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.

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.

cheers, that was helpful to know!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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 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.

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.

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.

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.