Quick note, this video does not account for Strategic Resources and their substantial impact.

You helped me beat the Unbidden in my current campaign. Didn't expect them. Was preparing for AI war.

I generally make 5 different designs and use them in tandem with each other, the first is a massive artillery striker with a giga cannon and all kinetic artillery, with no armor and maximum shielding, this will take down most large enemy ships really quickly. The second is one with a Tachyon Lance and all large phase disruptors with the same shielding setup, this will melt enemy shielding and armor and serves the same role as the first but with lower range and fire rate. Third is Focussed Arc Emitter with whirlwind missiles, marauder missiles, two bomber craft wings and guardian point defense, this loadout will take down a lot of enemy corvettes due to it's high tracking weapons and stop you from getting swarmed. Fourth is to deal with destroyers and cruisers, which is all broadside with Kinetic Artillery and stormfire cannons to rip through anything from long and close range. Fifth is the carrier, which uses flak, strike craft, point defense and stormfire cannons, they serve as the defense versus enemy carriers or missile based enemies, as well as to overwhelm enemy point defense. If you really want to just build one type of battleship, ASpec's build is probably the best one I could discover as well.

As i can have discover, a swarm of corvettes with Gatlings are usually more efective against large fleet that uses battleships and cruisers. Battleships and Cruiser have a huge DPS but only if they can hit you. The key is to flee from the enemy with your less powerfull fleet made of corvettes, when the enemy chase you the only thing you need to do is wait them to jump into you and its done, all your corvettes will start to rip them off as they cannot really do much damage. This is not the only adventage of the swarm strategy, if you lose 20 or 50 corvets up of 200 or 300 its not a big deal, maybe a couple of thousands of fleet power, but, if you lose 3 or 4 battleship you are losing large chunks of fleet power at the same time. Not to talk about the time and minerals (and maintenence) of corvettes against all of that things from the Battleships.

Remember when we all used to run with all L Battleships in the original builds? Good times.

Personally I typically make 3 different types of Battleships. A standard layout with all large and medium cannons. A Carrier type that I use to carry strike craft such as bombers and point defense craft, and one for my mega cannons.

i remember running a all battleship fleet during my first real play-through, the scourge annihilated my fleet after i took out 2 of theirs and had free roam of the entire northern galaxy...

"Multiple fleets for multiple targeting" Yeah, this is a problem.

Finally, it's only about time we get a video about this. Newbs such as I, have a hard time knowing what's the best ship build, to conquer the galaxy.

The best bet for a general purpose battleship is to take full max range weapons, namely the Giga cannon (t2) with kinetic artillery (also max tier), and then use smart positioning to maximize your effectiveness. Knowing which way the enemy will come into the system, or utilizing a ftl snare, and position just at max range effectiveness, will allow you to have a massive leg up on your foes. Against weaker fleets, you will deal crippling damage from afar, destroying mass amounts of ships before they even get to fire back. You should be alternating these in a 2 to 1 ratio with battleships focusing on spamming fighters (which counter other fighters, rockets, and can still do significant damage vs the lower tier enemy vessels). Alternatively, a smaller fleet could utilize a combination of disruptors and plasma throwers, utilizing a ftl snare to pull the enemy in close, and then pound them at the range you're most effective at. Though that fleet would struggle like crazy to fight my longer ranged one unless they caught us off-guard.

Hey Aspec! Just discovered your videos, and may I say these mechanical deep dives are excellent. Thoroughly appreciated and subscribed. Looking forward to watching some of your other content.

Aspec, is there anyway to control your ship to priorities a class of ships or targets. I notice that the enemy AI would go for my battleships, while my fleet AI would just go for whatever is in their range. That is problemetic when a mining station is the first thing they engage and they won't change target until that is destroyed. While they are doing that, the enemy gets into range and start taking out my ships.

Aspec your channel has grown so much lately. I remember subscribing to you when had only just hit 200!!!

I found this useful, but I believe you overlooked a bit the range topic. The alpha strike is important but it just as important if you get to land it twice before the opponent even begins to fire at you. In my experience using high calibers when available (L>M>S) and long range weapons give good results. Matter disintegrators are quite op in the endgame.

An up-to-date guide on stellaris ships? Huzzah! Seriously, all of the other ones I can find are over 9 months old. There have been so many updates since then I strongly suspect the mechanics have changed, nerfs have been applied, and they are probably no longer valid. But I'm hoping I can trust this one.

I generally run with like 6 different types of battleship for example in my imperium of man game, i have the "Dominator class" with a bunch of level 5 railguns, and kinetic artillery. this is my ship of the line basically as it can counter most cruisers and destroyers with its large compliment of highly accurate medium railguns, and still damage larger ships. My "Devastator" class is basically all kinetic artillery. This ship focuses on destroying enemy battleships. My "Emperor" class is a dedicated carrier with lots of point defense and Medium Railguns. This ship is my second most common, since the fighters counter enemy strike craft and enemy missiles. The "Imperator" class has all flack weaponry and a single strike craft. Helps to round out the anti-torpedo/fighter defense The "Eclipse" class is all disruptors and plasma weaponry. It operates just like the Dominator in terms of battlefield role. Finally, my "Retribution" class has my spinal mounted weaponry, which is either a tachyon lance or a mega cannon. It operates similarly to the Devastator but from longer range. As a side note, I do not usually use corvettes. In my fleet i rarely use more than 20 torpedo boats. Instead I escort by battlesips with anti-corvette destroyers and well rounded cruisers. I have yet to lose a war.

I developed my own Battleship Design with the thought process of going all Battleships by the late game. Ideally, I would go Giga Cannon, with a Large Kinetic Artillery due to their range and bonus damage to shields and armor. Afterwards I have Bombers and medium plasma cannons on the mid section. The bombers help dish out a lot of DPS onto other battleships and by the time the other fleet engages, most of their shields should be down from the artillery that the plasma cannons can rip them to shreds when those finally get into range. I also have them medium just in case a swarm of small ships try to surround my Battleships. Medium cannons can track Corvettes and destroyers pretty well and destroy them relatively quickly. So my Battleship design is mainly just in case I don't know exactly what the enemy ships have equipped and I want all of my bases covered.

nice work man, keep up the good content! appreciate it a lot!!!

I might be horribly wrong, but always going for the largest guns doesn't seem to be the best option. You'll want a good combination of DPS, range, tracking and accuracy, not to mention point defense. I always go for 1 X Giga Cannon, 2 S Gauss cannons, 2 P Guardian point defense, 1 H Advanced Fighter Squadron, 1 H Advanced Bomber Squadron and finally 1 L Kinetic Artillery. The Carrier core has the highest DPS, as far as I know, and it takes care of point defense, both from the Guardians and Fighters. You could go for 2 Bomber squadrons but you don't wanna leave them unescorted and defenseless against, say, Fallen ships and Fighters. This seems to be the most balanced build, which takes care of everything. Considering Battleships serve as artillery, you don't need M weapons, though you'll want some for your Cruisers. As someone else said, L weapons deal the highest damage *if* they hit, and M and S weapons have an often much higher chance of doing so. For M and S weapons on my other ships I go for Gauss, which has the highest DPS apart from Autocannons, which have poor range, and Marauder missiles and Torpedoes, which can be taken out by point defense. I always make sure my Cruisers have 1 L Kinetic Artillery for long range and DPS and 1 Flak for point defense, the rest is always M Gauss Cannons for landing more close range hits. Might not have the highest DPS or range, but I think these are the most balanced designs.

Lazers are better due to not having projectile travel time; they hit instantly and thus get their first kills faster, giving an advantage that can quickly snowball. They also have higher dps as they fire faster than plasmas. The only real advantage plasma has is the range, but the slow travel speed eats away at this advantage quite a bit.

LET FLY! ALL GUNS!

When fighting enemy nations, I'l send in the tankiest fleet I can of five-eight battleships on it's own, with flak batteries and gauss and defenses stacked to the max. Next comes the artillery battleships and cruisers, carrying a variety of x and L kinetic and energy weapons. Then comes the doomstack, with whatever else I have. Generally it' a 1:2:3:3 ratio of battleships, cruisers, destroyers, and corvettes, with the destroyers just being kinetic battery carriers and the corvettes lighting up everything with torpedoes, both energy and explosive, and the cruisers each tossing out one swarm missile and then plasma and disruptors. My battles usually have close to no casualties, and also lets me easily wipe out an enemie's fleet then blockade quite a few planets.

I always refit my fleet according to how my current enemy is outfitted. Countering shields with kinetic weapons, energy weapons with shields and vice versa.

Mixed fleets of corvettes ad up work best for me, with advanced battle computers I get a nice mix of attacks from the different ships.

90% armor battleship with regenerating hull obviously! Shields are problematic because they do not benefit from having armor, and 4% per month regen is huge if you only take 10% hull damage on average. Also, you can have Hangar slots to deal with any small / well shielded enemies.

I like a lance, 3 stormfire autocannons, and 2 flak on the back..good mix of off/def, and protect my carriers launching bomber waves xD

i always use giga cannon with 4 kinetic artillery - 91.17 damage shield capacitor and dragon armor in the aux slots

It depends on whom you fight. The best solution so far is simply copy already existing design list against every opponent/crisis/fallen empire archetype from game forum or even wiki and adjust it to your capabilities. It just shows that AI needs more flexibility with their own designs too.

i usually just have one battleship design for each main weapon type, and just have good amount of both

I know this was years ago (the first sign if this being 20% dmg reduction for lazers instead of 50%). but currently in vanilla the the most op weapon is disruptors. people often underestimate them, but I have battleships all equipped with arc emitters/max disruptors, which can decimate fleets bigger than it and get away with a reasonable amount of ships intact.

In V1.6.1 u need the lasting monuments mod in order to be able to build any oversized ships

Against Prethoryn, I use Tachyon Lance + Plasma/Neutron + Fighters. Against FE and Unbidden, I use Focused Arc Emitter + Cloud Lightning And against everything else, Giga Cannon + Neutron Launchers

i usually made 3 types of battleship....fighter, carier and also kinetik artilery... that's working in game with that 3 massive type,,, (well, every game is different, how we play indeed) its just my usually battleship in game.

Swarm corvettes are a bad idea; my computer died.

So before this, my ship was all Gama lasers and as much armour as possible...I didn't put much thought into it...

So you could build a military dictatorship and give your race the fleeting trait to quicken the rate at which you could build ruler class Battleships.

Can you make a video about how to get Cruisers and/or Battleships within the first 250 years that have the usual fleet power it goes with it. You make it look so easy to get a powerful fleet within 250 years but we never get to see how you get there. Including unity; you skip where you place your traditions and expect us to know instead. I want a video that shows us how to get a powerful fleet that can possibly take on a more advanced opponent. Without you skipping on any of the details as you usually do. I love ur videos, but I’m disappointed when you don’t show us an in depth study of how to do it step by step of the way.

I use the "unbidden" design and can slaughter everything, no other ships in my fleet, just tonnes of giga cannon kinetic artillery battleships and even a fleet of 100 high dodge rate corvettes falls hilariously quickly.

Gigs cannon with double afterburners and 4 extradimensional weaponry gives 88+ damage

Giga cannons have good average damage, are versatile, and have good range though

Hey ASpec, You gonna do an update for this vid for 18.2 once it's out? Given the Scourge's Armor Pen additions and the Plasma Cannon nerfs? Would be good to see Cruisers, Destroyers and Vette builds covered too, as well as fleet ratios (how many BS vs CS, DD, CV etc).

Thank you A-spec. Now I will always name a battle ship Ayutthaya.

Wait,where carrier ships?couse they probaly,most OP ship in game?They opening attak starts at half system,they can start annihilate enemy ships BEFORE batle und if u stack them like 10+,that become swarm of locusts... (Most OP after corvets,of course)

on the first editions of the game a build battleships that had nothing else equipped but tachyon lances. Now the game patched and my ships are ridiculously OP, you can only have A SINGLE TACHYON LANCE now! thats ridiculous...

What about bombers? They ignore 100% of shield and absolutely annihilate the enemy's battleships and cruisers which will take a long time to rebuild. They can also deploy from much farther away. I've been able to reach 105 damage per cycle with this design.

You should work with paradox to update your videos as each new expansion comes out.

For the majority of my game I've just gone with kinetic weapons and all armor, the AI uses a lot of laser weapons and the gauss cannons do good damage against both shields and armor. My only issue is the awakened empire that I have that uses a similar loadout to the video.

Best battleship design is really not to use battleships. The removal of the perk slot severely nerfed them imo. Cruisers are lighter, more offensive versions, way cheaper and easier to build as well. Only battleships i use are carriers and that works great for me against AEs, regular empires and end game crises

I have a xenophobic fallen empire as neighbor in my current campaign... have not been attacked yet, and I am pretty sure I do not have the power to fight back if they would... at least not yet. You mentioned that they use a lot of kinetic weapons. But do they mostly rely on armour, or shields? Since they do not use so much missiles or lasers, maybe I could try to counter them with corvettes if I have to? Maybe torpedo boats?

my best ship is a carrier is just a hanger and a carrier battle ship with a alteriy back

I really like Giga cannons more then tachyon lance. Mainly because I do not agree with the game design. Right now the US has both laser and railguns. Yet what are we putting on the new generation of ships? Railguns. Railguns have more stopping power. Pretty much the same accuracy and longer range. Laser you will just put a tiny hold in the enemy ship. While railguns will not only leave a massive hole. IT would also crumple the area around the impact. Making the ship take more damage from a second shot.

*having flashbacks to my all mass driver fleets getting wrecked by fleets of plasma smaller than mine* god damnit I didnt know xD (I mean ALL mass drivers)

huh, my designs are so diffirent from these, i usually go for a large amount of long ranged phasers to rip down their shields for my high dmg armor piercing ships, and ofc with a mixture of point defence and carrier ships

In a mixed fleet, would it make sense to replace some of the Plasmas for Kinetics as your Plasma Cruisers will do much of the heavy lifting against the armor of shield-stripped ships from up close?

Aspec, do you have any sort of method in which you import/export ship designs? your naming structure of each design of battleships indicate that you might. i want to be able to make a huge amount of designs but not have to constantly remake them each new game Also i love your videos, thank you!

Can you make a guide for ship counters (what is good against what) and weapon/armor counters ? Like for instance what size of weapons and ships are good against corvettes,destroys,cruisers etc ?

Thought I heard Zootopia, then I realised that you said "The Utopia"

Whenever i use battleships i run 2 designs. i have an Artillery design running long range cannons, and a carrier running 1 fighter 2 bomber squadrons

Hmmm... what about disintegrators and bombers & fighters? I can see how with strike craft not getting replaced over time that would be a major problem but I'm surprised disintegrators aren't really a factor

And what about carriers? I've noticed that on many occasions retrofitting all my battleships to carriers changes the output of a clash dramatically... BTW, it would be great to hear more about various battle mechanics in depth so to say. Like the mentioned "tracking mechanics".

A bit OT, but why do your graphics looks so good ? I have mine maxed out on a GTX 980Ti and the game looks nothing like your. Also, how do you get those really close-up camera angles ?

Why would you choose Artillery over Broadside? The dps adds up the same, the only differences are that Artillery gives you longer range while Broadside offers higher tracking and accuracy. Also, are shield capacitors still useful in 1.5? Monthly shield regen seems a little bit underwhelming.

Awesome video :)

So then, there isn't any ONE most powerful ship.

im curios on how you got such amazing battle scenes....looks great.

Heya, LordMagus/OloroMemez here, thanks for the link :) For a summary of builds posted, I've got the pictures here: imgur.com/a/gJdvd which includes the "best battleship" before you get strategic resources and repeated tech, which is the variant with 2 shield capacitors. The next question I'm going to address is whether cruisers are better than battleships. In terms of player built cruisers vs battleships, it's simply better to have the cruisers due to 2 cruisers having more hull points than 1 battleship. The only question I want to answer is what sort of situations cruisers are better to use than battleships, such as against Fallen Empires or an end game crisis. Have enjoyed a number of your videos so far, didn't expect to see my results to make it into one your videos :)

More or less useful, i still lack a lot of info about the roles (like the phantomatic flanking ships). Still it gives me some ideas

Clearly 6 hangar slots with Amoeba Fighters is the best option, then!

Nice - I was looking for something to help me put together the backbone of my fleets... Do you have a video(s) on cruiser/destroyer/corvette design too?

this video really needs an update for 2.3

Hey ASpec can you do a video on whether or not the location of armor/power cores/shields matter during engagements? For example, if I placed all shields forward, but get attacked from the rear do the shields still behave the same way? Or does attacking position only determine which ships you engage first (flanking maneuvers)?

Question, question, what is your personal opinion on missiles? I know that Proton and Armored torpedoes have their own strengths and weaknesses, however, I wish to bring attention to the other missiles. Will Paradox bring more use and balance for the other missiles? If so, what can we expect? I'm all about utilizing heavy emphasis on kinetic weapons, but I like seeing some other variety in the traditional military tech. What are your thoughts on missile weapons? Do you think they're viable?

I only use kinetic weapons on my ships, except torpedos on my corvetts xD but it's only my tactic and it works out

The best battleship design is the default one Cos you never build any battleships

Thank you

For battleships? Really? Usually I want kinetics on my destroyers and battleships to alpha off their shields at range and give time for my plasma frigs and cruisers to get in range.

Will you be doing a video on cruiser builds as well for different situations? I've been designing my cruisers with M plasma/M disruptors and PD cruisers for protection.

best ship in fucking game is naked corvette

Aspec, I may have asked this before but can you make an mechanics video on Awakened empires and what they do differently besides rebuild ships, like go over titans and planet changes?

RIP royal battleships, or as I liked to call them: flagships.

Never looked into this as precise as you, thank you. I will try to test that. One question. Do you build your fleet with your different Battleship setups or only a fleet per "situation"?

would like to see a upgrade for 2.3 :O

And yet, nothing beats the cruiser spam, loaded with medium plasma canons and psionic technology to further stack evasion into a ship with a strong hull and decent armor :v- And really, the proportional difference between medium and large, for plasma, is not that big. When it comes to tracking, I think it favors the medium sized canons.

I'll ask your opinion here, is the XL weapon slot even worth it? I've seen a number of arguments saying, it's simply better to put a L slot Kinetic artillery instead of a Giga cannon, because the cannon does the sam e ase damage as a single artillery but is also limited by it's arc of fire

thanks for the vid :)

the old day stellaris are much more simpler on damage stuff ;(

What about carriers? The game says that the DPS is higher than anything with maxed bombers (except the "x" weapons? haven't checked recently). But is a carrier second-best for battleship DPS?

Can this be redone for the new patch 1.8 with the buffs to missiles and the introduction of the contingency as an endgame crisis?

Did anyone figure out if missile or carrier builds are viable now since synth dawn?

If I have lots of energy weapon damage and firerate from tech boosts, but no bonuses for kinetc, would it be better for me to use disruptors rather than kinetic?

The Imperial Dreadnoughts are clearly more powerful.

spam tachyon beams

So will you be doing any more videos like this for the other classes of ship?

They can't track/target jack in combat. How stupid can programmers get? Stick a couple of flack guns on them when you can and then see if you can find something that always hits. There might be better weapons systems around but if you can't hit a moving target with them they aren't worth jack.

Sad things - you dont really need battleships. They not 100% useless like destroyers, but they cant handle cruisers and corvettes. Corvettes also direct counter to battleships no matter what. But if someone look for "best ship" - its cruisers with all m slots. You can focus this ship design on every role - autocannon vs massive swarms of corvettes (dont know who will use it in 1.4 but still), gauss vs shields (and corvettes), flaks vs rockets and bombers. And of course our star - cruiser with full m plasma. Best of the best, all around. Battleships only userfull then u fight inferior forces - they will reduce your loses by destroing big ships from away. Also plasma - reason why shields > armor. Cuz vs great treat (fallen, crisis or human player) you will always face alot of armor penetration weapon. Armor still userful but shields generally better. Only few weapons in game can ignore them. Sorry for poor english btw.

hey Which Mode are you using for your Camera view? Could you link it please?

Naked frigats

Are Tacyhons really better than Giga cannons? Gigas have bonus shield and armor damage, Tachyons do crap against shields.

Is it better to use your battleships to play with more of a carrier role with the strike craft or a artillery role with all guns? And is the focused arc emitter any better than the tachyon lance? Thanks!

At the point my fleet reached 1000 (around 120 battleships) my game cannot handle it anymore. Its slow motion only :| How am I supposed to oppose the fallen empire? With a 10k fleet? Hell no! I only can beat them with equal power. Cuz their ships are just to powerful. But my pc says: NOPE NOT ON MY WATCH!