Whipping boy strategies

[tadrinth]

I was hoping to collect some wisdom around whipping boys.  Lots of questions:

How do you pick a planet to turn into a whipping boy?  Does the choice matter much?  Should it be on a critical chokepoint? It seems like you'd definitely want a system with only one wormhole leading to friendly systems, at least. 

How many whipping boys? 

How much are, say, ion cannons worth? Is it worth capturing a planet with ion cannons just to serve as a whipping boy?  Same for gravity drills, attritioners, OMDs, etc, but ion cannons are the most common.

Does the arrangement of wormholes on the planet matter much? Obviously its better if all the enemies come from one direction, but is it better for the wormholes to be close, medium, or as far apart as possible? 

Is it worth warp gate raiding to ensure all waves come in through a single wormhole?

Kahuna's guide suggests putting the turrets as close as possible to the friendly wormhole, but this seems to sometimes cause the incoming wave to turn around and leave without ever getting to the defenses (maybe just due to the wormholes being really far apart, or AIP was low).  Is there a sweet spot for the distance to the hostile wormhole? 

What unlocks (player or AI) or minor factions inform your whipping boy tactics? 

Personally, I usually try to ensure that the enemies only come from one wormhole (gate raiding if need be but preferably starting with a system with few hostile entrances), and I usually capture a system with a high mark ion cannon and/or OMD where possible.  I've tried building all my defenses very close to the wormhole, and that worked great except that mines were fairly useless.  I've tried building as far back as possible, but then stuff turns around and leaves.  Currently experimenting with leaving just enough space for the enemy to fly through minefields, then hitting tractor beam turrets, with turrets piled so that they at least cover the tractor turrets. 

So far I've mostly stuck to having one whipping boy and just reinforcing the heck out of it, but I could see multiplayer or multi-HW games favoring multiple whipping boys, since then the odds are better that the double waves go to different planets. 

It seems like sniper/bombard-type AI unlocks would strongly encourage building defenses so that the hostile wormhole is covered by turrets. 

Currently working on a vanilla campaign (no expansions), so I don't have as many defensive options as I might like. 

[Draco18s]

How much are, say, ion cannons worth? Is it worth capturing a planet with ion cannons just to serve as a whipping boy?  Same for gravity drills, attritioners, OMDs, etc, but ion cannons are the most common.

Ion cannons are near worthless.  The AI will almost always be immune to them, unless you're playing very low AIP or manage to capture a high mark one early.

Gravity Drills, on the other hand, are AMAZING.  I once had a Military Station (this was back when they had just translocation shots) hold off a wave to it for like an hour before the AI's ships punched through the Force Field.

(Attritioners and OMDs are not that useful either.  The former for their not-that-impressive rate, but can be combined with other things, but it's closer to "icing" than "cake" and the latter because the AI doesn't use that many starships, and if they ARE, the OMD isn't likely to live very long).

[Bognor]

Grav Drills were strongly nerfed in 6.013, though. They now limit speed to 32, rather than 8.  Still useful but not godly.

[Diazo]

The things is, a "whipping boy" is just a defended system you guide the AI's forces to.

The term "whipping boy" has come to mean the strategy of focusing all the AI's forces onto a single system through map layout (and gate raiding).

Note that I rate map layout higher, you can guide AI waves to a system via gate raiding, but threat and CPAs don't care and will come at you from the direction they please.

Which defensive setup I end up running with is almost exclusively dependent on map layout.

A system with an Ion Mk V, a Black Hole generator and a Grav Drill is an excellent whipping boy system, except it's off the path the AI take and so it is useless.

Note that this means because I run the Realistic map type, even if the map layout favors me, the fewest systems I can reasonably expect to expose to the AI is 3. Most games I never get below 5 systems exposed.

This means I never really setup a whipping boy, rather I detach my lower mark units as the game progresses as roving defenders to repel the AI wherever it decides to attack rather then taking the AI hit for destroying Warp Gates.

D.

[Draco18s]

Grav Drills were strongly nerfed in 6.013, though. They now limit speed to 32, rather than 8.  Still useful but not godly.

Alas.

Still really nice though.

Still think it was funny that the command station alone held of 95% of a wave X3

[Kahuna]

-whipping boy=critical chokepoint
-~3 whipping boys is max if wave sizes are about 1200 or more. If wave sizes are about 600 i'd say ~5 is max. When difficulty level is high and/or waves get big (~900 ships) each hostile wormhole should be "blocked" by 45 area minefields. And no minefields are not useless. If they "are" (they're not) you're not doing as i suggested in my guide.
-ion cannons are worthless. Omds are good. However you shouldnt capture a planet because it has an omd. Building an omd from traders might be worth it though. Whipping boy should be only captured because of it's position and wormhole positions. A planet with an advanced factory etc can sometimes work as a whipping boy too.
-about wormholes. As i said before each hostile wormhole need x amount of (area) minefields. Also. Your command station and left and right wormhole form a triangle.. the corner of the triangle on top of your command station must be ~100 degrees max. Otherwise some ai ship can flank and out range your turrets. The wormholes should be as far as possible. Out of missile turrets range. Of course all of this isnt always possible but this would be an optimal whipping boy.
-ai ships retreat only if theyre massively outnumbered by your defenses.
-area minefields, tractors (mark iiis out range mark ii bombers) covered by mark ii hardened forcefields, higher marks of needler, mrls and/or missile turrets. Mark iv heavy beam cannon is an absolute beast too.
-remain rebuilders+mark >=ii needler turrets and heavy bomber stars ships will clean up bombards. remain rebuilders rebuilders+sniper turrets will clean up snipers.

[Bognor]

tractors (mark iiis out range mark ii bombers)

Note, though, that if unit A is caught in a tractor beam emitted by unit B, then unit B is always considered within firing range of unit A.  No unit can use a tractor beam alone to render another unit harmless.

     *     *     *

This thread got me thinking, you could pick a hybrid AI type with the aim of creating an awesome choke point or whipping boy.  Eg One Way Doormaster/Peacekeeper for a choke point with a Black Hole Machine and OMD, or Grav Driller/Attritioner for a whipping boy that forced enemy ships to move slowly while being being attritioned (though Attritioners are pretty underpowered).

[Draco18s]

Grav Driller/Attritioner for a whipping boy that forced enemy ships to move slowly while being being attritioned (though Attritioners are pretty underpowered).

This.  Then boost the attrition power with the spire (asteroid) units.

Then area mine and tractor beam the hell out of the place and finish off with sniper turrets and a military command station.*  If that's not enough, superfort and Beam Cannon 5.

*Or a logistics, but I think the speed debuff would be less useful than the military's damage boost and railgun shot.

[tadrinth]

Ah, so if the AI ships are retreating I either need less defenses or I need to play on a higher difficulty.  Then the ships will actually stay and fight, which means I can build defenses far back from the wormhole, which means I can use mines effectively.  If I build all my defenses so they're covering the wormhole, the ships don't really move, so they don't trigger mines. 

Of course, I'm currently up against a Neinzul Youngster, so it sends extra large waves that are entirely immune to mines. =(

[Bognor]

Ah, so if the AI ships are retreating I either need less defenses or I need to play on a higher difficulty.  Then the ships will actually stay and fight

Not sure about the underlined bit.  I'd have thought retreating when it's intelligent to do so would be behavior you'd see on higher difficulties.

Another option - I think ships never retreat from a system containing your home command station.  So if you're feeling brave and you don't want ships retreating, make your home your whipping boy  >D

[snelg]

I'm almost never playing maps that give good opportunities for chokepoints so I usually rely on the fleet for defence as well. But you still get decent defences with some turrets, tractorbeams, shields and a few mines. The mark V turrets if you can find any are godsent when you have trouble getting chokepoints as well.

[100307009]

I prefer to rely on disposable fodder like mk1 laser and flak turrets and deal with enemies with forts and heavy guns from far away (who are covered by shield bearers and other protecting stuff). after certain unlocks this whipping boy can deal with almost any abuse like 5k ships from each wormhole, mixed with golems. motherships are still a problem but hey, when you get these ugly guys you should have huge fleet or something that can give it a punch. boosters/debuffers from zenith trader are a big plus also

[Draco18s]

I prefer to rely on disposable fodder like mk1 laser and flak turrets and deal with enemies with forts and heavy guns from far away (who are covered by shield bearers and other protecting stuff). after certain unlocks this whipping boy can deal with almost any abuse like 5k ships from each wormhole, mixed with golems. motherships are still a problem but hey, when you get these ugly guys you should have huge fleet or something that can give it a punch. boosters/debuffers from zenith trader are a big plus also

You are doing it inefficiently.

Your whipping boy might hold against 5k ships, but I guarantee that it'll crumple under 20k.  If you have to use rebuilders on anything other than tractor turrets, you're doing it wrong.

You don't have a real whipping boy that can survive anything until you have a full complement of heavy beam cannons (yes, even a HBC 5), two super forts, grav turret Mk3, two dozen tractor beam turrets, and everything else you own.

Mind, I did that back when Light of the Spire was new and no longer have a screenshot, but me and my friend had an entire corner blocked by a single wormhole and we put EVERYTHING on it.  Every turret of every mark we had, two super forts, all of the regular forts, force fields (covering the tractor turrets only!) and we held off waves without having to have a mobile ship within 10 jumps (ok, Flagships, but only for their munitions boosting prowess).  We held off HUGE waves (with our machines grinding to keep up).

Ah, those were the days. <3

And that was the same game that made Keith implement transport-wormhole-attrition.

[Kahuna]

There is a Mark V HBC Fabricator/TurretController?

[Draco18s]

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.