Planetary defense strategies?

[Spikey00]

IMO I believe protecting Harvesters from harassment is top priority--therefore I always guard the wormholes themselves instead of having to use Sniper Turrets in destroying strays.  Alternatively, if the enemy has Tractor Beam immune units I will usually have one or few turrets guarding a cluster of the resource points.

[Ragnol]

for defending my homeworld, i put a force field over the wormhole on the other side, after i take the planet.

ok, crazy idea. if you have a lot of tractor beam immune ships coming through, and they tend to always go in the same direction, what if you put up a pair of level 1 force fields? have them set up in the right position, so that incoming ships would have to go a longer path, giving your turrets more time to shoot them, and your ships will have more time to get there if necessary. then again, a mine field with a mine layer would probably work better.

basically it would be set up so that there is a little crevice for the wormhole, and they can't go straight for their target, instead they have to go all the way around the two force fields.

[Spikey00]

Well, knowing that most turrets have a large enough radius to deal damage to incoming ships, this wouldn't be very necessary.  Besides, I have yet to observe the AI be as intelligent as to evade my defenses--perhaps it is just the way that I secure my planets. 

[Ragnol]

the AI seems to usually have one or two ships regularly(much more frequently than waves) go to my planets and attack them. usually they completely avoid my turrets when they do this. meaning i need to keep fast ships there to chase them down. of course, a mine field is probably more practical.

[x4000]

the AI seems to usually have one or two ships regularly(much more frequently than waves) go to my planets and attack them. usually they completely avoid my turrets when they do this. meaning i need to keep fast ships there to chase them down. of course, a mine field is probably more practical.

Those are the Special Forces ships of the AI.  If you take out nearby Special Forces Command Posts that can cut down on the influx of those smaller bands, but it won't completely eliminate them.  Turrets and tractor beams at the wormholes, or minefields, and/or tachyon beam emitters, will generally keep them pretty harmless.  Having FRD ships that are fast or teleporting can also cut it down even more, as can sniper or spider turrets.

[Vaos]

I found Gravitational turrets very good against tractor beam immune ships, mainly because those are usually damn fast. This give your turrets plenty of time to have some fun. Using Grav turrets is also a way of protecting your other turrets from being approached too close in certain cases.
But they also affect your own ships! Better used in combination with teleporting ships.

[x4000]

I found Gravitational turrets very good against tractor beam immune ships, mainly because those are usually damn fast. This give your turrets plenty of time to have some fun. Using Grav turrets is also a way of protecting your other turrets from being approached to close in certain cases.
But they also affect your own ships! Better used in combination with teleporting ships.

Oh yeah, those are awesome also.  They are so new that I don't always remember to use them yet.   They work great when paired with turrets in general, too.

[Vaos]

Oh yeah, those are awesome also.  They are so new that I don't always remember to use them yet.   They work great when paired with turrets in general, too.

The real drawback of those is that they are very knowledge intensive. You need 12000 to get to the Mark III ones, and that's a lot. The Mark I aren't really decisive (range, and 8 speed isn't that low), so you pretty much to get Mark II to have a pretty good effectiveness. But often, you just can't spare that much knowledge.
They could use a little discount on the amount of knowledge!

[x4000]

Oh yeah, those are awesome also.  They are so new that I don't always remember to use them yet.   They work great when paired with turrets in general, too.

The real drawback of those is that they are very knowledge intensive. You need 12000 to get to the Mark III ones, and that's a lot. The Mark I aren't really decisive (range, and 8 speed isn't that low), so you pretty much to get Mark II to have a pretty good effectiveness. But often, you just can't spare that much knowledge.
They could use a little discount on the amount of knowledge!

Possibly... those are super effective for what they are, though, so I'm wary of rebalancing them too heavily until I have a little more data.  I'm curious what others think on this matter -- thoughts, anyone?

[Vaos]

Well, I admit the Mark III are extremely effective. They have a bad cost-effectiveness ratio, but they really do their job well. The problem with the high knowledge cost is that most people already have some good use for it, so they won't try these Grav Turrets. Would be interesting to know if anyone else actually used them once (and not only the Mark I version).

[Ragnol]

the AI seems to usually have one or two ships regularly(much more frequently than waves) go to my planets and attack them. usually they completely avoid my turrets when they do this. meaning i need to keep fast ships there to chase them down. of course, a mine field is probably more practical.

Those are the Special Forces ships of the AI.  If you take out nearby Special Forces Command Posts that can cut down on the influx of those smaller bands, but it won't completely eliminate them.  Turrets and tractor beams at the wormholes, or minefields, and/or tachyon beam emitters, will generally keep them pretty harmless.  Having FRD ships that are fast or teleporting can also cut it down even more, as can sniper or spider turrets.

these definitely aren't special forces, because they go straight for my command station. they aren't heading for other wormholes at all. or do special forces attack too?

[x4000]

the AI seems to usually have one or two ships regularly(much more frequently than waves) go to my planets and attack them. usually they completely avoid my turrets when they do this. meaning i need to keep fast ships there to chase them down. of course, a mine field is probably more practical.

Those are the Special Forces ships of the AI.  If you take out nearby Special Forces Command Posts that can cut down on the influx of those smaller bands, but it won't completely eliminate them.  Turrets and tractor beams at the wormholes, or minefields, and/or tachyon beam emitters, will generally keep them pretty harmless.  Having FRD ships that are fast or teleporting can also cut it down even more, as can sniper or spider turrets.

these definitely aren't special forces, because they go straight for my command station. they aren't heading for other wormholes at all. or do special forces attack too?

Those are special forces.  Whenever a special forces ship is on the same planet as one of your ships that it can see, then it stops being special forces and goes into full attack mode.  So what you're seeing is a big batch of them coming out of the wormhole together, then all switching into attack mode.

[OniRyo]

Long short, 3 tractors, 9 standard, and 9 mrls turrets (all mk 1) at EVERY hostile wormhole is standard especially early on when I have the popcap to spare still. As i take the planets I delete the turrents and move them to the new planet. I try to find bottleneck planets and take most everything on my side of them forcing the AI to only have one way to my planets. Tends to raise the AI progress with all the excessive planets I take (usually I'll just neuter/gate raid the mostly useless ones just so they aren't a real threat.)

As needed I add more turrets or upgrade to higher level turrets etc but that's very much a 'when needed' thing. I go entire games with nothing but the starting turrets, other times I feel like more of a turtle than the turtle ai lol

[soMe_RandoM]

well electric shuttles are good if you use grav turrets and get the units clumped up or tractors as the same. use K (low power) then when you want to deliver your payload yust K relasing the ES from low power giving the payload to the enemy. this works but you activly defending so asuming it like an wave and not yust random 10-150 ships coming through. i turtle. use defences that are ment for mobile ships and few turrets that attack.

[rubikscube]

what if you can move your resources close to each other and use lightning turrets.