Dealing with AI Raid Starships

[Vinraith]

These things are driving me nuts.

They run my defenses, penetrate into my backfield home systems, and pick off a command station or two before I realize they're in there and can get a defensive force over to deal with them. I don't want to have to garrison ships at worlds way off the front lines, I haven't got the hardware to spare, what do more experienced players do to deter AI raid starships?

[Fox Soul]

I actually never had problems with raid starships, they are usually one of the first few ships to die off first in an AI wave.

In my signature is a link, that defensive plan I've seen it killing MKII raid starships with ease.
But out of everything in my plan the main thing that stops the raid ships are the gravity turrets.

Gravity turrets will reduce the speed of all ships with'en its range, I only use MKI which reduces speed down to 8.
So while the raid starship just comes in range of my turrets its beginning to move slower and will take longer for it to come into attack range.

If you set up like 8 MKI heavy cannons around your command station then that should be enough to successfully defend your command station from a single MKI raid starship if pairing up with well placed Gravity turrets.

If your warp points a bit more complex then I would just put like 3 gravity turrets around the warp point for your frontline then have 8 heavy cannons between the warp point and your command station but in range of the warp point.

Hope that helps.

[Tusoalsob]

Sometimes when  see that in an AI system next to my systems ( scouting ) there are 3-more Raid Starships, i get a sniping force in there to kill them before they join anny CPA's. when they come in lower numbers the new beam turrets help and tohave some def behind the front line.

When they get me really bad i need to relokate my battelships with some transport in the system they are hassesing so the battleships can take them out with there range and the speed of the transporter. Simply load them when they are ot of range and unload them when ther are nera the raidstarships. ANd of corse own raid starships help too .

[x4000]

If they are breaking through your main defenses, think about that is happening: a big wave comes in, your turrets are flooded, and a bunch of stuff sticks in your tractor beams. Your turrets shred all that, but it might take a few seconds or even a minute. Meanwhile, the raid starship is immune to tractors and so slips through. It would take a long time to kill, so unless you manually gave your turrets a raid starship priority, they probably will focus on the smaller ships first so that the tractor beams can be freed up to stop more ships.

Meanwhile that raid starship slips past almost unscathed with nothig even shooting at it anymore. It makes a beeline foe your command station on that planet, probably, and goes right through the forcefield and quickly kills it.

There are three problems here:
1. There is too much congestionin your main defensive area for the raid starship to be shot much.
2. There is a long stretch where the raid starship is crossing the distance to your command station and meeting not resistance.
3. When it gets to your command station, even if you put turrtmwta there, it kills your command station so fast that your turrets don't have time to do their job.

Normally it's the job of tractors to "hold while you punch," so to speak. And if that fails, then the force fields can do the same. For any ships where that doesn't work, you instead need to use very different tactics. Turrets have a long range, so are great for making "corridors of pain" through which ships have to fly to get to your command station. Mines can also work for this, just not with raid starships. A dreadnought or two stationed in that corridor could also work wonders. Gravity turrets could also be used to slow that ship, though it slows your ships, too. A zenith space-time manipulator (or several) could give your ships a needed boost in speed to catch fast ships like this. Higher mark command stations have a lot more health and could give your nearby turrets more time to fire at the raid starship while it's whittling away at all that extra health. Paralyzers, if you have them, could be great in the corridor of pain. Decoy drones, if you have those, could be used to draw the fire from your command station while your turrets do their work.

There are definitely a lot of ways to go. hope that helps!

[Vinraith]

Thanks for the advice everyone, I'll experiment with some of the options and see what I can find that works for me. I keep running into turret caps (despite unlocking new ones whenever I feel I can afford to spend knowledge on something other than new ships), so my defense is getting sparser than I'd like anyway...

One interesting note:

It makes a beeline foe your command station on that planet, probably, and goes right through the forcefield and quickly kills it.

That's what I'd expect too, but it's not what they do. Instead, they run through the wormhole at the back of the system, into one of my nominally safe economic areas, and starts blowing up THOSE command stations, their accompanying reactors, and harvesters. Presumably the AI is having so much success with this tactic that it's figured out it should do it as often as possible. Suffice it to say I'm taking it somewhat personally at this point. 

P.S. Sorry for dropping this in the wrong forum, originally.

[Dragon]

Just on the topic of raid starships, what fleet ships are best for taking them out?  I have noticed that most ships do reduced damage to raid starships, and of course, missile ammo does nothing.  Are there any ships with a bonus towards raid starships?  Or at least not a penalty?

Also, I have found that Grav turrets are the main key to stopping raid starships.  That, and manually ordering your turrets or ships to attack them.

[Fox Soul]

Well, with 2 planets and a maxed cap of mk1-3 of autocannons can kill a fortress in about 10 seconds, I would imagine they can do the same with a raid starship.

[Dragon]

Ahhhh, well, Autocannons have a 15x bonus to heavy defense.  That's why they can take down a fort so fast.  They didn't have raid starships listed at all, so I'm assuming that means they do base damage, which isn't all that much.

The so called "Anti-starship" ships do a whopping 0.2 bonus (1/5 base damage) to raid starships, compared to 4x to other starships (and 16x to bombers, z-bombers, & tanks)

I did a search for "raid" on the shipdatafull.xml file, and the only ships I found that had a bonus larger then one are:
Acid Sprayers do a 50x bonus (they have larger bonuses to many things)
Anti-Armor does a 4x bonus
Bulletproof Fighters, with 5x.
Core Acid Sprayers only have a bonus of 5x (this makes them weaker then the mark 4 version, as it has a 50x bonus.)
Core.....  Many core ships (including core missile frigates, which doesn't make sense) have a 4x bonus.

Ahhh Haa!  Fighters, the baseline of our fleets, have a 5x bonus to raid starships.  Awesome!  :-)
Merc fighters are the same.
Micro Fighters do 1.5x bonus.
Planes do a 2x bonus.
Heavy Beam Cannon's also do increased damage to raid starships, a 1.5x bonus.
Laser Turrets are a 6x bonus to Raid Starships.  But their base damage isn't very high, mark 1 does 30 every one second, even with 6x, 180 per second isn't much to a raid starships.
The laser cannons on Riot Starships do a 2x bonus.



Ships that have a large bonus that raid starships are immune to:
Core Missile Frigates
EtherJet's
Snipers & Sniper Turrets
Wasps from a hive golem

[Fox Soul]

This is true that autocannons don't have much for bonus damage compared to other potential ships and turrets.
But if you can down a zenith starships in 30 seconds with mk1-4 autocannons max cap with 2 planets. I think its more than enough to bring down a raid starship.

--I don't look at bonus damage or actual stats, I go by what I experience--

[x4000]

Some of the bonuses against raid starships that are pointless are there because those ships have bonuses against all starships, not just raid starships -- but it translates to raid starships specifically for purposes of that export.  Kind of no way around that, unfortunately, but it's just a minor point of confusion hopefully.

[Burnstreet]

I found the optimal defense against Raiders (and everything else).
1. Find a Experimental Speed Booster Factory.
2. Secure it and produce Speed Bosters
3. Profit!

There is not much that is able to withstand a 5000 ship blob of death at 150 speed.

[x4000]

That's very true.

[Sunshine!]

If you have access to teleporting units, those are effective en-masse against Raid Starships.

[Diazo]

Ummm, dreadnaughts?

I do know that not everyone unlocks them as early as I do, but if my fleet has dreadnaughts in it, I don't even notice enemy starships. They just get shredded.

Got a starship commander on random, my fleet only consisted of Mk I's and dreadnaughts. In my attacks all the startships just died. Even enemy dreadnaughts died fast, although they started taking my dreadnaughts with them.

I'm not sure which starship it was (I think Fleet) but my dreadnaughts had a "100% chance to hit for 226,000 damage" on it. Can't remember the exact number, but it was a single shot from a dreadnaught doing over 200k damage to an enemy starship.

Even with the increased knowledge cost recently, just unlock the Mk I's and save them as anti-starship defence if necessary.

D.

[wyvern83]

A Black Hole Generator would also work and it would contain other slippery ships the AI's might unlock later as well as long as the system is a choke point.

If the system is supplied from a neighboring system, it'd hold provided there were enough defenses around it and/or other higher priority targets to take the heat for it til your other ships caught up with the Raid Starships. (losing the command post was a given when I did it due to very high AIP and an aggressive AI)

From my experience Black-Hole generators seem to have a low target priority for anything that's managed to get close to one. However my system had a lot of everything so they never lived long enough for me to see if they'd shot one or not.