Am I forgetting something about "Neutering AI Planets"?

[Elok]

Because even if I'm destroying everything except the command center, they still spawn up to 200 ship every few hour and attack my sectors. How I'm supposed to concentrate on the offensive if I have to kept half of my fleet and turret in every corner of the universe to control them? Even if I save 15 AI per sector, I don't see how it balance for the 3000 knowledge + the time lost + having to be ready to defend my sector everywhere.

Unless I'm forgetting something?

[x4000]

200ish ships sounds about right, but they shouldn't be bothering you at that level unless you're playing on low ship caps. If you're playing normal ship caps, they should mostly hang around as guards. If the ships are actively attacking you, my guess would be that hose aren't from that planet, but are from elsewhere and choose to stalk you from there. Keeping a low surface area to active AI planets would keep that to a minimum.

[Elok]

Hmmm...now that I think about it, does someone have a save of a game about half-way to the end to share with me?

Also what you mean by "not bothering you"? You mean they aren't supposed to attack my sector even if I put nothing there except command center?

EDIT : I'll rephrase my question : What do you mean by "Keeping a low surface area to active AI planets would keep that to a minimum."

[Orelius]

The point of neutering is to limit the number of ai reinforcements on border worlds.  Often, you won't be able to neuter everything, so there will still be reinforcements (that spawn on more distant worlds) that will occasionally overstock and attack you.

I think x4000 means that 200 ships are not likely to be much of a threat if they only attack once every few hours; midgame waves tend to be that size.

[zebramatt]

Chris is saying 200 ships shouldn't find cause to attack at all, yes. What would free them in the first place, aside from CPAs? Their default behavior will be to guard their own planet from attack, not to come after you. Unless you do something to upset them, like shooting at their command station...

'Low surface area' means simply minimising your hostile front - you want as few of your worlds bordering the AI as possible, really. Sometimes it's unavoidable and you have to necessarily defend multiple ingress points but usually you should be able to take planets in such a way as to create only a few chokepoints through which the AI might send ships.

[x4000]

Chris is saying 200 ships shouldn't find cause to attack at all, yes. What would free them in the first place, aside from CPAs? Their default behavior will be to guard their own planet from attack, not to come after you. Unless you do something to upset them, like shooting at their command station...

Right, exactly.  Or flying really near them, etc.

'Low surface area' means simply minimising your hostile front - you want as few of your worlds bordering the AI as possible, really. Sometimes it's unavoidable and you have to necessarily defend multiple ingress points but usually you should be able to take planets in such a way as to create only a few chokepoints through which the AI might send ships.

Right.

[SenorPez]

I'm a little confused as to what you have to kill in order to neuter an enemy planet. The wiki says "all normal guard posts." Does that include the Wormhole Guard Posts, which aren't hard to kill, but do require a bit of time and a parcel of Siege Starships to not go insane while doing it. Or do only the "harvester point" Guard Posts (that is, the ones that are actually dangerous but easy to kill) count for the ship cap?

[Lemon]

To completely neuter it you need to kill the wormhole guard posts, but its often better to let some guard posts live so that you goad the AI to reinforce those areas. This way you can bleed off their numbers there rather then let the AI endlessly reinforce its core worlds into an impenetrable fortress. If you just want to end warp gate attacks, obviously all you need to do is kill the warp gate, and if you want only to make the system safe for your forces to stream through then you need to get rid of all guard posts that will spawn ships in the paths your forces will be crossing.

[Blasphemy]

I just started playing ... with that in mind this is what I have been doing.
I have found that if every few minutes I wipe out the 20-30 reinforcement ships I can keep the AI wasting its resources and keep my planets relatively safe.

I leave the wormholes and the command station.  Even 20-30 mark 4 ships get owned by 200-300 (total) mark 1s and 2s since they do not all attack as a single front but stagger their approach.  I like to support with a m1 star ship.  I do however, have to keep the number of such planets to a minimum for obvious reasons.

This will frees up my mark 3s and 4s for deep strikes and planet grabs.