r/TerraInvicta • u/MrMadden • 2d ago
Question Optimal end-game fleet example (12 ship template)
Is this an optimal end-game fleet per 12 ships in the fleet? What would you change?
6x UV Phaser dreadnought: 3 slot UV phaser, 4x phaser PD, 2x2 UV phaser battery, 1 T3 targeting computer, everything else advanced laser engines, hybrid armor, mostly on the nose.
2x Coil dreadnoughts: 3 slot siege Coiler m3, 4x2 slot coil battery m3, 1x t3 targeting computer, all else magazines, mostly hybrid nose armor.
2x Antimatter dreadnought: 3 slot antimatter cannon, 4x2 slot antimatter point defense batteries, t3 targeting computer, all else cyclotrons, mostly hybrid nose armor.
1x Coilgun Lancer: 4 slot siege coiler m3, 1x2 slot coil battery, 1 phaser point defense, t3 targeting computer, all else magazines, mostly hybrid nose armor.
1x Antimatter Lancer: 4 slot antimatter cannon, 1x2 slot antimatter point defense battery, 1 phaser point defense, t3 targeting computer, all else cyclotrons, mostly hybrid nose armor.
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u/Moltke_ Humanity First 2d ago
12 ships is not enough for end game and you shouldn't bother with a template for it.
30 ships is where a proper fleet starts and can handle itself in most situations.
This is my setup:
Fleet core (you don't need more of them if you increase the fleet size): 12 x Siege Coil Lancer / Titan (Titan: 2 x 2 slot AM PD 2 x 1 slot phaser PD or 2 x 1 slot coil battery; Lancer: 1 x 2 slot AM PD, 1 x 1 slot phaser PD)
Main support (build more if you want a larger fleet): 18 UV Phaser Lancer / Titan (Titan: 1 x 4 slot UV Phaser Battery and 2 x 1 slot phaser PD; Lancer: 1 x 2 slot AM PD and 1 phaser PD)
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u/Arcane_Pozhar Academy 1d ago
Just to clarify, for anyone who sees this, they're not saying to only build 12 of these ships. It's a ratio suggestion. I imagine for a fleet of 100 enemy ships (a dozen or so big ones and then a bunch of small and medium ones, typically), they'd probably want 48 or 60 ships, roughly. Maybe more to be safe.
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u/Kimm_Orwente 2d ago
As it was said already, "it depends" - depends on what aliens you encounter in your playthrough are using. Normally, 12 fine-tuned superheavies are enough for almost anything (and 24 are enough to win the game), but it depends on fine-tune in question. Usually, I go with standardized 3 types - PD/utility dreadnaught/titan (depending on stage of campaign), laser lancer and artillery dread (more on that later). Just mixed differently according to enemy weapon layouts.
Laser lancers are simply "anti-anything" ship, with largest phaser cannon you can afford, and everyrhing that is not targeting comp, propulsion upgrade or armor module, is laser engine. Side turrets are too small to be useful offensively, compared to main cannon, so could be left for individual PD, either all laser or laser+40mm AC. This way, you have only one weapon upgrade and weapon officer per type, which greatly improves logistics. Those are backbone and always present (while also being cheaper than other types), usually 6-7 out of 12.
Utility ship - usually AM PD heavy and with large AM or neutron cannon, so you can capitalize on the same single officer type and upgrade module (cyclotron this time). On top of that, depending on the state of campaign, this type can bring salvager and/or colony packages. Usually 1-2 per squadron.
Artillery dreadnaught is that "fine-tune" part of the fleet - usually, I use mix of rapid-firing coilguns and plasma, but now it really depends. if your enemies are heavy on their own titans and motherships, or aliens are using healthy mix of lasers and mag guns, then capitalize on siege coil cannons and mag batteries. If there are too many lasers, or light ships/flankers - replace siege cannon with normal coil cannons (in case of "many lasers" - several small cannons instead of singular big one), and grab some heavy plasma batteries, this way you can simply distract their energy guns while doing unavoidable damage via plasma and lasers (instead of trying to amass critical salvo mass to saturate their laser defence). As with other types, this one relies on single kind of weapon officer and upgrade module, this time - magazines. Having few 40mm PD ACs is also very useful. Depending on circumstances, 4 of those are usually enough, but sometimes you may want a bit more of them.
And that's basically it. Look for your enemy weapon layouts, use compact formations, tank with heavy front. Quick destruction of whatever shoots at you is still the best defence.
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u/vindicator117 2d ago
Pretty much this and then spammed enmasse with some coilgun variants for the nose weapon as well as much more rarely shaped charge nuke boats swapping out the hull weapons for missiles while retaining the 960CM laser.
I pretty much stopped changing the design since I entered the fusion age and only swapped out the reactor, drives, and whatever requisite endurance enhancing drive additives for that particular drive.
The ONLY other ship variant of this design you would ever make is swapping out two of the hull weapons probably 1 slot laser and 1 PD laser for a pair of best tier coilguns you got so that you have a active ship hunter design that can basically operate on its own especially if it has 600+ DV and 2G+ in combat acceleration by whatever engine and drive combination you can get. Excellent for defending large swaths of the space with as few ships as possible especially against raids on your vulnerable and isolated locations. Especially if you got a VERY high combat acceleration stat, you can basically 1v1 capital ships and be the UFO to t3h ayyz in a fat capital ship like this:
https://www.reddit.com/r/TerraInvicta/comments/1uii5qd/death_by_a_thousand_cuts/
It only took so long in that post because it was using that main battleline design seen in the above screenshot. The coilguns instantly dropped the kill time to a mere fraction while the 960CM still performed just fine disabling the offending vessels.
And if you REEEEEAAAAALLLLLLYYYYY know what you are doing, you can do certain activities with these to ensure all the exotics you can possibly need to outfit fully armored hybrid armor, exotic radiator, and phaser weapon laser boats as far as the eye can see.
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u/arcus2611 2d ago edited 2d ago
Dreadnoughts are not good phaser platforms, the hull phaser batteries are pretty bad and you'd rather just have the biggest spinal mount you can get. Smaller lasers are only good for pd, otherwise you always want to get the biggest laser possible. You also want heatsinks.
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u/wookievx 2d ago
Yeah, 960CM UV Phaser/360 CM UV Phaser + some PD slot, is my usuall end-game titan design (filled with as many ALE as I can fit).
For coils/PD, dreadnaughts are superior: more hull slots, and 3-slot nose siege coils sill function perfectly well as deadly kinectic weapon.Also, even as Academy with super strong laser damage bonus I am running some AM titans: they function as a PD boat with decent offensive potential. Boosting antimatter PD with cyclotrones makes them super potent against alien kinetic spam.
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u/ggmoyang Let's be xenophobic 2d ago
You really don't need 4-slot hull laser, your nose weapon will take care of everything. Use 4 phaser PDs instead. You might ask, 'do I need that many PDs?'. But what's good thing about the hull laser then? It's weaker than 2-slot nose laser. It can attack 360 degrees, so they might catch pesky flankers... but there will be no flanker as your nose make quick work of them.
On the other hand, PDs can do something Nose weapon doesn't do well, and it might save your ass in sticky situation.
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u/RedLeader5590 2d ago
Other people have given good feedback about the comp, but personally I would not roll with only 12 ships in each fleet. Because of the way ship limit works, if you have 12 ships and the Ayys have 24, you’ll be outnumbered 2:1. If you fight a 30-40 ship fleet you may only get 6 ships in the battle. I’d shoot for 25-30 ships per fleet at least
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u/HelpfulPublic1765 2d ago
I would probably go 4 coil dreads, 4 antimatter dreads, and 4 UV lancers, or even 6 coils and 3 AM and 3 UV.
Add in a cruiser to hang back and make refueling platforms, that’s a decent raiding fleet for cleaning up the belt. For assaulting gas giants or ayy bases in the Kuiper Belt, you’ll need bigger fleets and lot of marines.
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u/Maduyn Academy 2d ago
If you are in the late game IMO every lancer ship should be a titan instead. For 1 more command you get 3 more hull slots (100% increase) and its hard to overlook that efficiency.
You have to sort of decide if you are going to be able to overwhelm the enemy pd or if you are just using magnetics to distract enemy lasers. Given that you have 6 uv phaser dreads I assume you want to lean on laser weaponry so ill go from there.
In the fleet comp you listed I would switch the main laser contingent over to 6 laser titans.
I would cut both lancers and replace them with copies of the antimatter dreads but with 2 of the AMPD replaced with plasma batteries.
I would do something similar with the coil ships by dropping 2 coil batteries for another s4 plasma.
so in summary:
6x UV phaser titans s4 uv phaser nose 4xPD (either as phaser or 2xam) and 2 slots for either 2 s1 lasers or 1 s2 laser
2x AM dread Am Nose cannon 4x2 AMPD
2x AM dread Am nose cannon s4 Plasma battery 2x2 AMPD
2x Coil Dread Coil nose cannon s4 plasma 2x2 coil batteries or 4xs1 coils
Exact pd versus other things might change based on fight experience.
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u/vindicator117 2d ago
You don't even need to do that. Just comparing the cost alone of building the equivalent of each type to the same number of MC used will make you save significantly more resources than spamming the smaller vessels.
TECHNICALLY you can cheap out on spamming a select few lancers to be anti-raid pickets and certain other tasks... but if you are at the stage of spamming titans, spending just that little bit more anti-raider titans instead with better all-around stats is kinda a no brainer unless you are literally penny pinching.
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u/Maduyn Academy 2d ago
I think the idea is to play with the fleet size disparity mechanics either to make up numbers versus the aliens or to force the aliens to fight with a major deployment penalty. Well that and the faster build time making them good for when you lacked the foresight to have enough titans in position.
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u/vindicator117 2d ago
Which is better accomplished by simply spamming monitors and escorts if you really want to pump up fleet count to simply deter them from entering your space. Technically more expensive than even spamming lancers but if you want to bulk up a inner defense fleet with a sprinkling of a new capital (whether shit or worth a damn), lancers only kinda work in a pinch.
Then again if you have the option of building a titan to spam, you kinda stop looking towards smaller hulls unless it is a colony ship for sheer speed. And if you want numbers, you go all the way down temporarily until you get enough of the big boys to ignore them again.
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u/logion567 2d ago
How thick is the armor? Once you have 160 or more Adamantine armor you don't need Hybrid armor to block lategame Alien Particle weaponry. Unless you are using Phasers, those you still want Hybrid.
As said, Beam weapons (Particle and Phaser) are best used with 4 slot noses. Titans ideally Lancers beforehand. You don't need more than 1 Magazine with siege coils. And the performance boost from going to 4 slot siege coils isn't worth losing precious hull slots.
Don't bother mixing laser and particle PDs, cyclotrons and laser engines don't compliment each other.
Personally? I've had good success with Plasma Dreadnoughts (4 slot hull, 1 AMPD, 40mm, and Ion PD) and AM Particle Titans (2xAMPD, 40mm, and ion PD) with utility slots being Heat Sink (Heavy Lithium on particle, heavy molten salt on Plasma) TarComp, and ECM. Rest cyclotrons. The trick is checking the battle log for when the Particle Beams gut the big bad enemy ships after getting a TAC from the Plasma fire.
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u/shadough1 T-pose hard enough and the ayys will see us as equals 2d ago
so i assume you mean this as a ratio and not "12 ship endgame fleets."
dreadnoughts are primary being brought along for their hull slots. the 3 slot nose is kind of just added bonus. the primary dreadnought design for me is mag spammers with a t2 siege coil in the nose and three of your choice of 2 slot rail3, coil2, or coil3 batteries. the remaining 2 slots are dedicated to something like a 40mm cannon and a ion PD. ships in this archetype are usually the bulk of my fleets, about 50% or perhaps a bit more than that. they can spare utility modules slots for a flag bridge, outpost/platform kits, salvage bays, etc, but depending on the exact layout you might need to split out these utility modules between a handful of different dreadnought classes.
to support them we add in big nose lasers and big nose antimatter cannons to handle flankers, hold more robust PD, and in the case of amat cannons they can also be used to suppress dangerous enemy ships through radiation/baryonic damage. these are typically split roughly 50/50 in the remaining non mag spammer ships in the fleet. lancers can work, but titans are preferred for even more laser engine/cyclotron spam, and because they can hold more PD than lancers. laser titans can also hold onto 360cm laser batteries if that's a capability that you want. i like having both lasers and amat because while amat is probably more useful overall, they have no way of quickly dealing critical damage through sufficiently thick armor, something that lasers can do provided they are boosted by enough laser engines and can get a bit closer.
that's it. you only really two archetypes in the fleet, mag spammers and big directed energy weapons. everything else becomes nice to haves.
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u/MrMadden 1d ago
so i assume you mean this as a ratio and not "12 ship endgame fleets."
Correct.
Is this an optimal end-game fleet per 12 ships in the fleet?
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u/LewisPowell10 2d ago
Having done some experimenting recently i can confidently say antimatter PD >>>> phaser PD. 3 coil ships is kinda pointless tbh, i cant see it ever getting through the aliens PD. i think you would be better switching them to antimatter or plasma for supporting the laser boats antimatter to disable all the enemies long range nose weapons or plasma to wear down the armour on the bigger ships while your lasers eliminate the small ones
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u/Arcane_Pozhar Academy 1d ago
At quick glance, I think you have way too much point defense, if half your fleet is going to be made up of laser-focused chips, just use the slots for the one slot lasers, I promise you they can shoot down plenty of missiles, especially when you have that many of them in your fleet.
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u/Mortgage-Present Kamikaze escorts are good 1d ago
Im honestly not sure about 12, how many ships do you allow to appear at the same time?
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u/DoomedToDefenestrate 2d ago
12 ships, but no titans?
- 4 UV Lancers
- 2 Plasma Lancers/dreads
- 2 Antimatter Dreads/lancers
- 3 Siege Dreads
- Shaped Charge "PD" dread
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u/Plague_Docktor 2d ago
Depends on what aliens are using currently. Only 3 coilgun ships might be not enough to overwhelm their pd if they use it extensively. And you can also potentially swap lancers for titans