Your favorite defence and why?

[superking]

Have anyone tried lightning turrets vs the Neinzul ships yet? Maybe a grav turret and some lightnings would be a decent defense in that situation...

lol, I have- 2 lightning turrets is enough to deal with waves of 5000+ neinzul, only the tigers survive (and those expire in 60 seconds0

[Buttons840]

I like fortresses after seeing this clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QiL_lzQvCAM

One can hardly imagine the drama and bad acting which takes place inside a fortress!

[SgtScum]

With the new gameplay changes my current defence strategy is lots of spider/sniper turrets at the choke with a blob of merc parasites to run along the nice long line of strung out ai ships. Free defensive fleet ships for the taking for those dratted new counterattack guard posts.

[Mánagarmr]

Gaaah! After realizing that every single neinzul is immune to mines I went over to placing defences in line with "juicy" targets. The defences are usually a bunch (10-15) tractors in front, 20 or so Standard turrets and MLRS and 1-2 Heavy Beams behind it. Not nearly enough for giant waves though. I'm still stuck in the "blob the wormhole with turrets" mindset and are currently examining new ways to defend my systems effectively.

[Lancefighter]

does AI war have a patrol function? I ask because ships in frd will stop at a planet and engage hostiles.. if you had a bunch of ships visiting all your planets (or just a few) while in frd mode, they would constantly stop and engage any hostiles there..

[CogDissident]

Why would you want ships that patrol but do not stop to engage enemy ships? There is an attack-move command, but I can't see sending ships constantly back and forth.

[Spikey00]

He means he wants FRD to do that; but actually, they do stop to attack if you FRD to another planet, but obviously it's not a continuous patrol sequence so you would have to do it manually.

Something like the AI spec ops I think, where the AI ships patrol across multiple systems.

[Lancefighter]

rally point forwarding

[Spikey00]

You know... does anyone here actually know what defense is best against what type of unit?  Throughout my testing with cheats/etc. I cannot really discern what is best against what in simple terms.

All I know is that MRLSes always seem to do the trick most efficiently.

[superking]

lasers own fighters, wacky units and stuff that otherwise owns defences like tanks and armour ships

MRLS belts out damage but is less effective against heavy shielded units like bombers

missle turret does little damage but is ultra tough and penetrates shielding relatively well

basic turret generally fails

flak is effective against all ships with low HP

[Lancefighter]

i actually disagree - basic turrets might not be as powerful on a ship cap basis.. but they are VERY strong en mass, especially at a low cost of 100m/c per unit..

[RCIX]

Missile turret is the only one that works vs. bombers, so i use it a lot.

[Spikey00]

Ah, okay.  Yeah, that was similar to what I thought some of the turrets were good against.

Thanks for the advise everyone. 

[vonduus]

I voted for the MLRS turrets, because they kick ass. But actually I build blobs of 5 basic, 5 mlrs, 5 missile and 5 laser turrets (mk I until I have used them all, then mk II etc), combined with tractor beams (mk II and III preferably) and a few lightning turrets (mk III if I can afford it) and heavy beams (all marks).

And I have found a very effective way of distracting the ai on my home world: It seems that no matter what other kinds of targets are available, the ai always goes after the ion cannons. So first time the trader comes around I buy an ion cannon, put it somewhere far away from everything, and protect it with turret blobs and heavies and some mk I movable ships, plus several lines of tractor beams on his approach path. So, when the enemy arrives, he ignores everything else and goes straight for the ion cannon. Which has a lot of health and can sustain quite a lot of punishment. Of course I loose a cannon from time to time, but I am pretty sure that in those situations I would have lost my home command station instead, if it wasn't for the ion cannon.

Combined with spiders this even works reasonably well against aoe-immune frigates (which btw is a pita, enemy frigates has become a nuisance rather than a challenge after this nerf/boost - it is no problem to stop them, but taking them out has become a major pain).

[Tyladhras]

I generally like hitting multiple targets with mid to high damage weapons.  AOE weapons like lightning turrets just have to little damage output to be worth it so I generally try to unlock higher levels of MLRS but usually back it up with lower level lasers and standard turrets.  I tend to sink a reasonable amount into defense because I'm paranoid but I don't like unlocking too much as it means my offensive units are kinda crappy.