Defending against waves of a thousand or more.

[sirpounce]

So how do you stop massive waves of a thousand ships or more?  They always overwhelm the first system they attack, and it they decimate two to three systems before my defenses wear them down or they run into a fortress.  (Playing the game vanilla btw, no expansions yet)

[Ramsar]

If your turrets can't handle it, you can use your fleet to defend against the biggest waves, and if you know the fleet composition of the wave you can also opt to only send those ships that are most effective against the AI ones. To this purpose I always have a bunch of transports sitting around in the vicinity of my largest fleet, such that I can quickly redeploy my main fleet in case a large wave would arrive in one of my systems.

[Red Spot]

Like seen on the screenshot
(Bit over the top, but it 'stops' anything.)

[x4000]

Minefields work great for stopping or slowing large numbers of ships, but make sure you put your tractors away from the mines or they will actually pull many ships to safety in an effort to hold them still! Setting up defenses on common or sensible attack vectors on the planet can really help. With mines and turrets all along it, rather than just at the ends. Multiple force fields all coverin the command station can also help buy turrets outside the force fields time to do their work.

Also, a military command station can work wonders in just this sort of front-lines situation. The translocation shot can buy you a ton of time, and the higher mark ones have a ton of health. If you can limit the waves coming to just one planet via gate-raiding, then you can keep you need for military command stations to probably just a single planet, or possibly two.

If the ai is slipping past you into your territory before you have a chance to mop them up, you can put a forcefield over the side of the wormhole on which the ai is. Not the side they would emerge from, that doesnt work. Except those ai ships that are immune to force fields or have teleporting, that will block them in.

Good luck!

[chemical_art]

Gravity effects are as powerful against 1000 ships as one ship, so feel free to use them to buy precious time. In particular, the gravity turrets MK II's and III's really slow down the enemy, and they are no less effective under shields! (I think). While effective against all but a few units, gravity stomps nenzul younglings and their ilk.

[Panopticon]

Parking a Light Starship or a Flagship at the turrets that are doing the most work can help a lot too, since they can boost their attack power. Spider turrets can also do wonders to slow down or outright stop a lot of ships, and are especially wonderful combined with Military CommStats.

[sirpounce]

Well I'm doing better but I just got flattened by a 700 mark I bomber run.  Mk II military station, Mark II shield generator, tractor turrets, gravity turrent, fortress mk 1(Which seems to work wonders on everything except bombers.) 20 spider turrent, 20 rocket turrets, Plus about nine hundred ships.  About  100-200 bombers got in range of the shield and it collapsed.  Spider turrents made sure they didn't go anywhere afterwards but I lost the mark IV bomber ship factory. 

Why is the fortress so useless against bombers? 

Thanks for helping out a newb. 

[x4000]

Bombers are specifically for killing fortresses, forcefields, and structures -- that's what they're designed for.  You'll want to unlock a turret of a sort that is good against the polycrystal hull type in particular, or use mobile ships that are good against polycrystal, to survive bomber raids in particular.

[Panopticon]

Huge bomber waves are a special kind of terror.

Standard fleet fighters are a good counter for them, though.

[Shrugging Khan]

I always play shizo, so I dunno if it holds up against single-type waves, but:

Use mixed, drawn out defences. A small ring of mines around the wormhole, a larger minefield in between the wormhole and your CS, Tractors all along the way, a large concentration of various turrets directly in front of the CS (far enough away to get some extra range, close enough to be repaired by engineers below the FF). Layer your forcefields to gain some extra protection if necessary, be sure to build counter-sniper turrets if the enemy uses snipers. You might also want to combine lightning turrets, flak turrets, and tractor turrets around the wormhole for maximised area damage.

With this, you will string the attackers out all across the system so that the fleet can sweep them away from one end to the other. You can also do this very well throughout multiple systems, although it becomes a little difficult if your territories have branches or exclaves.

And generally speaking, you should always have small garrison details at the ready in all your hubs. Your main fleet will be a little weaker, but the defensive advantage of being able to quickly scramble local response forces is usually worth it.

[Lightbulb]

I would also add its fairly normal to lose systems. Just try to make sure you keep the ones with advanced factories as these cannot be replaced.

(Sorry if it was your home command station you were talking about but I think not..?)

[Philo]

Yep, sometimes it can't be helped. You'll just lose that Command Station. But if the planet has a Factory mark IV or something valuable, you should always have a lot of extra defenses there. Lots and lots of turrets, and at least 5 tractor turrets for each wormhole and some along the way.

If you are informed of a large 1000 ship fleet coming your way to that planet you can't afford to lose just pull out your attacking force and everything else in defense for that planet.

That being said, if you're playing on blitz speed it's just impossible to defend your command stations against a large wave of bombers no matter how many troops you have since they'll just fly through so fast you have no time to kill them.

[Shrugging Khan]

Yeah...I think blitz ought to have double damage & ROF as well as double speed.

[BobTheJanitor]

Yeah...I think blitz ought to have double damage & ROF as well as double speed.

Wow I thought it did. I always play on normal, so I had no idea. That sounds like it wouldn't be balanced with the rest of the game speeds, really.

[Philo]

Wow I thought it did. I always play on normal, so I had no idea. That sounds like it wouldn't be balanced with the rest of the game speeds, really.

Well, tbh it's not. Taking out enemy Command Stations is just a breeze. You never need to sacrifice anything more than 50 bombers to take out the command post and the external invincibilty providers (unless they're under a MK 3 force field, that's when you'd want some Bomber Starships too).
That said, the enemy will easily take out your Command Stations as well. They're indefensible at many cases for me. Best you can do is build 10-20 tractor beam turrets at each wormhole and some other turrets if you really need to defend that place.

I have no idea why the damage etc. is not upped as well. I find the normal speeds a little too slow but blitz just isn't cutting it for the moment.