As for luring ships, generally you can't. There are some situations where they'll come after you, but its more specific-situation than something you can do to any unit (e.g. defenders of a fixed structure will stick near their defend-target, but if you blew it up, those defenders get converted to Free Threat which follows different rules).
Indeed, killing a couple of ship storages/guard posts was enough to attract about 30Str of threat ships from Akka, twice. I gave up though, Akka kept reinforcing too fast for my taste, despite the 20AIP reduction
Counterattacks are still hefty, after I poked Akka (took down a reinforcement storage).
You can arrange your defenses more efficiently, check Kahuna's AI War 1 guide (yeah I know, it's 7 years old
),
part 3.2 "Defense / Proper positioning" :
https://forums.arcengames.com/ai-war-classic-strategy-discussion/kahuna-s-guide-to-ai-war-find-your-inner-super-cat!/
