that is easier said than done...unless I want to either sink a ton of time ... into scouting.
That's how I tend to do it. The way I look at it, the homeworlds are like a puzzle that has to be picked apart, and so I try and find all the tools I need along my way through the game. I'm always going to want access to MkIV ships, so advanced factories are chosen (or hacked) according to strategic placement, but the ARSs, core and experimental fabs I capture/hack are all chosen with the end goal of taking down the homeworld with minimum pain. As a consequence, I try to avoid making decisions about these until I know what I'm facing.
It had never occurred to me to try microing teleporters though - do they really get though it's health in a reasonable time?
It's not too bad. None of the three teleporting fleet ship types get a bonus against heavy hulls, so it's not super speedy, and as the wrath lance tends to *need* to be (one of) the first guardpost(s) you kill, you tend to have pretty high attrition with the ships you're using from the reserve pouring in. Still, it "only" has 60 million health, with pretty negligible armour, so all the damage coming from your ships has a noticeable effect. Typically, if I've got full MkI-IV caps of a teleporting ship, I'll micro them until the MkI and II ships are mostly gone, then pull out the MkIII and IV ships to be repaired while the Mk I and II ships are being rebuilt, which doesn't typically take too long. It takes a few goes, but it's fun and challenging rather than grinding, frustrating and boring. At least to me.
Also, like nitpik, I don't much mind homeworld assaults as they are, but I don't play above difficulty 8 either. Sooner or later I'm going to meet a wrath lance sitting next to a superfortress or some other major unpleasantness, and I'm going to find that frustrating, I'm sure.
