Ideal fleet for the unbidden (2024)

DK2 said:

Is there an optimal feel composition to counter the unbidden? Please mention specific ship designs as well.

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The Unbidden have heavily shielded ships, and their weapons all suck vs shields. Also, they have the shortest range weapons out of all the crises.

A fleet full of Battleships, equipped with Giga Cannons and loaded to the gills with Kinetic Artillery, with as many high-tier shields as you can put on them, with Artillery computers and - if you finished Supremacy traditions - Rapid Deployment is the way to go. Rip them to shreds with long range guns before the Unbidden can fire even a single shot.

Pump the glowing bastards full of hot lead.

Cronos988 said:

If you have Cloud Lightning, Full on CL + Arc emitter battleships will also deal with them nicely. The full piercing setup is usually superior when fighting fallen empires or endgame crises (it's about 3 times as strong as the stated fleet value would indicate against FE, for example). Not sure about the Swarm, but it should work against the unbidden.

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CL and Arcs work wonders on the swarm due to their high evasion and having more armor than health.

FIBBIDEH said:

CL and Arcs work wonders on the swarm due to their high evasion and having more armor than health.

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Ok, so it's a general late-game build against everything.

DK2 said:

Aren't there missles or something which would ignore the unbidden's shields?

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Evasion + PD.

I'd add one titan with whatever aura you like.

Cronos988 said:

Ok, so it's a general late-game build against everything.

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yes, but it shouldnt. everything should be simmilary effective, nothing shoould be such superior.

But for Unbidden
Penetrating weapons, including:
1. Arc emmiters, and cloud lightning.
2. Missiles, and strikecrafts (especcialy in 2.2.5 when they are buffed)
3. Null void beam, and anything with huge bonus to hull dmg, you can use energy with this, especially if youhave some repetables in energy, but not in kinetics, missiles or strikecrafts.
If you dont have cloud lighning, and have space for other weapons, use kinetic.
For defence, use shields, lot of shields, and if you cant (bcs energy) use armor (not hull).

DK2 said:

Aren't there missles or something which would ignore the unbidden's shields?

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There are, but you can't put enough of them to make them count. Plus missiles have a long travel time - against the Unbidden, more than anything, you want range.

I'd also argue against the Penetrating setup people use. That's ideal for the Contingency, who have something like 5x more Armor and Shields than Hull. But the Unbidden are more 1:2 hull to shields, in which case you're probably better off using Kinetics.

For defense, focus heavily on shield.
For offense, There's two builds to fight against Unbidden. Focus only on one of them and don't mix both:

The main weapons are Strike Craft + Missiles (not Torpedoes) + Arc Emitters + Disruptors + Cloud Lightning. The main advantage is that by the End-Game phase (assuming default 2200) you should have a few levels of repeatable tech on Physics for Energy Weapons to make AE+D+CL combo more powerful. However, this build has the disadvantage of range. Unbidden's Matter Disintegrator has insanely long range (120 for L). CL only has 60 range while Disruptors at most have 50 range.

The main weapons are Kinetics + Null Void Beam. Kinetics (except for Autocannon) have pretty good range although still a bit lower compared to Matter Disintegrator . Kinetic Battery can start trading shots with Unbidden at 120 range (or even further with Artillery combat computer). Null Void Beam may seem really weak in number compared to other late-game weapons but don't forget it has 500% shield damage and range on par with Matter Disintegrator. With a few repeatable techs on Energy weapons, Null Void Beam is a strong hard counter against Unbidden. Besides, Null Void Beam costs only alloys and no strategic resources so it's a good choice to add in case you run low on strategic resources from replacing ships.