Super-armor tanked Campaign Battles

So, I’ve been playing the Campaign lately (Which I FINALLY found a fix for! Huzzah!) and, after expanding a few planets outwards, I almost without fail get hit by one of these horrible monster fleets.

Basically, they’re set up with an absurd amount of armor- so much so that literally nothing hurts it. I get lucky shots in, sure, but by the time I run into these my fleets just don’t stand a chance. I’ve tried building fleets with high firing rates and heavy defense (basically trying to match them) and fail. I go for heavy, high-armor damage weapons, and still no. Nothing I seem to try manages to put a dent in them past superficial armor damage.

I’m not exactly the best ship builder (I think I over-specialize, or maybe under-specialize), so maybe someone can help me figure out a way to deal with these monsters?

I am going to guess that you’ve tried the various Beam Lasers? Not high right of fire but there are very few armoured designs with adequate weapons that can sustain a constant attack. The other question - are they all armoured? An old trick is to put armoured tanks in front in order to suck up fire while less armoured ships in the back fire over their armoured brethren. A solution for that is to play with the orders to retaliate or defend and your ships should when range permits fire over to the other ships.

I admit I don’t play the campaign that often and prefer the human challenges that abound where armoured tanks have very limited usefulness.

Tried Frigate spam? The Ion Cannon while having a low armour piercing rate has an incredible rate of fire (higher than the Cruiser Laser) and you might get a fast frigate (speed of 1.00) to survive for a while. Fighter spam is sometimes usefull in those situations.

What race are you using and what supports are with these fleets? If you could recreated a reasonable facsimile and post it online I am sure you’ll find lots of adequate retaliations that should give you an idea.

Berny_74
We need more challengers!