LenWho has six pincers, two cyber-claws, and just accidentally unsealed the nanite menace waiting beyond the L-gate because they forgot to switch off their science vessel automation? This guy! 🤦‍♂️
Noooo they killed the Tiyanki :(
It looks like my fleets have the right composition to defeat them, but they were drastically out of position. I've lost one inhabited world, and the Artisan Troupe report they lost a station. And the Tiyanki are going to go extinct.
Fuuuuck me. Also don't forget to set Terminal Egress to a "restricted" system, or your damn fleets will path through it on their way back for repairs! 🤦‍♂️
There goes XuraCorp.
Okay. All fleets are in position.
We're lower in raw power score than their fleets, but our composition should be better.
It's now or never. To Terminal Egress! Death or glory!
Great. And now one of my neighbours has swooped in and claimed Terminal Egress themselves.
Not like I need that system to have a starbase so I can refit the ships I'm using to save the galaxy!... ...from a problem I unleashed, yes, but still.
Cheeky little bastards also took over one of my systems, where the starbase was destroyed by the nanites!
And they've turned down my pointed request for these systems. You would think my overwhelming firepower would be more persuasive. Oh well, I think I can spare one of my fleets to do the persuading in person.
So, the situation is now stable.
Funny thing, though, I noticed I'm not coming first in the rankings (even though I'm really playing this on easy mode), despite second place being rated "pathetic" compared to my tech, economy and military. I also notice that the game can't end in victory for anyone while the nanite crisis is still in progress.
So, I find it politically expedient to just keep my fleets parked in Terminal Egress, for the time being, and not wipe the nanites from the rest of the L-Cluster.
Once I've fortified Terminal Egress itself so that it can look after itself with minimal support from my fleets, I can send those fleets elsewhere to work on getting the top spot. Seems number one has a bunch of vassals...
Right, okay. Another reason why they're ranked number one is that their federation is perhaps a quarter of the galaxy, and apparently now they have fleet strength equal to mine. Nowhere near the economy, of course.
But I have just four fleets, with a fifth in production. I can't fight them all simply because my ships can't be everywhere at once. I need another solution...
Well, for starters, I guess I can start crash-building habitats, for fortress and forge worlds, to get that fleet cap higher. And more matter decompressors.
It seems like a bit of a liability that the matter decompressors have to be around black holes, and most of the black holes are L-Gate systems. But then again, I do control Terminal Egress, and the station there is 70k by itself (a nanite fleet is 40k).
...no, you can only have one matter decompressor. Aww.
Oh well, I'm still 900+ minerals up, should be okay.
Well, my fleet is double in size. I've now come to the limit of the dyson sphere and the matter decompressor.
But something else has occurred to me. I don't have to beat them if I join them, right?
So I'm furiously bribing my way into the federation with the squillions of motes, crystals and rare gasses that are otherwise sitting idle in my warehouses...
Bingo. I guess diplomacy (and deep pockets) works!
Now to put the nanites out of their misery...
I'm not really sure what I've learned from this session, to be honest. I had way too many worlds to manage comfortably, but I don't know any other way to play.
I'll probably keep playing, and see if I can conquer the galaxy. Or at least convert them all to space communism.
Also: lol at joining the federation just to win the game and then immediately leave.
(I'm not going to do that. I'm going to deal with the rest of the galaxy first, and leave them for last)
So, I did immediately leave the federation.
They wouldn't let me go to war by myself, and they wouldn't go with me without a vote. So out the door I went.
I'll have to take them on eventually, and while I'm pretty sure my combined fleets dwarf theirs, the smaller wars I've been fighting show I won't be able to manage a war on several fronts just from an organisational point of view. Nine full strength fleets, one on each 1-9 key, doesn't really work that well, because they can each take territory quite easily but then it'll be hard to hold, having to move them around to seal holes and chase the enemy.
So I decided to restructure the fleets into multiple smaller ones. Spent about an hour, and ended up with roughly the same thing as I started with.
I also had the problem of how to access so many ships, even if I did have smaller fleets, because there are only 10 hotkeys. Then someone on the Stellaris forums commented that they simply have multiple fleets per key. Obvious in retrospect!
So I had a good long think, and landed on a solution I've just finished implementing. Each "fleet" is now comprised of four squadrons, A-D, plus a Titan. Each combat squadron is 250 fleet cap, and I've gone with four battleships, one carrier and five picket destroyers. Each fleet is one hotkey, and totals 1080 fleet strength.
When I actually go to war, each fleet will fight as one unit, or possibly two units of two squadrons with the titan supporting, and will then split into squadrons to hold the territory.
Apparently there's a limit of 9,999 fleet cap (I'm currently in the 8000s). Call it 10k total. With 10 fleets of 1080, I'll be 8% over my fleet cap, so everything will cost 8% more to maintain. I think I can live with that.
I've also gone with repair modules, an even mix of shields and armour, and the battleships have shield-stripping guns plus very high armour/hull damage weapons. Basically, I've gone general-purpose.
And then we'll see how it goes on some of the nations not in the megafederation.
And then, one day: the galaxy.
Nick Drew@Hyperlynx ahh - the General Purpose vehicles from the culture? “GSV So Much For Subtlety”, “GCU Just Read The Instructions”
@nicksdrew not really, no. Far too many of them to individually name. And they're purpose-built warships.
E: I'm up to 41 x 8 warships. That's too many for me to mental arithmetic how many ships I have, let alone come up with individual witty names for
@Hyperlynx cattle not pets, huh!