Oh, no turret tech? That is probably a big part of it, then -- even the mark II turrets of basic and mlrs are about twice as effective as their lower-level counterparts. Laser turrets are also really popular, and highly effective (and the lowest tier is cheap on knowledge).
Sounds like I should invest in some turret tech, lol! I'll try that.
It definitely can help. Remember: turrets are better than their counterpart fleet ships in pretty much every way except one: they are completely immobile (well, and also more expensive). But, they have kick-butt range and very good attack power, etc. I wouldn't go with a 100% turret defense, because often you need ships to chase down stragglers, but the turrets can make up easily 75% of your defenses on most planets.
I tend to have turrets as my primary line of defense on all my border (and other key) planets, and then have a smallish "defensive fleet" that I move around in FRD mode as waves come in. Assuming my planets are not too spread out, and a given wave is not too huge, that will generally handle it. Then my larger offensive fleet goes out the rest of the time and does its business -- unless it needs to be recalled for defense, which happens more or less frequently depending on the game.
But, I'd still recommend the non-expansion part of the prereleases given your quandary here.
Ah, OK. I gather I can download & install them now and they won't "confuse" my Steam installation. I noticed a thread saying the pre-releases would appear to disable Steamworks, but I could re-enable it by adding a parameter to the .exe's properties file.
Yep, no issues with that, although you do have to add that one command line parameter. The FAQ in the prerelease thread has the relevant notes, it is quite easy.
I personally tend to leave the mk1 version of all my ships on FRD mode at my home planet.
Makes sense. But how about all your other planets? Do you just defend those with turrets, and mass your Mk2 and Mk3 ships in one attack fleet? I've been trying to defend every planet with ships, and I guess there just aren't enough ships for that.
Generally not, no. The other nice thing to try to do is take planets that protect one another -- so, if there is a chain of three planets, and they are good and resource-bearing, take all three and then just defend the end one. If ships slip through, you'll have to clean up that on the interior planets, but otherwise those are at no risk. Also, if you're worried about it, you can put turrets at key junction points (like wormholes) to catch any such stragglers. Main thing is to have a smaller fleet standing by, waiting to do something if you decide that is needed, rather than to have huge standing fleets all over the place. When you have more turrets in place, too, that will give you a lot more security than you have now.
Also, I should note that for most small incursions (special forces and the like), turrets can usually clean those up 100% on their own. So mainly the fleet ships that are mobile would be for waves. So then if you can do gate-raids to keep the number of hostile wormholes (W on the galaxy map, if I recall) to just a planet or two, then you can mass your defenses there with some confidence except when it comes to cross-planet attacks. But, you were really having way more CPAs than you should have. A new prerelease will be out within an hour with the latest CPA tweaks, you might appreciate those.
