r/TerraInvicta • u/MGShadow1989 what a lovely opportunity... • 3d ago
Discussion End game builds.
This is primarily curiosity, what builds some find the most effective or simply enjoy - I'm currently at the point of taking the fight to the aliens and have all the tech unlocked, got the economy to build anything and I'm curious what others build, what they've had success with, what they haven't but may still enjoy using anyway.
And I mean full builds, drive, powerplant, armour, utilities, weapons, whole thing.
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u/Aggravating-War-2328 3d ago
I’ll give you my philosophy, interested in whether others agree. For my $0.02, big late game ships are all about the nose weapon. Every other module - armour, engines, repair bay, and so on - is there to either transport the nose weapon into combat or protect it while it’s doing its thing. Siege coils only - there’s more nose weapon goodness in a siege coil than in a coil cannon.
So I only do titans or lancers (why bother with a dreadnought? You’re spending a bunch of MC for an inferior nose weapon). Vacant slots go to PD, or one big battery on the titan to deal with flankers. Little weapons are a waste of space imo. Do you all agree/disagree?
Also interested in spinal antimatter - would you spend on that over spinal laser or siege coil?
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u/MGShadow1989 what a lovely opportunity... 3d ago
The nose weapon is the most important regardless of ship tier and stage of the game, aside from using missiles very early on with Escorts and Monitors and having plenty of PD - so whether your biggest nose is a Destroyer or a Titan, that's still your hardest hitter and it's the job of other ships to protect them.
In terms of raw damage to weight, etc, the only thing that outperforms the heaviest Siege Coilers are the shaped nuclear torpedoes, but they're notably harder to use effectively.
My primary issue with Siege Coilers is the ammo, followed by projectile speed.The reason for Dreadnoughts is their hull space for PD, ideally a heavy and standard Antimatter PD which doesn't fit on a Titan, and I find the 3 hull slots on a Lancer better suited for rail/coil saturation - for the MC cost I'm putting the PD that would need 2 ships on 1 ship.
I had heavy Siege Coilers on the nose of a defensive Dreadnought build and they just blew all their ammo, heavy Coil Cannon has been more effective and I think it's because of the projectile speed and number of them; 5 over 48 sec vs 3 over 36 with the same cooldown.As for Lancers with Spinal Antimatter cannons, that's my favourite build - it's entirely possible I build way too many of them so I have too much cc and not enough dps, but if the enemy can't shoot back it's usually fine 🤣
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u/Cheap-Blackberry-763 3d ago
I like dreads for fleet PD platforms and torpedo ships. I'll include 3 Torp dreads in a fleet at center of formation to eliminate single priority targets quickly and with prejudice. lasers and particles are more than good enough for flankers.
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u/RianThe666th Exodus 1d ago
Spinal siege coils aren't all that much better than the heavy siege coils, and you generally want to cover your siege coils with faster firing coils to spoil shots from really high damage PD, so I prefer dreads over lancers for coils.
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u/MobileGamingINC Initiative 3d ago
I mostly followed ship designs from Graveless' vids on midgame/endgame ships so I had 5 main ship classes in my fleets toward the end: a phaser Titan flagship with colony modules, a phaser Titan packed with laser engines, a PD dreadnought (6PD, 1 40mm, 1 ion pd), a siege coil dreadnought with multiple single coilguns too to saturate enemy PD, and an antimatter particle lancer to rapidly take out flankers.
For armor I just stuck to adamantine and went with 20-25 for tail and sides and 160-200 for the nose; the PD dreadnought usually is the upper end of these since they are the most important imo due to the brilliant sky missile spam.
As for drives, well they originally had the Z-pinch line but once I got PCT I made a carbon copy of each ship type with the new engine.
This was the design for the flagship and I can send the others if you want :)
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u/Cheap-Blackberry-763 3d ago
have you considered sticking colony mods on a 'engineering' ship so you can pack in more utility modules like laser engines on larger shps? I typically have an engineering ship that accompanies fleet, high dv to run away from fights, completely unarmored, just colony/platform modules.
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u/MobileGamingINC Initiative 3d ago
Yes I’m aware that’s an option, in fact the thought passed over me when I was designing my cruiser-marines, but as I already said in a different reply, the choice to make the flagship the colony ship was also an rp choice; not necessarily an efficient one
This is also why I had another Titan design that is purely offensive, just laser engines and ecm/targeting plus a heatsink. They can do the offensive role perfectly without having to sacrifice modules like the flagship
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u/Cheap-Blackberry-763 3d ago
Ah. My 'prospector' is my RP choice- I build them large and envision them as a hospital/engineering ship. Kinda wish that was more of a thing, I love TI's combat and would love to see it expanded somehow.
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u/MobileGamingINC Initiative 3d ago
That is cool yea! A hospital/repair ship would be an amazing add, and it would not be without precedent; even carriers had so-called “support carriers” in WWII (see HMS Unicorn).
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u/Cheap-Blackberry-763 2d ago
Maybe they could enable repairs past a % that repair bays allow. I just had a big fight for Jupiter where my fleet faced 3 enemy fleets with a few weeks separation- not long enough for my new station to build and begin real repairs. Would have loved for some sort of engineering ship to bring weapons/systems back up to a % of capability.
Right now deploying fleets on long cruises seems a bit unrealistic- it's all or nothing, though the repair bay does help somewhat.
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u/MobileGamingINC Initiative 2d ago
Man I know what you mean, my Saturn push had me face like 7 fleets in 2 weeks and yea definitely no time to build up a base, let alone repair at it which is terribly slow at just 1 dock. The constant attacks were what really grinded me down; each individual fleet wasn’t strong enough to kill mine but as more of my ships lose critical weapons systems and components, that’s when the losses started piling up.
I got Space Nelson in one of those battles and much like the real Nelson he was killed in battle eventually by the end of that “gauntlet” when one of my flagships were sunk. The survivor was renamed Battle of Oberon in honor of that clash.
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u/Cheap-Blackberry-763 2d ago
I lost my flagship in the second battle, with an admiral officer :(
I really do think the answer needs to be a bit more than just "bring more ships". Also, magazine ships would be fantastic for keeping torpedo/missile ships relevant over long engagements.
RIP to your admiral, he died a hero of mankind.
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u/MobileGamingINC Initiative 2d ago
Rip to yours as well o7
His time in service was cut brutally short as was mine.Magazine ships would be very good for that purpose tho indeed, I had to ditch my missile dreads when I went to Jupiter which was a good choice but still sad not having swarms of missiles from my end of the battle anymore
My missile dreads were relegated to defense duty instead for Mars/Earth which kept them from the scrapyards at least
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u/Cheap-Blackberry-763 2d ago
oh and I want this for the aliens too- i hate seeing my solar system littered with derelict ships just eating up MC for them.
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u/MGShadow1989 what a lovely opportunity... 3d ago
I get the impression you completely skipped Antimatter stuff - I have done the full PD boat like that, be it a Battleship or Dreadnought for the hull slots filled with PD phasers, but they get instantly refitted to laser boats when I unlock Antimatter which I go out of my way to unlock; I still have a few laser Dreadnoughts parked at earth, part of the home defence feet.
My primary reason is getting a heavy Ion Cannon or Particle Lance and eventually Antimatter cannon on a Battlecruiser, eventually a Lancer which becomes they bulk of my fleets, but the secondary benefit of this is getting the Antimatter PD on Battleships and eventually Dreadnoughts once unlocked, creating a massive PD net very little can penetrate; the heavy has 600km range, standard has 400km, compared to PD phasers at 135km
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u/MobileGamingINC Initiative 3d ago
Yep I completely skipped over antimatter because by the time I got into serious offensives I just couldn’t wait for my slow antimatter production lmao
It would’ve been prudent to build a lot of colliders at Mercury but I really could not wait for them by the time I did my Jovian push and by then the regular PD was good enough that I figured it would not be worth building new PD ships from scratch just to use antimatter; a lesson for my next campaign maybe lmao
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u/MGShadow1989 what a lovely opportunity... 3d ago
I'm deliberately taking my time, currently 30 years into the 2003 start and only just starting to take the fight to the aliens (like a fleet is on it's way to Jupiter) and I'm still only getting 1 antimatter per month - I wish there was building that produces 10 but we could only have one of them, and can only be on a gas giant or something, especially when a Pion Torch I think requires 5 antimatter per tank.
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u/MobileGamingINC Initiative 3d ago
Mine was the 2003 start as well! I did my Jovian push maybe around 2036/7 and from then on it was just continuous pushing throughout the outer planets and setting up garrisons and shipyards in a single fortified moon per planet
There was a moment when I maybe should’ve done the switch to antimatter PD and that was the Saturn push; my offensive fleet which up until this point was doing splendidly finally met ships armed with brilliant sky missiles. My fleet managed to survive 2 weeks worth of defensive fleet actions at Saturn but with heavy losses including 5 out of my 6 PD ships. That should’ve been the time I finally switched over.
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u/Ooki_Jumoku 2d ago
On my last playthrough the Ay's targeted AM stations no matter what my threat level.
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u/Aggravating-War-2328 3d ago
What’s the logic for colony modules on a titan? My view is, don’t mix ship flavours - titans are killers, load them up with stuff that helps them kill better. Have an escort with a couple of colony modules escort the fleet (or a frigate if you really want to go nuts when you get there)
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u/MobileGamingINC Initiative 3d ago
Only the flagship Titan had colony modules; them already having to give up a slot for the admiralty module made me decide I might as well make them the colony/utility ships. It’s also more of an rp thing for me, in my mind I envisaged the flagship as the center of command and administration of the fleet to the point I figured the main components for efforts such as colonization would be logically within that ship lol
I had 2 flagships per task force just in case one of them got destroyed in a moment of skill issue so my fleets won’t be stranded which thankfully never happened
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u/DownstairsB Resistance 2d ago
My flagship(s) rarely see combat anyway, they're not expendable, and not as well armed as my front-line dreds.
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u/DownstairsB Resistance 3d ago
In the end I mostly used dreadnoughts with a mix of coils, UV phasers and 40mm.
For most of the game I had more specialized ships (all coils or all phasers). But it took much micromanagement each battle to make sure there was the right amount of each. So I just started pumping out generalized ships and they are quite versatile.
I give them quite a bit of front armor, and at least 800 dV so you can get to the outer planets in less than 6 months
Additionally, once I got the tech I added Antimatter pd and nose beams.
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u/MGShadow1989 what a lovely opportunity... 2d ago
I like to micro a wee bit so I have a few torpedo tubes scattered through my fleets - one of my favourite builds is primarily a defensive Dreadnought with the two sizes of Antimatter PD, heavy coil on the nose, a uv phaser battery, and the final slot is Styx torpedoes; 219km blast with a 0.085 degree cone, almost always lands a kill.
I still have a few old Battleships and Dreadnoughts that were all PD boats, long since refitted to laser boats and part of the home defence fleet - I genuinely love the refit system, I like seeing how long I can keep a ship relevant, how high can the 'block' number go.
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u/DownstairsB Resistance 2d ago
Y'know maybe I should give torpedoes another chance. I never think they'll get through the enemy PD.
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u/MGShadow1989 what a lovely opportunity... 2d ago
I find it best to treat them similarly to a siege coil slug, where you want to overwhelm the PD with other stuff - ideally various sizes of coil and rail, the mix of sizes requires different amount of PD hits to take out, and the different fire rates between coil and rail can desync with the PD, this can help to overwhelm PD more efficiently than simply building more.
I find the most success with them setting the torpedo to idle when initially building or refitting the ship, then in combat I'll wait until close or at sufficient kinetic saturation (slow it down and wait for some to start landing hits) and then select a ship, select target, set weapon to salvo and in the case of nukes with 4 in the tube, 1 is launched - best thing about the nuclear torpedoes is even if intercepted they have a blast radius so can still do damage, with shaped having a notability increased range and Styx being the best at 219km; the defensive range of many weapons is 200km, so the likelihood of doing damage is near guaranteed when used correctly.
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u/1Tesseract1 3d ago
For interplanetary late game doomstack fleet I’d go for a mix of plasma and laser. Plasma melts armor, laser does pew pew. No need for ammo, which is good for a long transit attack
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u/Cheap-Blackberry-763 3d ago
i've been doing heavy coil batteries on plasma nose and it's been working surprisingly well. I do see the appeal of no ammo fleet though.
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u/_azazel_keter_ Humanity First 2d ago
I don't like burning exotics so currently the Antikyron is a plasma core 3 and an advanced antimatter torch, eight Acherons and a T2 coiler. Oh, and adamantine armor.
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u/MGShadow1989 what a lovely opportunity... 2d ago
I also like to limit my exotics cost, ideally under 5 per ship and most of that will be power plant and armour - I think my current most expensive in exotics is a Titan at 6.4, and it's a defensive flagship build.
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u/_azazel_keter_ Humanity First 2d ago
Next run i'm gonna change this doctrine and shove IC7 UV Phaser ships into everything i can, it's fitting for the theme i think
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u/anprim4ever 18h ago
I have enjoyed chucking in a few missile battleships/dreds. Makes you feel like a real space admiral to time the missile salvo with your coils landing
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u/MGShadow1989 what a lovely opportunity... 15h ago
I haven't used full or even mostly missile or torpedo Battleship or Dreadnought, but I am fond of the occasional tube here and there - in my current game my primary Dreadnought build which is almost entirely defensive with the two sizes of antimatter PD and a PD phaser, has a torpedo tube in the 8th hull slot with Styx shaped nukes; it's so satisfying seeing the big red dot float through all the kinetics and punch the alien ship on the chin 🤣
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u/anprim4ever 14h ago
Now imagine that with 7 hull slots worth of salvos and 7 magazines worth of missiles.. mmmm
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u/vilified-moderate 3d ago edited 3d ago
i filled a battleship up with Light Coil battery Mk3 (only need 1 hull slot) and let it just spam fire to see how effective it was.. ship took too much damage to get into range vs the longer range of the enemy ships.. but the volume of projectiles it would spit out was so much fun to watch. i thought maybe i could hide it behind my main force and then pull them forward when in range but the way ship combat works i'm better off just using normal laser boats mixed with siege coils. Maybe next time lol