Stellaris Beating The Contingency Guide
Stellaris Beating The Contingency Guide by A_Dying_Wren
The contingency seems to pose a problem for many players (myself included) so I thought I’d take a crack at finding out an optimal single-type fleet composition.
Setting:
- Difficulty: hard
- Crisis multiplier: 1.25 (I think)
- Galaxy size: Default?
- Average size of crisis fleet: Roaming 125k, Defensive 250k
- State of Contingency: Basically defeated. All hubs destroyed and only the last node to go. There were a few fleets still hanging around so I thought I’d use them for target practice
- Admiral: 8 star, gale-speed, aggressive, trickster, cyborg. Bonuses: 50% fire rate, 50% combat speed, 5% evasion, 20% sublight speed. My baby. Led from the start to the end of the contingency and me taking over the galaxy. His bonuses probably best support smaller ships.
- Extra bonuses: https://imgur.com/G2Um2yu. Notably I’m missing the strategic resource for explosives but have everything else I think. In terms of repeatable tech I have shields VI, explosive attack speed III, explosive weapon damage II, hull points II, kinetics II. So nothing extraordinary (and probably a bit slow) for 2400 onwards.
The fleet(s) to destroy:
Two of them were stacked in my territory so I took the opportunity to use them.
Basic fleet stats:
| Corvettes | Destroyers | Cruisers | Battleships | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cost: | 215 | 257 | 659 | 1227 |
| Time to build: | 19 | 37 | 73 | 145 |
| Number of ships used to reach fleet power parity (approx 260k): | 960 | 780 | 280 | 123 |
| Total cost: | 206400 | 200460 | 184520 | 150920 |
| Build time: | 18240 | 28860 | 18240 | 20440 |
My initial approach was just to build a fleet to roughly equal the contingency fleets in fleet power and see how they perform. Costs don’t vary much between top tier weapons. Build time and cost was reduced using an retired fleet officer governor + full prosperity/supremacy tree + assembly yards. Every spaceport had a fleet academy.
For Destroyers, Cruisers, and Battleships, the fleet always jumped to the opposite side of the system and engaged the contingency at max distance
(Sample) Ship Composition
Corvettes: https://imgur.com/Jqt5gNM
Destroyers: https://imgur.com/KuYpZDn
Cruisers: https://imgur.com/gsAmmjJ
Battleships: https://imgur.com/xf4BeLg
My approach was simple: Top tier weapons + as much shielding as possible within power envelope. Jump drive, thrusters, computer (not sentient of course), and tracking all maxed. Don’t know if its optimal. Always ran with neutron torpedoes where possible from experience.
Initial Results (given in losses)
| Corvettes | Destroyers | Cruisers | Battleships |
|---|---|---|---|
| Torp+Miss 259/960, 27.0% | Plas+Art 79/780 10.1% | Torp+Plas 61/280 21.8% | Art 15/123 12.2% |
| Torp+Kin 237/960, 24.7% | Las+Art 94/780 12.1% | Torp+Miss 55/280 19.6% | Tach+Art 9/123 7.3% |
| Torp+Las 256/960 26.7% | Kin+Art 91/780 11.7% | Torp+Kin 52/280 18.6% | Tach+Miss 15/123 12.2% |
| Tach+miss/bombers/pd+art 21/123 17.1% |
Torp = Neutron torpedoes Miss = Marauder missiles Kin = Gauss cannon Art = Kinetic Artillery Plas = Plasma Cannon
What about with a weaker fleet? We don’t always have the luxury of reaching parity especially at higher difficulties. I took the two best fleets built with even resources and tested them. 450 Destroyers and 92 Battleships were used respectively. The fleets cost about 112k each which is very doable for 2400 onwards (with patch 1.8.2) or even 2350.
| Destroyers | Battleships |
|---|---|
| Plas+Art 162/450 36% | Tach+Art 18/92 19.6% |
What about a single fleet? The above fleets were basically playing on 2.5x crisis. What about where most of us mortals dwell? At this point I also realised its probably more useful to compare fleets of equal cost. I took the best fleets, halved them to be worth 75k each (292 destroyers, 61 battleships) and fought this fleet: https://imgur.com/G4PZnCk
| Destroyers | Battleships |
|---|---|
| Plas+art 65/292 22.2% | Tach+Art 8/61 13.1% |
| Kin+art 61/292 20.9% | Art 8/61 13.1% |
Conclusions and observations (TLDR)
- It doesn’t make that much difference what weapon system you use
- Corvettes and Cruisers have the most % losses even though they cost more. Don’t use them
- I suspect +range admirals will do even better. Kinetic artillery started doing serious damage before the contingency even engaged.
- Destroyers compete with Battleships in efficiency but took way too long to build
- Battleships (with tachyon lances + kinetic artillery) were by far the most efficient ships and had the lowest losses.
- Kinetic artillery is the MVP
- The contingency isn’t that hard with the right build (and probably at least 20 planets). A cheap and cheery 150k minerals/984 naval capacity/260k fleet power fleet does major work on 2.5x crisis fleets and is not hard to sustain.
If I’ve missed anything or you have anything you’d like me to test specifically (no guarantee) just PM me or drop a comment. Hope this helps.
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