A bad whoppin (Advice on on defending aganst massive AI Armys).

from Sins Forums

Hey everyone, Ive been playing comp on easy for a few days now getting the hang of things and trying to piece together my starting build and I was gettin pretty good so i thought.  So I decide to step up to a Large 5 star system map with 10 ai, 7 on easy and 3 on medium (I had only played small games to this point).  After a intense planet grab keeping in mind a good choke setup so I can have my few frontline planets defending my economy.  so im sitting at about 20 planets, I have three choke points, 3 groups of 30-50 Ships each (Along with 2-3 Capitals per group).  Boom out of a wormwhole two computer opponets spam me with full metered armys every 10 minutes...  I was sitting on a few hundred thousand in each category, but in order to keep up with the computer bursting out of the wormhole, I had to build 4 barracks in one world behind the front line, and 4 more barracks in the world behind that and constantly spam nonstop units to try to hold back the disgusting mass of the enemy, after a few hours I ran out of money, it really turned into just monster battles of 200-200 ships over and over... Hard to micro, but I cant belive how difficult the computer can be sometimes, I like the AI in this game alot I think its very diverse.  For them to ally and team up like that and nail me down was great.

   The most glorious part of the battle was probably when I amassed as many ships as I could and tried to storm the wormhole to make a break for the enemys home worlds and take the pressure off but I never made it, I fought out the grav zone for the wormhole and just as I cleared it another 200-300 ship army warped in.  It was epic as hell.  In retrospect I dont know what the heck I would have done different to try to defend aganst that....  I have a staple defence I give to each world, 4 hangers, repair bay in middle, 6 turrets in close proximity, with repair towers on the grav edges to aid defending ships (My typical setup for choke point worlds), and they ripped threw this like it wasnt there, and this was only on easy and medium. 

I would be interested to hear what the more experienced players do in this massive assualt situations.  I was thinking a 10-15 ship capital fleet might be the way to go but i couldnt afford it. 

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Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
Not enough defense. Hangers = no.

The AI sucks at takling planetary defence - they blunder straight into it. So make use of this and put all your turrets crammed together at the planet's edge, closest to the direction they're coming from (make sure the range circle gets the edge of the planet, so you can kill siege frigates).

For each hanger you could have built 4 turrets. You don't need hangers against the AI - they rarely build many fighters, and they don't simply go around turrets as human players would. Turrets are perfect, since they walk straight into them.

So just have a mass of turrets and maybe a couple of repair platforms (within range of the turrets! Your fleet should be fighting next to the turrets anyway). That's it. So instead of 4 hangers, 6 turrets, and 3 repair platofrms, you'd have 2 repair platforms and 20+ turrets all close enough that anything fighting one of them will be getting hit by the lot.

With about one-third of your popcap in a defensive fleet you should have plenty - just make sure you fight under your own defensive guns. The main objective is simply to get him to retreat, which means taking down his numbers compared with yours. Target frigates! Capships contribute a relatively small amount of firepower (which is why you should never have more than about half a dozen capital ships even at maximum popcap). A good way to chew through enemy fleets is to grab chunks or 20 or so friendly ships, then shift-right-click a sequence of enemy frigates. That'll make them focus fire, and that reduces enemy firepower fast. Keep in mind that you can do this while paused if the AI is giving you trouble.

Start by targetting the siege frigates, since they'll be at the front and you don't want to lose the colony. Why? Because as long as the colony is alive you can rebuild turrets. As you lose them, immediately rebuild them - make sure there is a live turret between the new one and the enemy, and they'll keep hitting that one. A fully upgraded colony will have - what? 4 builders? So you can be building 4 turrets at once. Almost nothing can damage you fast enough to beat that. And as soon as their numbers drop a bit they fall back. That's when it might be worth popping a slow-ass capital ship...

Turrets. Yay turrets. They cost less than a frigate and have HEAPS more health, armour, and firepower.

Note that this comes from beating 7 lock-teamed hard AIs. It works.