Whipping boy strategies

[Toranth]

There is a Mark V HBC Fabricator/TurretController?

Sorry, mark 4.  The whichever-is-biggerest of that turret.
"Whichever-is-biggerest" tends to mean "mark 5" but not everything goes up to mark 5.

Drat.  You got my hopes up for a minute there. 
I'm really hoping to see more Mk V turrets someday.  Mk V HBC, Mk V Grav, Mk V Tractors...  Oooh, the fun.

[Draco18s]

I also said that that game was back when LotS was new :p

[Kahuna]

I'm just gonna leave these here.

This is how most people seem to place their defenses. My head almost explodes every time I see something like this.
Blue = how it should be done


VS


(I'm not saying you need all of those defenses. Just an example)

There may be exceptions to these. For example you can build some Needler Turrets in front of the Wormholes to pop Carriers.

[ErictheRed]

Ok looks like I've been misplacing my turrets since I started playing this game.  Will rarrange and try this tonight.

[Draco18s]

I've probably been doing it wrong too, but likely as a holdover from when tractor beam turrets were essential, but with their pitiful range the only GOOD place to put them was wormhole-adjacent.  Which meant that turrets needed to be somewhat wormhole-adjacent or they'd be doing nothing while your tractor beams simply delayed the wave.

[Bognor]

Kahuna, don't you find with your setup that you get thousands of ships from the wave fleeing and turning into an unmanageable amount of threat?  Or do you always have a Black Hole Machine or some other trick?

[Kahuna]

Kahuna, don't you find with your setup that you get thousands of ships from the wave fleeing and turning into an unmanageable amount of threat?  Or do you always have a Black Hole Machine or some other trick?

AI ships rarely get away from me. Area Minefields usually destroy majority of the waves and then missile and sniper turrets and my fleet will destroy fleeing AI ships. If the fleeing ships manage to get trough a wormhole to another planet I usually follow them with my fleet and destroy them there. I very rarely have thousands of threat. My threat is usually a couple of hundreds at max. And even if I did have lets say 2300 threat it would be no problem for my defenses.

[Kahuna]

I've probably been doing it wrong too, but likely as a holdover from when tractor beam turrets were essential, but with their pitiful range the only GOOD place to put them was wormhole-adjacent.  Which meant that turrets needed to be somewhat wormhole-adjacent or they'd be doing nothing while your tractor beams simply delayed the wave.

I think tractor beam turrets are still quite essential. Especially after the gravitational (turret) nerf. Now I don't know which version you're talking about but I think this would have worked in that version too. I started playing AI War when it was version 5 or something.

[Bognor]

Kahuna, don't you find with your setup that you get thousands of ships from the wave fleeing and turning into an unmanageable amount of threat?  Or do you always have a Black Hole Machine or some other trick?

AI ships rarely get away from me. Area Minefields usually destroy majority of the waves and then missile and sniper turrets and my fleet will destroy fleeing AI ships. If the fleeing ships manage to get trough a wormhole to another planet I usually follow them with my fleet and destroy them there. I very rarely have thousands of threat. My threat is usually a couple of hundreds at max. And even if I did have lets say 2300 threat it would be no problem for my defenses.

Ok, thanks.

[Kahuna]

Btw. About threat waves and carriers:
Since I rely quite heavily on Minefields (especially Area Minefields) a wave of 1000 ships is much harder to stop than a wave with 1400 ships because AI Carriers are immune to minefields and they can carry up to 1000 ships. When the Carrier has ships "escorting" it they will run into Area Minefields and the Area Minefields will damage and destroy the Carrier and then the ships inside the Carrier too. So you should always know how many ships the AIs will send at X AIP and be ready to pop the carriers before they enter the minefields.