Defending a bad planet

[Kahuna]

How would you defend this home planet?

The only way to defend this homeworld is to capture and fortify the 3 adjacent planets. All of them. Leave one out and every single exo and CPA will come from that right to the homeworld.

Actually in this case.. even capturing all 3 adjacent planets might not work.

If the AI attacks from the REM-Z21-63 wormhole you won't be able to stop the attack because it's so close to the homeworld's wormhole. Sure I could neuter REM-Z21-63 but CPAs and Exos could still use that wormhole.
Instead of Gleason I could fortify Imrik which is a good planet.

The 2 wormholes I need to defend in order to keep my homeworld safe (Gleason and REM-Z21-63) are close to each other and far from the hostiles wormholes. However.. if I fortified Imrik I'd have to fortify Vulputate which is a HORRIBLE planet to defend. Impossible. There are 2 hostile wormholes right next to the wormhole I need to defend and I'd have to defend almost 180 degrees.


Defending Flanderin isn't possible either. You can only defend one side of the wormhole effectively. Not 360 degrees. (about 80 - 90 is pretty much the maximum)


Thanks to Gleason, Flanderin and Vulputate it's not possible to defend this homeworld. Not on vs 2 10 diffs. I can already see it without playing.

Defending this homeworld could be possible on a lower difficulty level though.
It could be possible to defend Mardia

and Kathwallace

If I had those fortified I'd not have to defend Project Metacalf.. so I could defend Flanderin vs Jataka wormhole. Then I could dump like.. 30% of my defenses on Gleason and 10% or 5% on REM-Z21-63 as beachhead defenses in case of CPAs and Exos.

There would still be a problem.. capturing Gleason, Flanderin and Katwallace would be a suicide. Gleason has only 3 resource asteroids, Flanderin has 4 and Kathwallace 0. Capturing a planet with less than 5 resource asteroids is basically a suicide.. well at least on 10 diff.. and on a real map (Simple or Realistic).. not some dumbass tunnel map where you can defend your 20 planet empire by blocking 1 wormhole.

Anyway.. capturing and fortifying these 4 horrible planets would cost 113 AIP. 80 from capturing the planets and 33 from neutering the surrounding planets. Now the homeworld would be safe from waves and CPAs.. but all of this hard work would go down the drain when an Exo spawns on Brunowalter or Juliet Xray. So because of that (and because I'd need more energy and resource asteroids) I'd capture Juliet Xray and Ascs J46 for energy and +15 resteroids. This would cost me +55 AIP. All of this would cost 168 AIP and a lot of time.

Again.. this might work on a lower difficulty level (+/- 8 maybe 9). On 10 difficulty 3 whipping boys is max.

Any way to make CPAs and Exos "not so PITA"?

Added the save file.

[_K_]

Any way to make CPAs and Exos "not so PITA"?

Well you are speaking of Exos, do you maybe have any access to whatever superweapon you have?

Other than that, i dont think people will come up with things you dont know already.

[Hearteater]

I've never tried it, but I thought I read somewhere once if you gate raided further (two systems back) in all the direction you didn't want an Exo to come from, you could actually funnel the Exo through a specific Warp Gate.  The theory being it won't select a Warp Gate for an Exo is another Warp Gate exists that is closer to the target in terms of hops, but it will randomly select from all equally close Warp Gates.  Split Exos might still cause you a problem.  And of course maybe I'm mis-remembering.

[Kahuna]

I've never tried it, but I thought I read somewhere once if you gate raided further (two systems back) in all the direction you didn't want an Exo to come from, you could actually funnel the Exo through a specific Warp Gate.  The theory being it won't select a Warp Gate for an Exo is another Warp Gate exists that is closer to the target in terms of hops, but it will randomly select from all equally close Warp Gates.  Split Exos might still cause you a problem.  And of course maybe I'm mis-remembering.

Oh I haven't thought about that. Makes sense.. I can't think of any reason it wouldn't work.. unless exos spawn from Command Stations not Warp Gates. But I'm pretty sure they spawn from WGs. Gonna have to try this at some point. Thanks.

[Toranth]

In a situation like this, I would seriously consider the viability of tanking on the Homeworld itself.  If the incoming wormhole layout is favorable, that is.  CPAs and Exowaves would require a more forward defense, killing off (or slowing down, at least) the groups to prevent attacks en-masse, but it can be done.

If you have the Zenith Trader on, consider the Black Hole Generator.

Last, but not least, consider a new map.

I've never tried it, but I thought I read somewhere once if you gate raided further (two systems back) in all the direction you didn't want an Exo to come from, you could actually funnel the Exo through a specific Warp Gate.  The theory being it won't select a Warp Gate for an Exo is another Warp Gate exists that is closer to the target in terms of hops, but it will randomly select from all equally close Warp Gates.  Split Exos might still cause you a problem.  And of course maybe I'm mis-remembering.

Exowave battlegroups spawn from Warp Gates, and gate-raiding will prevent them from spawning in those systems.  However, I know battlegroups can spawn from at least as far away as three systems.  I'm not sure, but it kind of looks like each battlegroup also tries to spawn from a different warp gate. 

I think, to be safe, you'd need to gate raid everything north and east of Mardia and Kathwallace.
That would force Exos and CPAs into certain paths.  From the northwest (the Red AI's HW brach), they'll likely funnel through Imrik.
From the southwest, it all depends on pathing.  If the AI pathing chooses Vulputate to Imrik, you'd be good.  But if it says Vulputate to REM Z21-63, you're out of luck.
From the south and southeast, everything would go through Flandern, Mardia, and Kathwallace.  Flandern wouldn't be as much of a concern to defend, though, because neither Oort nor Metcalf would be a source of ships.

Unfortunately, that's still 4 systems, minimum, to defend, and 8 to gate-raid.  It also requires a good amount of forward action to keep the threatfleet from concentrating.
That means that each CPA would need to be handled first using the mobile fleet, preferably before it relocates into carriers.

As for me, I might try this against diff 9 AI.  I wouldn't against a diff 10, though.  More likely, I'd just try to see if I could over-fortify my Homeworld and pray for luck.  If the Homeworld wormhole layout was bad enough, I'd just start a new game.

[keith.lamothe]

Ouch

Yea, my first guess would be to make your stand on the homeworld itself.  It might not work, but it's the simplest solution so probably worth a try.


My second guess would be to shape the entry points like Hearteater suggests.  I just checked the code and it does require a warp-gate (wave) or a warp-gate (full) to be eligible to spawn on a planet.  The exception being if either AI is a warp jumper, or there just being no such warp gates in the entire galaxy (that would be kind of amusing).  The other key point is that once it finds an eligible spawn point that is X hops from the target planet, it will not consider spawn points further away than X hops.

So that's a lot of gate raiding.  But worth a shot


My third guess would be to lower the difficulty or reroll the map.  Diff 10 is not intended to be remotely fair, so there are going to be situations that are highly improbable to win.

[Diazo]

I'd just tank on the homeworld, that's quite often my strategy as I play low-AIP games so the wave sizes never get big enough to overwhelm a single system worth of defenses.

For all that gravity slows ships less now, the spirecraft are no longer immune (I think?) so the exo-waves will no longer ignore gravity turrets making exo's actually easier to deal with.

Note that when I say low-aip, I mean low. I take usually only the 8 systems I need to to take out the CSGs, sometimes one extra if the map layout demands it.

So, if I had that layout, the location of the CSGs would determine my next step.

D.

[ZaneWolfe]

You could fortify the easiest wormhole to defend on your home system, and gate raid the other two 4-5 (4 if you want to, though 5 is probably better) hops deep in EVERY DIRECTION. Note that if you leave a gate connected to your system then waves and Exos will ALWAYS come at you from that point. While this would mean that you have to defend on your homeworld, you would be able to put the vast majority of your defenses there, giving you a huge edge.

Keep making sure that no other world you have (and want to survive an exo) is within 4-5 hops of a gate, and you will likely never lose a system unless you get hit with a Counter Attack Wave. And while this part is obvious, it still should be stated, neuter every planet within that same 4-5 hops of your back systems. While border aggression is fairly rare now, you CAN lose planets to it. And it will always happen at exactly the worst time.

This will cost you a chunk of AIP, but you get the same benefit of those "dumbass tunnel maps" of only having to defend one wormhole. Oh, next time, think before insulting. I play FS games all the time, and when you're pushing 1k AIP with 4 exo sources and threat fleets that you nearly have to EMP to deal with, you will be glad when you only have 1 way into your system.

Edited for clarity