Home system defences

[Latro75]

Hi all

I'm new to the game and am still finding my feet. I think I've grasped most of the basics, but am wondering how much time and effort (and resources) I should put into home system defence. At the moment, I am setting up one tractor beam turret and 5 basic turrets per wormhole with 5 missile turrets covering the whole system (with five more if the first five can't cover all of the wormholes). I then add turrets as and when waves occur, with the choice of turret relating to the composition of the wave. This has worked pretty well except when I assumed my fleet would be in enough to stop 300 cutlasses. It wasn't. About 200 made it through and took out my command centre. Ouch!

Thanks in advance for your help.

[e102]

Turrets are usually a lot more cost effective than ships, build 10-20 tractors along with at least 10 of all the other basic types (flak, mrls, basic, laser) and you should be okay, at least for the first few rounds .

[pierre dupon]

You've got too few tractors, they're what will really defend the system. You want enough tractors to trap 90% of the ships in a large wave. If the AI is using lots of ships that are immune to tractors use grav turrets to slow down the whole area to speed 8. That's for all ships including your own though so only them use if necessary. Also tachyon emitters; they're crucial. Beyond that, just keep a good mix. The turrets have bonuses against different ships and if you build 4-5 of each to cover all wormholes you should be fine. I like to keep some rapid-response ships in a transport on a nearby planet though because eventually something will take you by surprise.

[wyvern83]

Don't forget to destroy neighboring AI Warp Gates to decrease the number of wormholes you have worry about when it comes to normal waves.

I'd destroy all but one and at the nearest feasible opportunity do the same thing for a new world and then destroy the that last AI Warp Gate bordering your home world so that it is no longer subjected to normal wave activity.

This will help you cut down on the number of turrets you need everywhere and will let you concentrate some of them where you are funneling higher AI activity.

As for your cutlass problem, Flak turrets have a 8x bonus against melee vessels. They are one of the starter turrets so be sure to use them if melee ships have a large presense in your game. (If it was a 300 wave, build a number of them and scrap them later if you don't need them. It might help.)

Cutlasses are also immune to tractor beams, so be sure to place some of your flak turrets around your command center. (or most of them if thats where they all make a bee line for.)

[zebramatt]

When placing turrets (or anything for that matter), holding CTRL and clicking will automatically place five.

Holding Shift and the left mouse button will stream turrets from the end of your cursor.

Holding Shift-CTRL-Click... well, you get the idea.

I usually place at least three lots of five (i.e. 15) tractor turrets around a wormhole I'm looking to defend.

[Luddite42]

I'm pretty new too but I go for like others, about 10 tractor beams per wormhole. I have a ring or open-ended box formation (if they use astro trains) with a layer of 10-12 lightning turrets, another layer or 8-10 basic turrets, further out about 10-12 MLRS, another ring of 10-12 Missile turrets, and finally about 30 sniper turrets placed in 2 groups at each end of the map pointing towards the middle.  I also keep a fortress and some riot control ships on my homeworld, plus an extra shiled or two around the command station unless I need them to go steal knowledge.  Make sure to have remains rebuilders.  If astro trains are not in use then tractor beams, tachyon emitters, emp and area minefields can be used to great effect as well.

I guess this leads me to a question though, can you cancel out the effect on your own ships from the gravity turrets by using zenith space time manipulators?

[Signata]

Technically, not nullify, but mitigate would be a better word I think. I think the manipulator boosts speed by around 20 for all ships, but the gravity turret drops everything to 8. So no matter how fast the ship was, it's all just 8. Thus, a fast ship, like the Raid Starship, would still only be 28 with a manipulator, as would a missile frigate. Still, better than the AI.

Gravity turrets + long-range riot ships make for a pretty solid wormhole defence. You can cut back on how many of those turrets you have. Even moderate engine damage will effectively halt a ship with a grav turret around.

[oddlaurence]

Despite the map style or conditions i play, i always prefer having 50 to 100 spider turrets on my home planet, which combined with enough tractor beams pretty much stop any ranged ships (except starships) that come through wormholes. Of course make sure you dont have "focus sniper fire" enabled in controls menu, as in my understanding they will not spread the shots between multiple targets.
 This leaves melle ships, and for that you might want gravity turrets and some other combat turrets to destroy them. cloaked ships are rare occasion, unless playing against specific AI type or such.
 With this strategy i was able to hold up to 2,5k mark 2-3 nearly constant waves when i accidently hit the raid engine and couldnt find it. I'm pretty sure that with some carefull planning and consideration you can make your homeplanet impenetrable for AI, well literally   because if you hit counter post and it spawns loads of high mark ships just in random spot on your planet, your focused defenses will not work, and you'd need to make quick decission. Then again, this should be done before hitting the counterpost

[Latro75]

Thanks guys. I haven't used riot ships at all yet. I'd better experiment ...

[Sunshine!]

I've taken to placing an extra two mk1 forcefields around my home command station, with 4 sets of 5 of each long-range turret (10 of each long-range turret if the incoming is really nasty, so basic, MLRS, missile, and laser turrets) forming a tight box around my command station.  I also unlock harvester exo-forcefields, and just completely ignore tractor turrets.  Most enemy ships will head to your command station, and will run into your full defensive firepower (instead of defensive firepower dispersed to cover each wormhole), and the few stragglers that attempt to target your harvesters will get picked off by your missile turrets or a group of 5 sniper turrets I've tossed somewhere else on the planet.  Saves on resources, and gives your missile turrets a while to weaken the on-coming horde before they hit your other turrets, meaning less repair costs and allows for "defense in depth".  It's how I defend all my planets actually, except with fewer forcefields/turrets and using logistics stations on the non-home planets.  The logistics stations allow for faster fleet response to the less-well-defended systems.

[shugyosha]

I've taken to placing an extra two mk1 forcefields around my home command station, with 4 sets of 5 of each long-range turret (10 of each long-range turret if the incoming is really nasty, so basic, MLRS, missile, and laser turrets) forming a tight box around my command station.  I also unlock harvester exo-forcefields, and just completely ignore tractor turrets.  Most enemy ships will head to your command station, and will run into your full defensive firepower (instead of defensive firepower dispersed to cover each wormhole), and the few stragglers that attempt to target your harvesters will get picked off by your missile turrets or a group of 5 sniper turrets I've tossed somewhere else on the planet.  Saves on resources, and gives your missile turrets a while to weaken the on-coming horde before they hit your other turrets, meaning less repair costs and allows for "defense in depth".  It's how I defend all my planets actually, except with fewer forcefields/turrets and using logistics stations on the non-home planets.  The logistics stations allow for faster fleet response to the less-well-defended systems.

I tested this kind of defense today and your method is by far better than the Tractor/Spider defense I think. Engineer and Reclaiming Drones can work on the defenses under the protection from shields while the assault is going on. I never lose drones anymore and several waves actually arrive and immediately retreat.

One thing I add sometimes however are forward tractor turrets just inside the build range from the engineer drones. Only a few tractors are necessary and they keep a lot of different ship types out of range of your command station but inside the range of many turrets.

Sniper turrets weren't good for me. Regardless where I build them they always get destroyed which is a huge resource drain when constant waves hit your defenses.

[wyvern83]

Interesting idea Sunshine, I'll have to try this sometime.

Shugyosha, I wouldn't give up on Sniper turrets just yet: they're getting 100,000 armor piercing in 4.043.

[Echo35]

they're getting 100,000 armor piercing in 4.043.

Which they've definitely needed for a while

[shugyosha]

Interesting idea Sunshine, I'll have to try this sometime.

Shugyosha, I wouldn't give up on Sniper turrets just yet: they're getting 100,000 armor piercing in 4.043.

And they got Close Combat x5 which is also really nice.

[Winter Born]

2-5 snipers on either side of the map can split the AI waves and serve as a bullet/ship magnet giving everything else time to strike.