How do you deal with lightning turrets efficiently?

[TheSilverHammer]

So you have this decent level AI worlds, III or IV.  Each wormhole or defense post has a bunch of lightning turrets.  You can take the defense post out, but it will cause a great deal of losses which will take forever to rebuild due to the fact that you are running -2k metal income which will suck your 600k reserves dry in no time.

OR you can use a bunch of sniper units and take them out safely, but again you are watching paint dry.

How do you do this in a manner that isn't really slow?  Being slow because you are either rebuilding  your fleet or because you are waiting for some pea-shooters to do the job.

[x4000]

Usually the main problem with snipers on ai worlds is that the ai will quickly build a lot of counter sniper turrets. If you have the expansion, and have bombards as one of your bonus ships, those can be excellent against the lightning turrets. I have not tried dreadnoughts, but those might work well also given their long range.

Another trick that I have used is transports. Basically put your strike force in transports, then take the transports into the heart of the lightning turret area. Wait for when the lightning has just hit, then unload your guys to do their thing. If you want, you can even blow an emp warhead right before that to give yours 30 free seconds. And setting all your guys to prefer lightning turrets as their target before you put them in the transport also really helps for when they pop out of the transport.

[NickAragua]

Raid Starships are solid gold vs electric shuttles and lightning turrets.

[TheSilverHammer]

I do not have the expansion, and EMP missiles cost AI progress and they would EMP my own troops, wouldn't they?

Raid starships?  Hmm.  I have been going down the Dreadnought and Spireship lines.  How are Raid starships vs all the rest of the defenses?  I sometimes try and use my Dreadnoughts, but all the missile turrets and whatnot chew them up.  I can kill the lightning turrets, but once again, I need to rebuild some a few things which take a while.

[x4000]

EMP missiles cost AI progress and they would EMP my own troops, wouldn't they?

Not if they are inside the transport at the time.

Raid starships?  Hmm.  I have been going down the Dreadnought and Spireship lines.  How are Raid starships vs all the rest of the defenses?  I sometimes try and use my Dreadnoughts, but all the missile turrets and whatnot chew them up.  I can kill the lightning turrets, but once again, I need to rebuild some a few things which take a while.

Yeah, that's true, I had forgotten about those.  They are great at soloing, and very resistant to missiles and such.

[RCIX]

And, on the upside, you can intentionally skew the turret mix on AI worlds if you want by building snipers

[x4000]

And, on the upside, you can intentionally skew the turret mix on AI worlds if you want by building snipers

Not as badly as you used to be able to, though.  But yeah.

[Fox Soul]

I use a mix tactics when taking over systems.
The AI is well known too send all there forces into your system when the command station is destroyed, so the main threat when taking over the system is that one massive force.

Like the others suggested, I use Raid Starships, they are fast and a major asset too my military.
I take out anything that respawn enemies, that means all guard posts and what not. I send only the Raid Starships, rarely I send other ships for a mire distraction.
Then I take out the Warp Point and Command Station, then that lovely AI Armada will pour into your system you are attacking from.
Luckily I tend too have my Command Station as far away from the Worm Hole I'm attacking, using Spider Turrets and the all mighty Triangle ships (Fighters, Bombers, Frigates), The Armada usually never gets half way too my Command Station. The only time ships do get past they are usually high in health or cloakers, which die with in seconds of meeting the Wall of turrets humbly waiting for them.

Its a long elaborate plot I always use but it gets the job done, steps awhile too set up and then after that's done you still have too worry about the turrets.
I have discovered a cunning plan too avoid the turrets tho. All you do is destroy the next system before you colonize the current one, this way the Turrets will have no incoming supplies from the AI and will be disabled. Now it becomes shooting fish in a barrel with your Triangle fleet.

I find it has the least amount of casualties and faster than the pea shooters.

Hope that my strategy helps ya SilverHammer and gives you new ideas too taking out those challenges.

[RCIX]

I use something like that occasionally, and it works until you start going 2 or 3 hops out: you can never be sure where the ships will go... 

[Lancefighter]

I used to use sentinel frigates.. Kinda like snipers I guess, but unfortunately the AI seems to reinforce counter-snipers eventually, and that screws that tactic. Other than that, (5x :rolleyes:) munitions boosted sentinel frigates used to be good at blowing up turrets, and excellent compliment to my starships.

havent used them since then though.. After a while they just dont seem as useful as there were (especially tieing up 80k energy in 8 units..)

[vonduus]

Some time ago lightning turrets were crazily deadly, killing entire fleets in two or three zaps. This was nerfed, and now they are not quite the threat they were, but still rather deadly, especially for small ships. During the crazy period I found a lo-tech way to kill them without loosing too many ships:

I always buy Dreadnoughts. Initially I park them at a safe distance and target the lightning turrets. While they are pounding away I manouver my fleet close to the lightning turrets. When the turrets flash, I know I am in range, and I move a little back and stay just out of range for a while. When the Dreadnoughts (and other long-range ships) have taken out half the health of the nearest turret (or when I run out of patience, which normally comes first) I sacrifice a single ship by moving it towards the lightning turrets. If there are multiple turrets, they will all flash at the same time. The moment they flash I order my whole fleet to attack the nearest turret (ctrl-click), and then i line up all the other lightning turrets in a target queue (ctrl-shift-click). And then I just sit and watch them die one by one. Because of the cooldown time and the concentrated attacks, the turrets seldom flash more than once or twice before they are all dead.

Not very sophisticated, and I may loose a few ships, but this method gets the work done. Just don't bring your autocannons and microfighters along, they are way too brittle for this.

[Ruges]

My current game, a 120 AI 7 map. The AI is lovings its lighting turrets. Putting around 10 on each of the strategic points for each planet. Plus all the other defenses there too. To counter this we have developed a stratagy of clearing planets ahead, and thus cutting off the AI's supply line. So when we finaly go back to fight these turrets they dont have any supply, so they are easy to kill as they cant shoot back.

[AdamK]

Level 2 and 3 space planes are great against lightning turrets.

A full set of level 2 space planes can survive 3ish lightning charges, and can one-salvo them. So usually, you can destroy up to 5 lightning turrets entirely within their first recharge timer, and then escape before the other turrets have enough time to do any serious damage.

Often it's even better than just 3-5 because the first lightning charge only hits the leading couple of ships, so if you pop them inside the first charge timer, the cost is almost zero and you can scoot around and clear an entire map of all the lightning towers.

Of course, this breaks down for level 4/5 maps. But in general, the combination of lots of firepower, high speed, and JUST enough health to survive the first half dozen cycles seems to work wonders for strike and run.

[superking]

starships, zenith bombers + vampires

[RCIX]

Resistance frigates. But then, they're my solution for most everything... Edit: and in the expansion i think. But i could be wrong.