The Tokamak Defense

[Haagenti]

Tokamak (wikipedia): a machine producing a toroidal magnetic field for confining a plasma. It is one of several types of magnetic confinement devices, and it is one of the most-researched candidates for producing controlled thermonuclear fusion power.

Note: This defense has not yet been tested in practice, as it will take quite some time, knowledge and resources to set-up. I will probably know for sure over the coming weekend. I can't see why it would fail, unless ship placement logic will react to this in a strange manner. Feedback is much appreciated.

The basic goal of the Tokomak Defense is to defeat a 1000+ ship level IV raid without having to commit your fleet. The reason is that at high difficulty levels, you will get quite a lot of these raids, and if you want to fight them with your fleet, you have about 5 minutes to get to the raid from the moment that the warning signal sounds. Therefore, your fleet has to be near your planets all the time (about three hops away from where the raid will land), which is highly undesirable. 

The Tokamak Defense is exceedingly simple:
1) Capture a set of planets with at most two connecting wormholes to the rest of the universe (perhaps three will also work, and perhaps more if you use the mobility of the III forcefields). This will be your basis of defense.
2) Research III forcefields, and build all I, II and III forcefields in a ring around each of the two wormholes, such that:
 - the ring is unbroken
 - there is as much space inside the ring as possible
3) Fill the forcefields with all of your lightning turrets, close enough so each covers a lot of the open  space in the ring, but is not at the edge of the forcefield
4) Wait for the raid to fly into the trap and watch the death of a 1000 ships
5) During the raid, where necessary,  maneuver your III forcefields to keep the ring closed at all costs

If it all works out, you shouldn't lose anything: some forcefield may get damaged but they should regenerate before the next raid. If not, scrap and rebuild.

[x4000]

Hmm.  Now how will I nerf this...

[Haagenti]

Hmm.  Now how will I nerf this...

I've been thinking about this (of course). Whatever you do, my first idea was some sort of cascade, where you have only a single Orbital and nothing else in a system. Then you know the path the enemy will follow. So you place a forcefield just off-center of this path, so the enemy will hit it and fly around it, then you know his path again, so he will a hit another forcefield somewhat further down the road. And another and another. All the fields filled with lightning turrets and somewhere in the distance you have a large fleet of fighters ready to swoop down on enemy cruisers that bombard the fields from a distance....

I think that the real problem is that lightning turrets are unbalanced. The forcefields only serve to keep the AI in place: I think that using all I and II tractor turrets and all lightning turrets around the same wormhole would also work. And these I can simply scrap after the raid, and build in the path of the next raid (forcefields build too slow for this) so I can defend a lot of wormholes instead of two.

Lightning turrets in the hands of the AI are also unbalancing: in my 8.3 game I had to use two lightning missiles to destroy most of the lightning turrets on a IV planet wormhole and even then the remaining 10 or so would do extreme damage to my fleet. On IV planets you have to bombard all other enemy positions from a distance as well, because the LTs will kill all your fighters/bombers in no time.

[x4000]

Yeah, you make some great points about lightning turrets on both sides there.  I think these are due for a nerf.

[Revenantus]

This is similar to a tactic I currently use that involves building a Tech I/II Forcefield so that it half covers the wormhole. I then build a number of tractor beam turrets and a tachyon emitter inside the forcefield on the side of the forcefield facing the wormhole, leaving a small gap to account for the fact that the field will shrink as it takes damage. Finally, all of the damage dealing turrets are placed on the far side of the forcefield.

Your defense is slightly better (though a lot more expensive!) in that it will also stop cutlasses and most starships. I'd normally have to resort to mines or a ship garrison to deal with the cutlasses effectively.

Given that this defense requires multiple Tech III forcefields, does it really need nerfing? You need to make one hell of an investment to set it up.

EDIT: Lightning turrets probably need a nerf. Perhaps there could be a limit on how many ships they can simultaneously hit? The thematic reason can be that they only have so much charge to dissipate per shot.

[x4000]

I'm just downing their power, to keep it simple.  The whole point of lightning turrets is that they hit everything in a given radius -- multi-shot attacks are what hit a limited number of enemies.

[Haagenti]

Also examine:
- the number that the AI builds at its IV wormholes (I sometimes see 20 or more)
- whether a lightning missile should be able to one-shot them (right now lightning missiles do not one-shot them, thus requiring two)

The combination of many LTs that require +4AI to clear is nasty at the moment.

[x4000]

I've made their attack 1/5 as strong in the next version (to come out today), so we'll start with that and see where it takes us.