Stellaris – Fleet Composition Tips

Quick Tips for Fleet Composition

There are some social techs that help (but none are %, so they flatten out late game), and AP that helps early (flat 100, IIRC). The real value comes from:

• Any +% bonuses to naval capacity (Supremacy Tree w/ Supremacy diplomatic stance! A couple Strategist Commander leader benefits)
• Stuff that lets you steal naval capacity, like the Satrapy subject type you get access to via the Great Khan relic.
• Anchorages (6 anchorages + the double anchorages module)
• Fortress Worlds. Just take a small size planet and fill it with fortresses. Don’t have those worlds? Build habitats. Disable all other jobs except for just barely enough amenities so the extra pops auto-resettle to better planets.
• similarly, orbital rings.
• Going over your capacity. Have 30 Starbases? Build 35. If you have enough energy, the +125% energy cost isn’t going to put a dent in your net energy/turn. Similarly, have 2k fleet capacity? Build 4k ships. It’s only an extra +100% upkeep.

A good fleet composition usually depends on what you want to do:

Militarist Stance:

If you like invading empires for systems or total defeat I recommend armamenting yourself with Cruisers the second you get them and Battleships once you get them. Up your Alloy production to atleast +500 and then build anchorages in your core systems. Have a dedicated ship building system(s) with the starbase full of shipyards. Get the Galactic Force Projection Ascension perk of you want +100 naval capacity early game for cheap and use all militaristic and starbase capacity edicts.

Defensive Stance:

If you want to save yourself from the trouble of declaring war on enemies and defending your claims I recommend having dedicated Torpedo and Disruptor cruisers. Have one decently sized battleship fleet but not many as if you are defensive and not expanding there will be a time when you won’t be able to support more than a few battleship fleets especially early game.

Make use of your chokepoints and if your rivals are weaker than you just place some fleets along the border chokepoints. Also make fortress worlds and FTL inhibitors so that they can’t jump out of the system or give you enough time to reroute fleets to your attacked systems. The Dedicated shipyards and core systems remain the same.

Crisis:

Depending on what type of crisis you are dealing with you will mostly exploit the major flaws in their ships. The only exception is the contingency. Usually once you are about 50 years or so from the endgame just put your economy into overdrive producing as many battleships as possible. These fleets should be better if they are accompanied by a few Titans.

Most crises will throw fleets with millions of fleet power with respect to you and I recommend just increasing your alloy and EC production to max. Exceeding the fleet count shouldn’t be your concern as you can just offset that with increased production. If you are fighting something like the Prethoryn scourge just put extra fleets into production before they arrive as your fleets will rapidly decrease by the sheer number of ships they will throw at you.