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Ever since this rework I feel lost since its no longer neutron launcher spam. This will definitely help a bit. Can’t wait for the rest of this series

Ship designs are some of the harder part of the game for me to wrap my head around, so these videos are of great help

After every shiptype has been discussed, there needs to be a fleet composition test

I hope you will also make an overall fleet design video. These are very good for understanding the mechanics and the design and I'd love to see how you combine them all into a fleet.

this man is the reason I have any tactics in stellaris

I feel it's important to note with the armor hardening: Since it blocks 30% of the damage, 70% will still bypass entirely, and just hit the hull. When a ship gets to 0 hull points, it dies no matter what the shields and armor is at, so the best ratio of armor to hull HP in this case is 3/7. Any armor you have beyond 30% of the armor and hull HP combined, serves effectively no purpose against disruptors, as your ship will be dead before that armor even gets damaged. It would probably be better to switch out just 1 or 2 of the armors for shields to make the ship better at everything other than disruptors.

I'm glad there's no one OP meta build anymore, but now I actually need to think about my fleet designs. Not used to doing that besides RP reasons

Yes, This was a great rework and I am glad to see comments about it in your channel. I like laser destroyers but with an energy siphon option in s slots, or with railgun option in M/2s slots. And yes speed for ships is a dramatic option now. I play habitats in my games, so rocket boat is not the best variant ofter because before the year 2030 I like to upgrade habitats instead of rocket tech progress. so I often use lasers or disruptor ships and anti-rocket corvets.

Awesome! I’ve been looking forward to updated ship-building tips for a while now! Thanks!

My go-to destroyer design is Gunship Bow with PD Stern. M slot Autocannon, 2x Lasers and then a PD Flak and PD Laser in the rear with Picket computer. I wanted to try and imitate the close range screening warship that destroyers were in WW2 and that's what i came up with. Everything has good tracking. It forms a nice wall infront of my main host of capital ships.

thank you maan. i know you have a video in which you talk about all the ship types and possible/viable designs but, specific ship type videos are more informative in my NOOB opinion. Loved the corvette video and really helped improve my early game and now...i have destroyer designs too, to push further... can only hope, you find the time to do videos for cruisers and battleships( and maybe frigates too, so they don't feel left out) in between changing diapers, to push even further Beyond!! Much health to mrs. and baby Montu!~

These videos are so useful for a stellaris noob like me! Please keep making them for other ship types as well

Thank you for the video. Can you please also create video specifically for pve players that covers everything related to fleets, like admirals, war policy, edicts, fleet composition, titan auras, starbase buffs, etc? Some recommendations on how to adapt on the fly might be helpful as well. For example how to identify why your fleets keep losing: do you need more shields, or point-defence, etc.

Hope the next video comes out soon. Your content has been very helpful!!

Very helpful videos covering all these changes. I’d love to request a vid on cruiser and battleship designs in the late game for PVE and how, if there have been any big changes, to get the most out of those and the new tech please. Great videos. Thanks.

Great video. I would also love an updated ship design vid on fighting each crisis and awakened empires.

This is really cool, but I would love to see how different ship designs work in a combined fleet approach (ie not mono-hull). For instance I mainly use destroyers as a screen class for my battleships/carrier battleships/titans. And then have separate smaller fleets of corvettes/frigates designed to chase down enemy fleets and lock them into combat, or to clear up undefended systems quickly.

As a beginner, I frequently come back to this video to remind myself to keep it simple with the ship design in PvE. Thank you so much for your videos!

now you have to do ship design videos for all classes. this is great. ty!

Huh...I hadn't considered using the Artilery combat computer on smaller ships for kiting tactics. That sounds incredibly useful.

Using all missiles at the early game served me well against the ai. Adding in disruptors was good too. Once I got into mid to late game I needed to take down defense platformed bastions and bigger ships. I switched to kinetic artillery battleships with arc emitters. Along with neutron torp cruisers. Adding in carriers to handle smaller ships and that handled anything endgame ai sent. I did switch to tachyon lance and plasma cannons from kinetics for the 5x scourge tho.

Shields still regenerate after combat, armor points has to be repaired at starbase or have regenerative armor. So for combats far away from my territory, I use shield version in order to survive if enemy is not spamming missiles. Specific to game to game, thanks for this guide!

I'm still not done with the patch notes video and now there's a new video ready? Thanks Montu! :D Edit: I had thought that the artillery computer just stops the ship at the max range I didn't know they could move back. That's good to know!

Wanted to run a couple ideas/questions by you real fast, since you were in the middle of making these videos. Firstly, with the corvette video I think you missed a few key points about specifically the missile point defense module: it has almost the same range as the small turret weapons (mass drivers/lasers), have nearly double the base DPS of turret weapons, deal an additional double damage to armor on top of that, AND have 25% armor bypass. That thing absolutely SHREDS any armor it comes across. I tend to make my corvettes 1 anti-missile PD and 2 mass drivers, since not only does it auto-win against missile corvettes but it damn near auto-wins against anything else. Mass drivers take down the shields first, then the PD gets to work with its 9 DPS vs armor with 25% bypass. I only play PvE so obviously the AI is bad at ship design, but I legit haven't seen a corvette yet that's managed to beat it. Secondly, if/when you do a full fleet design, something that I personally run in my games that I'm curious about is a 1:2:1 kinetic artillery battleship, missile/neutron launcher cruiser, and missile/PD destroyer. As far as I've been able to tell, range is still king (even more so now that the combat computers actually do things other than leeroy jenkins your carriers into the enemy corvette swarms). So, max out on the range, which means kinetic artillery and giga cannons on the battleships, neutron launchers on the cruisers since you can't put them on BB's anymore, PD destroyers to try and provide some cover (also a bit of damage soaking - I've noticed that for one reason or another the destroyers always all get destroyed first before the AI goes after the cruisers and BBs), and missiles everywhere that isn't artillery to overwhelm enemy PD. I'll tend to have one fleet of pure carrier BBs (anti-missile PD and missiles everywhere that aren't fighters) to provide the strike craft, and then everything else gets the 1:2:1 treatment. No idea about exactly how optimal it is though, it's what I run and it's worked so far.

I used to just spam, but now I’m checking shield/armor levels, properly using take lead, setting up appropriate choke points, and having muiltiple designs ready to refit + always keep some shipyards near the front in addition to a shipyard system. It’s a bit tedious, but we’ll worth it when your 10k force just smashes a 20 k with light losses in comparison.

I have been waiting for these videos for months, THANK YOU MONTU

I almost never interact with videos but i need ya to bring more of these vids. I have never been good at ship design an this vid was hella informative. U get a like good sir.

Great video, PDX really need to add some mechanic of observation following fleet combat to bolster ship intel, makes no sense whatsoever when you get decimated by an enemy fleet and after surviving ships witnessing firsthand their weapons only to still have no intel on the same fleet upon second contact! At the very least you should at least get a popup as to general weapon types in play.

Hi! New subscriber here. I have been looking for a overall ship and combat guide with a mind towards beginners. I have been watching your videos and actually taking notes, when it finally dawned on me that combat changed has changed so much that a video that is 10 months old won't have the same information and advice that newer guides contain. And you DO have updated information, but it seems predicated on knowing how it used to work. Or rather, the information is presented as a change or a patch note. I wanted to suggest a new ship and combat video for beginners that focuses less on what has changed, but what are the best builds and practices right now. Like a fresh start look at the topic. I have gotten a lot out of the corvette and destroyer design guides for early and mid game, and defense platforms too.

you should do a video on ship design for NSC and the extra component mod. considering how big these 2 mods are, as well as the fact that there's no wiki for them

Just for the record. PD is not completly useless against stations. Un-upgraded stations have a missile weapon, so just a single PD ship will prevent you taking any damage from basic stations. Very useful early game as that missile damage can stack up as you swarm through enemy systems. Edit: I also always put lasers or distuptors on my pd destroyers, as I see it they're more useful for countering corvette swarms. Tbh kinda odd you didn't mention corvettes here, as killing corvette fleets is the most imporant thing for an early game destroyer fleet.

What I do: When I first start out, I have corvettes. Sometimes I do the pure missile things, but most of the time I split the corvettes into 2 classes: the CV-PD-K and CV-PD-L, the former having 1x Point Defense and 2x Kinetic, the latter having 1x Flak and 2x Laser. I then have them at either a 6-14 or 7-13 ratio. Reason being that PD and Flak are also anti-ship weapons if they aren't shooting missiles, and are a bit more effective than either at least until that first weapon upgrade. Once I get disruptors or autocanons, I switch them over to that on both counts. Either CV-PD-D (1x Point Defense and 2x Disruptor) or CV-PD-K (1x Point Defense and 2x Autocannon). The latter especially if I have destroyers by that time, the former if I do not. Although in some cases If I'm going a missile-heavy playthrough I'll stick with CV-PD-M (or just CV-M if I know they aren't running missiles themselves) all the way. Seems to work fine against AIs at that stage, though at that stage it really is a big numbers game. 20 missile corvettes and the split K-L corvettes pitted against 20 ai corvettes will always win out. Later when I get destroyers, I again split them between the PD Destroyer and Laser or missile destroyer. Only 1 PD destroyer at first (since especially against AIs I find extra PD is not necessary). Laser destroyer if I'm going the Autocannon route for corvettes, Missile if I'm going disruptor. At this stage, unless I know for sure I'm going against missile-heavy things, I tend to go with a PD/MS destroyer 1-4 ratio, while simultaniously switching my corvettes all to the disruptor or autocanon config. And as far as frigates go... fuck'em. Complete waste of alloys. Once cruisers come in, I swap out all the MS destroyers with PD ones since that will be the only role the destroyer will play. The cruiser is now the workhorse of the mid-lategame fleet. As for what I do there... that's a story for that video.

I’m honestly a bit lost ever since the combat rework. I was so used to torpedo corvettes, PD destroyers, plasma thrower cruisers, and neutron launcher carrier-battleships. I do love the greater variety in designs, though. My machine empire RP is always to put as many missiles and autocannons on my ships as possible cuz it makes for very cinematic battles. Not the greatest meta, but still fun.

Nice video and good testing methodology. Funny thing is that it appears that the technologies you can field are now (?) less important than getting the intelligence you need to know how to counter enemy ships.

I love the design series, helps me a lot

Cloaking is gonna really make small short range fleets like those bypass destroyers or full torp frigate fleets very scary.

Nice video. Can't wait for the DLC

I do miss max evasion destroyers…but I’m glad to have a better idea of what to do with my current destroyers xD

I would be interested in seeing a break down of ship amount and the impact it has start with both fleets equal then keep adding 5% to one would work both ways as it would lead to better understanding when using many weaker ships and less stronger variations

When you get to battleships, could you also test a universal design versus two purpose built ships? Let's say you do have Matter Disintegrators for some nice L-slot armor killing. Is it better to build, say, 30 Bships with gigacannon+4xMatterDisintegrator, or two separate Bship designs, one that's purely anti-shield (giga+kinetic arty) and one pure anti-armor/hull (tachyon+disintegrators) in a 15/15 split or maybe 10/20. If no Disintegrators, perhaps the effectiveness of the pure kinetic Bship + neutron cruisers versus equivalent amount of battleships with mixed weapons. Thanks for your work and testing on ship designs! It's been very interesting!

I literally keep fleet designs for every possible type of threat I’m just such a perfectionist in game lol

You can keep your rock paper scissor system. I'm all about the tic tac toe :P. Joking aside thanks for the good video

I've found you got to mix up the fleet now. When it comes to destoryers I like to run the missile boat from the video combimed with broadsider/picket disruptors and some corvettes or frigates for screening.

I would like to see something on cruisers and how they fit into all this now. Almost feels like they get overlooked compared to destroyers and battleships. With destroyers it's "oh good, a solid backbone to my early fleets, now I can really get to annihilating my enemies", and with battleships it's obviously getting some very big guns to snipe ships from across a system with, but cruisers seem like a weird middle ground. Maybe something short going over frigate and later game corvette design too. I suppose it should be fairly simple to deduce given the general idea of "missle good", heavy armor, speed, and a focus on lasers and other anti-shield weapons, but I would like to hear your input on it and see if there's some tricks to the humble corvette that one normally may not think of.

While I do love stellaris, I think you've won me over on the star trek game as well. I'm glad to see you doing your own relevant advertising these days, your amazing and keep keep it Jeff always.

More of this!!

ive always just used the triple picket slot build and be done with it, dont dismiss countering missiles/torps/fighters

This video, as well as the corvette video, assume you are both fielding the same type of ship. How do the types interact with each other? Like, could I shortcut the whole rock paper scissors by bringing (for example) some clever cruiser design that beats all of these variants? Or are there even more rock paper scissors interactions between designs of different types?

Funny @Montu Plays, in my last gameplay during last days I discovered the enemy almost never disengages if I use ONLY disruptors. Quite the opposite to what you said. The whole (literally) enemy fleets are getting tottally decimated by my disruptors, while disengaging with almost no casaulties against my other weapon types, which is super annoying btw. What will you say about it I wonder? I swear with disruptors I was literally wrecking everything, enemies were retreating like 5% of times when almost very dead and 95% of times fighting till their miserable end. All of that with minimal casaulties on my side lol.

who would have ever thought that missiles would be good at some point... like damn i love this. any information on how good missile only is in singleplayer?

The good old missile destroyer. You're as beautiful as the day I lost you.

I was thinking about doing missile frigates. I noticed the new frigate hull. I was going to put some of these in with the rest of my fleet for battles against AI fleets. I would love to know the suggested load out for Frigate these days. Interesting ship.

10:39 If you have 30% hardening, any armour/shield above 30% your hull is useless as you run out of hull before armour/shield. So with 600 Hull Points, any armor/shield above 90 per hardening module (180 w/ both) is only useful against non-bypass weapons.

i love your economic based tests since for me its the most usefull. i dont care for my ships, just for the ressources expended (yes i play mostly hive XD )

I see a problem. 600 points of Hull. 30% hardening available. So that means you would only expect any hardening to block 400 damage. So having 600 shields or 600 armor doesn't appear to actually help. Nor the 1000 on max armor. Your hull will fail first. So all we can do is block incoming damage. That said. My build is Line Large Ripper Twin Plasma. The Ripper shreds shields on every target, and the plasma tears up hull and armour without discretion, and allows my Heavier Cruisers with one Torpedo and Lasers+plasma to tear up battleships, stations cruisers and anything else, while a few Battleships sit at range with X slot weapons and Carrier hulls to give Corvettes, Cruisers, Destroyers or Stations a really bad day. I lose a lot of destroyers, but they mostly evac with Hit and Run, ensuring endurance in the fleet, soaking damage that would otherwise cripple Cruisers or Battleships that I use to deal with heavy threats. Against corvettes? The abundance of small slot plasma, Medium Lasers and Large slot Rippers ignore their evasion, and few if any survive more than a few seconds in an AI mixed fleet. I suppose theoretically an All Corvette force might work. Or perhaps an Missile Destroyer build. Except I usually have some PD around. Somewhere.

I was wondering one thing: With all the rework, have you planned doing some calculations for Menace fleets? They are much different than normal fleets, they do not have the same roles and they do not have the same number of components. Also, no Menace Frigate and Menace Battleships.

I'm glad that missile destroyers are getting the love they deserve, mostly because of the name. Missile destroyers rolls off the tongue well. You've used lasers and mass drivers but what about plasma weapons and KA? Do they just not compete?

Something I've noticed is that Kinetics generally seem to work better as supplemental secondary weapons rather than primaries. Mass Drivers especially seem to have a low median damage relative to other "Gunship" weapons due to their lack of a hull multiplier. Even the Kinetic Battery/Artillery suffers due to its relatively poor accuracy compared to energy weapons.

My destroyer design has 2 shields, 4 armor, it uses the 2 point defense with the M Swarm Missiles and 2 S regular missiles. I also use armor hardeners. I put it on the furthest range if they're with a artillery fleet, or on medium range if they're escorting a mixed fleet. PD wise, I use 1 of each, as the flak cannons are amazing at killing strike craft, and can STILL target missiles even thought they do less damage to them. This means that if you had a fleet of only these destroyers, you would have enough missiles, armor, and point defense to counter any fleet. You have the range to contest with battleship fleets, the missiles that can hit anyone from corvettes to battleships, the PD to block ALL incoming strike craft and missiles. The shields are just enough to stall energy weapons from hitting the armor too. It's perfect. Edit: His chart even said that PD Missile craft lost only 1% compared to the rest. Now of course, everyone can do their own variations of ships, but I feel as though if our two PD Missile went against one another, it would be a very close call. Edit 2: Let's also consider this. A mixed destroyer fleet of say 5 pure missile and 5 max point defense missile will have 15 PD and 35 missile. A fleet of 10 of mine will have 30 missiles and 20 PD. My fleets would have 10 swarmer missile, and theirs would have 5. Now of course, my armor would be less so, meaning their larger amount of missiles WILL win against me... except that I have an additional 5 PD against theirs. Now, I've only recently started using flak cannons again, but if I made my PD purely the point defense, I wouldn't even be worried about missiles getting through. All in all, these designs would 10)% have to be tested against each other to see the better xD

So in a pve situation go full missle or throw in a few point defense corvettes too? If the second what ratio? Also would you consider another weapons/module tier list that will include the new stuff we get from the expansion?

We need a laser artillery slot in this meta!

Hi, I watched some other stuff as well (@Montu Plays we want more ship meta build videos). I wanted to state something controversial now: I argue that Battleships are still the meta in the lategame and to go even further, that the variety of ship types useful in the lategame was higher before the change (Destroyers is psionic, Cruiser to counter evasion destroyers and Battleships for all normal empires) What makes battleships unique? Three things: first it is the only (spamable) one with x slots. Although this is not that op anymore it still is very useful against destroyers (hereafter DD), Cruisers and Battleships (hereafter BB). Second it has the most options Carrierspace, making it super effective against smaller ships. As you will probably run three auxiliary slots anyways, BBs can get really fast, making them good in kiting and in many ballte situations untouchable against frigates (one of its supposed counters). I didn’t test is, but i assume even long range frigates will get wiped, as neutrons etc have such a long cooldown now. Third, one ship design that I found was the only counter to rocket spam was a ship of the line cruiser with long range weapons and high speed. Rocket cruisers are not fast enough not to take constant damage, since engeren weapons ripp through armor and hull. Now BBs have even more fire power and similar speed to cruisers, which makes them more effective, as they can kill the rocket cruisers and the ship of the line cruisers. Even frigates make no sense here. One test that I found pitted equal cost clocked frigates against BBs with maximized medium and small slots. While the BBs lost some in the initial strike, the frigates got completely wiped with the BBs losing not even half of their ships (against its supposed counter). Lang range wouldn’t make a huge difference, as frigates are to slow to run, and neutrons have a firing arch additionally to its long cooldown. It seems like there are only two viable ship types in the late game and one possible counter: BB as Carrier against dump enemies who run small ships, BB as ship of the line as it is superior to carrier and small ships and even more flexible (can change between fast and brawler (afterburner and shield hardening), i don’t know which slots are best though) and as possible counter Cruisers with torpedos, as they (hopefully) survive long enough to fire more than one salvo of torpedos and can get close enough. I have to admit i am not much of a PVP player, so i would appreciate some feedback from someone with more expertise in this realm. I also would love some more thoughts on that as i would hate to have a even more boring late game and to know were my reasoning went wrong or if these tests i found were not realistic enough.

Is there a video that explains all the changes they made to ship combat?

Are you gonna return to updating the ship designs videos or are the ones youve already made still valid?

What are the results of the laser destroyer against fast missile destroyers? What about same speed? Judging by your descriptions, the rock paper scissor situation only occurs is the missile boat looses the speed arms race, otherwise missiles dominate, is that true?

The disruptor also has the disadvantage that it has no synergy with any L weapon. This means your L weapons are either effectively useless or the the penetrating effect of the disruptor is not used, making it a bad choice compared to other smaller weapons

Just come to me that ship weapons could be classified as primaries and secondaries just like WW2. So combat computers could simple be: stay at primaries range (artillery) or within secondaries (line). Picket would be kept as move to engange incoming missiles or fighters.

I think I stay at my fleet Design. In Early game I unse L Laser and 2S railguns Destroyer. In late game I change from gunship to defend Destroyer und use Cruiser and battleships as Main firepower. Interresting is now the rocket Destroyer. I now it doesn't make sence but I allways like the idea of multi class fleets and use them still in the late game.

No, Montu, we have seen missile destroyer before, but that was when the game first came out, before all the current meta and the 2.0 reworks.

What did the overlord meta turn out to be? Console just got that and i am not sure if console patches are exactly in line with historical PC patches for balance. I remember people saying a mix of torpedoes and strike craft was strong, but also battleships being built with only neutron launcher/tachyon lances. I feel like sometimes the AI has enough shield to beat that easily however. I generally skip corvettes, rush to destroyers with small guns to beat corvettes, then get a few torpedo/carrier cruisers before switching to battleship only fleets with a mix of 1 carrier battleship to every 5 neutron/tachyon artillery ships. Super late game i might have 1 or 2 mono torpedo corvette fleets for speed. I also try to get some crystal plating for extra disengage chance and put hull regen in every auxiliary slot. I just started my first 25x crisis game so i think fleet design will be a bit more important than normal.

I lile how the increased prevalence of missiles make point defence actually useful. And destroyers are no longer boring!

damn starsectors gryphon ship missile barrages

Have you made video about how to easily spy on enemy so you could easily get ship data?

Thank you for the great content and the rate you put it out at. Your dedication is honestly inspiring to me.

So will these builds work for the new First Contact and 3.7 updates?

Do you need a mod for these tests? how do you set up the combats?

Has anything changed in 3.7 regarding this build?

For some reason despite Artillery setting my destroyers don't even try to maintain distance, they are just sitting in one place and shooting missiles, even when enemy ships are literally next to them.

Will your combat rework go into best builds to take on 25x crisis going forward?

Hey Montu, unrelated to the video I think I know what the big 2024 DLC is going to be. Its going to have to do more with the internal politics/governing of the empire and a new mid game crisis (that might be pandemic related). To lend some credibility to this i predicted first contact if that helps any. lol

I just put whatever canonically would go to my ships, as part of the roleplay lol. The Missile destroyers sounds very interesting.

I am curious why you went laser destroyer instead of Plasma launchers? Care to compare the two?

Minor correction: I think the analogy you're looking for is "Tic-Tac-Toe"!

So is it good to pair up point defense battleships with middle destroyers??

a fleet of corvettes of equal alloy cost with pds and disruptors will rip to shreds the missile destroyers, even with armor hardening

montu can we get a comment of the link because ya can't read descriptions on shorts on mobile

What is the reason/mechanic behind Disruptors causing ships to disengage vs Missiles not doing so?

All Ship Types pls🚢

do these work for pve? my friends say to just use the pre built ships but I dont know if thats efficient

Does this apply to the console edition yet? Or are you going to make one for console edition in the future?

The Swarmer Missiles have a range of 120, the normal missiles only have a range of 100. Does this mean that they will only shoot the swarmers with the Artillery Combat Computer?

Hmm, at the end I fail to see a "Missle" (not the slow one) vs "Laser" matchup.

Des Troy Er? Is this a new ship in Stellaris? I've never heard of it.

currently missile section cannot be installed to Destroyers?

They should release 3.7 now. Because I’m off work. That’s all I’ve got.

And thus having intel on your enemies become more important.

Im eager to play human and alien payback start. Haven't played in years.

I heard that Picket Destroyers are the best against AI because they love spamming corvettes. Is that true? If not, what destroyer design would be best against the AI (crises excluded)?

But how do these DD fleets survive against mixed Vette & DD fleets? Part of the whole rewrite of the combat was to bring back in mixed fleets.