How to defend against massive attacks on your home system

[greyhoundgames]

I need some advice on defensive strategy.. I have a game that is about 5 mins before a giant attack and I have been trying to go back and survive it without luck so far. I have 2 main defensive forces, one on each side of my empire because I have lots of fabricators to defend. I am at ship cap and have 4 or so different ships unlocked from hacking etc. My AI progress is in the 180 range and I have 12 systems.

I am on hard difficulty with random medium AI and the main problem I am having is giant rushes at my home base with tons of bombers. The shields go down pretty quick and its over before I can thin the herd so to speak. I have 4 kinds of T5 turrets maxed out in every system as well.

[keith.lamothe]

If it's really a do-or-die situation, just quick-build a lightning warhead and hit the main bomber swarm in the face.

But it's probably not that dire.  If you post the save (you can attach files to a post using the "Additional Options" thing under the posting textbox) I'm sure some of the local cheesemasters will be happy to offer advice

[Kahuna]

Please post the save file so I (and others) can take a look at it and tell what's wrong. The .sav files can be found in "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\ai war fleet command\RuntimeData\Save"

[greyhoundgames]

I actually just survived finally. Ill post my save file anyways for evaluation help. What I ended up doing was selling all shield generators in systems without a fabricator and piling a bunch of them at home. Also critique my research choices if you don't mind. My general strategy has been to keep all ships at defense points and use starships to attack systems such that I can get usually 0 losses and just go repair.

[Kahuna]

Sorry if this post seems a bit messy but I'm dead tired thanks to a half marathon and a workout and will go sleep soon. I also feel a bit lazy. EDIT: writing this took quite a while and it woke up my brain so I could just go running again. I will try to go sleep at some point. EDIT: This post became much bigger than I thought it would. EDIT: lol you can really see how my brain woke up while writing this. This post starts with short sentences and an illustration of defenses that looks like it was made by a 5 year old. Then the text parts get bigger and screenshots more complex/detailed.

The first thing I noticed were you defenses.
The positive thing is that you have not built Turrets on top of the Wormholes like many people do. That's a mistake because:


The problem with your defenses is that you don't have every hull type countered. Mouse over turrets and ships to see their description, hull type and which hull types they have damage multipliers for etc etc


Some important hull types that you need to counter:
Polycrystal - Bombers have Polycrystal hull
Light - Fighters
Artillery - Plasma Siege Starships, Missile Frigates
Medium - (most?) AI Guardians use this, Spire Starships
Neutron - Pesky Zenith Starships take forever to kill

Also I see you have placed Turrets in groups of 1. If you hold down SHIFT you will be able to place more stuff after.. placing stuff.. Hold Ctrl to place 5 at once and Alt to place 10 at once. Check your keybindings:


Placing Sniper Turrets on the edge of the planet.. "map"?.. is a good idea only if you're not going to use Minefields. That's because the Sniper Turrets will distract the AI ships. The AI ships will go after the Sniper Turrets and thus avoid the Minefields. Also you should use Minefields because they're really good. Especially Area Minefields which used to be underground op. Now they're just op. But still not too op. You should "line place" them like I have in the screenshot below. Use the line placing to line place them between the hostile wormholes and the command station. (Alt+Right click on the background-->line placing-->enable packed line. make a line by first clicking on point A then B. Then hold shift and start placing). Make 3 lines of 15 Minefields = 45 minefields. Each line next to each other. If you do it correctly that alone is enough to stop most waves on low difficulty levels. EDIT: You're playing on 8 difficulty. That's good. You will still definitely notice the Minefields. I mean I notice them at 10 difficulty.

The first wave was stopped in about 1 second.

The second wave was stopped in about 45 seconds.


This is why "Area Minefields + Force Fields + Tractor Beam Turrets + Flak and Lightning Turrets" is my favorite defensive tech combo at the moment.

This is how I like to build my defenses. I'd go as far as saying there is no better way to build defenses. aka place the Turrets between your Command Station and the hostile wormholes.

The second thing I noticed is that you have way too many hostile wormholes. aka planets where the AIs can send waves. Open the galaxy map and press W to see all hostile wormholes. Red number = how many AI warpgates are connected to your planet. Most people have a couple of heavily defended planets where they take all the waves aka "whipping boys". You can control where the AIs send their waves by destroying Warp Gates aka by "Gate Raiding".

Then I checked your tech unlocks. They're actually really good nothing to complain about. Good unlocks.
-Mark II Engineers are really good and a must when you have the economy to support the increased construction/repair rate.
-Mark IV Bombers are amazing at their job. It seems like you have Hacked an Advanced Factory.
-Holy crap you have Mark IV and V Leech Starships. Leech Starships are really good at defending against large AI attacks like CPAs aka Cross Planetary Attacks. Just keep the out of AI Bombers' range. All 5 Marks of Leech Starships would probably reclaim hundreds or a couple of thousand Mark II AI ships in a CPA.
-Neinzul Starships are really good since they spam so many drones they disrupt the AI. The drones work as cannon fodder.
-Flagships are pretty good but I think they're too expensive in terms of Knowledge. If they cost as much as Plasma Siege and Bombers Starships to unlock I'd use them too.

I usually don't unlock many Starships since they're so expensive in terms of Metal but they are really good.

You have hacked Sniper, Missile, Flak and Lightning Turrets. My 4 favorite Turrets actually. You would get much more out of them if you placed them like I did in that screenshot. Place Flak, Lightning and Tractor (which you haven't used at all) Turrets in front of the other turrets.. between you Command Station and the hostile wormhole.. under a couple of Force Fields. The Force Fields will keep the Flak, Lightning and Tractor Turrets alive and the Tractor Turrets will grab the AI ships and then your turrets will own them.

Also you have OMD aka Orbital Mass Driver under a Force Field. I think that will reduce their damage by 75%. You have probably placed it there so it wont get destroyed. But if you build defenses like I have in that screenshot and place the OMD next to the Missile and Sniper Turrets (in my screenshot) it will survive. If the AI has Snipers (Snipers (actual name of the ship), Sniper Guardians or Sentinel Frigates) then protect the OMD with Counter Sniper Turrets. If the AI has Zombards aka Zenith Bombards then build a Force Field just for the OMD and enable/disable it depending on does the AI attack with Zombards or not. Force Fields are immune to Zombards' ammo type so the OMD will be safe.

Your play style seems to be quite similar to mine when I was at your level playing around 8 difficulty. For me the best way to learn was to just try stuff. And when I died or something failed I analyzed why it happened, how I could have prevented it and how I could have done it better. Which is what you seem to be doing.

I actually just survived finally.

AI War has a lot of content and is complex compared to many games. There are also many different startegies and tactics so it takes a while to learn. Seems like you're doing just fine so good job.

I may have forgotten something. Ask if you have any questions.

[keith.lamothe]

Excellent advice from Kahuna.  The only point I'll add is that OMD's only get a 25% reduction from being under a standard/hardrened FF, rather than the normal 75%.   Basically they have the same flag as flak and lightning turrets.

So putting an OMD under such an FF isn't necessarily bad... but it is a tradeoff.  Often things can be protected in other ways.

[Kahuna]

Ah ok. Only 25%. Does it say that in the description? If not, it should.
Anyway. If the AIs have Zombards I always build Force Fields over all turrets with no radar dampening so the Zombards will have to get in range of my turrets. EDIT: And they will get in range because the only targets they can attack are the Mark II and III Needler Turrets (Which have radar dampening). When they're in range I disable the Force Fields so my Turrets do 100% damage.
---> set /A AI=SadPanda

[keith.lamothe]

Ah ok. Only 25%. Does it say that in the description? If not, it should.

I thought they did, but on checking I don't see it, so just put in a change to have it show that modifier in the ability bar if it's not the standard down-to-25%.

For reference:
Flak Turret, Lightning Turret, OMD : 0.75 multiplier when under FF
Military Command Station, Neinzul Railpod : 1.0 multiplier (so no penalty at all)
Everything else: 0.25 multiplier

When they're in range I disable the Force Fields so my Turrets do 100% damage.

Clever, I'd never thought of intentionally dropping FFs to switch a turret bank from protected to full-pain like that, but that's a very good idea.

[Kahuna]

For reference:
Flak Turret, Lightning Turret, OMD : 0.75 multiplier when under FF
Military Command Station, Neinzul Railpod : 1.0 multiplier (so no penalty at all)
Everything else: 0.25 multiplier

Copy pasting this into a .txt file. Yet another .txt file in my AI War archive.

[keith.lamothe]

Copy pasting this into a .txt file. Yet another .txt file in my AI War archive.

100,000 AI 1 Inflitrators (V) to TXT Archive in 00:42

[Kahuna]

Hm I wonder how many of those 100k Mark V Infiltrators would die to a cap of line placed Area Minefields (line placed in 3 lines like I always do).

[keith.lamothe]

Hm I wonder how many of those 100k Mark V Infiltrators would die to a cap of line placed Area Minefields (line placed in 3 lines like I always do).

Since they don't appear to be mine immune, or made out of anything more solid than aerosol, I imagine they'd all have a heart attack from just seeing all those mines, without actually having hit them.

Edit: that is, of course, if it didn't stuff 99% of them into carriers, as it probably would.

The following would probably let you find out (typed in to the chat thing with cheats enabled while looking at the planet with the mines):

warp in the clowns,CoreInfiltrator,100000

[Kahuna]

Edit: that is, of course, if it didn't stuff 99% of them into carriers, as it probably would.

HHMmmm.. I think the Carrier change was an indirect nerf to Area Minefields btw. The aoe damage from Area Minefields will no longer pop the mine immune Carriers.. when the carrier was destroyed it would unload all ships inside.. and those ships would run into minefields and that aoe damage would kill the next carrier and so on and so on. That's how they used to work. I guess not anymore.

warp in the clowns,CoreInfiltrator,100000

I will try this tomorrow.

[keith.lamothe]

I thought of removing the mine-immune flag from carriers, but since they'd just get hit once it wouldn't make much difference.  Or for laughs I could replace their "mine evasion" flag with a "is about as evasive as a cow" flag that makes them hit the entire minefield all at once (rather than having the "can only hit 1 mine every X seconds" logic most things do).  Even there, they'd probably just soak the mines without a lot of effect.

[Kahuna]

I thought of removing the mine-immune flag from carriers

I'd like that :'P

but since they'd just get hit once

What do you mean just once if it's "can only hit 1 mine every X seconds"?

Or for laughs I could replace their "mine evasion" flag with a "is about as evasive as a cow" flag that makes them hit the entire minefield all at once

Here we observe the AI Carrier on the player's minefield:
http://www.macrobusiness.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/A-Bull-in-a-China-Shop-57223.jpeg

Even there, they'd probably just soak the mines without a lot of effect.

Well at least they would take damage.