Proper Planet Defenses

You can never spend too much on defenses.

But generally I go for a full complement of Hangars, and whatever points I have left are spent on a repair bay, a jump inhibitor (depending upon significance of the location) and a nano weapon jammer if I'm Vasari. Whatever points are left I'll use to put a turret down to help defend the hangar cluster.


Oh, and while I used to go with a complement of 25/75 Fighters/Bombers I've noticed better results with a 50/50 split recently, so split 'em right down the middle.

In early game in terms of defenses left behind I would recommend LRM frigates (the long-range weapon/fragile frigates), but not skirmishers/disciples/cobalts, and no flak frigates.

on my central, i usually have 14 squadrons stationed.. mainly bombers with some fighters.. i tend to leave some heavy cruisers, like kodiaks to draw fire and buy time for reinforcements to arrive

EFFING TURRETS!!.. some please tell me HOW to manually place them.. the autoplacement always puts them in the most useless corners of the system..

ALSO.. since we're on the topic of planetary defense (sorry for sabotaging ur thread :P) can anyone tell me the best way to deal with raids from planet killers.. it really seems rediculous to me that these ships (purges, etc) arent more susceptible to my frigates and bombers.. buy the time i get through half a doz, theyve wiped out my pops..

please advise!


btw, i love this game.

While I have yet to get into the late game play, so far, I've found that using at least 4 or 5 hangars (somewhere between the 25/75 and 50/50 fighter/bomber ratio)complimented by a couple turrets and a repair bay is effective enough to stop at least the early pirate raids. Keep a smaller fleet (maybe 1 cap ship with a small host of frigates) in a central location of your empire to swoop in and assist if there's an actual assault.

Click that icon to the left of your buildings bar. The one that says "Automanage placement".



There's not much you can do against population-wiping, it gets eliminated quickly, but it comes back quickly too. But if you're expecting a siege-frigate raid, or just want to be ready, go for a majority of fighters versus bombers. I didn't realize this until a couple of days ago but they do better damage against siege frigates than bombers.

cheers, that was helpful to know!

Interceptors are more effective vs siege than bombers (they'll kill em 4x faster), so if you're getting hit by mass siege, swap out some bombers for interceptors

Been playing a Huge Random with 9 AI opponents for a few days now. At first I was annoyed by how badly turrets suck. Then I found that with a combination of as many hangars as I could cram into a system, a repair station or two, and a planetary shield makes the difference. Obviously, I'm playing TEC.

My front line systems have withstood attacks from 3 massive, multiple capship fleets from 3 different AI opponents arriving on multiple phase lanes within 1-2 minutes of each other, when my nearest fleets were 4 or 5 jumps out.

Invest in population upgrades and the emergency facilities. Add every tactical slot you can, get a shield generator up and spam hangars. I go about 60/40 bomber/fighters, but sometimes swap it up for more fighters as they seem to be more effective vs the random 10-ship fleet of bombardment ships.

This advice applies to TEC, as it kind of centers around that shield generator to buy some time, which it is exceedingly effective at. I get the impression that the Advent beam platform has better firepower than the Gauss cannon and the Vasari have the nano jammer, which I assume would give you a similar delay.

I kind of played it slow and defensively until I was able to research the defensive tech I wanted to feel comfortable leaving my planets with only built defenses for more than a minute or two. When the AI gets 3, 4 and I think 5 opponents together to go after you, it can be daunting.

You should try Advent. 3 Squadrons per hangar (but increased tactical slot cost) and research upgrades that boost all bomber and fighter squadron complements by 33%

Ah, that's how they balance the lack of a shield generator then.

Sounds like every race has a way to either fortify against or punish attackers very badly.

Yeah.

TEC shields are nice, the vasari jammer is... well, I don't like it, but thats more due to a lack of feedback than anything else... its the advent anti-matter multicaster I don't like. Its useful in smaller maps, but falls completely apart in larger maps (where defenses are less than useful anyway).

The Vasari Nano Weapon-Suppressor or whatever it's called runs out of antimatter fairly quickly for my tastes. I think it should be a constant area of effect, or have a reduced cost and cooldown.

The Advent antimatter battery, pffftttt. Go straight for a Glory Cannon.

One thing people seem to be forgetting for vasari are the phase stabilizers.

these are so good that they're potentially game breaking and they're worth every bit of the 10 slots required for them...

your entire fleet is always 1-2 jumps away and with the returning armada research you get an unending swarm of reinforcements constantly

Nothing but repairs and 2 or 3 hangers..

repairs > all. Can take on twice as large a force that way.

Hell oen game my 3 caps and fleet against a 3x bigger force (2 peopel ganging up on me )kept getting owned trying to attack because of my repairs.

"your entire fleet is always 1-2 jumps away and with the returning armada research you get an unending swarm of reinforcements constantly"

QFT..

On huge maps with multiple enemies, the faster travel through phase space, and the ability to be 1-2 jumps away from your entire empire is unrivaled. Not to mention it's neat watching trade ships make 30 minute journeys across entire star systems =P

My question, in regards to any defense turrets. Do people tend to place them on the outer edge of the building circle, or the inner edge, closest to the planet? I haven't really decided which i prefer. Normally I create an interlocking grid, just on the edge of where the outside phase lanes come into my choke planets.

I prefer close orbit, usually clustered around important infrastructure if it's not an asteroid. Spread out defenses make it harder for raiders to move around, but they are almost useless at stopping determined attacks.

I always build -+4 opposed to a phase lane on the iner cirkle.

On the inner edge i build the hangars on the opposide of the pahse lane's with the planet/aseroid in between.+ repair facility and a trade post. + +-2 D turets

and my fighters/bombers dispersed

most of the time pirats want rusch to the trade facility and get wasted.

thats how i build

I am pretty hanger centric person my self, but I always try to have a couple gun/missle platforms near trade depots. But never more then 1 or 2.

I always place turrets as close to the planet as possible, mostly on the side where a phase lane (or two) is. I usually setup 1 or 2 repair bays, 2 or 3 hangers and fill in the rest with turrets.

When playing TEC or Vasari, I rely less on turrets and more on hangers. This is usually enough to counter those annoying siege frigate attacks, especially if you keep a small number of ships (long range frigates) close to the planet and keep their engagement on local.

On frontline planets that I typically have a large fleet stationed at, I usually have 2-3 repair bays combined with max hangers, then leftover tactical points on turrets. As I transition them by creating new frontline planets, I'll change up the defenses to match those above.

Keep in mind that static defenses are never really enough to stop an invading fleet, but will buy you tons of time.

If you find you are losing planets to siege frigates, make sure you:

1) Upgrade Emergency Infrastructure
2) Have proper defenses setup (max tac slots)
3) Have at least half of your fighter squadrons as "fighters" instead of bombers.
4) Have a small fleet (10 or so) long range frigates at each planet that could be potentially targeted

They are annoying, but can be dealt with.

Hangar defenses is the only effective means to defend a planet when you got your fleet out conquesting, there's a few other buildings that could be worth to build once if you don't want to base everything on your fleet returning. This game has great distances, and if there are no natural good chokepoints on a map, you can get hit in the rear while you are in the front.

The problem with this, is that you can easily bring a group of 10-20 flaks to effectivly completley ruin the hangar defenses (You get 2 flaks for each hangar). 2 flaks will be able to do more than the damage needed to negate a hangar.

There is no really effective defense against anything less of a small bomber squad.

Repair towers. I can't stress this enough. Three repair towers will multiply the effectiveness of your defences exponentially. My standard defense for front line planets (as Advent) is three repair towers, two (maybe three) hangars and five or six beam platforms. Against AI, this will decimate anything short of a full attack fleet, and against a human it will certainly buy you time to get your fleet there, which should be your main defence anyway.

I've been trying 4-5 hangars with 2 repairs and sometimes 1 or 2 special defensive structures and the only thing you can ever count on is them taking out small pirate or rebel attacks. Anything beyond that easily overwhelms them after a couple minutes with the planet getting nuked by siege ships.

Other than fortifying your planet to take as much of a beating as possible, the only good defense really seems to have a solid mobile fleet within 2 jumps to take out fleets bent on attacking your planets while your main fleet is out.

Usually I'll do 2 repair towers, 2 hangars and the rest turrets. I'll position it in a semicircle around the front of the planet (whichever side I determine to be the "front") and cluster all of the important logistics structures over there amongst the turrets and repair centers. This protects about half of the planet from siege attacks and all of the logistics structures except the relatively cheap mining things (I forgot their name). It also turns pirates into nothing more than a nuisance (assuming they hit that planet). I don't build Phase Jump Inhibitors since they pretty much suck now. I also don't think planetary shields are worth building either.

I figured out if u have the money and the resources---forget about hangar defenses and their 4 tactical slot replacements. i grab a lot of Carriers (the ones that contain single squadrons). Not only do they allow u to open up 4 tactical slots, they can move into other gravity wells as well.Granted, they dont have as much armor, but imo manuevurability gives them more of an advantage.

Turrets are better than hangers for human players, who tend to just fly right to the hangers and blast them. Stick a ton of turrents around your repair towers and voila! Fortress! Mind you, I do play as Vasari and tend to have a defence force no more than 1 jump away (I love stabilizers), so sieging my planet is not a huge worry.