Help understand reprisal to newbie

[badman]

Hi,
I'm on my 3th campaign right now (6 difficulty, settings to normal, aip advance to 0) and have problems dealing with reprisal waves. I got now 8 plants and 70 aip. And this is because i choose my targets well and not doing any warp gate raids because normal waves are like 100-150 units. But now i need to take some more defended planets and I'm able too, but reprisal killing me. Especially when ai choose bombers. Bombers fu** hard without condom, without vaseline, without mercy. Big reason of that is because my tractor units are spread over galaxy.

So my question is. Does this reprisal waves spawn from warp gates? For example if i destroy all (left only one) warp gate near planets owned by my, does all waves (normal and reprisal) will come from this last gate? Well if yes i can deal with them after setting some serious defenses (yep i read on this forum how to, big help actually). And if yes, is there any sense to left (mass) turrents/force fields on other planets? And there are other units that player can produce with have tractor beam? Or only tractor turrets?

And bonus question. Its any way (keybind, button somewhere) to select all mobile military units on planet? I got sometimes frustrated when some units left on enemy planet and get destroyed and reprisal level going up, and then i can load game.

Edit.
One more question. What is best turret unlock (for knowledge) to deal with those nasty bombers?

[TheVampire100]

As far as I remember, Reprisals use the warp mechanic like normal waves, which means you can route them to specific planets if you destroy warp gates. So yes, if there is only one warp gate left, then they will come only from that spot.

It really helps to put the bulk of your defenses on one or two planets. Should you remove defenses from other planets because of this? No. It is advised to leave at least some basic defenses on every frontier planet, if not on every planet you have. there is this thing called threat, this is a coutner that measures current AI ships that prepare for an attack that is not included in a wave. That means the Ai prepares ships to attack you regulary like you do normally. And just like you the AI can attack anywhere anytime. The AI however uses a logic system and scans your frontier planets for weaknesses, meaning it will attack only there where it think it has the best chance to succeed. If you have a planet with no defenses at all it will always attack there. It will attack anyway but you can at least give it  abad time and prepare some minor defenses so the planet stands longer until you have brought your fleet in. You can always counter threat if you simply kill the massing ships (they will roam before the wormhole to the target planet before they attack, so you can always tell where they will come from).

Effective against bombers are turrets with a high polycrystal multiplier. you can check that out for yourself, every ship has a hull type (structures as well but their hull type is, well, structure) and every weapon has attack multipliers. These show you how much effective damage is done against that hull type, for example a multiplier 3 against polycrystal means three timesthe normal damage. It's  asimple system to show players what is effective against what and also gives the game  agood "rock-paper-scissors" system (for most ships).
A good counter are always sniper and spider turrets regardless of the hsip type 8except they are immune to the sniper or engine damage). They have unlimtied range and especially the spider turrets can help your other defenses because they target engines which slows enemies first or might stop them entirely. This helps your turrets to live longer because there are less enemies to deal with.

[Toranth]

As Vampire said, reprisal waves behave like normal waves, but are sized based on the resource cost of the units you've lost in AI territory.  Gate-raiding will control where they come from, but as he mentioned, there is also free-floating "Threat", so every system you own should have at least some defenses.  If you destroy every AI Warp Gate adjacent to your systems (or lose every system that the AI could Warp to) then waves will appear in AI territory as "Threat", and you'll no longer have any idea where they'll go.
There is also a "secret" wave size modifier based on how many human systems the AI has Warp Gate access to - if you Gate Raid to reduce access down to just one of your systems, the AI will send larger waves than if it could potentially a dozen or more of your systems.
So, yes, it is always worth having at least some defenses on all of your worlds.  Your primary defense world, frequently called your 'whipping boy' around here, is where you put the galaxy-cap items like Fortresses or HBCs.  This is usually along the path that exowaves take, since those are considered a primary game-ending threat, where waves are normally considered an annoyance.

As for anti-bomber defenses, as he mentioned, Bombers have a Polycrystal hull type, so units with a bonus against Polycrystal will work better against them.  Specifically in this case, Sniper, Missile, and Laser turrets have bonuses against Polycrystal.  Sniper turrets have infinite range, Missile Turrets have a very large range, and Laser turrets are awesome because they also have a bonus against Heavy ships.

Tractor units are uncommon, yes.  The Tractor Turrets (Mk I-IV) are the only turrets with tractor beams.  Additionally, there are EtherJets, Spire Tractor Platforms, Riot Starships with the Tractor module, and Black Widow Golems... and Astro Trains, but I think that's it.
If you want other ways to stop AI units from moving, you can look at Gravity sources (Grav Turrets) and Force Fields - most non-mobile Force Fields prevent enemy units from moving through them, which can produce a temporary wall effect.  There's also EMP - Warheads and mines can produce a temporary 'stun' effect.

Edit:  Just checked, there is a shortcut for "Select all Military units".  It's under View Controls, planet controls.  Mine is set to Control-comma, which is probably the default.  I usually shift-click units on the unit bar to the right.

In case you haven't already, I suggest perusing the AI War Wiki a bit.  Some of the information is a little outdated, but it has things like hull types and bonuses listed for every unit.  You can also repeatedly press F1 in game to cycle the unit bar through a library reference mode, which lists the stats of all units in the game.
Finally, I think you may have read it already, but I'll mention it again: read the Excellent Guide by forum member Kahuna, to get some good tips on how to build your defenses.

[badman]

Ok thanks for advices. I add some important info if someone else will read this topic.
And this info is "eye's post's" also have warp gate abilities. Even ones like nuclear eye. Worth mention i think.

Yea i actually kill all but one warp gates near my planets, then move all heavy defenses like HBC's and unlock some turrets (also by controllers on planets).My mistake was i dont do it on planet with ion cannon mk3. Completely forgot about fotresses, but for this particual campaign they are overkill so i will skip them. 4k fleet of bombers now just vanish everytime, dont even look anymore on this planet when they attack.

7:30 campaign time now and almost everything done. Only take cantrol before first homeword (with core shield), kill first home world, kill 4xco-processor and finish second home world.

Truly great game, time flies like nothing.

Only downside its name. War Ai. Sometimes hard to find info in google. Only limiting search to arcengames/steamforums/wiki helps to find something.