Stellaris Newbie Tutorial for Ships

hello everyone and welcome to the stellaris new player guide to ships i'm your host colorsfe in this guide we'll cover a wide variety of topics we'll go over the ship designer templates fleets refitting and upgrades and a whole lot more in the description below you'll find time stamps for the specific topics covered in this guide so if there is something you want to jump to feel free to use those links this guide is by no means comprehensive as always if you want to know more about a particular topic with greater detail check the stellaris wiki as it contains a wealth of knowledge now without further ado let's get started there are four basic ship hall sizes that come with the base game corvettes destroyers cruisers and battleships each of these four basic ship types can be built at a shipyard a starbase can hold up to six shipyards on it allowing you to construct up to six ships simultaneously this will help you build fleets faster you can build as many of these four basic ships as your empire's resources and finances will allow there is no cap on the number of ships you can have however there are a couple of limitations you need to be aware of command limit is a hard cap on the total size of each of your fleets a fleet cannot exceed this number in order to understand what this means let's take a look at the metric ship size every ship has a size value and they are as follows corvettes have a size of one destroyers have a size of 2 cruisers have a size of 4 battleships have a size of 8 and titans which require a dlc have a size of 16. at the start of a game your command limit is capped at 20. this means you can have any combination of ship sizes that add up to 20 but you cannot go over this value for a single fleet so you could have a fleet of 20 corvettes because they all have a size of one or you could have a fleet with two cruisers two destroyers and eight corvettes your fleet composition can be whatever you want it to be as long as it does not exceed your command limit through research ascension perks and other technological advancements you can increase command limit from the paltry 20 that you start the game with to the grand total of 260. that is the largest fleet size that is allowed in the base game without modifications whenever you are examining a fleet template for a specific fleet you'll be able to see what your command limit is and what the fleet's current size is you can then use this information to determine how many more ships you can build in order to utilize the entire command limit for a given fleet now before i go any further i want to take some time to explain what these numbers mean when it comes to ship sizes because this can be confusing to new players when they're seeing this on the ui for the first time here on the right hand portion of the screen in your outliner you'll see three numbers for instance for the seventh fleet here we have 190 out of 230 and another 230 in parentheses so let me explain what these mean if you click on the fleet and bring up the fleet screen you'll see these same numbers up here in the upper right hand portion of the screen the 190 out of 230 is the total number of ship sizes in this fleet versus your command limit in this case at this point in the game due to all the research i've done my command limit is 230. i have a 190 worth of ships in this fleet at the moment but what about this 230 in parentheses this is the total number of ships that have been assigned to this fleet it's just that not all of them have been built yet and haven't joined the fleet you can determine that by looking at the fleet manager and inspect this more closely click on that button it'll bring this up and you can see we have assigned 30 corvettes six cruisers 20 battleships and one titan to this fleet but currently we're missing three cruisers and we're missing 28 corvettes they have not been constructed yet more than likely they were destroyed during a war we'll talk about reinforcing fleets and repairing fleets later on in the video but for now i want you to understand what these numbers mean we currently have 190 sizes worth of ships in a fleet that allows a maximum of 230 and we currently have a total of 230 fleet sizes assigned to the template for this fleet the other limitation you need to understand is naval capacity which is basically a soft cap on how many total ships your empire can support you can find this number in the upper right portion of your resources bar this is the sum total of all ships sizes in your entire empire it is important to understand that unlike the command limit which is a hard cap this is a soft cap you can go over this number however when you do it will turn red on your resource bar to alert you that you're over the soft cap when this happens it means your ships will have a much higher maintenance cost associated with them which can be a drain on your empire's energy resources in other words you can have more ships than your naval capacity allows but they will be a financial burden to your empire still it is important to understand that you are allowed to go over this cap sometimes having more ships than your naval capacity allows is a good strategy during a war because you know you're going to lose some ships to attrition sometimes it's better to have too many ships and ensure victory than to have too few ships and lose a war now that we've covered the basic ship types and command limit and naval capacity let's talk about some of the special ships you can only get through dlc content in addition to the four basic types there exists three other ship holes via expansions the titan and colossus which are provided by the apocalypse expansion and the juggernaut which is provided by the federation's expansion unlike the four basic ship types the game limits how many of these ships you can actually have additionally each of these special ships requires a special shipyard module on a space station in order to construct these ships a titan shipyard is required in order to build the titan ship a colossal shipyard is required in order to build the colossus and the juggernaut so if you find yourself unable to build these ships make sure your starbase has the proper modules installed the titan is basically a much bigger stronger version of the battleship it has a ship size of 16 so twice that of a battleship the number of titans a player can possess is limited by their empire's total naval capacity for every 200 points of naval capacity your empire possesses you can own one titan ship up to a maximum of 20 titans at 3 800 naval capacity for instance here my naval capacity is 1878 units it's greater than 1800 and less than 2000 which means i can have 10 titans it's also worth noting if a titan is destroyed you can build a new one so long as you do not exceed your empire's titan cap the colossus is a special kind of ship that does damage specifically to a planet does not attack other ships and it cannot be included in a fleet it must fly on its own it's basically a planet killer or planet pacifier depending on how you arm it it will do different types of damage based on the weaponry you configure when you build the ship a colossus can be configured with one of five different types of weapons a global pacifier world cracker a neutron sweep a divine enforcer and a nanobot diffuser using a colossus can result in some rather extreme hostile reactions from the other empires of the galaxy as you might imagine it is for that reason i recommend you check the stellaris wikipedia page for more information on each weapon type and the damage it does this will help you decide which version of the colossus might be best suited for your particular empire and its goals also one final important note the colossus can only be unlocked through an ascension perk accessed through the tradition screen otherwise you cannot build one so if you want to use a colossus make sure you plan for it when you're planning your ascension paths and save an ascension perk for the colossus the juggernaut is a very large slow-moving ship that is designed for a very specific purpose it is a mobile star base it has a lot of defensive capability a couple of very powerful weapons and a load of hangar bays and strike craft to help defend it from attackers but more importantly it has its own shipyards on board which will allow you to repair refit and reinforce your other fleets while you're deep in enemy territory its role as a mobile shipyard is its most valuable function but in addition it also provides some nice bonuses to nearby fleets as well like the colossus it cannot be included in a fleet it must fly on its own and it is very slow compared to your other ships so keep that in mind as you move it around so now that you know about the different ship holes let's talk about how to design ship templates in order to build a ship in one of your shipyards you must first design a template for that hull type and give it a name ship designer is available on the pc by pressing f9 or it can be accessed from the menu on the left it's worth noting that you can design as many ship templates as you like for a given hull as long as you provide them each with a unique name in the lower left of the ship designer window you'll see a check box labeled auto generate designs when this is checked stellaris will automatically generate a template design of its own for each ship hole you unlock thus when your scientists unlock the cruiser hole for instance stellaris will automatically generate a template for that hole complete with shields armor and weapons however these designs are typically not optimal for the needs of your empire at any given time and they are certainly not specialized to counter your enemy's strengths and weaknesses thus i recommend unchecking this box immediately and always making your own template designs for all the hulls you have access to this will give you more flexibility as the game progresses allowing you to customize your templates as you see fit in order to design a ship template you must first choose the whole sections each ship has between one and three hull sections available corvettes for instance have only one hull section destroyers have two a forward and aft and cruisers battleships and titans each have three sections a forward a mid and an aft whole sections determine the configuration of your weapon loadouts for each hull section of a ship there will be multiple weapon loadout choices not all weapon mounts are available in all hole positions for instance on a battleship the aft section can only house large or medium-sized kinetic and energy weapons you cannot place small weapons hangers point defense or missiles in this section of the ship because no aft section exists to mount those weapon types when you are designing a ship template it is a good idea to start by asking yourself two questions what kind of weapons can the ship mount based on the sections available and what kind of role do i want the ship to play and let me be clear about what i mean when i say ship role the game has no defined hard-coded ship roles in it there is nothing you can manually sign to a ship template to designate it as a specific role when i say ship role i mean in the most general abstract term possible ships can play certain roles in your fleet based on two things the types of weapons they mount and the ai computer you install in its combat computer slot for instance it is common to design cruisers and battleships that perform the picket ship role that is a ship that mounts a lot of point defense cannons which can be used to counter enemy strike craft and missiles in order to build a picket ship you must choose the hull sections that allow point defenses to be mounted on a cruiser only the middle section of the ship can mount point defense weapons using the hanger core on a battleship the forward and middle sections can both mount point defenses using the hangar bow and carrier core respectively now i want to emphasize this point and make it very clear not all weapons can be mounted on all whole sections for instance the big alpha strike weapons the tachyon lance the focus star committer and the giga cannon can only be mounted on battleships and that is because only the battleship bow section specifically the spinal mount bow variant actually possesses the hard point necessary to mount those weapons the alpha strike weapons cannot be mounted on the mid or aft sections of the battleship because those sections do not contain the hardpoint so when you're thinking about the kind of weapons you want to use you need to give some thought to the weapon mounts that various ships possess and be aware that not every ship will possess the mounts you need once you have your sections selected for your given ship hull you can begin to mount weapons and defenses this is done on the pc by simply dragging and dropping the appropriate component to an open slot keeping in mind that the component must match the size and type of the slot for weapons this means that it must match the slot's hardpoint type and allowable size the ship designer will filter the components on the left side of the screen based on the open slot you click on if you try and drag a component to a mismatched slot the game will prevent you from assigning that component to that slot some weapons like the gamma laser are available in multiple sizes and allow you a great deal of flexibility when mounting them other weapons like the stormfire auto cannon are available in only one size in this case small and can thus only be mounted in a small slot one thing to note when creating templates of your own first make sure to uncheck the box labeled auto generate designs as we discussed earlier as this will allow you to save your own designs with your own naming conventions second make sure you check the box marked auto upgrade so that whenever your scientists unlock new technology your ship template will automatically be updated with the latest tech so for instance if your template is using gamma laser version 2 and your scientists unlock gamma later's version 3 your ship template will automatically update any new ships you build with this template will automatically be built with the updated gamma laser version 3. you do not need to go back into the ship designer and update the template manually so long as you check that box finally be aware that weapons shields and components require power which is provided by the ship's reactor the reactor is a component that you select on the right hand side of the ship designer if your ship doesn't have enough power for all the weapons shields and components you want to use then the ship template cannot be saved and you will not be able to build that design at a shipyard if you find yourself in the red and your template is underpowered you'll need to adjust the components so that there is adequate power one way to do this is by selecting a more powerful reactor if your research has unlocked it or another easy thing to do is swap out shields in favor of armor which use no power there are three main layers to the defense of a ship shields armor and hull shields are a ship's outermost defense armor is next followed by the hull shields must be defeated before armor can be attacked armor has to be defeated before the hull can be attacked when a ship loses all hit points from shields armor and the hull then it is destroyed by default a ship always has a certain amount of hull points from there you can add any combination of shield armor or additional hull points depending on which technologies your scientists have unlocked it is possible to build ships in a myriad of different configurations for instance you can build ships with just shields on them just armor or even ships with only additional hull points this gives you a great amount of flexibility when designing ships allowing you to outfit your ships with the best possible defense for a given opponent we'll talk more about configuring defense and offense for specific opponents later in this guide for now it is only important to understand that these three layers exist one other note you can always see the value for an individual ship's defenses whenever you click on the fleet from the outliner each ship is listed in the window on the left you will notice three small bars at the left edge of each ship the blue bar represents a ship's shielding if the ships are damaged this bar will be shorter the orange bar represents a ship's armor if their armor is damaged this bar will be shorter finally the green bar represents a ship's hull clicking on an individual ship will also reveal the numerical values of all ship defenses there are several main types of weapons in stellaris each with their own strengths and weaknesses if you hover over the hardpoint size icon for a given weapon in the shipbuilder screen a tooltip dialog window will show you all the details about that weapon from here you can see the weapon's power usage material cost damage range cooldown time which is given in days accuracy tracking range and even the average damage per day that it'll do in combat more importantly at the bottom of this tooltip dialogue you will also see any bonuses or penalties that apply to the weapon for instance you can see here that a large plasma cannon does plus 100 damage to armor and plus 50 percent damage to a ship's hull however it takes a penalty of minus 75 damage to shields this makes this weapon very good against armor and hull defenses but a poor choice against enemies that rely heavily on shields for defense it is very important to pay attention to these bonuses and penalties as this will determine which weapons you should use against certain enemies later on in this guide we'll cover how to equip your ships for maximum effect against specific enemy defenses energy weapons are the most abundant weapon type in the game these weapons consist of guns like gamma lasers and plasma cannons energy weapons typically do extra damage to armor and hulls but they do less damage against shields this makes them a great weapon choice against enemies that use little to no shielding for defense or against ships that have lost their shields during the course of battle in addition to the standard energy weapons like the gammon laser and plasma cannons there is also a second style of energy weapon called a disruptor disruptors have a very special ability called penetration their damage completely bypasses the shield and armor defenses of enemy ships striking directly at the hull that sounds awesome right not so fast there is a trade-off disruptors do a wide range of damage with a minimum damage of 1 which means that while it is guaranteed to strike the hull of an enemy ship the damage output may be very small you can see for instance that a medium disruptor on my ship does a range from 1 to 75 so while the damage the ship spits out will go directly to the hull of an enemy ship it is possible for that amount to be very tiny based on the randomness of dice rolls imagine wanting to fire this weapon off only for it to do a paltry 5 damage to an enemy hull that said disruptors do have an important role in the game they're very valuable against enemies that use a lot of shields or armor because they can bypass both of those defenses kinetic weapons generally work the opposite of energy weapons by doing more damage to shields and less damage to armor or holes for instance the large gauss cannon has plus 50 bonus to shield damage while doing -50 damage to armor through research you can unlock some better kinetic weapon designs such as the kinetic artillery you'll notice here that the large gauss cannon does around 39 damage per day of combat on average the kinetic artillery is a similar weapon that fires more slowly but does more damage per hit yet overall it does a similar amount of damage to the gauss cannon coming in around 45 damage per day that's not a lot of difference between the two weapons the average daily output of these weapons makes it appear as if they are roughly equal in potency however when you look closer you'll notice that the kinetic artillery has a much better damage bonus it does plus one hundred percent damage to shields compared to the gauss cannons plus fifty percent and it has a slight bonus to hull damage where the gauss cannon has none the limiting factor for the kinetic artillery is that this weapon is available in only one size the large weapon mount but that is the way a lot of weapons work in stellars many weapons are available for only a single mount point and others have more flexibility explosives comprise weapons such as missiles and torpedoes they can only be mounted in the blue slots with the g indicator like disruptors they have 100 shield penetration meaning shields do absolutely nothing to stop them they also do bonus damage to armor this makes explosives ideal weapons against enemies that rely heavily on shields for defense the drawback is they are slow traveling have trouble hitting smaller more evasive ships and they can be countered by strike craft and point defense strike craft can be mounted on the yellow hangar bay mount point you can think of them as small one-person fighters like tie fighters or x-wings from star wars they can shoot down missiles torpedoes and other strike craft they can also do direct damage to other big ships though in much smaller amounts you will want to utilize strike craft against enemies that use lots of missiles and torpedoes point defense guns exist to shoot down strike craft missiles and torpedoes although they will also do damage to small enemy ships such as corvettes they are mounted in the red slots with the p indicator their damage is low and their range is short but they perform their role well point defense guns come in two flavors flak and point defense unfortunately the game does not make it very obvious what the difference is between these two to put it simply flat guns are better at taking down enemy strike craft and point defenses are better at shooting down missiles and torpedoes the tool tips for these two weapon types will not tell the player about these advantages you have to search this information out on the wikipedia by yourself that said for all intents and purposes these weapons more or less serve the same function if you are facing an enemy that is using a lot of strike craft and not a lot of missiles and torpedoes then you are better off using flak cannons if conversely you are facing an enemy that uses lots of missiles and torpedoes and very few strike craft then point defense guns would be the better choice finally we come down to the big alpha strike weapons these weapons can only be mounted on the bow of a battleship in the x slot they each have incredible range a fairly long cooldown time and do significant damage there is one weapon for each of the main weapon types in the games the tachyon lance which is an energy weapon thus it will do more damage to armor and hull the giga cannon which is a kinetic weapon so it specializes in destroying shields and then the focused arc emitter which is a disruptor so it penetrates both shields and armor though it does a wide variance of damage there are five components that every ship must assign in order to function properly reactor hyperdrive thrusters sensors and combat ai reactors provide power to all the other components on the ship including weapons better reactors mean more power more power means more powerful weapons and more shields the hyperdrive allows the ship to travel through hyper lanes better versions of this component provide shorter charge time so ships can enter hyperlanes quicker reducing overall travel from system to system thrusters affect how fast a ship moves in combat while in a system and they also can affect the ship's overall evasion ability sensors affect how far a ship can detect ships and other systems they also affect weapon tracking which helps increase weapon accuracy finally combat ai affects the ship's behavior during combat now as long as you have the box auto upgrade checked on each of your ship templates then whenever your scientists unlock a better version of one of these five components your ship templates will automatically switch to the latest and greatest tech this means any new ships you build with this template will have the most recent technology installed as i just mentioned when your scientists unlock new technology your ship templates will be automatically upgraded with the latest tech provided you have the auto upgrade check aux marked however you may be wondering how do i get my existing ships to upgrade to the latest technology the ones that are out in space fighting wars in order to make that happen you need to order your fleets to upgrade themselves selecting a fleet from the outliner will display that fleet's window you'll see two rows of buttons in the upper right portion of this window the second button from the right on the lower row is for upgrading if this button is grayed out it means that no ships in the fleet can be upgraded in any way you have the latest and greatest tech however if this button is active then it means that at least some ships in the fleet are eligible for upgrades in order to perform upgrades your fleet will need to be at a star base that has a shipyard installed if your fleet is not at a shipyard when you click this button the fleet will automatically fly to the nearest shipyard that you control and begin the upgrade process old obsolete components will then be replaced with the latest and greatest technology there is one exception to the auto upgrade checkbox when it comes to ship templates and that is the hyperdrive component when jump drives become available your templates will not automatically upgrade to the jump drive you must manually go into every single ship template and swap out the old hyperdrives for the new jump drives why the game forces the player to do this i do not know but you must so beware jump drives are a very useful technology of your fleets that can make navigating the cosmos a little easier especially during times of war when certain hyperlinks are cut off from access for instance you may find yourself blocked by closed borders while you are trying to invade a neighboring enemy's territory that is open to you because of the blocked lanes getting into that enemy's territory may require a very long circuitous route through several hyperlanes however you can skip the long way around if you have jump drives installed on all of your ships this is a very important note every single ship in your fleet must have the jump drive installed or you will not be able to initiate a jump jumping is only allowed between systems that are physically close to initiate a jump you need to use the jump drive button on a fleet and then select the destination system when you select a fleet via the outliner you will see the jump drive icon on the very top row it looks like an upside down fishhook click that button then click the destination system the fleet will then initiate a jump and skip directly to that system there is one caveat to use in the jump drive after your ships jump there is a cooldown period of 200 days for those 200 days your ships will take a minus 50 penalty to sublight speed and weapon damage therefore it is wise to avoid jumping directly into an enemy fleet when using this tactic to invade an enemy's star systems unless you have an overwhelming advantage in fleet power instead try to jump to an uninhabited system devoid of enemy patrols and wait for the 200 days to pass before engaging in combat that way you don't have to suffer a minus 50 damage penalty to all your weapons combat ai computers sound more complicated than they really are they basically affect only one aspect of combat the distance your ships will try and maintain from the enemy while they are fighting in addition to the distance each combat ai computer provides some bonuses to the ships that equip them the swarm combat ai computer is designed for close range and provides evasion bonuses to the ships that equip them the picket combat ai is also designed for close range it provides a modest evasion bonus and a boost to tracking of weapons the line combat ai is designed for medium range it increases the chance to hit for weapons and the fire rate the artillery combat ai is designed for long range it increases fire rate and weapon range finally the carrier combat ai is also designed for long range and it gives a bonus to ship engagement range the combat ai you assign to your ship should help enhance whatever role it is that you want the ship to perform for instance in the case of a small corvette that is outfitted with afterburners which increase the ship's evasion the swarm combat ai makes a lot of sense it adds to the evasion of the ship making it even harder to hit and it is a combat ai designed to keep the ship at close range in the case of a point defense ship which is designed to shoot down enemy missiles and strike craft the picket combat ai makes the most sense it grants some evasion and improves tracking making your ship slightly harder to hit while also increasing the ability of your point defense and flat cannons to do their jobs finally the carrier combat ai is particularly useful for things like large battleships with the alpha strike weapons it will try to stay at very long range and fire off the alpha strike weapons and then when smaller enemy ships get closer to it its aft and mid weapons will go off the fleet manager screen in stellaris allows you to define the number and type of ships for a given fleet this is technically referred to as a fleet template but it is important to note that this is not a template in the traditional sense fleet templates and stellaris cannot be saved or copied to new fleets you cannot hand a fleet template to a shipyard and tell it to build all the ships in the template to form a new fleet so in that respect a fleet template is a bit of a misnomer but for consistency purposes we're still going to call them fleet templates in order to design a template for a specific fleet you must use the fleet manager the fleet manager button is available on any fleet or individual ship from the top right row of the ship fleet screen second button from the left pressing the button will open the fleet manager screen you can see here i have a small fleet template consisting of one titan ship and three different styles of corvettes the titan is currently the only ship in the fleet that actually exists as it has been built and is now lingering in space above one of my star bases it is important to note that in order to access the fleet manager screen like this at least one ship must exist you need to build at least one ship in a shipyard before you can access this screen and start managing the template for a fleet the middle column of the fleet manager screen will show you how many of each ship design are specified in the template and how many of those ships also currently exist you can see we have one of each corvette design specified but zero of them actually exist in space just yet adding more ships to this template is a simple matter of pressing the plus sign for each given design in order to add a brand new design to the fleet template you need to press the add ship design to fleet button which will open this panel here the panel will show you all the ship designs you have created before and saved in the ship designer to add a ship to the template simply select it from the right hand panel and a row for that design will be added to the fleet template then click on the plus sign until you reach the amount of ships you want to have in the fleet as you add ship designs to the fleet template you'll notice the command limit changes in relation to the size of each ship added recall from earlier that corvettes have a size of one so each corvette we add to the template increases the allocated command limit by one against our total allowed command limit of 230. if we were to add a battleship to this template which has a size of 8 the command limit changes accordingly you can continue adding ship designs until you reach your command limit at which point you will be unable to add any more ships to the fleet template removing a ship design from a flight template depends on whether any ships exist in the fleet or not if no ships exist for a given design and it's just the designs that have been assigned to the template so far as is the case with our corvettes here you can simply press the minus sign until no more ship designs of that type are specified this will completely remove that design from the template if however a ship currently exists in the fleet then you will need to disband the ship to get rid of it disbanding the ship is in true stellaris fashion another misnomer it doesn't actually disband the ship from the fleet and leave it intact floating in space ready to be added to a different fleet oh no instead it destroys the ship it does not dismantle the ship and save its components but just destroys it no resources are refunded for this destruction the materials of the ship just go to waste it's for this reason that i do not recommend ever using this button once your fleet template is designed to your satisfaction you need to press the reinforce fleet button so that the nearest shipyard will actually begin constructing the ships for this fleet a word of caution the game is not particularly smart about how it utilizes shipyards when you press the reinforce fleet button it will generally use the nearest shipyard this means that if you are trying to reinforce your fleet near a shipyard that is already building a lot of other ships for a different fleet it will simply add those ships to its queue instead of making use of the idle shipyards in your empire for this reason i recommend that if you're going to build or reinforce several fleets at once you send them each to different shipyards in your empire and then press the reinforce fleet button so that the work is distributed evenly among all your idle shipyards and thus not burdening a single shipyard with all the work i'm not going to spend a lot of time talking about fleet composition because frankly this is a subject for which there is no right answer if you browse the stellaris forums or the redis forums you'll see as many answers to this question as there are people who play the game some people prefer to build entire fleets out of nothing but corvettes and play a corvette swarm style of game others will only use battleships and still other people will use a mix if there is an optimal approach i'm not sure anyone has discovered it yet do what you prefer and try things out that said i'll take a few minutes here to discuss my own methodology command limit is a limiting factor early in the game we only have so much room for so many ships personally i do not like to destroy ships like corvettes to make way for new technology like destroyers my first fleets are corvettes just like everybody else because that is the only design a player can start with and as destroyers become available i may or may not have the command limit room to add them to those first fleets if i don't have more command limit i will not destroy existing corvettes to make way for new destroyers instead i'll just wait until my command limit grows at which point i will then start to add destroyers to my fleets i will repeat this same process with cruisers and battleships as the type becomes available i will only add new ships into my fleets as my command limit grows never destroying any of my existing ships thus by the time i unlock all of the whole tech those first few fleets that i have will be a mix of all the different hull types in the later stages of the game however when i have all the technology available and i'm building fleets from scratch that's when i have a more specific fleet design in mind i always try to utilize to 30 corvettes in a fleet for starters they have high evasion which makes them really hard to hit this helps keep enemy guns busy shooting at something they are unlikely to kill and keeps them from shooting my less maneuverable ships plus corvettes are quick and cheap to build so they are fairly easily replaced i will always have a couple destroyers in my fleet as strictly picket ships with point defense to shoot down enemy missiles torpedoes and strike craft i usually have a few cruisers set up with my very best long range weapons and the artillery combat ai trying to shoot and destroy as many enemies as possible these are my damage dealers sometimes i will also set up a couple cruisers as pick a ships as well with point defense to shoot down enemy strike craft torpedoes and missiles finally i will use a lot of battleships these are the bulk of my big fleets toward the end of the game they're big they're powerful they're strong they have the alpha strike weapons and the rest of what they're outfitted with is usually large weapons that do a lot of kinetic damage or a lot of armor and hall damage i usually don't have to worry about them being destroyed because i have a number of corvettes destroyers and cruisers between them and the enemy i don't really have any hard and fast rules about how many of each type of ship to put in a fleet i usually just go by feel and what kind of tech i have as i said generally 20 to 30 corvettes two to four destroyers a few cruisers and the rest are battleships that's how i roll but you should feel free to experiment with those numbers and find what works for you that's one of the keys to stellaris is just finding out what really works the best for you and your strategies over time as you battle enemies your ships will become damaged or destroyed when ships in your fleet become damaged the repair fleet button will become enabled this is the button farthest to the right on the lower right row of the buttons on the fleet screen pressing this button will send the fleet to the nearest shipyard you control where repairs will begin if ships in your fleet have been destroyed then the reinforced fleet button will become enabled this is the leftmost button on the same row pressing this will cause nearby shipyards to build missing ships in your fleet template the only constraint here is resources if you don't have enough alloys for instance the shipyard may not be able to fully reinforce your fleet and return all the mission ships to you once the ships are constructed at the shipyard they will attempt to fly to your fleet and join up with it this is a very important point to understand that due to borders opening and closing during times of war and faster than light inhibitors at some systems it may be impossible for reinforcement ships to actually reach your fleet depending on where your fleet is located in the galaxy this can leave these newly built reinforcement ships stranded at the shipyard that created them you may find your outliner flooded with all manner of ships because they could not reach the fleet they were meant to reinforce for this reason i strongly recommend doing one of the two things a either move your fleet to a shipyard prior to reinforcing it or b have a juggernaut close by to reinforce your fleet with this is one of the things that makes the juggernaut so useful it is basically a mobile starbase that can repair or reinforce any of your fleets i add this in here because i know people are going to ask yes ships gain experience but the effects of this experience for the most part are negligible ships gain plus one experience for every day they are in combat and they also gain plus 0.1 experience for every day they are suppressing piracy however it takes a lot of experience for a ship to level up in a rank there are only a few ranks and the bonuses they get from these ranks are not that great the exception is the damage bonus at the elite rank which is plus 40 that is significant however i don't think the players should worry or concern themselves with trying to make sure that their ships gain a lot of experience you should be far more concerned with outfitting your ships properly to counter your opponent and just being strategic with how you play ship experience is the lowest thing on the totem pole to worry about one question new players to stellaris often ask especially after they see screenshots from veteran players is how the heck do i get fleets that powerful and the answer is repeatable technology after you have researched all the one and done technologies in the research tree you will come across the repeatable technologies like shield harmonics or focusing arrays and each time you research one of these technologies you will add a plus five percent bonus to things like shield strength or energy weapon damage these technologies can be repeated over and over and over and the bonuses stack these bonuses add up over time allowing you to feel the same number of ships as an enemy fleet but your fleet will be so much more powerful because of these bonuses this is why fast research and good use of research scientists with as many bonuses as possible so they will research faster is so critical to success in stellaris the faster you can reach these repeatable technologies and the faster you can complete them the more powerful your fleets will be and the quicker you can outpace your enemies countering enemy fleets is probably the most important part of fleet management in stellaris this is what's going to give you the edge in defeating your opponents this is an incredibly important topic and i'm going to try to devote enough time to it here for it to make sense to new players the first step in effectively countering enemy fleets is to inspect them so you can see what kind of technology they are using to inspect fleets you'll need good sensors so your ships can see them from several systems away or if you built the century array megastructure later in the game you'll be able to see ships in any system across the galaxy regardless of your own ship sensors clicking on an enemy fleet will reveal all the ships in that fleet you can then click on the ship details button of each individual to ship to see what kind of tech they are using in the case of this particular faction we can see that defensively all of their ship designs are utilizing shields and hull they have almost no armor on their ships at all what that tells us is that we should be utilizing offensive weapons that attack shields and hull like kinetic artillery which does 100 damage to shields and plus 25 damage to the hull in addition to kinetic weapons disruptors torpedoes and missiles would all be effective weapons against this faction's ships offensively we can see that this faction is making heavy use of energy weapons and disruptors on their ships which means they're going to be very effective at attacking our armor and our hull they are using almost no kinetic weapons to attack shields as a result we should definitely combat that by leaning heavily on shields for our ships and additional hull points we want to make them work very hard to destroy our ships if we design our ships with a healthy dose of shielding which they're poor at attacking we will hinder their energy weapons and if we utilize some extra hull components we'll slow down the effectiveness of their disruptors by analyzing enemy fleets and retrofitting your own designs to counter them you'll give yourself the edge you need to win battles this is especially important when it comes to the end game crisis opponents each one of the crisis opponents is very strong in one particular kind of offense and very strong in one particular kind of defense but they are typically weak elsewhere so you want to make sure to build ship designs that counter them as effectively as possible and if you're wondering how to counter a specific crisis opponent just check the wikipedia page it breaks them all down and tells you what kind of offense and what kind of defense you should be using proper ship and fleet design can go a long way toward evening the odds for you against seemingly superior opponents alright so we just established that you want to counter enemy fleets with specific ship designs that attack enemy weaknesses and defend against enemy strengths so how do we do that how do you retrofit your existing ships to these new designs well the first step in this process is to go to your ship designer and design the new ships with those counters and then save those designs with new names we'll talk later about naming schemes in this guide the second part of this process is to go to the fleet manager and swap out those designs with your new designs that are specifically created to counter the enemy the left most button on each row is the retrofit button this allows you to swap one design for another using the same hole type that means you can swap one corvette design for another but you cannot swap a corvette design for a destroyer design once you've retrofit all the designs in your fleet you need to hit the upgrade fleet button this will cause your fleet to move to the nearest shipyard where the retrofitting will begin and as before i recommend spreading your fleets among several shipyards so you don't overwhelm one shipyard's queue and slow down this process when you're getting ready to face one of the in-game crisis enemies for example time is of the essence and you want your retrofitting to be complete as soon as possible naming ship designs is a very personal thing and everyone should use whatever scheme they personally prefer however because i know people are going to ask let me cover this topic briefly i have a very specific naming convention for my ships this naming convention allows me to look at the name of a ship and know pretty much everything about it at a glance much like a football player rattling off a play call i can read the ship name and know exactly what it does my naming convention starts with the ship prefix cv for corvette d for destroyer cr for cruiser b for battleship i use these designators because it makes it easier for me to tell what kind of ship i'm looking at in the fleet manager when i'm trying to determine what kind of ship design to add to a fleet template the second designator in the ship name is a letter used to represent the ship's major offensive role k for kinetic damage a for armor damage ah for armor and hull damage pd for point defense p for penetration or disruptors and g for missiles and torpedoes a third optional designator is something i may add to a ship so that i know what kind of defense it is using in the case of these corvettes here i've added armor or whole keywords to the designs this was necessary because during this game some enemies were using a lot of disruptors and i needed my corvettes to have a lot of hull defense to combat that their disruptors went straight through my armor designs so because of that i added those keywords if an enemy wasn't using disruptors i went with the armor design because the specific armor components had more overall protection than the hull components but if they were using disruptors i went with the hull defense design finally i will occasionally add a designator in parentheses such as the c you see here to indicate this ship design is specifically meant to counter the contingency which is an endgame crisis opponent as discussed previously and game crisis enemies have very specific ship designs that allow them to be very strong in one area and very weak in others when they show up i want to make sure i have fleets refitted to handle them specifically hence these designs so as i said earlier this is like a play call in football i can read off cv k armor and i know that a this is a corvette the smallest hull ship b it is primarily doing kinetic damage so it is attacking enemy shields and c it uses armor for defense so i should not use the ship against enemies that have great armor eating weapons you should of course use whatever naming convention you prefer i'm just showing you how i name my ships i'm going to briefly touch on two other subjects that new users to the game will probably want to know the first is how do you remove ships from a fleet and use them in a different fleet there is no way to remove a single ship from a fleet all there is is the disband key which doesn't actually disband it as we said earlier that's not actually what it does it just destroys the ship what you can do is you can take a fleet and you can split it in half and then you can take one of those halves and split it in half and continue splitting and splitting until you get the ships that you want isolated from the fleet this is a long process i'm sorry there's not a faster way to do it once you have those ships split the way that you want like down here in our outline you see all these individual ships you can merge them together in a single fleet all you have to do is start clicking on the ships using the control key and as long as you are not exceeding your overall command limit this button over here the merge button will become available these ships if i click this will start flying towards each other in whatever systems they are and they will merge together in a growing fleet so you can go over here and you can say okay i'm going to take all these ships together and i'm just going to click them all together and i'm going to merge them the merge button will become unavailable if you try to merge two fleets for instance that are both very big and the merging of which would cause the command limit to be exceeded i can't merge these two fleets because they're 229 and 230 this was already a max fleet if i tried to merge the 38 fleet this 84 fleet and 184 that's too many ships it exceeds the command limit of 230 and so the button is grayed out but if i decide to take off the 184 suddenly these two fleets can be merged together so i hit the merge button and they will go seek each other out and join together in a new fleet this guide is by no means meant to be comprehensive it is designed for new players to the game so that you will be able to get up to speed very quickly on building ships building fleets refitting them repairing them and in general just making them work well against your opponents if i can offer you no other advice about shipbuilding inflates it would be this inspect your enemy fleets that you're going to attack and determine their strengths and weaknesses and then build your ships to counter those strengths and weaknesses use retrofitting liberally and swap out designs as necessary do these things and you'll give yourself a chance now get out there build those ships and conquer the galaxy alright everyone this is colors fade signing off i hope you liked the video if you dig it give it a thumbs up if you like the channel subscribe if you have a question or comment drop it down below and if you want to see more guides like this from me my patreon is listed in the description below i hope that you all got something out of this and i hope that this helps you on your quest to conquer stellaris thanks for watching and i'll see you next time

Channel: ColorsFade Gaming

Views: 82,254

Keywords: #Stellaris, #Guide, #Ships, #design

Id: MveW080XGXE

Length: 53min 45sec (3225 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 23 2020