In my current game with one friend and myself we started out with a several MKIV worlds around our home planets.
So far the game has been somewhat difficult for us but we are making headway by finding grav drills and setting up fortifications using special turrets from the trader.
In my section in the west I have captured the next 2 planets off my homeworld, setting up MKII radar jammers, Ion Cannons, Mass drivers, Counter Spy and Graviton Turrets with supporting turrets of 200-300. Nothing gets close enough from 100 spider turrets and if they do they slow down to a halt from the grav turrets and everything blasts them to tiny bits.
Now the only way to go is south where several MKIV planets were, we planned that route because the only advanced research station 10 planets out is in that direction.
So all our ships were concentrated in those planets clearing everything out.
In between waves I watched my West Fortified Front line take out everything that comes its way, holding strong against even 1000 ships waves.
We managed to go south enough where all the worm holes got funneled into one planet where the new frontline was being build while everything before it was beginning to be claimed.
At this time my ally had no resources and his turrets where building very slowly at his home planet and our ships were redirected to one of my fortified planets to take out 500 bulletproof fighters, since they were dieing very slowly.
Now we had a threat of 500 ships blinking on and off for about an hour now and we weren't too worried about it since our fleets could take out pretty much anything at our ai progress of 250. Each of us having around 3000 ships.
Now, his new frontline in the south had enough to defend from 1000 ships and we noticed the 500 ships were finally making their way north. Since we had scouts down there.
Then all of a sudden we get a wave of 2000 ships coming in 2 minutes, we began desperately reinforcing the new frontline to take the pressure while our main fleets come back.
Sadly it wasn't enough, our fleet was gonna take an estimated of 1 minute to arrive when the AI fleet arrived.
They busted right through the tractor beams around the wormhole and began to scatter everywhere.
Sniper shots were being shot everywhere, ship after ship were having their engines taken out.
Eventually raiders came up around and doing a strife run against the line of sniper turrets which were our last offensive turrets.
All that was left was 700 AI ships with intact engines and my ball of 80 turrets around my friends command center which were all MKI and a few MKII lazer turrets.
So I built another Forcefield Generator so we had a MKI and II FF gens.
Then the Ships began attacking our forcefields, since my turrets were under the ff they couldn't do enough damage to do mass damage my frontlines were set up to do.
But without the ff they would be goners to the ships, so it was a matter of time before the ff's were gonna give out.
Another 30 seconds at this point for our fleets to arrive.
All of a sudden when my FF had around 40% health left my friend started to build 3 more MKI turrets, Since I had 4 engineers their I was able to build them up quickly for my friend since he had no resources left. The AI ships changed targets for some reason aiming at the new FF gens giving me and opening to repair my FF.
After that we built 5 more, now the ships were constantly changing targets and unable to do any sort of damage quickly. Allowing the engineers to repair everything in the ball with ease.
The fleets managed to come and take out the rest of the AI ships, the planet now has dozens of rebuilders running around and my ships slowly pulling out to aim at a MKIV world right outside of my frontline.
We saved right after that, being in awe and too tired to continue.
What I wrote hardily described how epic that planet defense was.
