White Knight: Fighters are the better counter to siege frigates, not bombers. They are also a counter to scouts.

A better way to deal with caps is to keep a frigate factory or three around, and pump out LRMs. You can always scuttle them afterwards for that fleet cap. The best is, of course, to bring in your fleet.

What you build depends on what effects you want to produce. There are several unique abilities that static defenses have that ships do not.

Firepower-based static defenses do not contribute to your fleet cap, delaying the point at which you must upgrade... allowing more total firepower for a given amount of upkeep cost. This is more than balanced out by the fact that a static defense is only useful while the system is invaded, which unless it is being constatly hammered then its useless most of the time. Using a fleet instead defends that system AND nearby systems.

Exception #1: you can use hangers to prevent scouting.
Exception #2: any worlds that have labs can benefit from the full defense setup, as losing them has serious consequenses.

Buildings that give special abilities that are hard or impossible to come by with ships are invaluable, however. PJI's delay an enemy fleet until your defense fleet can catch up, and hold them where you can pound them. Deep penetrations become risky propositions if the enemy can't be sure he will be able to escape. They can also be a nice suprise for a fleet that likes to bypass worlds if you (re?)install them AFTER the fleet passes by.

Repair buildings keep other buildings alive (like your PJI's). They also keep a defending fleet alive. If you are reasonably certain of forcing the enemy to action in a system, by all means install them. They and restore-AM also serve the purpose of refreshing your own fleets, provided your repair facility is near the front and will remain so.

Culture buildings are something you'd want to have anyway, as in addition to the tactical benefits you also get +econ and resources. You don't necessarily need them at every planet.

In my opinion, there only two real ways to defend a chokepoint, that is with a good warning system, hangar bays and jump inhibitors. (Big Fleets dont hurt of course)

The best thing to do when faced with the challenge of holding onto that precious stronghold is to capture at least one planent in front of it. All empires have a tech that allows you to know when enemy forces are approaching. If you can get the tech that allows you to see hostile forces up to two jumps away. With this you would be able to see enemy invasions up to three jumps away from your chokepoint. This would hopefully give your fleet time to arrive, or at least get their faster.

If this plan fails then your best bet is to have hangar bays. Many people argue the usefullness of these but if you can build at least four, that gives you eight bombers. And if you are playing with the advent you get THREE PER HANGAR!!! This increases your fighters to 12. That is a pretty nice force. Coupled with my strategy for using early warning they will be able to hold off an attack in time for your fleet to arrive.

And when your fleet arrives hopefully you have enough firepower to either eliminate the invaders or make them flee. If they retreat your handy dandy jump inhibitors will be there to slow them down enough to hopefully destroy them completly.
There you go. That is my way of defending a chokepoint.

i like those ideas, espiacally the 1 about building turrets offensively. however, the build time may b a problem, and since u cant get many builders it may b difficult 2 get enough turrets in time. It could work tho, i think

I'll keep this simple. This is for TEC by the way.

What I do is set up as many hangers as I can with bombers bombers bombers!! I also max out the missile research as much as I can depending on the number of military labs I have. Having 16 bomber sqadrens goes pretty far in deffending a strategic point until backup can arrive.

Just my two cents.

edit: oh yah... just thought I'd add... if the enemy comes in with all they've got on a planet that has only the defense systems to protect it... kiss it goodbey unless you can get your fleet there quickly. So I always try to keep a decent fleet in a centralized location so they can go and help if it's needed.

I think Vasari has the best fluid defense in the late game, since they have warp gates with the ability to hugely cut travel time between planets in large maps and summon ships, and they have a tech that lets them view any ship making a jump anywhere. All I usually do as Vasari is place a warp gate and a few hangers on my frontline planets and connect it with my major shipyards, or just RA till my fleet cap is up, and then scuttle all of the ships after the battle. I've played a battle (against the ai) where i saw their fleet coming from 7 planets away, so by the time they got to my planet I'm already dug in.

Hi!

In my recent SP game I just pushed Vasari up to RA, and was "swamped" with those returning ships. What I noticed was I couldn't scuttle more than one ship at a time. Despite I manually selected two (or more) ships in the same solar system and ordered them to scuttle, only one did. Anybody knows how to circumvent that "limitation"?

BR, Iztok

One of the best defenses i have been able to do is with vasari.

I like to setup nano jammers/ repairbays in the center, with a deacent amount of missile platforms around them. I place the repairbays/nnanojammers right on the planet, and put the missile bays just inside of repair range of the repair bays, leaving as much room as possible.

If the planet is large enough you can also put a phase thingy in the center, or a few warp jammers around.

After this like to put an assortment of flaks and lrms (dont remember what the vasari versons are called atm) in between the planet and the ring of guns. And put them in hold position mode.

Station your heavier ships in another system with a phase generator, or in a nearby system.


After you get everyhting prepared you should be able to see when you enemy is coming, once you see his fleet coming pull out any heavy ships you have in the system, And move your lrms and flaks to the center.

Most players will take the bait and try to seige the planet, i so far i havent had anyone that will forego the seemely ill-defended planet. And