Strength" and mousing over it will show the impact on Sapient Combat Computers and, if you have any, synthetic pops in your empire.
@@roymundchf8917 Personally, I think the Unbidden need a permanent 75-100% shield hardening at all times. As it stands right now, they just evaporate under missiles and strike craft from ranges far beyond what they can respond to. The slaughter is even worse if you get lucky and get the Zroni and have a few Zroni Storm Bastions between them and your core worlds. They WILL suicide on them like lemmings.
One thing that makes the unbidden so easy is how they target psyonic empires first. In a 25 times crisis run, I had them make a 1 system thin line through half my empire while they tried to attack a spiritual fallen empire. So I always faced one or less fleets of them and they never really attacked me as long as I "raided" their fleets on their way to the fallen empire. Their portal was only 2 systems away from a system of mine, so I could just sweep in and kill it after a few months
My preferred all rounder crisis fighting ship is the Focused Arc Emitter battleships with the hangar core and the 3 aux slot stern sections. That gives 1 hangar bay and a bunch of M slots for Whirlwind missiles. It bypasses Unbidden shields, fends off Prethoryn swarm strikers, has great range for kiting the Contingency and can continue inflicting damage while the X-slot is turned away /out of firing arc. Although this video focuses on ship design, high levels of research into repeatable weapons damage and firing rate technology is the key to beating a high multiplier crisis. Energy weapons and strike craft are easy to focus on but kinetic weapons, missiles, armor and defense platform buffs all compete with each other within engineering. So I have turned away from kinetic weapons in my own PvE meta in favor of missiles. Kinetic weapon also have that default 75% accuracy which just begs you to use up an aux slot for an aux fire control instead of an afterburner or regenerative hull tissue.
Nice, I switched up to missiles as well. With repeatable researchs into missile fire rate + damage is truly underestimated. I honestly like my whirlwind destroyers, they just hit hard and cut through the enemy.
Tho if you really want to mass corvette swarms do work against crisis as well, about 400-800 of them will do the trick (taking out a single fleet with minimum losses), and are quite cheap and fast to build
It shows how much the game changed. It used to be the Ubiden was considered the most terrifying threat. Though to be fair, they did get a bit nurf without having large slot arc weapons, which can now penetrate shields and armor and have a range of 100..
Thank you, I was struggling against the unbidden and keep losing to many ships. Now with these cruisers and good artillery battleships I'm turning things around :)
I've always found the high level contingency the hardest faction to beat, probably because in the past I didn't commit to the naked FAE battleships. I did notice in my last run they had some minimal hardening, I'm guessing its like the synthetic leader trait? Just 10%. I also found it difficult assaulting their bases when the system had a gateway or hyper relay positioned in range of their weapons. It really sucks you can't choose to approach from one of the hyper lanes when the other methods are considered higher pathing priority. edit: I needed to use corvette screens to beat those systems...poor corvettes.
3:00 doesn’t artillery class take the median of all weapon ranges for the range it’ll try to stay at and not the mean? Strat made a video on that so you should be alright to add marauder missiles even if they won’t be firing all the time due to range.
Due to end-game lag, you don't want too large a galaxy, so I'd say small to medium (I play on 400 stars with the standard number of empires) and everything else is up to your taste, to add variety to the playthroughs.
@@mathhews95 1000 stars is just too epic to pass. Thousands to tens of thousands of ships warring across the whole galaxy in titanic battles for the ages! I could commission paintings of such glorious vistas! I mean, I kinda am, seeing as my poor laptop takes around 10sec to render a frame in these late-2400 battles. WHATEVER, WORTH IT!!!
@@MEUAR in general I like large maps too. But I don’t like it when all star systems become owned and there’s no neutral territory whatsoever. There need to be natural hazards/obstacles (abandoned mine fields; littered asteroid belts, etc) that remain neutral territory even in late game
@@Jasons073 To keep that sense of wonder, that idea of still having uncharted territories beyond the frontier of your empire eh? I get you. Closest we can come to that is pacifying space fauna and creating some kind of reserves for those beautiful space whales! Or like building an impregnable goddamn Ligne Maginot around crisis spawns and let them marinate there as a "barely contained unknowable threat". But that's not the same yeah.
Thanks for the video Montu. I got absolutely shredded by 10x Unbidden using mass torpedo cruisers and stealth frigates this week. The Alpha strike didn’t kill as many as I hoped and my fleets got disintegrated in 1 min 🤣
I laughed at the naked penetration battleships until I saw that upkeep for them is 3 times lower compared to fully-slotted one and it got me thinking that one might try to make only these until the type of crisis is know
You know speed is key when the juggernaut class is faster than the unbidden. Also even tho i play on the console version (cause rip my pc trying to run the game) were missles cant go in the M slot and share the slots with torps. But hey this still helps alot here.
Could you imagine being a civilian that survives a 150X all crisis universe. Not only have billions probably died in the process but now they’re all defeated the economy basically doesn’t exist because it was all directed towards pumping out battleships. That’d be a rough couple of decades if not centuries of economic recovery.
Thanks! I purposely delayed my current playthrough hoping you'd release this video. I think I'll move to the all-rounder option until I see what the coming crisis is and where it spawns. If I have time to convert to a more specific setup after the first crisis message pops up, I'll do so.
The anti-anbidden cruiser - would it really get closer to the enemy with marauders? The artillery computer uses the longest range weapon for distancing if i remember correctly (even if it uses the median it would still use 120). This would mean that in an ideal case, the marauders would never fire, but if something goes wrong because of jump points, multiple fleets, or system size, the marauders would give a bit more firepower in situations where you need it.
Never played with 25x crisis, but always play against 10x all crisis in my games. And I think that missile tactic is really great against Prethoryn Scourge. You can remake your frigates into neutron launcher/missile build, and make aircraft cruisers. Put all of possible variations into aircrafts and last slot can be made with 2 middle class and whirlwind missiles. The real problem in all of this crisis is Contingency. They just need to be prepared for. All of the times I met them - I was just smashed or barely held them till 2500 happens 😅
Against normal strength of a contingeny crisis, i armed all my ship with afterburners, focused light-arc-bow-emitter and all available slots with disrupters. defense are as many shields as energy allows it. Targeting computers to run in with the whole fleet as quick as possible and then give them hell.
I just had gray tempest swarm the galaxy (my fault) with 150k fleets. I had no chance so I did al all out rush of their capital system and destroyed the fortress with barely any fleet strength left. Maybe five years later, the Prothyn scourge showed up (about six months from first warning to first appearance). They were brutal, but I managed to fight them back. Then I had two fallen empires awaken on either side of my empire and start hating each other. One just attacked my federation member, so about two years after the scourge was defeated, I'm at war again. They have 2-3 million fleet power, so I'll try hit and run harassment with my psi-jump fleets and hopefully scoop up their better tech through salvage. This game is exhausting but thrilling. I've never had such back-to-back crises before.
I stopped using juggernauts because even with the great aura, the juggernaut will cut your ship production by a third, at least if you rely on ca. 2 mega shipyards like I normally do. How reinforcing your fleet works is that Stellaris will just split the queue by the amount of ship yards amd assign them, so the 2 shipyard juggernaur will get as many ships as a 20 shipyard megashipyard with ship production boosts
@@robguy8501 yeah, but it for some reason did. I don't know if it was fixed in recent patches, but when I played my juggernauts queue was always full while my shipyards got nothing to do
Thank you for that incredibly helpful material. I love your ship design videos as they are really good and explained clearly. Do you plan to make something similar about "general" battleship/titan/juggernaut/defense platforms? Or about designs vs Gray Tempest/Fallen Empires/Khan/Leviathans etc. for us being able to beat them early instead of just flooding them with much greater fleets? I'm good at the economic part of the game but I really suck with creating my own designs (and fleet composition even more). Especially with archaeo-tech, which I don't use in general because of then being so different 😅
Im really just getting into it myself and i would guess Torpedo Cruiser against Fallen Empires and Leviathans because those do more Damage the bigger the Target. Not sure about the Gray Tempest but Khan (the 3 Times i had him) was never even an Issue as you only have to defeat the Flagship and then the Rest desolves into a new Faction
@@fuchsmichael93 for Leviathans I was usually making huge fleets of cloaked frigates with torpedoes, stealthy flying very close to a Leviathan and then attack from point blank range, but it feels like cheating and should be good for any Leviathan. About FEs, I'm not sure about torpedoes, as the smaller ships are packed up with Point-Defense. And all of their ships have Strikrcrafts. They have enormous shields and armor, so I'd go with ignoring weapons like disruptors. And wait for them very close to the hyperline point, to start the battle from very close range to not losing my ships before they be close enough to hit with disruptors. But I don't have any other ideas, and I'm very lame with fleet compositions - I'm used to monohull fleets
I noticed you didn't mention the Dark Matter technologies. But it's cool. I can take the very detailed designs you showcased and easily create Dark Metter equivalents. Thanks, Montu a and Yern.
There are two anti-crisis ship: 1. 10’000 of nanite swarmers in a single fleet totaling 6 million fleet power 2. Cosmogenesis Battleships (400k per fleet, 25 evasion, 500 DPS).
2:55 Wait, if you have the artillery combat computer, doesn't that make it so the ships stays at the maximum range of their farthest reaching weapon? So equipping the marauder missiles should not have an impact on how close the ship gets, right?
Can I ask for a specific guide? A way to benchmark progress in the game to know if you're playing well or not? Basically, where should you be on total research / fleet power / resource production every 50 or 100 years in the game?
For research, a good rule of thumb is 100 research for every 10 years into the game. So at 2260 you should aim for ~600 research points minimum. Stellaris is a snowball game though, so while you might be under that mark early on, you can quickly snowball research. For resource production, honestly just try to keep a surplus while increasing research and alloy production. Fleet power is harder because it depends on what you're trying to do/whether you're playing to conquer or just to defend your space, but having 80-100k fleets by the midgame is a good benchmark. Against 5x crisis, you'll probably need about 2 million total fleet power by endgame, though you can get away with less if you optimize for the specific crisis faction. At that point, your individual fleets are probably in the 200-300k fleet power range.
I think the general indicator on how well your run is going (at least on default science cost and pop growth) is how far you are from 10k naval power and 1k research at 2230. Though I too would like to see a video going into details about checking progress.
For min tech in PvE, I use this simple formula: total_tech_output (phy+soc+eng) = years_into_game * 20 (low end: * 15) So in year 2230, you wanna be at min 30 * 20 = 600 (low end: 450), in 2250 at 1000 (750), in 2300 at 2000 (1500), and so on.
I'm pretty sure the general indicator of how well you are doing is what your rating is against other empires. That is the entire point of that mechanic.
You are on a content spree mr Montu! I assume after vassalizing EP2nil you acquired his content library and decided to repurpose it for better use! I for one welcome our lizard Overlords!
Me (Getting obliterated by the Contingency) : That's it !! let's see if there is any tips about how to beat them ! Montu (literally one hour ago) : Got you fam.
a simple and no brain choise, build massive t34, similar the pen only-class battleship, a cheaper version of him, Remove the accelerator, remove the acceleration accessories, and bring a level 1 engine. Because they are very slow, if there is a long-distance battle, you can shoot two more rounds first. If there are a lot of T34s, they will be cleared out at once. They are very cheap, so you can overpopulate them in large numbers at will. You don’t have to worry too much about maintenance fees. Likewise, you don’t have to worry too much. Casualties, they are consumables. A standard battleship will be in danger if it gets close, let alone the super slow T34. Of course, this is a brainless solution, a solution that works but is not very efficient. Personally, I would add a crystal board, and then bring some missiles or passenger planes or something else depending on the type.
I'm confused about ship's AI combat tactics. On the Unbidden carrier design you argue that adding marauder missiles would be bad because they'd cause your ships to want to fight from a closer range, but on the Prethoryn battleship you fill small and medium slots with plasma weapons and still equip afterburners for kiting. Wouldn't the short range of the plasma weapons mean that those battleships simply charge straight into the fight?
The pretoryn have pretty fast ships so their smaller ships will reach your fleet anyways. The AI makes sure the fleet will try to kite back and do a decent job against larger Pretoryn, while the lower range weapons will target the smaller Pretoryn ships who are already close. After the small Pretoryn are dealt with, then yeah the ships would close in the gap a bit more, but by then most large Pretoryn will likely be dead anyway, so it's mostly a non-problem.
With unbidden ships, your plan is to completely be outside their range, which makes their weapons useless. Scourge ships are fast enough to actually get within the range where those other weapons are useful. Your ship won’t get 120 away anyhow so no point in trying to kite
I think i need a video to fight against an awakened spiritualist fallen empire at year 2260, 😅, but i set all 3 crisis so this will be useful too. Thanks Montu. Btw i really hope that 3.10 stop the vassal spamming for the ia
In my experience the best way is to have two different types of fleets for fallen/awakened empires. One with full disruptor corvettes or cruisers to fight their fleets and one with either artillery battleships or torpedo cruisers to fight their starbases. The fleets all have very, very low hull compared to armor and shield but the starbases have massive amounts of hull and will rip apart a fleet with only disruptor weapons.
I have played two games so far, and faced the scourge both times. Both times, I have only just finished discovering battleships before they arrive. I must be doing something wrong XD
If prethoryn scourge is running away from a predator larger than them, and that predator is following it, something really nasty could be coming to the galaxy after the scourge....
Creates 5k corvette fleet Go on crusade from choke point to choke point. Rebuild ships. Keep up and keep orbital nuking all planets including non-crisis.
So... get long range weapons and kite them, get long range weapons and kite them, aaaaand... get long range weapons and kite them. I'm starting to suspect afterburners are a little too good.
I do wonder if the starbase modules have a similar problem as the Auras. If so, the module with shield points reduction would be particularly awful and I should switch to the fire rate and range boosting-modules. I did notice (I think) you can aggro crises fleets so they try hunt down those fleets with which you inflict heavy losses on them. So a decent strategy is have your fleet eviscerate one or two small contingents, then lure the bigger ones into one of your own heavily fortified systems to ambush it with those juicy defensive modifiers. A bit risky, but high reward. (Honestly, I believe there should be a Major Fortress-Orbital which grants less habitation space, but adds an additional base with firepower like the Orbital Ring can be. Maybe lock it behind the 'Galactic Force Projection'-AP, or require finishing Unyielding. Or both.) I usually play with the Gigas-mod as I can't find the energy to alter my pre-made empires in it by reverting back to vanilla. My preferred method of dealing with the standard crises is throwing a literal planet at the problem, which honestly is quite funny when you think about it for the Unbidden and the Prethoryn. Usually solves the 25x-crisis unless I have to fight all their fleets in a single battle. However in Grand Admiral, it usually takes me about 90-100 years from the game start to build them, as it takes a lot of research and economy to do so. So for the sadistic earliest crises this might not be that viable of a strat.
Not worth the alloy cost compared to building more ships with minimal positive power I guess: There's probably only 5-10% fire rate to be gained. If that's additive to other fire rate bonuses, it will be worth even less. But with only 1 weapon and no shields/armour, it probably significantly increases the ship cost. Although needing more shipyards (which could be anchorages otherwise) to build faster and upkeeping more ships (when over naval cap) also has its cost, so I don't know for sure.
Why no mention of driller drone fighters againt the preythorian?They ignore armor and do bonus damge to hull. If they manage to win the fighter duel they just melt the bigger ships.
only thing i saw was for unbidden the rockets had 0-120 then u said in the small slots you put nothing because the marauder missiles have less range at 120 (yes they have 100 but u said 120)
Important note on the Contingency!
You MUST either:
a) Wait and only fight them after you have blocked the ghost signal.
b) remove sapient combat computers from your ships. (Autonomous and psionic are fine, sapient gets a debuf from the ghost signal! Switch down to yellow if you have to.)
The sapient computers on the contingency designs have left a fair few people confused so I wanted to add this!
jokes on you I have not even researched sapient combat computers yet.
Montu: Detailed and well designed ships to face each each crisis.
Me: Sending wave after wave of auto designed ship to the slaughter.
Sheer numbers will break them! Not one step back!
Okay Captain Brannigan...
Quantity is a quality of its own.
Now that's a strategy with some chest-hair!
Can you build more than 1 dyson sphere?
I had the best moment in my life when, small galaxy, I was in a galactic war with the big three-faction conglomerate when unbidden showed up. In the middle of a transit system. My navy just flew by and I never had a clearer: "no stfu"-moment. Drive-by and unbidden was gone again.
That is like if a tyranid hive fleet arrived during the siege of terra and the emperor just went “NO, FUCK OFF!”
Wait I don't understand they showed up in your territory? Or the conglomerate territory?
Something to note about the Unbidden; they get 40% shield hardening in systems with a dimensional anchor. That was a nasty shock the first time I lost a bypass fleet to a fight I "should" have won.
The Unbidden are very aptly named, always showing up in the most inconvenient system.
It gets to the point where I design my systems around making them easier to fight
I have gotten them twice in my home system with 600 hours played.
I beat them in both cases but not without them crashing my economy from just destroying my homeworld.
I have a friend who is rather... crap at the game and didnt have many planets or systems and only survived by virtue of me and my friend being his neighbors.
Then the unbidden spawned in his capital system, destroyed everything and broke him mentally for a time. That game was an immediate restart.
And approximately 4 jumps from my capital ffs
@@mlgsty8880 Back when the old ftl, tile, and border systems were still around, I played a pacifist empire and had barely any ships when the unbidden spawned right next to my capital. The only reason I was able to survive was that I spent insane amounts of influence to colonise a tiny, low habitability planet at the edge of the galaxy. I went down to less than 10 pops, slowly grinding out a habitat and claiming the last unclaimed patch on the side of the edge galaxy opposing the unbidden. Incredibly slowly I managed to scrape together the resources to make a few more habitats, and eventually start work on a ringworld. Roughly 80 years from the start of the crisis i was finally able to rejoin the struggle of the galaxy that had just barely been holding on thanks to the fallen empires. That was the first time I had ever beaten a crisis.
I prefer massed carrier builds myself. One thing you never mentioned, and I noticed, you had Sapient Combat computers on all your ships when going over the Contingency. Those suffer a -50% penalty at the start and only gradually weaken as you crack their worlds. So, either psionic combat computers or advanced combat computers should be used instead vs the Unbidden. Fun fact, Unbidden have 50% shield hardening. Or, at least that is what the tooltip says any rate once you can see the loadouts on their ships.
Oh I did forget to mention, don't use sapient combat computers against the contingency!
The autonomous ships intellects are fine!
where does it tell you the penalty though? Is there someplace you can see the modifier?
Unbidden's shield hardening is tied to the Dimensional Anchors, so it only applies when fighting in that specific system.
@@cheetahman2830 You can find it under "Empire Modifiers" in your main government window. Just click on your empire's flag in the top left corner of the screen, make sure you are showing "modifiers", and scroll to the bottom of the list. It will display the current "Contingency Signal Strength" and mousing over it will show the impact on Sapient Combat Computers and, if you have any, synthetic pops in your empire.
@@roymundchf8917 Personally, I think the Unbidden need a permanent 75-100% shield hardening at all times. As it stands right now, they just evaporate under missiles and strike craft from ranges far beyond what they can respond to. The slaughter is even worse if you get lucky and get the Zroni and have a few Zroni Storm Bastions between them and your core worlds. They WILL suicide on them like lemmings.
I NEEDED YOU 2 DAYS AGO, NOW THE CONTINGENCY IS EATING ME ALIVE
Please lodge a complaint with our 'crisis centre'. Follow the link here to be connected directly with them: bit.ly/bureaucracy_satisfaction_survey
@@MontuPlays Clicking on that link was worse than the crisis...
@@arandomguyfrommtl4194 I am sorry to hear that!
Please lodge a formal complaint here: bit.ly/bureaucracy_satisfaction_survey
@@MontuPlays STOP IT!!
@@MontuPlaysoh god, it’s the worst crisis of all:
Bureaucracy
Montu: making a very detailed guide
Me knowing damn well I’m gonna use wave after wave of evasion corvettes:
Evasing destroyers are also ok
One thing that makes the unbidden so easy is how they target psyonic empires first. In a 25 times crisis run, I had them make a 1 system thin line through half my empire while they tried to attack a spiritual fallen empire. So I always faced one or less fleets of them and they never really attacked me as long as I "raided" their fleets on their way to the fallen empire. Their portal was only 2 systems away from a system of mine, so I could just sweep in and kill it after a few months
i am just happy that my standart battleship design i use is in the video and is listed as an all rounder against the crisis
My preferred all rounder crisis fighting ship is the Focused Arc Emitter battleships with the hangar core and the 3 aux slot stern sections. That gives 1 hangar bay and a bunch of M slots for Whirlwind missiles. It bypasses Unbidden shields, fends off Prethoryn swarm strikers, has great range for kiting the Contingency and can continue inflicting damage while the X-slot is turned away /out of firing arc. Although this video focuses on ship design, high levels of research into repeatable weapons damage and firing rate technology is the key to beating a high multiplier crisis. Energy weapons and strike craft are easy to focus on but kinetic weapons, missiles, armor and defense platform buffs all compete with each other within engineering. So I have turned away from kinetic weapons in my own PvE meta in favor of missiles. Kinetic weapon also have that default 75% accuracy which just begs you to use up an aux slot for an aux fire control instead of an afterburner or regenerative hull tissue.
Nice, I switched up to missiles as well. With repeatable researchs into missile fire rate + damage is truly underestimated. I honestly like my whirlwind destroyers, they just hit hard and cut through the enemy.
Tho if you really want to mass corvette swarms do work against crisis as well, about 400-800 of them will do the trick (taking out a single fleet with minimum losses), and are quite cheap and fast to build
As someone who has never owned stellaris, excellent guide.
that intro of The Stolen Earth (Doctor Who Series 4 episode 12, 2008) was used perfectly how the end game crisis is described
I KNEW YOU'D DO IT.
Thank you so much your content is amazing
So I'm hearing massed kinetic artillery battleship spam for all crises? Understood, knew you had good taste Montu.
It shows how much the game changed. It used to be the Ubiden was considered the most terrifying threat.
Though to be fair, they did get a bit nurf without having large slot arc weapons, which can now penetrate shields and armor and have a range of 100..
I love the intro scenes, I enjoy it most when I like the references too
Thank you, I was struggling against the unbidden and keep losing to many ships. Now with these cruisers and good artillery battleships I'm turning things around :)
Thanks Montu! If I ever survive the gray tempest I will treasure your advices!
I've always found the high level contingency the hardest faction to beat, probably because in the past I didn't commit to the naked FAE battleships. I did notice in my last run they had some minimal hardening, I'm guessing its like the synthetic leader trait? Just 10%. I also found it difficult assaulting their bases when the system had a gateway or hyper relay positioned in range of their weapons. It really sucks you can't choose to approach from one of the hyper lanes when the other methods are considered higher pathing priority. edit: I needed to use corvette screens to beat those systems...poor corvettes.
Imagine if paradox added turning speed for ships
Great video as always!
Glad you enjoyed!
3:00 doesn’t artillery class take the median of all weapon ranges for the range it’ll try to stay at and not the mean? Strat made a video on that so you should be alright to add marauder missiles even if they won’t be firing all the time due to range.
I really, REALLY love those videos. Keep 'em coming! :)
I find it funny that the next? season's ending of Dr Who has the universe allied against the Doctor since they think he is the endgame crisis.
Great video! Can you do one that shows your ideal galaxy settings (shape, number of AI empires, etc)?
Due to end-game lag, you don't want too large a galaxy, so I'd say small to medium (I play on 400 stars with the standard number of empires) and everything else is up to your taste, to add variety to the playthroughs.
@@mathhews95 1000 stars is just too epic to pass. Thousands to tens of thousands of ships warring across the whole galaxy in titanic battles for the ages! I could commission paintings of such glorious vistas! I mean, I kinda am, seeing as my poor laptop takes around 10sec to render a frame in these late-2400 battles. WHATEVER, WORTH IT!!!
@@MEUAR in general I like large maps too. But I don’t like it when all star systems become owned and there’s no neutral territory whatsoever. There need to be natural hazards/obstacles (abandoned mine fields; littered asteroid belts, etc) that remain neutral territory even in late game
@@Jasons073 To keep that sense of wonder, that idea of still having uncharted territories beyond the frontier of your empire eh? I get you. Closest we can come to that is pacifying space fauna and creating some kind of reserves for those beautiful space whales! Or like building an impregnable goddamn Ligne Maginot around crisis spawns and let them marinate there as a "barely contained unknowable threat". But that's not the same yeah.
Thank you this will come in very handy in our current round.
Thanks for the video Montu. I got absolutely shredded by 10x Unbidden using mass torpedo cruisers and stealth frigates this week. The Alpha strike didn’t kill as many as I hoped and my fleets got disintegrated in 1 min 🤣
You DO NOT EVER want to be in close range against a crisis. Your ships will die.
@@MontuPlays unless you have 10k corvettes
@@ScorpioneOrzionthe scourge strike craft in question:
I laughed at the naked penetration battleships until I saw that upkeep for them is 3 times lower compared to fully-slotted one and it got me thinking that one might try to make only these until the type of crisis is know
I've got a new video to watch anytime I hit late game now lol. Thank you Montu!
Endgame Crises are so simple with this tips. Thank you my Emporer! :D
Montu: counter the crisis for the best possible time
Me: FOR THE GRACE FOR THE MIGHT OF OUR LORD
You know speed is key when the juggernaut class is faster than the unbidden. Also even tho i play on the console version (cause rip my pc trying to run the game) were missles cant go in the M slot and share the slots with torps. But hey this still helps alot here.
Could you imagine being a civilian that survives a 150X all crisis universe. Not only have billions probably died in the process but now they’re all defeated the economy basically doesn’t exist because it was all directed towards pumping out battleships. That’d be a rough couple of decades if not centuries of economic recovery.
The economy would have to be a control economy after that. Literally the only way you could demobilize it.
Thanks! I purposely delayed my current playthrough hoping you'd release this video. I think I'll move to the all-rounder option until I see what the coming crisis is and where it spawns. If I have time to convert to a more specific setup after the first crisis message pops up, I'll do so.
Exactly what we needed post 3.6
The anti-anbidden cruiser - would it really get closer to the enemy with marauders? The artillery computer uses the longest range weapon for distancing if i remember correctly (even if it uses the median it would still use 120). This would mean that in an ideal case, the marauders would never fire, but if something goes wrong because of jump points, multiple fleets, or system size, the marauders would give a bit more firepower in situations where you need it.
I think it takes the Middle. So 110 instead of 120 in that Case, more Guns never hurt i would say
My favorite weapon is shipyard.
Never played with 25x crisis, but always play against 10x all crisis in my games. And I think that missile tactic is really great against Prethoryn Scourge. You can remake your frigates into neutron launcher/missile build, and make aircraft cruisers. Put all of possible variations into aircrafts and last slot can be made with 2 middle class and whirlwind missiles.
The real problem in all of this crisis is Contingency. They just need to be prepared for. All of the times I met them - I was just smashed or barely held them till 2500 happens 😅
6000 corvettes works 99% of the time.
Against normal strength of a contingeny crisis, i armed all my ship with afterburners, focused light-arc-bow-emitter and all available slots with disrupters. defense are as many shields as energy allows it. Targeting computers to run in with the whole fleet as quick as possible and then give them hell.
I just had gray tempest swarm the galaxy (my fault) with 150k fleets. I had no chance so I did al all out rush of their capital system and destroyed the fortress with barely any fleet strength left. Maybe five years later, the Prothyn scourge showed up (about six months from first warning to first appearance). They were brutal, but I managed to fight them back. Then I had two fallen empires awaken on either side of my empire and start hating each other. One just attacked my federation member, so about two years after the scourge was defeated, I'm at war again. They have 2-3 million fleet power, so I'll try hit and run harassment with my psi-jump fleets and hopefully scoop up their better tech through salvage. This game is exhausting but thrilling. I've never had such back-to-back crises before.
Montu: use marauder missiles and swarmer against the unbidden! Me: with Arc inmitters and gauss cannons
I stopped using juggernauts because even with the great aura, the juggernaut will cut your ship production by a third, at least if you rely on ca. 2 mega shipyards like I normally do. How reinforcing your fleet works is that Stellaris will just split the queue by the amount of ship yards amd assign them, so the 2 shipyard juggernaur will get as many ships as a 20 shipyard megashipyard with ship production boosts
Wait, really? But that would be so stupid.
@@robguy8501 yeah, but it for some reason did. I don't know if it was fixed in recent patches, but when I played my juggernauts queue was always full while my shipyards got nothing to do
Thank you for that incredibly helpful material. I love your ship design videos as they are really good and explained clearly. Do you plan to make something similar about "general" battleship/titan/juggernaut/defense platforms? Or about designs vs Gray Tempest/Fallen Empires/Khan/Leviathans etc. for us being able to beat them early instead of just flooding them with much greater fleets? I'm good at the economic part of the game but I really suck with creating my own designs (and fleet composition even more). Especially with archaeo-tech, which I don't use in general because of then being so different 😅
Im really just getting into it myself and i would guess Torpedo Cruiser against Fallen Empires and Leviathans because those do more Damage the bigger the Target.
Not sure about the Gray Tempest but Khan (the 3 Times i had him) was never even an Issue as you only have to defeat the Flagship and then the Rest desolves into a new Faction
@@fuchsmichael93 for Leviathans I was usually making huge fleets of cloaked frigates with torpedoes, stealthy flying very close to a Leviathan and then attack from point blank range, but it feels like cheating and should be good for any Leviathan.
About FEs, I'm not sure about torpedoes, as the smaller ships are packed up with Point-Defense. And all of their ships have Strikrcrafts. They have enormous shields and armor, so I'd go with ignoring weapons like disruptors. And wait for them very close to the hyperline point, to start the battle from very close range to not losing my ships before they be close enough to hit with disruptors. But I don't have any other ideas, and I'm very lame with fleet compositions - I'm used to monohull fleets
I noticed you didn't mention the Dark Matter technologies. But it's cool. I can take the very detailed designs you showcased and easily create Dark Metter equivalents. Thanks, Montu a and Yern.
Thx for the video .
Very very good video, do you have any videos on what the minimum number of these fleets we should aim for for each 25x crisis?
Hello ... does this channel have a star trek infinite part ? does he makes videos about it ?
We've covered the recent release with a review and two live streams! Check out the 'live' tab!
@@MontuPlays allready did.. so i hope for more
Your awesome dude and awesome video be safe out there
There are two anti-crisis ship:
1. 10’000 of nanite swarmers in a single fleet totaling 6 million fleet power
2. Cosmogenesis Battleships (400k per fleet, 25 evasion, 500 DPS).
2:55
Wait, if you have the artillery combat computer, doesn't that make it so the ships stays at the maximum range of their farthest reaching weapon? So equipping the marauder missiles should not have an impact on how close the ship gets, right?
Can I ask for a specific guide? A way to benchmark progress in the game to know if you're playing well or not?
Basically, where should you be on total research / fleet power / resource production every 50 or 100 years in the game?
as a newbie to stellaris myself this would be dope
For research, a good rule of thumb is 100 research for every 10 years into the game. So at 2260 you should aim for ~600 research points minimum. Stellaris is a snowball game though, so while you might be under that mark early on, you can quickly snowball research. For resource production, honestly just try to keep a surplus while increasing research and alloy production. Fleet power is harder because it depends on what you're trying to do/whether you're playing to conquer or just to defend your space, but having 80-100k fleets by the midgame is a good benchmark. Against 5x crisis, you'll probably need about 2 million total fleet power by endgame, though you can get away with less if you optimize for the specific crisis faction. At that point, your individual fleets are probably in the 200-300k fleet power range.
I think the general indicator on how well your run is going (at least on default science cost and pop growth) is how far you are from 10k naval power and 1k research at 2230.
Though I too would like to see a video going into details about checking progress.
For min tech in PvE, I use this simple formula: total_tech_output (phy+soc+eng) = years_into_game * 20 (low end: * 15)
So in year 2230, you wanna be at min 30 * 20 = 600 (low end: 450), in 2250 at 1000 (750), in 2300 at 2000 (1500), and so on.
I'm pretty sure the general indicator of how well you are doing is what your rating is against other empires. That is the entire point of that mechanic.
6:23 Zerg swarm: What? Are you suggesting people would copy the tyranids? Ridiculous
Forgetting the combat computer issue when facing Contingency? Use Psionic one, or one tier lower from Sapient.
You are on a content spree mr Montu! I assume after vassalizing EP2nil you acquired his content library and decided to repurpose it for better use! I for one welcome our lizard Overlords!
Me (Getting obliterated by the Contingency) : That's it !! let's see if there is any tips about how to beat them !
Montu (literally one hour ago) : Got you fam.
Have you done a video about the different leviathans and such yet? A few of those things have really messed me up in various games.
Thanks!
Finished a multiplayer game today where we had the Unbidden appear. Corvette swarm saved the galaxy XD
Any advice on the Grey Tempest and Great Khan?
Me: "....but I like stealing planets with hostile intent..."
Never noticed the Unbidden have average hull, huh.
14:20 I am surprised you didn´t name them the ¨naked¨ class in the game too lol
when i played my first endgame game the unbidden popped up over transmission then like a year later some random civilization closed the portal
a simple and no brain choise, build massive t34, similar the pen only-class battleship, a cheaper version of him, Remove the accelerator, remove the acceleration accessories, and bring a level 1 engine. Because they are very slow, if there is a long-distance battle, you can shoot two more rounds first. If there are a lot of T34s, they will be cleared out at once. They are very cheap, so you can overpopulate them in large numbers at will. You don’t have to worry too much about maintenance fees. Likewise, you don’t have to worry too much. Casualties, they are consumables. A standard battleship will be in danger if it gets close, let alone the super slow T34. Of course, this is a brainless solution, a solution that works but is not very efficient. Personally, I would add a crystal board, and then bring some missiles or passenger planes or something else depending on the type.
I mostly never reach that far cause I get beaten by engame lag that is the true crisis.
For PvE stellaris, would you recommend the all rounder for general purpose builds?
I miss the crises ships against the crisis if you play with the crises and have access to minerals ships
I'm confused about ship's AI combat tactics. On the Unbidden carrier design you argue that adding marauder missiles would be bad because they'd cause your ships to want to fight from a closer range, but on the Prethoryn battleship you fill small and medium slots with plasma weapons and still equip afterburners for kiting. Wouldn't the short range of the plasma weapons mean that those battleships simply charge straight into the fight?
The pretoryn have pretty fast ships so their smaller ships will reach your fleet anyways. The AI makes sure the fleet will try to kite back and do a decent job against larger Pretoryn, while the lower range weapons will target the smaller Pretoryn ships who are already close. After the small Pretoryn are dealt with, then yeah the ships would close in the gap a bit more, but by then most large Pretoryn will likely be dead anyway, so it's mostly a non-problem.
With unbidden ships, your plan is to completely be outside their range, which makes their weapons useless. Scourge ships are fast enough to actually get within the range where those other weapons are useful. Your ship won’t get 120 away anyhow so no point in trying to kite
I think i need a video to fight against an awakened spiritualist fallen empire at year 2260, 😅, but i set all 3 crisis so this will be useful too. Thanks Montu. Btw i really hope that 3.10 stop the vassal spamming for the ia
In my experience the best way is to have two different types of fleets for fallen/awakened empires. One with full disruptor corvettes or cruisers to fight their fleets and one with either artillery battleships or torpedo cruisers to fight their starbases.
The fleets all have very, very low hull compared to armor and shield but the starbases have massive amounts of hull and will rip apart a fleet with only disruptor weapons.
Corvette crews: WE WHO ARE ABOUT TO DIE, SALUTE YOU!
The crisis fleets never regenerate in my vanilla console playthroughs
I have played two games so far, and faced the scourge both times.
Both times, I have only just finished discovering battleships before they arrive.
I must be doing something wrong XD
If prethoryn scourge is running away from a predator larger than them, and that predator is following it, something really nasty could be coming to the galaxy after the scourge....
Creates 5k corvette fleet
Go on crusade from choke point to choke point.
Rebuild ships.
Keep up and keep orbital nuking all planets including non-crisis.
So... get long range weapons and kite them, get long range weapons and kite them, aaaaand... get long range weapons and kite them.
I'm starting to suspect afterburners are a little too good.
8:25 are those strikecraft from a mod?
They're from an event chain that happens if you hire one of the new unique leaders from galactic paragons.
@@robguy8501 oh, awesome! strikecraft are my favorite so I love to see that :)
I do wonder if the starbase modules have a similar problem as the Auras. If so, the module with shield points reduction would be particularly awful and I should switch to the fire rate and range boosting-modules. I did notice (I think) you can aggro crises fleets so they try hunt down those fleets with which you inflict heavy losses on them. So a decent strategy is have your fleet eviscerate one or two small contingents, then lure the bigger ones into one of your own heavily fortified systems to ambush it with those juicy defensive modifiers. A bit risky, but high reward.
(Honestly, I believe there should be a Major Fortress-Orbital which grants less habitation space, but adds an additional base with firepower like the Orbital Ring can be. Maybe lock it behind the 'Galactic Force Projection'-AP, or require finishing Unyielding. Or both.)
I usually play with the Gigas-mod as I can't find the energy to alter my pre-made empires in it by reverting back to vanilla. My preferred method of dealing with the standard crises is throwing a literal planet at the problem, which honestly is quite funny when you think about it for the Unbidden and the Prethoryn. Usually solves the 25x-crisis unless I have to fight all their fleets in a single battle. However in Grand Admiral, it usually takes me about 90-100 years from the game start to build them, as it takes a lot of research and economy to do so. So for the sadistic earliest crises this might not be that viable of a strat.
Thaaaaaaank you
I don't know man. Making a total of 5000 corvettes seem to do the job. The cost? We don't talk about it
For the anti-unbidden cruisers, would you add missiles to the small slots at high crisis strength since the extra shield HP doesn't matter?
The Unbiden are here to sniff us out
Came here for knowledge on how to beat the Blokkats. I'm suffering as my galaxy is being absorbed :(
Does your build from the Maginot game still work for Starbases against the Crisis? Or do you have new recommendations?
Itd be nice to have gray tempest and fallens in here too but ah well
12:18 what do you mean you will not need that extra power?!? Extra power means extra firepower as excess power is diverted to weapons.
Not worth the alloy cost compared to building more ships with minimal positive power I guess:
There's probably only 5-10% fire rate to be gained.
If that's additive to other fire rate bonuses, it will be worth even less.
But with only 1 weapon and no shields/armour, it probably significantly increases the ship cost.
Although needing more shipyards (which could be anchorages otherwise) to build faster and upkeeping more ships (when over naval cap) also has its cost, so I don't know for sure.
Now can you do a video on how to deal with the Gigastructure crisis? xD
How do your general purpose ship designs hold up in the current patch?
war in heaven next?
How do these alien races fare against war moons and war planets?
What's best for fallen empires? I'm new a slug of war 😅
Hybrid build is kinda good to all crisis
You forgot the montu crisis counter :P
This is great and all, but how do I defeat the ultimate crisis of my own insecurities?
... I do not recall
how does the all-rounder class fare against Cetana's fleets?
Why no mention of driller drone fighters againt the preythorian?They ignore armor and do bonus damge to hull. If they manage to win the fighter duel they just melt the bigger ships.
Minor artifact cost
only thing i saw was for unbidden the rockets had 0-120 then u said in the small slots you put nothing because the marauder missiles have less range at 120 (yes they have 100 but u said 120)
Talking about 25x crisis strength and here I am struggling on the lowest setting whilst my economy is falling to bits on 600 hours of the game lmao