I'm having trouble with the time it takes to wear down a super-fortress on a core world, and looking for more efficient approaches.
I'm playing 7/7 (Mine Enthusiast + Train Master), 80 planets. I've gotten far enough to unlock most of the ARS, 18 planets with a couple chokepoints, a Mark IV factory, and I'm at about 120 AIP (found most of the data centers + a super terminal). Life is good. I've got a small outpost three hops from a core world.
Problem: Core world has a super-fortress covering the path into the AI center, and the superfortress is protected by a Mark III and Mark V force field.
I cleared out the guard posts, then started sending transports to drop waves of Mark IV bombers at the superfortress. (I decided that it would be really hard to launch attacks against the center with the super-fortress destroying my fleet as it flew in and out. Everytime I go to attack the superfortress, the AI reinforces its command post and often pulls reinforcements from the homeworld. I do a few percentage points of damage, then my bombers die. Then the forcefield starts to heal. I escalated to sending waves of all four marks against it. Some would a few moments doing a little damage; other waves would be evaporated instantly due to the reinforcements. My economy (18-20 planets, mark III metal and crystal gathers) can't keep up production of bomber waves, but eventually I wear out the two forcefields and the superfortress.
Is there a better option? Hurling wave after wave after wave of bombers takes forever and each wave is quickly evaporated. I feel that I can't bring the rest of my fleet -- it will die way too fast and I can't even afford to replace the bombers as fast as I loose them, let alone the rest of my ships. I don't have ranged artillery to protect the bombers from outside the range of the superfortress. And I'm not sure that an EMP warhead would take the forcefields down long enough to really matter (assuming Mark V fields are even affected by them).
