1] The AI eyes
In my current game I have a fairly substantial fleet (1500 ships of various marks) and a few special vessels. If the planet has an AI eye I'll start the assault by sending a small number of ships to take it down... ideally something cloaked, fast, or highly armoured so I can get in and out with minimal casualties.
I've been wanting to get hands on a golem so I captured an armoured one early one, and it has been tasked to fly in and pop the eye on any planets I come across with one. Assaults from there then split into two versions
2a] The planet has super-weapons I want.
I'll send in the portions of my fleet immune to the weapon, along with *distractions*. In my current game this involves autobombs and Z shredders... although some shredders will stay back, as the ones I have were just from a popped Z-reserve box and their children. I'll try and take out the command centre as quickly as possible and then move in forcefields and a colony ship to capture the planet... with the forcefields moving to protect the super-weapons and anything else like advanced factories of fabricators I want protected. I leave ARS to fend for themselves though.
2b] The planet has super-weapons that I don't care about
The golem or anything immune gets sent in and tasked to blow them up.
2c] The planet has no major weapons
Nothing special happens.
3] and then...
The rest of my fleet then comes in as a blob and gets ordered to take out the big threats with shift + right-click while the Z shredders and anything else that can't hurt buildings get stuck into FRD mode. My priorities are:
First: Zombie guardians
Second: Gravity guardians
Third: All other guardians, usually in descending order of DPS
Fourth: Starships
Fifth: Z-Reserves, if I can support them
Sixth: Guard posts outside forcefields
Seventh: Guard posts under forcefields
Eighth: Fleet ships
Ninth: Forcefields
4] The end
From there I'll either pop the command station and colonise, move on or sit still for repair. If the planet isn't worth taking but will still function as a gateway to the AI I'll take down the wormhole guardians to avoid the constant damage.
That's my standard plan, but I have some exceptions. If there's a superfortress then I've found a couple of spire rams will take them down, and before the golem when I came across a well-guarded eye I found that rams again solved all my problems! If the planet has several hundred ships wandering around then I'll send in the Martyrs and corral as many as many enemy ships as possible into one spot before detonating the Martyrs in sequence... starting with engine damaged ones*.
I'm about to take on the AI homeworlds though, so I suspect different tactics will be needed. I'll let you know how it goes!
-Pineapple
*No engine damage in the new update though!