Alternate strategies to transports?

[Kjara]

I'm going to reopen the transport question, not with their ability to deep raid, but for their ability to let me take planets I really shouldn't be able to take or at much lower losses + the amount of micro it requires.

Let me start by laying out the situation i was in:

The 2nd planet I wanted to take was two hops from my homeworld, and had an ARS and decent resources.  Since it would be my 3rd planet, I only had 16k knowledge, and at this point had unlocked mkII bombers, fighters and cruisers, missile turrets, and I think econ II command centers.  Special unit is armor ships.

The planet I wanted to take was a mkIII planet belonging to a peacemaker, its notable buildings were: Ion 1, 1 spider turret ball(pretty far from the entry wormhole), 1 fortress (also started pretty far from the wormhole), orbital mass driver and warhead intercepter from peacemaker, and a radar jammer mkII.  I was a bit rusty, so this was only on diff 7.6(which seems to be my goto difficulty to play after I haven't played for a few months).

My first assault was without transports(only having 2 planets I hadn't dedicated the energy to them yet + rustyness meant I hadn't remembered how good they were), and managed to get to and take out the command station(barely).  I had enough turrets and a distracting mass driver on the previous planet to take out the response.  I then paused and started thinking if the planet would be worth clearing out now or not.  Then I remembered transports.  My next attack involved 2 transports + ~400 various mkII units(about the same as the initial attack), but was able to get in and out, take out both the spider turrets and the fortress, losing only 1 transport(to the fortress) and about 200 units.  The cleanup was trivial once I built back up to 400 ships and had my transports drop the fleet on every guardpost, then pick them up and move them to the next. 


I'm not sure if its just fortress being more common, or the fact that I really can't use starships due to mass drivers everywhere, but in order to keep my losses low in general, it seems to require transport use offensively.  I have to admit its getting a little boring to be forced to unload, then pause to order all 1k ships to go back into their own transports, then move the transports to their next target, rinse and repeat. My losses are so much lower when doing so that its not worth not doing it.


Let me end with the question.  What are the alternate strategies to transports in this situation?  I mean I could spend 4k knowledge to unlock MRS's, but that would only help with the spider turrets, not the fortresses, and cost me a good chunk of knowledge rather than being free, so thats less than ideal.  Again, with a peacemaker, starships aren't worth the knowledge unlock, esp if I want to capture the mass drivers as distractions.  Transports don't currently have an ai progress cost, so that rules out warheads for the most part.  Perhaps they should have a small cost for losing them? 

Edit: A further note, I guess the fact that more planets have ion cannons, and the existence of mk III, IV, and V make transports more valuable as well.

[Spikey00]

I don't think there are many variations of the transporter strategy, or they all produce similar results of success.  All I do is just unlock III bombers straight on, then from then whatever I need (usually II eco station).

My procedure, from mid to late game is:
1) Have nice blob of death near the wormhole leading to the soon-to-be annihilated planet; MRS and leech/parasites are fun, along with starships to boost attack, mainly to catch the furious wrist-cutting AI fleet.
2) Load III/IV bombers and a few fleet starships into transport (include parasites/leech for creation of distractions for ion cannons/etc. and general giggles), include lots of beer and stereotypical projections of women.
3) Send trojan to enemy command station, unload.  Destroy the command station before anything else to tell the AI to make nice with nice blob of death waiting on the other side of the wormhole.  Quickly destroy affecting tractor beams in vicinity, then reload into transport.  Try to beat the forming AI forces over your friendly wormhole before they release BERSERKER BARRAGE on your planet; unload units back to the nice blob of death for immediate repairs and to amplify defense fleet.
3a)  If there are any other important structures to destroy, such as mass drivers and fortresses, then send transport that way.  The AI may at first be attacking your bombers, but they will immediately incur amnesia when you recollect them with the transport.  Fortresses won't be of much hassle, honestly as a only a few volleys are needed to destroy it.
4)  Wait for the AI to make nice with you.
5)  ?
6)  Profit!  You may experience the following, a) sudden increase in fleet (or trade-off of lower tier ships to higher tier if enemy planet was such); spend less overall on your fleet (unless you are still building ships when you know you can acquire them through leeching), b) AI has escaped and is beginning  spamming TIGER, TIGER, TIGER!! and TIGER UPPERCUT on your harvesters and possibly at your command station if you don't creep with your forcefields [then move on to your next planets, bad news especially if you have nothing on them].  Best if you don't allow the AI ships to pass your nice blob of death, or use engine damaging units to deal with escapees.  Important that your fleet be in a single area so as to have concentrated and focused fire, along with MRS and starfleet assistance.
7)  If the planet has some problematic structures that can be captured (ie. ion cannon), send your main fleet in after you have OMNOMNOM'd the enemy scourge after you have built a colony ship.  I usually have a control group of engineers speed up the construction.  Deploy colony ship near your wormhole (or somewhere else safe), and use engineers to immediately assist.  Costs no resources (that I know) and gains constant HP so survivability increases (construction cannot be disrupted by weapons fire).

Once captured, FRD or attack-move remnants.  Ion cannons can help clean up if they are able to 1HKO turrets; at this point you should proclaim, "you are on the way to destruction."  Scout next planet, send taunting message "you have to chance to survive make your time" "ha ha ha ha....", then follow procedure to  inspire bomber pilots to take off every ZIG for great justice once again, afterward turning to your main fleet and yell, "OUR ARROWS/weapons WILL BLOT OUT THE SUN/wormhole" as you await applause at your completely original speech.

TL;DR; main fleet to cover wormhole on your side while you transport ~200 bombers and misc. to destroy command station and other important structures.  Much easier than to face both defenses and AI ships (and then have AI forces pillaging on your own planet).

I don't think you can do without transports unless you're Rambo.  =\

[Sunshine!]

Infiltrators are a counter-strategy for transports.  If you do it right, your mob of 1400 infiltrators can deepstrike through 7+ enemy planets (with two or three of them being Mk3/4), and they annihilate fortresses faster than bombers.  Also are much better against turrets, and cause engine damage, so the enemy has problems pursuing them.  I don't know how well infiltrators do against command stations anymore with command stations having gotten massive HP boosts, but they should still be quite effective at destroying anything you'd otherwise use bombers for.  Also, much cheaper and faster to build than bombers.  Surprisingly hard to kill as well.  And there's enough of them that you'd have to suffer absolutely massive amounts of attrition to not have a viable (400 or so) force when you hit the target planet.

[Kjara]

Infiltrators would probably work, but I find they only work against ai's that arn't lucky enough to have aoe units, they die way too fast to lightning shuttles and grenade launchers(plus flak and lightning turrets do a number on them as well later in the game if planets get built up a bit more), plus I was sorta hoping a counter that didn't require a specific special unit, though your point is valid .

I guess I just feel that transports shouldn't be such a dominate strategy(as you said, bomber III's + transports always works), as it seems to take alot of strategic consideration out of the game.  For example: frigates are slower than bombers and fighters, but if they spend all of their time being moved around by transports, this doesn't matter in the slightest(besides the fact they take a fractional amount of time more to load into the transport after killing each target).

I still feel that transports are large enough that orbital mass drivers should target them, which would probably make peacemaker a hard type ai, but would force you to consider alternate strategies on at least some planets. 

[Spikey00]

Infiltrators get hooked up by tractor beams, even if there are a lot of them.  If we're talking about unit-specifics, then of course stuff like spy planes are good.

Perhaps a new structure type that prevents transports from... transporting units, or rather, disable their abilities to load/unload on that planet (though then of course they could unload at adjacent planet and send them back in)?

[Sunshine!]

Tractor beams are never really a worry to me when using infiltrators because their ship count is so high.  Even getting 500 ships tractored on the course of your journey doesn't really matter all that much.