Do you use forts?

[chemical_art]

There was a time when I used forts, but I haven't used in a year now I think. Here's why:

-Very expensive
-Power hungry
-Fragile for their cost
-No remains

Does anyone use them? For me, they just cost to much for their impact.

[keith.lamothe]

I think it depends a bit on settings.  On games without spirecraft, fallen spire, or golems, the forts can be the closest thing you have to a defensive superweapon.  I've seen players using them pretty recently as "without this, I die" components to defensive chokepoints, etc.

But expensive as all-get-out, yes.

[Bognor]

I put a fortress in most really valuable systems - those with an Advanced Factory or multiple Fabricators or whatever.

Fortress-based defense is expensive in metal/crystal/energy but very cost-effective in knowledge.  A single fortress has a similar base DPS to an entire cap of ordinary turrets, and can cover an entire planet.

Apparently there's also a quirk where the AI is less likely to attack a system containing a Fortress, as Fortresses count as mobile military and are thus not treated as having one-tenth their actual firepower like turrets.

[Wanderer]

If I don't have Golems on... and usually even if I do, Fortresses come into play in my games eventually.  There's just no comparison to the K cost to damage output.  That and they're really 'build once' kind of units, unless you're using them as damage sponges.  The REAL pain of them is in the power upkeep, not the build price.  Their insane range just artilleries the enemy to death, however, and you can soak a LOT of enemy with that much flame wave.  Bonus points for Multi-Homeworld.

Couple that with the repair abilities and even at mid-range (say, around where you drop your MLRS) they pretty much keep a majority of the mid-rangers repaired unless they're under continuous fire.  Bonus points for having fleet repair ready to go as soon as you enter your whipping boy... just drop a Raptor... REcon... errr, crap. what're they called again?  Rally points!  Ah, right, those things.  Just drop a local one next to a Fort a little out of the line of fire and your guys'll be healed up before you can turn 'em around.  Usually.

I use forts as my "Let's get dangerous..." moment.  Go ahead, carrier the size of Alderaan... let me show you what this thing can do.

Oh, and the final part about them that's rather nice compared to Golems which can be equivalent?  I can replace the Fortress!

[Coppermantis]

I always use fortresses. They're a critical part of my defense network in almost all my games.

The following type of planets get fortresses:
-Any border system with an AI Warp gate adjacent (There are usually only one or two of these)
-Any system with an important facility, e.g, Advanced Factories, Rebel Colonies, etc. unless said system is not adjacent to ANY enemy planets.

If I get Golems, they'll usually replace Fortresses on some systems. Hive and Botnet Golems are the most useful as a single one of either can clear out an entire wave.

[snelg]

Using fortress if I have trouble getting knowledge and have a lot of excess energy.
Considering you get both knowledge and energy from the same source it's not that often (pretty much only when I get a Z power gen or two).

Would use them a lot more if they didn't have such a high energy cost, but then they'd probably be too good. I think they're okay as they are.

[chemical_art]

Gotcha.

So they are not meant to efficient in terms of M, C, or energy. But they are awesome in terms of K.

Very understandable.

My other complaint is that with other defenses remains make rebuilding an asset for defense. Could a similar thing be done with forts, even if their initial cost jumped significantly so that rebuilding costs more?

[Bognor]

Dunno about that.  I like it how the mechanics of Forts are quite different from those of turrets, so they feel like different kinds of things, not a just mega-turrets.  I think it's ok for losing one to be a significant blow, similar to other superweapons.

[chemical_art]

Dunno about that.  I like it how the mechanics of Forts are quite different from those of turrets, so they feel like different kinds of things, not a just mega-turrets.  I think it's ok for losing one to be a significant blow, similar to other superweapons.

I get that, but in any game where you are stressed in difficulty your initial line of defense will occasionally be overrun. That will occur whether or not you have forts (due to waves "waiting out" forts until they can overwhelm them). They are already unique in that they have obscene costs. Its (in a distant way) like saying "this car is expensive, but this is ordinary cheap car, so you can't insure even at a expensive rate"

Or, to but another way, what makes someone want to invest in defense instead of offense is that in while the defenses have greater dps, they also have a faster and cheaper recovery if wiped out. Forts come with HUGE increases of firepower, which makes the AI not throw their waves blindly into the fort, but causes them to wait until they can overwhelm the fort. Then you are left with no remains and nothing to show for it aside from causing that one wave to wait for a second wave to then strike.

Ah! That's why I stopped using forts! They come with huge amounts of firepower. When a fleet is huge they can generate border buildup, but once the fleet leaves the buildup is relieved. BUT! With a fort, that buildup does not go anywhere, until the buildup is enough to smash the fort on its own. That does not happen with turrets, and even once a in a blue moon it does, the turrets are easily replaced. The fort does not.

[keith.lamothe]

My other complaint is that with other defenses remains make rebuilding an asset for defense. Could a similar thing be done with forts, even if their initial cost jumped significantly so that rebuilding costs more?

No mobile units leave remains, it's one of the limitations of how the remains stuff is done.  But I'm hoping to extend it to cover forcefields, so when that happens I could look at doing it for fortresses.

If the cost thing becomes a problem (too cheap to rebuild) I could add a special flag for fortresses where they start rebuilding from 10% or something instead of 50%.

[chemical_art]

My other complaint is that with other defenses remains make rebuilding an asset for defense. Could a similar thing be done with forts, even if their initial cost jumped significantly so that rebuilding costs more?

No mobile units leave remains, it's one of the limitations of how the remains stuff is done.  But I'm hoping to extend it to cover forcefields, so when that happens I could look at doing it for fortresses.

If the cost thing becomes a problem (too cheap to rebuild) I could add a special flag for fortresses where they start rebuilding from 10% or something instead of 50%.

Thanks for the reasoning. Please see my firepower complaint about forts. That is actually the single greatest reason I don't use forts. They are worth like 200 turrets that cannot be replaced, so the result is while ok against waves their bane is border buildup. Border buildup kills both offense and defense, and with forts being unreplacable I'd rather lose a system then cause a buildup that will wipe out all layers of defense from outer planet to home.

[TechSY730]

My other complaint is that with other defenses remains make rebuilding an asset for defense. Could a similar thing be done with forts, even if their initial cost jumped significantly so that rebuilding costs more?

No mobile units leave remains, it's one of the limitations of how the remains stuff is done.  But I'm hoping to extend it to cover forcefields, so when that happens I could look at doing it for fortresses.

If the cost thing becomes a problem (too cheap to rebuild) I could add a special flag for fortresses where they start rebuilding from 10% or something instead of 50%.

Thanks for the reasoning. Please see my firepower complaint about forts. That is actually the single greatest reason I don't use forts. They are worth like 200 turrets that cannot be replaced, so the result is while ok against waves their bane is border buildup. Border buildup kills both offense and defense, and with forts being unreplacable I'd rather lose a system then cause a buildup that will wipe out all layers of defense from outer planet to home.

Hmm, it seems that you might want to look at
Reduce the firepower cutoff ratio that "stalking a wormhole" AI ships will wait for before entering #7016 and
AI Undervalues Turret Firepower #5001

Which together would allow for the AI to treat fortresses more similar to how they treat turrets, without causing massive stupid behavior by the AI.

[chemical_art]

Forts could be like other turrets and can get some bonuses. Firepower (iirc) doesn't account for bonuses but rather raw firepower. So forts hyper-inflate since they don't have bonuses like most default turrets do. Even if they halved their firepower in return for double bonuses on a variety of things would go a long way to help firepower issues.

[TechSY730]

Forts could be like other turrets and can get some bonuses. Firepower (iirc) doesn't account for bonuses but rather raw firepower. So forts hyper-inflate since they don't have bonuses like most default turrets do. Even if they halved their firepower in return for double bonuses on a variety of things would go a long way to help firepower issues.

That's a good point. Firepower doesn't account for bonuses, which causes firepower calculations to undervalue ships with large numbers of bonuses.

I would support reducing the raw firepower of fortresses but give them a more interesting set of bonuses, rather than the 1x against everything but scout and polycrystal like they have now. (Fortress Damage Adjusting #4777)

[Diazo]

Just chiming in that fortresses are an (almost) must have for me.

Mk Is are unlocked by mid game and Mk IIs quite often as I move to late game.

However, this is due to my defensive setup. I play realistic or lattice maps so my border worlds commonly have 3+ hostile warp points.

I had a whipping boy system with 8 hostile wormholes a couple games ago.

I can't built turrets at every hostile warp point so the majority of my defenses sit around my command station. I park a fort there so it's repair beams are in range of most of the turrets in the system.

Park some grav turrets about the system and things just die.

The down side is there is no second chance. In a warp point defence you have some time between going "my defences won't hold" to "command station under attack" to bring in your mobile ships.

With all the defences at the command station, you only have seconds and the command station can just outright die if there are FF immune units about.

I suppose what I'm trying to say is my defences are built around the fortress, especially because of it's repair beams.

I can't argue with the firepower either of course. 

D.

edit: Just had a thought, right now fortresses and golems overlap for the 'superweapon' role. What about changing the fortresses role to 'make this system survive'.

By this I mean make it so that it gives the players command station invincibility while alive? (With appropriate tweaks to it's DPS and Health.) I don't know how other people run their setups but I reasonably often have my fortress still alive even though my command station is dead in the system.