Hangar defense vs. LRMs

There is exactly one million, seventy-eight thousand, five hundred twenty five threads discussing how fighters are effective against LRMs and Seige craft.

Outnumbered, they will die in a blaze of glory as one would expect.

Note that Fighters do anti-light damage and thus do more damage to LRM's then bombers would.

Malekish, yes, I know *fighters* are effective. I've read umpteen posts.

What I'm saying is - is *hangar defense* effective - cost-wise, armor-wise, etc.? How many would need to be built? I'm hoping for comments, not a "yes" or "no".

To be honest,static defenses just don't cut it with lrm's, the issue isn't that they do too much damage,it's just that when your facing 100 frigates,and you take them out 1 at a time,it'l take for freaking ever....and eventually you'll break.

Anyways,if you must build static defenses,4 hangars all with fighters,and as many repair bays around em as you can fit. micro the fighters so the ydon't all attack a separate target, and you should bring a considerable number down.

In a 1v1 (cost-wise) they are effective.
Problem is that in any real scenario the enemy will attack with way more LRM then you can have hanger defense so they will - like every defense against any big fleet - lose.

Static defense can never stop a dedicated attack force but it can slow it down long enough for defensive fleets to come to a rescue.

But that isn't really about LRMs, is it? That's just general static defenses. Going by the original subject line and the original post, it asked if hangers are effective against LRMs.

Thread 1,078,525+1 about fighters against LRMs.

A dedicated attack force should always beat out a static defense only planet.

This is to prevent the game from becoming turtle-central.

Of course, a dedicated attack force doesn't seem to have the juice to do it with two planets in a row... I've never lost more than one planet at a time, not even in multi-player.

Hangar defenses are only meant to be used as a deterrent to those annoying small raiding carrier fleets, or LRM fleets.

Both of which are capable of destroying turret-only defenses with minimal effort, just by staying out of firing range. 3-6 Fighter Squadrons alone will be enough to keep them at bay, which is why I never really understood why people spam Hanger Defenses - too many is really a waste of tactical slots.

If you're playing against the AI in SP, having at least 3 hanger defenses seems to deter the normal AI from attacking. I ran into a bunch of situations where the AI would jump ships into one of my planet's gravity wells and then immediately turn around because of those interceptor fighters coming at them. They would only launch an attack against me in full force or if they were paired up with a fellow AI.

Hanger defense does not seem as effective in MP, but it sure can surprise people when they see 6 to 10 fighters coming at them. It often knocks people off-guard because they may not initially have units available that can counter fighters, especially if there's mostly an LRM fleet. Also, hanger defense will aide you should you need to retreat. The moment enemy ships pursue it's like you've gotten free backup sitting there at a planet ready to engage the enemy. However, in MP people are obviously smart enough to go after the hanger defense instead of instantly rushing to the planet to bombard it...typically.

What about the Vasari? With their Phase Stabilizer network and Antorak Marauder Phase Nodes, they can send a fleet to defend any part of their empire at anytime from anywhere. So instead of needing to put up short-ranged turrets that may or may not aid in a fleet battle, they can fill the remaining Tactical Slots with Regeneration Bays and Hangar Defenses. As it is, the Vasari have the strongest fighters around.

And, if they're already engaged in something so critical that they cannot send anything at all, it's not as if a turret-based system will stop the attacker with 10 tactical slots gone in the redundant Phase Stabilizer.

beginning game, hangar defense is godliness vs LRF spammers.

thats funny, i thought advent did....or is that just the carrier cap? oh well. against someone that is an LRF (yes i said LRF instead of LRM) spammer, 5 or 6 carriers with fighters > 12 LRFs. if your gonna go on a raiding party, try sending in just bombers and have them FF defenses. after defenses are gone, phase them out and hit em somewhere else with your main fleet. i did this in a game. 10 carriers with nothing but bombers can pretty much do some heavy damage before your forced to retreat. hit hangar bays first. they usually have fighters early game and fighters > bombers. with the rest of your fleet, go hit somewhere else. run into hangar defense? hope you don't have LRFs cause wow, early game, 2 or 3 hangar defenses chew through those guys. also, if you see someone spamming LRFs, just build LRFs AND cruiser carriers. your fighters chew threw the LRFs while your LRFs chew through...everything else.

I was just thinking about using hangar defense to deter an early rush. Obviously, once an opponent has massed 100 LRMs, it's well beyond what any planet defenses can handle.

But at that point, the player should be well established, have a better economy, and have enough of a fleet to defend from such an attack, sneak attack or whatever. I just haven't analyzed the game to the point where I know dollar-for-dollar hangar defenses are a good buy.

Huh? What's funny, Advent did what?

I think s/he means strongest fighters.

But it's all matter of numbers as to how effective something is, alone hanger defenses won't last long against large numbers of LRM's, even repairs bays won't nessecarily extend the life of it massively.

But yeh they can be useful to slow down a fleet of LRM's is nothing else, but i wouldn't expect them to be able to hold their own entirely against large ammounts of LRMs, well for long anyway.

The problem is also... you would have to build them in every system, not just one.

If you only heavily fortify one system then an attacking fleet can simply bypass that with minimal losses and ravage all your undefended systems instead.

i don't build defenses. at all. its funny how many people build defenses. i ignore them. unless they are hangar bays. but i don't worry about those for long cause either my bombers take out the hangar bays, my defense vessels take out the fighters/bombers, or my fighters take out the bombers. hanger bay fighters are good for LRFs, bombers are good for taking out other cruiser carriers and heavy cruisers but anyone who builds a mix fleet don't have to worry about too much.

Hangar bays are useful for taking down lone passing scouts and giving air cover to your fleets when fighting in your own territory - it may be useful to have 6-8 extra squadrons flying around. That's like having an extra capital carrier in battle, but without the abilities. But if you don't expect full-scale invasions and need to only take down pirate raids or AI, then a thick ring of turrets may be better.

I'll usually use static defenses, like the hangar defense, in my "fallback" position. While I really never go into a fight expecting to lose, I know it probably will happen and having 4 hangar defense + repair bays is good enough to keep the pressure off retreating fleet for a second. Its not much of a break, but when you've got 3 wounded capships and a beat up fleet all trying for a repair, just the little bit of damage those fighters cause has tipped things in my favor more than once