General information about fleet in Stellaris Stellaris guide, tips

Last update: 14 March 2019

In Stellaris, you spend most of your time taking care of economy and managing your empire. However, a time may come where either from your initiative, or through one of your allies, you'll be in a state of war. You need to always be prepared for war and constantly increase the limit of your fleet and modernize it. Our guide is here to help.

On the one hand, increasing the limit of your fleet is very costly in the terms of upkeep. In order to maintain a large fleet you must sacrifice some of the profits on your ships.

Remember that each planet increases the limit of maximum number of units. The limit also increases when you expand the cosmoport to higher levels. What's important, each unit has its own weight which determines how much slots it fill in the maximum number of units. Civilian shits and defense stations don't count to the limit and you can produce as many of them as you want. However, remember that each such unit has its upkeep. In case of civilian ships it won't cost you much, but a well supplied fleet will have great impact on your wallet. In case of combat units the situation is as follows: Corvette - 1; Destroyer - 2; Cruiser - 3; Battleship - 4. It means that producing few battleships early in the game can completely deplete the unit limit.

No matter the size of the unit, you will always see the above panel above it. It shows the affiliation of the squad to a specific faction, its role and combat value. Combat value doesn't describe the damage dealt during specific time, but the value of components used for producing the unit. This determines the combat strength. The more expensive the components, the more expensive and better equipment sections in which larger equipment types can be placed. Combat value doesn't precisely describe the damage but it is a good value to grade chances against enemy squads. If your units were produced by using cheaper components, you aren't necessarily going to win. Very frequently lower combat value allows winning if your units were well designed.

You can't allow the computer to automatically distribute components and create designs. It is important for each part to be thoroughly planed and units named in such way that you always know what role a squad serves in your fleet. Remember that each ship project can be named according to its function, it will make it much simpler for you to construct units in the cosmoport.

Check through the projects from time to time and see if you haven't developed better components which can replace the older equipment in such way that unit doesn't lose its unique character. You will never have not enough time to perform required changes, you can always use the active pause. During the first minutes of the game you can use the basic projects, but on other side at this point of the game you are rather safe from enemy aggression. It all depends on how fast you want to check your ships in combat.

The battles take place in real time. Remember that you can always escape from the battlefield. Escape will be available a while after the battle starts. Sometimes it is better to retreat from a system than to lose the whole fleet. By using the squad panel you can observe the battle similarly as in case of surface invasion.

Units are configured in such way that rarely can they focus on two squads simultaneously. Sometime you have greater chances for victory if you split the fleet and allow the enemy to focus on one while you will deal damage to him with the other one. You should escape if the deflectors are destroyed. The shields regenerate quickly, so you have great chance for a successful revenge if you wait a bit and go at the enemy with reinforcements. A typical battle to the end without controlling the state of the ships isn't effective in Stellaris.

An important aspect is to plan your actions in time. If your fleet is divided into few squads with different units, then the time when the whole squad is in range of its weapons might work as a disadvantage for you. It is best to divide units in such way that only units of same type are in the squads. If you have corvettes and battleships in your squad, then after giving an order your corvettes will probably fly at the enemy and become destroyed before the battleships will get close to the enemy. Split your fleet and give orders depending on the speed of units. It is also important to properly use the on-board computers, but this will be described further in the chapter.