Planetary defense strategies?

[nullspace]

Let's say you own a planet with multiple wormholes to enemy planets.  What kind of defense do you build to destroy the enemy waves?

My typical setup is to place the command center behind one of the wormholes so that it is out of the way of the space trains.  Put a forcefield over the command center, poweplants, and factories, and place exo-ffs on the resources.  Turrets are positioned outside the ff, between the command center and the enemy wormholes.  Maybe put some tractor turrets in front of the damage turrets, to grab the enemy bombers before they can shoot my ff.  Add about 20 mk1 cruisers because I hate AI bombers, and move them under the ff when threatened by anything other than bombers.  Also some mk1 ships to counter the expected enemy types.  Mines on the approach routes if the attack will be tough.  The AI ships generally head straight for the command center (because the resource harvesters are hardened), and they spread out as the faster ships get there first.  So the turrets don't have to fight the whole wave at once, and I can move my counter ships in or out as needed. 

Actually, I don't build much defense ahead of time.  Just keep about 100,000 crystal in reserve, and a spacedock and an engineer or two at each planet.  When I get the wave warning, I pause and then start building the defenses I need, deleting them at other locations if I'm at the population cap.  Build times are very important here.  Most mk1 or mk2 turrets build in less than three minutes, but stronger versions need to be in place before the wave warning.  Two engineers are enough to build a mk3 ff in three minutes.  Some ships build much faster than others, fighters are 2 seconds each, bombers and cruisers are about 10. 

How are you guys doing it?

[Volatar]

I actually play rather similar to you, in that I keep my defenses flexible and put them where they are needed when they are needed.

[Grok]

On my home world I block up all the wormholes in a hard wall and then intersperse weapons where enemies tend to escape to.

On conquered worlds I model myself after british colonialism, spend as little as I can to get as much as I can.

For Hub worlds I conquered near my home world, I create a buffer defense. I put the command center with starship creater over the wormhole leading to my homeworld, and then I create huge defense on that (lots of sniper too.

This is all part of the campaign I'm nine hours into, so I'll get back to you about epic fail when the 3 waves of a thousand III and IV ships finally flood through from nearby planets while I'm jaunting around trying to capture one of the very few high resource planets out there (and 8 jumps away).

I'm a bit rash, so I don't have reserve crystal unless a fully formed fleet is operating. Though i'm going ot consider creating a reserve while I surf the net next logon, it sounds like a good idea. Again, the map I'm currently playing on is mostly 1 of one type of resource 2 of the other planets.

[Spikey00]

I usually immediately scout the adjacent planets, then determine which pose the most long-term threats.  Otherwise I place at least five (usually 10-30) per wormhole if needed, and a whole bunch of turrets further away from the wormhole, as to cover ships immune to tractor beams.  However, all turrets should be placed to be in range of the wormhole, at all times.

Of course I'm fancy so I place them all in neat patterns symmetrically.  


I usually make sure all ships are tractored with important wormholes.

--

Excuse the fragmentation for this post, since I forgot to finish it.  rofl

[Haagenti]

When there are multiple outgoing wormholes, I usually defend on the wormhole leading to my cluster.

Build the orbital next to the wormhole and a forcefield covering them both (with the obligatory II Powerplant inside as well). Now all attackers have to come to this forcefield and (apart from the occasional teleporter) cannot go through this wormhole as it is covered by the forcefield.

Build a lot of turrets around the forcefield. Resources that are outside the range of these turrets are not defended.

Let the waves come.

[Grok]

I build my tractors symmetrically as points of a pentagon. That way when they activate they form a Pentagram, signaling death to the AI and blessing my forces with demonic energy =P

[x4000]

I tend to place turrets on the perimeter of my territory, at all hostile wormholes.  This is often all I will place on those planets unless a raid is announced there, in which case I move some defender ships to that location in FRD mode.  I also keep a lot of turrets and a standing fleet of a hundred or two ships on my home planet, which has saved the game for me more than once.  I mostly just have a few turrets at each wormhole to start out with, and so tend to bolster those as major waves are announced.

In general, I tend to lose a lot of harvesters this way, but I keep my knowledge expenditure down regarding turrets, can defend a really strung-out territory, and keep 80% or 90% of my fleet mobilized for attacks instead of defense.  All of my alpha testers have really different methods of playing, though, which makes it an interesting mix in our group games.

[laxrulz777]

I generally have 3-5 star docks in my domain at any time and I specifically put these in systems that are 4+ wormhole systems. Let's say there's four wormholes:

Wormhole A is the one I came from, no defense needed (generally).
Wormhole B is the one I'm going to attack next, my fleet will sit on this and eventually it will not need defense either (once I start clearing out the other side
Wormhole C is the one that I'll set as my rally point for my ships and starships. I'll also put a tachyon emitter and 2-4 tractors on it.
Wormhole D is the "empty one". It needs the highest level of defense and usually gets 10-15 of each turret, 4 tractors, a tachyon and sometimes a deep layer of 1-2 other tractors.

I've never messed with the resource shield items as I view them to be relatively cheap to replace (and in fact a good decoy from the command center).

Non production systems generally just get a cursory tractor, tachyon, 5-10 turrets on each and I'll move ships to defend (easier if I have teleporters, etherjets, autocannons or some other fast ship).

[RCIX]

It's a BIG mistake not to get exo-shields because of the following two reasons:

 * they are so cheap to research, and you can grab like a higher level short turret and something else (don't remember) with the extra knowledge
 * they massively boost the longevity, by 1500x. Cruisers/fighters will barely make a dent in it and it gives you a little time to attack bombers

I got them and haven't regretted it. I don't think I've lost a single resource point since installing them on my planets!

[Kjara]

You don't always need them though, remember that in a balanced resource mix, they reduce your income from harvesters by 1/3rd(2 crystal and 2 metal--its worse in a unbalanced situation since arguably you would need less efficient factories to make up the cost).  It really depends on the type of enemy you are against and what units they have.

Losing a crystal harvester (assuming you can replace it right away), costs ~3600 crystal(in lost revenue--if you have no mkII engineers to warp around and speed construction, so worst case) and 1600 metal(in construction cost)(if you average these out, its about 2600 of each resource--reasonable if you have a mostly even number of crystal and metal harvesters).  Thus the break even point(assuming you lose crystal and metal extractors at about the same rate), is if you lose each extractor every 21.66 minutes it has the same resource cost as maintaining a exo-shield(ignoring exo-shield energy cost, since they can be put into low power when you don't need them).

Some retardedly placed resources are clearly much better with exo-shields(aka if its right next to a wormhole the enemy comes out of all the time), but safer ones are generally more efficient without them(though having them reduces the micro needed). 

[Revenantus]

I'm in full agreement with RCIX that, as it stands, harvester exoshields are a great investment.

They can be turned on and off at will, and when powered down consume no resources. Assign all your harvester exoshields to a control group for easy management. You can even turn them on and off in sequence to bait the AI around the system, giving you more time to prepare.

In other news, I hate this, and don't think exoshields should be able to be turned off. See this post - http://arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,1106.msg7019.html#msg7019

[Kjara]

Ah, thought the power cost went away, but the resource cost didn't.  Retested and you are right, but the text still says -2 crystal/metal.

If you don't micro them though, its still better to not use them if your stuff survives for 21 mins.

Edit: when microing them I found that I forgot to turn them back on way too often(which just means that instead of losing a harvester, you lose a harvester and a exo-shield that you have to replace--This is somewhat an artifact of having no "safe" worlds though).

[Revenantus]

Ah, thought the power cost went away, but the resource cost didn't.  Retested and you are right, but the text still says -2 crystal/metal.

If you don't micro them though, its still better to not use them if your stuff survives for 21 mins.

Very true, though the main reason this concerns me is that it actually encourages micromanagement. Players that take the time to constantly make sure that their exo-shields aren't running unnecessarily will have more resources available and therefore perform better.

I'm not inherently against players having to ensure that their operation is efficient, but this particular type of micromanagement is incredibly tedious. I dislike the concept of the player being rewarded for completing a task that wasn't fun to perform.

[x4000]

I've never messed with the resource shield items as I view them to be relatively cheap to replace (and in fact a good decoy from the command center).

I personally don't use exo-shields because of this very stated reason.  But, I can see why others would see this as a big mistake.  It's just a matter of playstyles here again, I think.

[Spikey00]

I tend to place turrets on the perimeter of my territory, at all hostile wormholes.  This is often all I will place on those planets unless a raid is announced there, in which case I move some defender ships to that location in FRD mode.  I also keep a lot of turrets and a standing fleet of a hundred or two ships on my home planet, which has saved the game for me more than once.  I mostly just have a few turrets at each wormhole to start out with, and so tend to bolster those as major waves are announced.

In general, I tend to lose a lot of harvesters this way, but I keep my knowledge expenditure down regarding turrets, can defend a really strung-out territory, and keep 80% or 90% of my fleet mobilized for attacks instead of defense.  All of my alpha testers have really different methods of playing, though, which makes it an interesting mix in our group games.

W-why don't I ever see you on IRC!?  Though I assume you have far too many games and much to do to play with everyone you know, haha.