Strategical Advice

[filippe999]

Salutations fellow survivor!

I came here with a request for a simple strategical advice, my situation is:



As you can see it's an X-Map and i've conquered 5 planets, i have an attack fleet



Which is a full stack of MkII fighters, bombers, missile frigates and vampire ships plus all starship i can build.

Now i have a hard decision to make, i have two border enemy planets and i can't decide which one to attack, they both posses a strong fleet and structures and some can be really threatening for my fleet.
One of then is:



This one posseses an ion cannon that can insta-kill my workhorses.
and this:

This one has a fearful AI eye which i don't need to say it's hard to destroy.

My main attack strategy is to simply select the attack fleet and go to the galaxy map, ctrl+g+v click on the target planet, watch and when they strat to come back to wormhole i order then to attack the command center, after that i order the construction of the outpost ship and build there.
The problem of my strategy against the AI eye is that the Ai eye summons those annoying zombie ships which will seek me out if the attack fleet is destroyed, and as you saw above my attack fleet is huge so do the AI counterattack with an AI Eye.

Additionally i would like to know a little more about attacking strategies.
Since no i thank you for your attention.
Filippe999

[Coppermantis]

The AI Eye will only make it so that you do not outnumber the AI more than 2:1, so even with the eye you will never have less than twice the enemy presence on the planet. It's annoying, but not completely battle-changing. If you want to destroy it though, you can use surgical strike attacks to eliminate all guard posts, after which the Eye will self-destruct. You can do this with starship task forces (Bomber, Siege and Raid starships are good for this) or with transports. Load a transport up with bombers and send it to a guard post. Once that target is gone, load up and hit another. Wormhole guard posts don't count so ignore them. Cloaker starships make this much easier, but they only come in the Zenith Remnant expansion which I don't know if you have.

[Minotaar]

There's a reason FRD mode on the attack is usually considered suicide 
If you want to improve on that, first of all, start using attack-move. It keeps your fleet tight, which can help you really outnumber the defenders, whereas if you attack in FRD you might lose a lot of ships to just a couple Guardians that will shoot them down one after another, or an Ion Cannon which will not get the attention it deserves. If you have enough ships, you can split the fleet in half (pressing L does that for you) and A-move them in different directions. Also make sure you deal with powerful defenses (mostly Ion Cannons) as soon as possible. The Raid Starship is usually the best for that job, send them in once the battle starts and you can pick a clear path. With Fortresses it's usually better to stay out of range and clean them up with bombers once the defending fleet is dealt with.
For AI Eye destroying take just the higher-mark ships until you get a 1.3-1.5x advantage (and starships of course) and focus on taking down the guardposts ASAP. Pull back parts of the fleet if you're winning, if you're losing it's fine to rebuild and take another go at it, just make sure you kill some guardposts every time you go in. Another helpful shortcut is holding N+number while box-selecting will select just the mark equal to the number.
Hope that helps 

[Wanderer]

The Ion's pretty easy to pop, just send your Raid SSs after it.  Might take two attempts if you only have MK Is, but still it's not that hard to pop, usually.

For the AI Eye, my usual strategy is to Raid the system to pieces with Raid SSs while using the fleet to kill off the released threat from the guard post pops.  This can be more difficult if you're facing a Spire Shield Guardpost but in general it works fine.  You'll want MK IIs for that.

If you don't want to invest in the Raid SSs, though, as mentioned the AI Eye isn't the end of the world.  Just use a fleet of your highest MKs and slowly raid the system to pieces.  It can take awhile but it's worth it.

Now, strategically, my question is why do you care about either of those worlds?  Popping the Ion cannon so you can get out sure, but why do you care about taking the world?  What's there that you want?  Do you need it for your strategy to protect the homeworld?  Does it have something you want on it?  Do you need it as a waystation to move foward? 

[filippe999]

i just like to take every world i can before the main AI home, i know it can cause a severe AI progress at the end, but i like the challenge btw this is my first "true" game since i got the game here

[Coppermantis]

Wow. Good luck with that. What difficulty are you playing on?

[chemical_art]

<99,999 and 99,999>

Use those resources! Even if you just buy 10 merc fighters.

[NickAragua]

The way I usually deal with AI Eyes is by building a full group (MK1/2/3) of raid starships, and sending them over to the target world to blow up every guard post. Once the guard posts are gone, the AI Eye blows up automatically.

As for which world to take, normally, I would recommend neutering (blow up all the guard posts and the warp gate) then avoiding Kalach until you find the other three AI Co-Processors. Currently, the cost to take it would be +40 AIP, for a world you don't really need.

Joly is on the way to the rest of the galaxy, so you'll definitely want to take it, as it forms an excellent choke point. Use Raid Starships to blow up the guard posts and the command center, then send your colony ship in after your fleet. You'll be able to set up your base and capture the Ion Cannon to boot, with fairly minimal losses.

I also would strongly recommend against taking every world you see, as it will make the later part of your game much more boring (and unwinnable). You will reach a point where you can't progress any further against swarms of MK IV AI ships, and then they'll spank you.

[barryvm]

I would recommend destroying the AI eye first by sending a small strikeforce (starships or higher mark bomber/raiders) to kill all the guardposts.
You would not need to actually take the planet nor destroy the co-processor so you would not get any AIP penalty.
This way you can lower the amount of reinforcements the AI gets on Kalach and lower it's overall reinforcements because it will always try to reinforce this planet.
After destroying all the guardposts on Kalach it will not be a major threat and it will actually divert AI reinforcements from it's narrow front to a pointless garrison on Kalach which you can periodically attack and clear at your leisure. 
When you have located and destroyed the other three CP's you can then snipe the coprocessor and take the planet.
The only downside to this is the time it costs to destroy the guardposts one at a time: as you are sure your static defences on the neighbouring world can take the released threat from Kalach you could attack (and take) the other world at the same time.

[Professor Paul1290]

I also use Raid Starships to kill outposts in order to eliminate AI Eyes.

If I'm in a hurry I also sometimes use specific groups of the appropriate ships (bombers, fighters, frigates) to hit them as well. As long as you stay under double the enemy number of ships you should be ok.

A trick that sometimes works, though it is really situational depending on how many enemy ships there are, is to send a group that can take a lot of punishment and use them as a distraction draw some of the AI ships off somewhere so that group you have taking out the outposts can do so without having to deal with as many other ships.