Against literally ten times my number I anticipated a few good kills before a swarm of predatory star torps went up my ass, and instead these dreadnoughts mopped the floor with them.

**Reasons I believe was able to win:**  
\-Alien capital ships were few in number and most of them were low tech (although a few were proper late game boats with x-rays and mag cannons and predatory star torps) and the siege coils made quick work of them after the escorts took their PD away with them to try and flank.

\-It's relatively late in the campaign and I'm on the verge of winning (this was one of the last strongholds in the system) which means they've been taking their garrison fleets out to play, so lots of orange laser garbage in this swarm.

\-However, despite that there were a *lot* of mid and high tech flankers in this swarm (the x-rays are where the one kill they got and most of the damage came from) and they still got bodied by the 4-slot phaser battery. I think the reason I wasn't simply zerg rushed with the literally dozens of predy torp escorts they brought is because of the *immensely* generous distribution of forces on the battle map. You'll always have at least a third of the forces on the field. So, being out numbered ten to one I was able to bring my entire force while the aliens had to come in piecemeal. Realistically, they should have had a line of torpedo boats a thousand kilometers wide that would break my fleet in half, but the current way the game distributes units means that's not possible (not a complaint - obviously there are hardware limitations - just an observation).

  
**Things I've learned here and in my campaign thus far:**

\-Phaser batteries are utterly fantastic when used in an organized fleet formation, I don't think a single torpedo touched me all battle (and you sure as shit *know* if a predatory star hits). I'm aware that the meta is something to the effect of a mix of laser lancers and gun dreadnoughts/titans but I've been having way more success than I expected just relying on the phaser batteries to kill the flankers while my siege coils kill the capital ships. Using the 4-slot instead of four more 1-slots means that I miss out on a shitload of PD but it also meant that these ships *very much* still had teeth even after running out of ammunition about one third of the way chewing through the enemy fleet. And tbh the three 1-slots were more than enough even for the dozen+ escort torpedo volleys I encountered multiple times throughout the fight.

\-The aliens have all these crazy powerful weapons (i.e. X-rays, preddy torps, etc), but they either pile it up in flankers with no staying power or they distribute the ships that have them piecemeal amongst the orange or violet laser chaff, so I've never felt as threatened by these alien game winners as I feel like I should have been (I'm also on accelerated so I'd think I'd be seeing even more of them but they've been a minor presence throughout the campaign, not just here when I've got them on the ropes).

\-Might be a strange comparison but the aliens in their current state honestly remind me of one of the more common historical assessments of the French Army during the Nazi invasion in WWII: their tanks are often argued to be superior to the German models, but they didn't concentrate them enough to be able to actually make full use of them. It feels like the aliens late-game tech works the same way: I never see it in large enough numbers to matter. I wonder how the late-game combat dynamics would change if the alien AI was altered so they prioritized concentrating their heaviest hitters into strike fleets rather than the current piecemeal distribution I've encountered in my game. I feel like a full X-ray fleet with torpedo battleships would absolutely mulch this same fleet.

  
Curious to know other people's thoughts on this matter: what has been your experience with the way the aliens wage war in your campaigns, and what did the unit distribution look like?

Can't believe this worked. Alien flanker swarms really just have zero capacity to kill a properly kitted late game dreadnought line in the current build.