Unprepared for first contact

[undercovergeek (OP)]

So…. Baddies have finally turned up off Saturn - the tiniest 8 energy weapon bearing craft currently chewing its way through the poor civilian logistics fleet

To my eternal shame I have nothing in the pipeline for defense or indeed attack

I have designed a destroyer in an emergency - I’m 18 months away from launching that ship and honestly don’t know if that will work having not asked enough noob questions here yet

Does one……

Start again and learn from lessons

Grin and bear the slow nibbling of anything in Sol until the wonky destroyer arrives

Can I SM an instant ship?

[AlStar]

Personally, I'd let them take their pound of flesh from Saturn... but if they continue on to Earth and start trying to blow up your shipyards, I'd SM in a ship or two.

[undercovergeek (OP)]

theyre now between mars and earth attacking my own transport fleets now - wheres the SM option for instant ship creation?

[Ulzgoroth]

Class Design -> select a class -> Priorities/Misc tab -> lower-left box, which may have lines like 'instant build points'.

Speaking of which if you're playing a standard start (not a pre-TN start) and don't let it auto-spend them at the start you start with a bucket of instant build points you are meant to use to generate your start-of-game fleet. That's what I used to generate an instant reaction force in the similar situation where my initial garrison ships turned out to not be strong enough for the fight you're having, because I never see the attraction of spending it all at T=0...

[undercovergeek (OP)]

wise words - however, i set my game up following a YT lets play expert who made life as difficult as possible to start with 

Found the option thanks guys - built 2 - well see how we do

[undercovergeek (OP)]

holy crap - stellaris this is not - where is the 'kill baddies' button?

[AlStar]

Depending on what they're up to, it might be worth SM'ing the research for an STO weapon, then SM'ing in an army group with, say, 10 of them. They'll tend to be harder to kill than a blodged-together destroyer, although they suffer from being unable to leave the planet they're stationed on; so hopefully your current range tech gives them enough reach.

[undercovergeek (OP)]

Well it’s been a hard time for the truckers round earth - by the time I solved the problem we’d lost 5 freighters 3 colony ships and a jump point stabiliser ship

I couldn’t keep up with missile production in the end so hastily threw together 3 beam ships that destroyed the enemy - I’m back on the sofa having a whisky and working how to recover all the wrecks including the alien one - that was a close one