Is AIP too inhibitive?

[Kahuna]

I have around 500 turrets, a spire city, and a modular fortresses for each defense at the moment. Complete with black hole machines.

And yet, 4 raid starships just blew up my home command station. Keith, can we murder these again? Is there maybe a 'no raid starships' game option?

Or maybe can we just remove the AI raid starship's immunity to black hole machines? Thatd be really nice, actually.

edit

Or even better yet - can we implement some sort of command station upgrades? Id pay a few million metal to stick another ~5m hp on my home station. And a lot of knowledge.

No. You just need to fill the holes in your defenses.

I have around 500 turrets, a spire city, and a modular fortresses for each defense at the moment. Complete with black hole machines.

It's not just about having lot of turrets. In addition to that they must be positioned correctly.

[Hearteater]

First time you encounter Raid Starships, pause, select all your Sniper and Spider Turrets, and click on the highest Mark Raid Starship (you eventually want to get a Mark III with this).  This will set all these turrets to prioritize Raid Starships in general, and Mark III in particular, above everything else.  With full caps of both Sniper/Spider Turrets, it takes a ton of Raid Starships to reach your Command Station, assuming there is a reasonable distance between were the Raid Starships enter the system and the Command Station.

[Diazo]

Note that raid starships are not gravity immune.

Gravity Turrets make them a non-issue.

D.

[orzelek]

Note that raid starships are not gravity immune.

Gravity Turrets make them a non-issue.

D.

How many gravity turrets you need to place so that they survive the exo in which raid starships are traveling? They have nice amount of hp but they also tend to die first to anything that comes

[TechSY730]

Note that raid starships are not gravity immune.

Gravity Turrets make them a non-issue.

D.

How many gravity turrets you need to place so that they survive the exo in which raid starships are traveling? They have nice amount of hp but they also tend to die first to anything that comes

Try placing some on the way to the home command station as well, not just by the wormhole.
Keep in mind that the human home shield (the one you get at the start of the game) now has a gravity effect, so abuse that.

[Diazo]

Well, having not faced an exo recently, I set up 'bands' of gravity turrets.

Essentially I assume they are going to get destroyed so I make it so they have to get through several which buys my turrets time.

I think I have 12 gravity turrets in my home system layered around my home command like this, nothing gets close on the normal waves I'm facing.

D.

[Mánagarmr]

I usually place a lot of them in a circle, so they all cover the wormhole (in case some genius tries to go the "wrong" way), and then trail a line of overlapping (side by side) grav turrets towards the CS. That usually works in holding anything by Spire ships at bay.

[ZaneWolfe]

I found that if I put 5 grav turrets inside the spire city, and put the city on top of the wormhole, it tended to prevent the raider starships from just surging past my defenses and killing my homeworld. Granted this strategy only works for the FS, but then I personally always have the FS enabled.

[KDR_11k]

Yes, beachheads interfere with supply, that's what makes them so overpowered.

If any changes were made to the beachheads I'd like to see them get a champion type force field instead.

They would still be immobile on the warp point but they would give the AI's waves time to get a wave or two of shots off.

D.

The supply blocking is the reason Chris fast-tracked them into the game.

[keith.lamothe]

Raids are a different kind of threat, but grav turrets + sniper turrets are a pretty hard counter.  If you can't afford to split some of those off your main defenses to cover your homeworld in that way, then I guess you've reached the limit of your defenses

[Lancefighter]

In that case...
 
Defenses are underpowered, and need buffs. I should be able to survive exo waves from 4 spire cities at 8 hours in purely on the might of a city, half of turret caps, a and a modular fortress. (only slightly kidding)

[TechSY730]

In that case...
 
Defenses are underpowered, and need buffs. I should be able to survive exo waves from 4 spire cities at 8 hours in purely on the might of a city, half of turret caps, a and a modular fortress. (only slightly kidding)

Half a caps of what marks of turrets?

Just like with fleet ships, if you want turrets to keep up with the opposition, you gotta be willing to dump knowledge into them. Either that or use a mixed mobile/fixed defense stratagy (aka, ensure at least some of your mobile fleet is availible for defense)

BTW, what is the balance goal of a cap of turrets vs a cap of fleet ships of the same mark? It was 3x if I am remembering correctly.

[Lancefighter]

All of them. Slightly less mk1, as about a third of those were actually on the homeworld.

mk1/2/3 basic
mk1/2/3 laser
mk1/2/3 mlrs
mk1/2 missile
mk1/2 hbc

[Draco Cretel]

I've been playing this game for a few years now and the current state of the waves and API is getting out of hand. Every match I play feels similar in the fact that I either have a stalemate, lose, or survive by getting the botnet to kill the huge waves. This does seem to happen around the mark2 level for the AI.

It's not due to the mark level itself but for me it's the sheer number of units the AI sends at you. A huge fleet of 800 fighters is extremely deadly without the botnet golem. Missile frigates kill them at a good rate but not fast enough to deal with them in timely manner. And it's worse since the two waves usually come close together, thus having two huge waves on different sysems is a mess, even more so when the same hard counter ship is needed for both. The botnet golem does make quick work of nearly all waves but if you play without it I think you're insane to do so.

My current game has pretty much all options and plots on normal, easy golem, botnet, and spire, with 8/8 AIs. I can handle everything but the waves pre botnet at this time. I have my defenses spread out to prevent the AI from focusing waves so heavily and to defend against hives. It's working good until I got to around 225 AIP when the waves get around 800 to 1k mark 2 units.

[Kahuna]

zzzzzz MarkII waves is not the problem. It's all about how you play.
Just take a look at this save file. There's a wave coming to my home planet in 5 seconds and my fleet is about to hack a super terminal on other side of the galaxy. Look how my defenses auto stop everything. "Study" the defenses. You're welcome.