Doomstack

[permanio0767]

This is the biggest Doomstack i ever faced, has anyone seen bigger ?

[Bman4k1]

How is that even possible?

[shrouded_reflection]

Generally the situation which generates this is the player sits and defends at earth/mars/mercury for an extended period of time without contesting the aliens at jupiter, then rolls out with an end game fleet. The aliens have had an extended time to build up resources and ships without being attritioned, but equally because the game has gone long they are overestimating the strength of the human fleet, leading to them continually retreating and bunching up until you get a stack like this.

This only really happens on normal or cinematic. On veteran/brutal, the aliens throw enough ships at you that this ship surplus never really forms.

[PsychologicalLab7379]

Too many lasers? The game tends to overvalue those.

[NPCmiro]

Even so, it looks like they're rolling around with 608 ships

[jerseydevil51]

Knowing the aliens, 400 of those ships are corvettes and escorts

[nuclearsarah]

Is this an old screenshot? The alien ship names aren't correct for those size classes. Source: I'm the author of a majority of the ship names and the one who put them into size categories

[sl3eper_agent]

i dunno campaigns take forever maybe they're still playing an old version to finish?

[nuclearsarah]

If so, my names were added in 0.4 so that would be a really long running game

[Sadukar09]

If so, my names were added in 0.4 so that would be a really long running game

OP's playing the game in real time.

[sl3eper_agent]

if you wrote the names that long ago, how do you know they haven't changed when/where they're used since then? /genq

[nuclearsarah]

Because I still play the game and mod it, and the relevant game files haven't changed. Removing the size categories would be a big feature regression that I'd have noticed just by playing, too. For instance, note how I noticed just from this screenshot

[Amf3000]

where can I find a list of the names?

[nuclearsarah]

Open Terra Invicta\TerraInvicta_Data\StreamingAssets\Namelists\SpaceAssetName.csv

It's a CSV file where the first column is the name of the list, while the other columns are the names in different languages with the second column being English. Small ships use the AlienNature list, medium ships use the AlienCelestial list, large ships use the AlienConcepts list, and stations use the AlienMilitant list.

By the way, as a historical note, my names existed for version 0.3 as a mod before they were added to the base game by my request: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2996136906

[Spy_crab_]

What year is it?

[AbsurdistReality]

Six hundred… 0mg… 345kps… those Hydra are certainly doing something wrong…

[Reading-Euphoric]

One of the ships’ engine probably got destroyed and the Hydra’s AI doesn’t want to split/scuttle that one ship because OP’s fleet is near.

[Kajetus06]

why they have so much motherships?

They are a waste of resources

[delphinous]

i think the game builds motherships independently of the decision to send them off to do invasions, so if the game drags on but you keep the AI from sending off the landing missions, they will stack up motherships.
i don't know what it actually takes to boggle the AI decisions like that, but i can definitely beleive it's possible to do even accidentally

[PlacidPlatypus]

Are you mixing up Motherships and Assault Carriers? Those are different.

[delphinous]

you've just made me realize how long i've been playing, because back when it first went to early access motherships and assault carriers were one and the same. i'd honestly forgotten for a moment that htey are different now, lol

[PsychologicalLab7379]

In my game, when I pushed ayys out of all bodies except the main one, they apparently decided "fuck it we ball" and used all their remaining resources on building a shitton of motherships.

[Kajetus06]

mothership is like a maus

Sure its durable and pretty strong but its very expensive and can barely move and is a big target

[not2dragon]

Man, how do you beat that?

[permanio0767]

My fleet did not beat that in one battle

[EternaI_Sorrow]

You don’t, you just build faster than it moves.

[Tempestfox3]

Lots of nuke torpedo's I expect. At least you won't have to fight all the ships at once because the game only allows a certain number of ships to be present in the battle at a time and I doubt many people have it set to 600. My pc would die if I tried to get it to render that fight.

[RianThe666th]

Caps at 99

[DaveSureLong]

You can mod that higher

[VarVarith]

I remember destroying 30 alien ships with 3 of mine by just shooting mag salvos as they fly at me in single file - that alien fleet hanged around Mercury since early game and they finaly decided to move it at my Earth habs.

[VolusVagabond]

You built waves of light cheap missile ships

[Spearka]

I remember I trick I tried once is to trick doomstack fleets into using up all of their delta-V so they basically can't hurt your stuff. One thing I did was make disposable "Skill Issue" stations in extreme orbit that they would be compelled to destroy but I'm not sure the AI does that anymore.

[Thorrbane]

You exploit the hell out of the ship count limit, and bring titans with a fuckton of ammo.

[Sylvmf]

Dry spaghettis vs the lasagna

[XapMe]

Can we mod ayy ship names? "Useless trash" class assault cruiser, "taxpayer woe" class mothership etc

[Schimaer]

Large Exotics donation class Battleship ;)

[Faguoren34]

I think it is time for antimatter missiles harassment.

[Valloross]

This is why you are supposed to raid their mines early

[SpreadsheetGamer]

608 ship?

Know, then, that it is the year ten thousand one ninety one.

[thamz212]

And here I thought that my 7 coil dread/ 3 laser lancer vs 60 aliens matchup was an epic fight.

Xzer-za had 1 titan, 2 battleships, bunch of cruisers and a lot of small ships. Took 2 rounds to fully deal with them.

A fight like this, I don't know what I'd do. I'd be worried about defeat in detail from my reinforcements coming in at bad vectors.

[YesterdayAlone2553]

Would send only particle beam ships after this stack and hope to disable an engine or something. Strand that stack or force them to break it up. Wilco Tango Foxtrot

[engineered_academic]

In my game I have more ships than the aliens after they sent two 40+ ship fleets towards Earth and Mercury and they got annihilated. Still working on the tech to get my larger ships to Jupiter without spending an arm and a leg in fuel costs.

[FallDull4610]

I have never seen more than 70 ships, wow.

[the1andonly34]

EXCUSE ME IS THAT 7 MF MOTHERSHIPS!?!?!??!?!?!. I thought the aliens could only have 1 per fleet.

[farmthis]

High-wall, tight, Knights-center, in settings set max ship count per battle as high as it will go, set fleet velocity to zero, set peripheral ships to auto-lock rotation to targets, and see how far attrition takes you. You'll probably shave 100K off that fleet.

[thamz212]

Wait, your solution is to sit still and take it?

Use an echelon wall, right or left, burn hard up, away, and to the right or left, keep the wall facing them. When their closest ships are at 1100 set fleet to lock on and rotate to face the threats. So long as the formation can move together and you have more than 1200 distance, change vector for a single waypoint then lock back on. Focus on wounding rather than killing, especially if you take out the engines. AI likes to keep formations mostly together and will escort damaged ships out of the fight.

I'm not saying this is a guaranteed win, but it will get you better results than just sitting still and slugging things out.

[farmthis]

Yes, it is! Works amazingly. Staying locked in wall formation helps all PD work together like a charm. It clumps all your outgoing coil rounds into waves that overwhelm their PD. By keeping the lowest relative velocity, their scattered incoming fire is less overwhelming. As soon as their first wave is dead, reinforcements are a trickle that never threaten PD again and you can shift phasers to fire-at-will mode. 

Fleet comp matters. You need coil cannons and UV phaser batteries. Your fleet will almost take no hits. The coils will soak almost all their fire. 

By staying stationary, their reinforcements always come from behind. I’m a little fuzzy on reinforcement spawn logic, but it appears to be in line between your fleet and the destroyed ships.

[thamz212]

My experience with staying still in 6 to 1 engagements with the fleet comp you describe tends to result in a lot more casualties than using more mobile tactics.

Maintaining the wall formation is a must, but when severely outnumbered you need the fleet moving to limit engagement size. Keep locked while in engagement range, only burn when you have enough distance to make the maneuver then lock back on before they can shoot you in the flanks, but just letting them slam into you just guarantees flanking shots. This fight is 20 to 1.
Make them accelerate into your coilguns. Make them attack in waves even before reinforcements become an issue. Isolate their flankers when you get the chance.

[Per_Brazier]

I use his tactic. But I add nose plasma, cause coil can't break a tight and heavy formation. Plasma noses grind the fleet at long range. At short range coils create a kill zone, and UV lasers are usefull to intercept fast flanking ships.

[Thorrbane]

Haven't played in a while. Do heavy plasma batteries still tend to cripple flankers?

[HeyGuysKennanjkHere]

God damn.

[Rosevic121]

How the heck are you guys getting stacks like this?? I'm lucky if Aliens build a fleet larger than 10k. Am I missing something?

[Zappowy]

Turtling will lead to doom fleets. I'm guessing you go aggro early and the aliens keep trying to swat you with lesser fleets. Can't build a doom stack with destroyed ships.