Attacking Absurdly Reinforced Systems

[Doddler]

So me and my friend are playing for about 3 hours on a 60 planet game (wanted it to be a quick-ish game).  We've taken control of about 18 or so systems, both have fleets of about 1500 ships each, and have an AI progress of about 450ish.  While we can't see the AI types we are fighting (set to random easy/normal), we do know one of the two is an experimentalist.  Both AI's are difficulty 7, all minor factions on except for dyson, and have the modifiers cross planet waves and non-announced waves enabled.  We have every system scouted, have control of a Mk IV factory, a couple experimental fabricators and captured 3 of the 5 advanced research stations.  We feel we are ready to bring the game to a close and take out the AI homeworlds.

However, we ran into an unfortunate roadblock.  The AI homeworld had over 3600 ships on it (3000 of which are core class), and all adjascent Mk IV systems have about 2500 ships.  These worlds have never been alerted.  After some dicking around, we more or less gave up.  We had the upper hand so to speak, the AI completely unable to assault our position (We set up some pretty awesome chokepoints), but the AI had such an absurd amount of ships on defense that any hope of breaking that system would have doubled the game length, but without anything fun happening.  This kind of situation was the one that I specifically brought up in my post about the end game.  It's just not interesting or fun to have to deal with such a thing.  I kind of wish there was a cap on how much the AI could re-inforce a system based on AI progress.

So I'm curious, how do other players get around this?  I assume the AI type is some kind of defensive type because most AI's won't re-inforce their homeworlds without being alerted.  The core worlds we could probably deal with by some kind of percision command station sniping or in a worst case, nuke, but the homeworld is absurd.  The AI has more than our combined ship cap in pure core rank ships.  What do other players do?

[Lancefighter]

Honestly in such a case it usually ends with me giving up. I simply dislike immensely having to constantly reinforce a system just to take it down.. In the past, munitions boosting would incredibly help, but it seems that is no longer a valid strategy.

The only thing I can think of would be to throw lightning warheads at stuff until they rush attack you -try and nix the command station if you can..

[Atrieus]

Having played an 80 world map with AI's at 7.3, where I took every planet, I have gained a wee bit of experience with heavily defended worlds.

The AI Progress finished around 4000+ or so, with the last 10 or so planets having around 5k of mark IV/V vessels.  There are a couple of methods I have found useful.

Force field - 2 methods of use.  First send thru a WH to activate the vessels on the other side, generally resulting in an attack by the AI that lessens its defenders of that wormhole.  Second: A mark II or III FF thru followed by the attacking force.  Secure the WH and build your beachhead.

Transport - 2 Methods of use.  First: The ai will chase these with anything that comes into target acquisition range.  Fly about 10 into the system, 5 go in one direction, 5 in the other, making sure to skim WH, and command center.  Once done send the transport as far away as you can.  Second: You can put all attackers less StarShips, Experimentals, and resistance fighters in transports.  Thru the WH, move to a location mostly out of range, setup a defensive or move on top of the target you want to eliminate.  I recommend disband the transport to unload, it is much quicker then hitting the unload button.  In addition, the transports are rarely in good enough shape to re-use anyways.

Emp/Lightning Warhead -  1x Lightning Warhead into each guard post, 2x into the Spec Ops.  If there is a Warhead interceptor, send an emp Warhead thru, followed by the lightning.  If your defense is strong enough hit the command center (1x lightning is sufficient) the planet will empty if you have killed the guard posts, if not only the majority will attack you leaving some clean up.

Spider Turrets - Since these have effectively infinite range, kill engines and are not affected by force fields these are amazing for beachheads.  A dead ship does not count against any limits and effectively response quickly.  A ship with no engines, particularly one pulled out of range, stills counts against the total, but cannot harm you.

Cloaked raids - Take about 100 or so cloaked vessels thru the wh on low power, locate the guard posts, hit one at a time.

Atrieus

[Ozymandiaz]

It seems to me you have a very small fleet.

On my multi game with a friend I got aobut 10 planets (and he the same), we got 3000+ units each (I focused almost all my tech points on ships). I also got 1000 merc fighters on standby.

With these numbers assaulting a planet that is reinforced is a lot is easier .

The above methods work well also.

[Draxis]

When we had this problem, we used the 'Decoy Transport' manoeuvre:

Send in a nuke, this removes the non-core shields and turrets, and takes the fortresses offline
Send in a few decoy transports, to draw away all the mobile military
Send in our real transports, run them to the AI station and detonate

[Doddler]

Those are pretty interesting suggestions.  I don't think winning would have been a major issue to be honest, I figured we could do it, but it's more of a matter of how long.  There was a point where we were literally both alt tabbed waiting for enough ships to build when we realised "Hmmm, we aren't actually playing the game".  It was more or less at this point where we actually ended the game.  At least the lead up to the end is interesting, it's why I hope they do something interesting with the end game.

Still some of the suggestions are pretty cool.  I haven't used transports since they stopped being bad, so I wasn't particularly aware of their AI distracting properties.  I will try some of those tips in my next game and let you know how it goes.

[Ruges]

We usualy like to set it up so we rush the last 5 or so planets to a homeworld, so that mrk3 planet next to the homeworld is easier to take. We always destroy the command station there and claim the planet for ourself. In such a situation you discribe with being outguned about the only way we have found to deal with that is to build up our forces to the max, max out our resources. Build all of our emps, lighting and armored warheads. Then send in all the emps, along with a steady stream of EMP's till the timer gets up to about 20mins. At this point in time we have two choices, Either we zerg the homeworlds command station. Or we warp in and establish a beachhead with max turrets, forcefields, space stations, repair facilities and the such. using the other warheads to take out defensive strongpoints. Also we try to time it so the traders arive at the same time so we can get some shield boosters and shield nulifiers, Iron cannons and the such up too. Its always a bloody battle.

[Draxis]

EMP's stack??  Every time I think I have this game figured out, I learn something new...

[Ruges]

Yea, but dont forget they have allot of AIP. And when you can produce 1 every 10 secounds and its effects last 30 secounds, Thats only 20 secounds added per emp. So you would need 60 EMP's to get to 20 mins. So 120 AIP, And if its your first AI homeworld add in anouther 100 for the command station, so 222 AIP to break the system.

And dont forget they wont work on the core ships and structures there, ontop of all the stuff that is immune to EMP's