Stellaris Early Corvette Design & Pre-Contact Wars 

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"If we hit that bullseye, the rest of the dominoes should fall like a house of cards" Montus

Sounds like there are some rough edges around pre-contact wars that need to be ironed out over time. It's weird that conquering their worlds wouldn't count as conquering them. It would probably give them a danged complex -- they met aliens and the first thing that happened is their entire civilization was conquered. Would also be a bit nice to have options for the envoy. If you ARE interested in aggressive contact, the envoy can instead be assigned to slow down contact efforts by coordinating attempts to hide your communications traffic, and maybe coordinate espionage to learn more about your target. After all, your desire to fight them might be based on a number of factors, such as whether you think they present a long-term threat or might stifle expansion. We should also get basic intel on enemy ships by just being in system. Instead of squinting at models (which is not accessible for some players!) we should get basic info on their classes. Oh, this class has missile hardpoints. Oh, we fought this ship and saw lasers coming from it, so this turret is an energy weapon. We shot this ship and saw it had no shields. Etc.

Galactic Council: "According to our historical archives, you invaded a fellow sentient empire as soon as you discovered FTL travel, what say you?" Montu: "I didn't invade them, I discovered them!" I'm dead xD. I'll probably try this out though.

I never thought I'd see the day Montu was sponsored by THE Clash of Clans. Truly a man making his way up in the galaxy

I like the idea of pre-contact war but I love vivisection more!

Clash of Clans has really been going hard on sponsorships lately

Devouring swarm: *excited screeching*

Just by chance, did you confuse tic tac toe with rock paper scissors?

I use pre-contact wars quite a bit. Especially if I can see that they have a good origin like say remnants, shattered ring, or even life seeded. Sure those are great starts and make for some tough pre-contact wars but they are winnable. Once had a game where I spawned next to a shattered ring and a remnants empire and when I saw that I put everything I had into building the best fleets I could and conquered them both in pre-contact wars. So got a ringworld and relic world to play around with that I otherwise wouldn't have had.

Part of me wishes the early game would last longer. I feel envoys establish communications way too quickly, eliminating any cool first contact stories or fun with early corvette fleets. But I get this feeling in Civilization games where I want 70% of the game to be played in the bronze age lol, so could just be a me thing.

I was playing on console the other day and almost destroyed another player in a First Contact war. I scouted his capital and sent ships to bombard it. As I moved my armies up to invade, he broke First Contact and diplomatically forced my fleet and army to retreat. It was very exciting because nobody in the lobby had ever seen a First Contact war and he had no clue who was attacking him or where the came from. Two of the players actually became very scared of me after that lol

I love these videos! Keep making more of these ship design vids, they really help me get better

Great video, would like to see more strategic videos like this. Especially more about ship design.

Be me. Roleplay game online. Playing Authoritarian Xenophile Materialist Criminal Megacorp. Roleplay as Hutt cartel. Initiated First Contact. "Yeah if i knock some sense into them early on, i'll be golden." ... .. . Fight becomes a back&forth slug. I'm losing the upper-hand. His fleets are constantly at higher fleet power than mine. First contact finishes. "Lemme see who these guys are" Doomsday Determined Exterminators "Well, there goes my game."

Oooh I have not thought to actually look at the ship models to do a counter in a pre-contact war. Nice idea!

Of course, this only works if there's another empire that starts the game very near to you. Otherwise, the distance is great enough to give them enough time to prepare their fleet. In general, I find that most indigenous lifeforms have no shields, so a triple laser corvette is by far the best design.

It’s so funny that I just had my very first pre-contact war last night and then you release this video!

i've learned so much !!! clear and precise thank you for that

good video as always mate. i would love to see late game corvete and battleship design (the only2 ship types i use)

Awesome strategy video. I think it will change entirely the way I do first contact :) A real gem!

While an interesting option, it seems like this system isn't properly fleshed out, particularly with the conclusion when you win. With First Contact coming out, I think it'd be cool if they incorporated some of the new mechanics into inter-empire contact. Maybe there could be some equivalent to Awareness that tracks your intel on other empires? With stealth craft and envoy actions enabling you to reduce the "awareness" other empires have of you and raise your own of them? Or the option to just beam a bunch of data to them to raise their awareness and speed up contact? Possibly with misleading data to give them an Intel penalty on you for some amount of time? I also think establishing communications should be an option, not automatic. Deciphering their language shouldn't _require_ you to actually establish formal diplomatic contact if they haven't deciphered yours. And even then, hostile relations could simply be formalized with a continuation of the war if one or both parties desired it. It'd also be nice if you could actually destroy outposts during a contact war. Sometimes all you really want is to take an important chokepoint or colonizable planet, not to wipe them out completely. Maybe they could get a partial influence refund and/or retain a claim on the system?

I've never tried doing first contact wars, but this video was very informative. I might have to bump down the difficulty a little bit and give it a try 👍 I do have a question though. In the rock paper scissors of ship design, would it make sense to replace shields with armor when going against missile corvettes and PD missile corvettes since those ignore shields? Or are the shields important to take care of the starbase?

I had a first contact war, I was the united nation of earth and they started the fight. and went hard as i could to deal as much damage as possible. but I was trying to make contact at the same time so the war didn't last just a couple space battles here and there, no permanent losses, that changed when I declared war on them for some of their solar systems.

Can't wait to try this, thanks Montu!

The loop of what beats what at 7:07 needs an extra line between PD+Missile and Laser/Kinetic. If it's more than 3 (true rock paper scissors), then the results of what happens if you end up with stuff that isn't a direct counter can matter. (I assume that future videos will test mixed fleets as well?)

You can put your envoy on the first contract, but just not vlick to progress it, which helps a little bit with the oh crap response timing

Damn thats some high skill tactics. I will definitely try this

Nice. Hope it still work like that - I want to try it!

The last MP tournament I think I saw had at least 1 pvp first contact war just to prevent early expansion.

The only time I tried this, I was about to invade their capital and then they made contact, it was pretty intense war. Since I left them weekend I eventually made them my vassal and integrated them out of spite for denying me their capital (this was pre overlord)

Hmm, I never really thought about doing that 🤔 But that's usually because I play on grand admiral with scaling to mid game and as I struggle to keep them away with starbases for a long time until I have superior fleets and use pre-ftl wars to only slow their expansion 😂

While we are not legally allowed to bomb them without their consent, we have interpreted the weird clicking noises they make when they burn as such.

Is this the first Montu sponsor? Congrats man!

There is one more ship design - flack + 2 lazers. Flack has big damage against shields.

Somehow even though my ship is presented in the enemy capital system, the enemy starbase keep repairing and building ships during fight. And there are a couple of stations too close to the star base, if attacked, the whole fleet will be drawn into the starbase.

Tic-tacs beat toes everyday in my book! 🤣

Hey! I have been following your channel recently because i started playing stellaris again after a break. I have a question: I recognize the term „dark forest“ from a book series „the three suns“, where it basically describes that the universe is a forest and species are Hunters trying to survive. Does this add up with „dark forest“ in stellaris? Or what does that mean in the game?

And to think. Autobuild seems to love loading my starbases and corvettes with mass mass drivers.

Church of Jeff, I love it!

Hey Montu. Are you going to be doing a fresh beginners guide to planets, economy, ships etc etc for the upcoming release of the "First Contact" expansion??

Montu really hates Rock, Paper, Scissors, but he sure loves Tic, Tac, Toe ;)

This is hilarious. I suggest shooting this idea over to Lathland and see what he can do with it. It would be so funny.

Indeed, Jeff wills it !!!

Where is that clip from in the beginning

Against missile ship... would it not be better to switch from 2shield1armor to 3armor? that way that shield pen bonus is negated

Saw this and thought I’d try it out. First empire conquered - doomsday origin 😭

I feel like the doomsday origin could make incredible use of this origin as your economy and thereby fleet in the early game should be superior to anything else and an easy war should make up for the lack of guaranteed worlds

I actually usually attack the very first empire I contact, didn’t know I could attack them before that.

maaan. if only this would've come out 2 days sooner xD

They list that first contact war achievement as very easy on the wiki. Still haven’t gotten it!

You sir, are awesome.

Montu's in the big leagues now he got the CoC sponsorship

Does anyone know what show is the footage at the beginning from? Thanks in advance.

How long until they program the ai to do this. That sounds like a nightmare

I swear I recognize that first few seconds of footage from some movie I saw a long time ago. Can anyone confirm? What was it called?

I dig it. I don't start precontact wars, but there are plenty of hostile empires in my lineup. As soon as one attempts to hijack my ships, I send my fleet straight at him.

I tried attacking a colonizing planet, the progress bar stopped but just stayed there, I couldnt get my fleet to bombard the planet anymore and it said the planet was under my control but still owned by the other empire, something about them surrendering? whats going on?

Where is that intro video from?

Dont people do 1/4 PD-Kinect-Laser + 3/4 Kinect-Laser-Laser vettes? Or similar?

didnt realize hearing montu call it tic tac toe instead of rock paper sicssors three separate times would bother me

Love all the Tic Tac Toe in this game.

I didn't know Clash of Clans still existed

So use all four

Does this work vs. very high difficulty AIs? I am trained on civilization, where they get multiple settlers and military units to start with, so you need some very special sauce to tackle them early.

Whats the opening animation from?

And then they complete the first contact as your assault force is landing :D

Tbh next dlc/update they should do next is completely integrate 'real space mods' into the game the mechanics and features that the mod has would greatly improve the game

I suppose you can easily role-play an explanation - the corvettes that destroyed the fleet and starbases are clearly some 'pirates' or some 'evil empire' - it's not like the civilian pops on the planet ever saw them up close. The invading armies? Anyone who saw them is dead. But then comes the colony ship... and the colonists say they come from ANOTHER empire that saw what happened, dealt with the pirates, and now comes to help the local populace to rebuild after that terrifying war that just wiped out their previous government. They even offer humanitarian (xenoitarian?) help and all, doing their best to rebuild the broken civilization... (because it's profitable to do so, but who cares?)

Why not use point defense, missile and laser?

This...changes everything.....

I can say from recent experince that this strategy doesn't easily work. The problem is stopping a planet from colonising, when I tried to stop a planet with 8 missile corvettes all it did was slightly slow down the inevitable and if you take their capital while colonising they don't get killed off and it appears their planet automatically finishes colonising

No shout out to Kizzy? She does this stuff in almost every pvp lobby I see her in. (Also, the is no end card for follow up video on my end)

10:51 It's they're own fault too, for being on our planet before we got there.

I can’t ever bombard planets it always says protected by start base even after I destroy it

The hive is early

lol and I wondered why multiplayer servers so often ban precontact invasion

I'm pretty clueless with the diplomatic side of things as well as wars

I play way too peacefully in the game now ever since the update that brought envoys, I would have never used this

Jeff wills it!

I think somebody might have been playing Star Control Origins at some point in the past..

“Oh my goodness me that’s sexy” to having 69 pop is just perfect

It's tic-tac-toe with 4 pieces! 😆

ep3o was also sponsored by CoC right?

This historical archive of the Church of Jeff only proves that we were right to vassalise them…

Wish they would allow for first contact wars to continue, although i suppose it's a question of which casus belli it would be, as you have no claims on the alien race, but its still annoying. Although i love the ad style montu, getting into the big leagues!

i like to pre contact war with post apocalyptic origin and bombard them to a tomb world. very funny.

BRING ME MORE ART-DECO STYLE SHIPS PLEEAAAAAASSSEEEEEEEE!!!

Just bring in a mix of ships 3 of each so multiples of 3.

I think you mean “Rock, Paper, Scissors” 😊

YES YES

I’m excited about your Clash sponsorship. Getting paid to promote something that isn’t garbage is rare.

I do Flak + 2 Lasers for my early corvette. The Flak is still decent against missiles, however unlike Point Defense it has 50% Tracking, so it also does decent damage against the corvettes themselves. Lasers are better than Kinetic, as Montu pointed out. Anti-shield is already covered by the Flak, so you can safely opt to use the other two slots for anti-armor & hull Lasers.

Bold of you to assume that it takes shorter than 30 days for your ships to show up after an retreat.

this seems like a pipe dream against grand admiral ai lol

What would the Church of Jeff acolytes Traits be ?

I mean playing a hyper military empire I have never had trouble railroading railroading the early ai. This seems a little unnecessary, just let them colonize and invade them, get free pops.

I thought missiles had their own unique slots? I am on console, so this may be different on pc.

Remember playing as a determined exterminator. Wiped out one my neighbors before they could establish contact lol

The secret message around 5 min 30 sec is glorious. 😂❤