Thanks to the super useful mobile builders, one of my favorite tactics when taking new planets is to just send a bunch of 'em through a wormhole at once with a force field and quickly place as many turrets and remains re builders as I can before they all get destroyed. The result of this is (depending on how long the force field lasted) is a very hard for the AI to completely destroy beach head. Due to the cloaking of the remains re builders, they generally survive for a surprisingly long time since the AI always seems to target the turrets (even the ones that are in construction) first. With a bunch of missile and sniper turrets placed right at the edge of planet (along with a few needlers and lazers to deal with those immune to those types of fire), I nearly always end up taking the system. Force fields can be a pain, since sometimes the only turret that can reach them is the sniper turret. I often fast fwd when this happens.
This kind of play is the main tactic I use in offense and has won me two 7.3 games and an 8. (Of course I can't use it for deep striking those pesky Prime Shield Generator worlds but that's never really been difficult anyways.) I believe that this needs to be balanced. Either up the AI reprisal for building turrets on an AI controlled world, or decrease the turret building cap on AI worlds.
Reprisal! That was the other thing I wanted to mention! The AI never really seams to respond to this tactic either. And if it does, it never seems to be that bad. I don't really know how the reprisal system works though, and what sets it of. With an AI progress of 385 I'm about to turret the hell out of an AI core world. I do so and the response is minimal. AI reprisal warning level 1. Get 650 mk 3 bombers and a siege star-ship sent my way. No problem at all with tractor beam turrets.
As I was saying, I feel like this tactic is a bit over powered. I doesn't seem right that 30 or so mk3 sniper and missile turrets along with a few remains drones and lazer/needlers should be able to take a whole core world pretty much by themselves. I mean, the planet had nearly 1500 ships there. They managed to destroy the beach head fairly quickly, but due to the minimal AI reprisal I can just rinse and repeat whilst taking no fleet casualties.
Thanks for listening!
