Leaving Warpgates Alive

[MoogleGunner]

So, in my current initial single player 5/6 game and Multiplayer 5/6 game I/we have been leaving Warpgates alive in captured planets just because it's not a lot of a trouble and they don't seem to be doing much. With this system I'm in the upper single digits of planet captures and am doing pretty good on AI Progress <150.

But I'm not sure about how sustainable this system is, or what the later game consequences will be... or if anyone else does this.

[Lancefighter]

Warpgates, allow raids to enter your system directly from the wormholes. when it says 'x number of y ship are attacking z planet in *time*'

If you leave them all alive, then the AI will be able to send those into the depths of your systems, and youll have to put turrets or military units quite literally everywhere. This is rather bad, in my opinion.

Taking out warp gates, while increasing progress by 10, also means that you can actually set up a front, where no AI ships can get past. Concentrate as many turrets as you want into a small area, making a much more effective killzone.

Think of it territorially, its easier to defend a single border, but when you are surrounded and the enemy is coming from within.. well, not very good strategically.

[Kjara]

It all depends on how many planets you plan on taking.  I almost always leave all warp gates alive personally, since when I take planets, they are usually not connected (and thus it would cost an extra 40 or so ai progress for each planet to remove the threat of raids).  Its pretty much most effective if you do one extreme or the other though (either leave them all, or kill all of them but 1 to focus all attacks in 1 place).

[x4000]

There are definitely some other players who do that.  I prefer not to, as it makes me feel like there is too much risk and the AI can come from anywhere -- I wind up leaving too many ships on defense all over the place -- but it depends on your style.  It is certainly viable for some, but I would call it a harder path generally.

[HellishFiend]

The only scenario in which I leave a warp gate alive on a captured world (and only one gate) is on a spokes map where I warp jam the center planet of each spoke but still want to leave an ingress point which I can then heavily defend (on one of the dead-end worlds). I havent played a snake map yet, but I imagine I might use a similar tactic there, depending on the AI types that I face.