Planet attackers (purges, korosevs, whatever the other is)

I can't agree with your comment more, I'm having the exact same problem. My fleet is too slow to catch them, and often out of position, my planetary defence kills them too slowly to defend the planet, and there is no tech that can slow their movement that I can find... The jump inhibiters help slightly, but not enough to save the planet, they just help to reduce hit and run tactics to hopefully save other planets...

I was searching the forum here for a possible defence to this strategy, but all I have found is someone with the same problem I'm having.

After your planets have been 'nixed' you have to reinvest in all their infrastructure, which is very expensive. Especially if your planets are getting 'nixed' on different sides of your empire simultaneously...

If anyone does have an effective defence vs a large number of planetkillers coming right for your planet, then please tell us, would love to know.

As an additional note, if a player had a small number of planets, presumably, you could build one small fleet of planetkillers for each of their planets, move them all in similtaneously to elimite the player? I haven't tried this yet, but if you can't beat it, join it, I guess...

Wow, your ships were A WHOLE SYSTEM AWAY and they managed to annihilate an undefended planet of yours? Do tell! Clearly we should just get rid of siege frigates from the game!

Build Hangers and stock them up with all fighters. Fighters have a > %150 bonus against planetkillers.

Yea, thanks for this advice, I was focusing too much on bombers, the fighters seem to solve this particular problem nicely. Also important to upgrade your planets health if this is a problem.

There's ways to defend against this but it's still ultra cheesey that a planet can be bombed out of existence so easily. It should be a viable tactic but not so easily done.

I just whooped 3 hard AI (yeah, amazing I know *cough*) and they kept spamming "plannet killers" around the edge of the map using dead asteroids to get to my flabby undefended rear. I lost that planet twice but it was intentional (not the loosing bit). I kept a nice developing fleet near by and jumped in to destroy them (always taking them out before they could flee).

Basically, if the AI wants to kill your planets, why not let them. Just make sure its a planet you dont care about and turn it to your advantage (like 10+ siege frigs each time down the pan) compared to an unimportant world where the space infrastructure stayed untouched.

Oh yeah, while they were doing this I was picking off research platforms, their asteroids and factories. If anything, I think the AI needs to be fixed because this "tactic" they use is too easy to use back against them.

The problem isn't the AI, because people can and do use the same tactic. "Fixing" the AI so it doesn't use this tactic won't fix the people who use it.

The problem isn't countering this tactic either, since at the bare minimum you can simply ape your opponent and send siege frigs at him too, then see who can bomb who out of existence more effectively.

The problem is different ideas of what should constitute a siege frigate. Picture a typical RTS - Starcraft for instance. You start building your base, everything is coming along fine, when in comes an enemy builder, who starts building a turret right in the middle of your base. You have a turret or two up, which start firing at the builder, but rather than exploding, the builder keeps on building. More alarmed, you select a nearby group of units to come in to fire on the builder, which they do. But as they all concentrate fire on the builder, the builder continues to build. Much to your horror, the builder not only finishes the turret, but then runs off and escapes, while this enemy turret then proceeds to attack your base.

This is the same dynamic that occurs with this siege frigate thing. Builders, it seems, should not be able to get away with the above scenario without dying a quick and painful death. These siege frigs, it seems, should not be able to get away with the above without a quick, painful death. It just sort of flies in the face of what many believe a siege frigate should be, just as that builder does. Nobody would complain if some big, late tech cap ship waltzed in through your defenses and started laying waste to your capital, and even built a turret right next to your planet to bomb it (in fact, one Vasari cap ship CAN build a turret right next to your planet for bombing it).

This problem was actually worse, believe it or not, before the small nerf to the siege frigate. Before, you could have a whole fleet wailing on a siege frig and it would survive for an extreme amount of time. Now, at least they pop at some point, albeit not soon enough.

With a better PJI, this siege frig problem would be less of a problem, because at least they wouldn't be able to make it to your inner worlds without an escorting fleet to take out the PJI. Thus you see how one broken area of the game (PJIs) compounds another area (siege frigs).

Well lets look at the alternatives. What can make a siege frig go pop and costs around half the resources and a third of the cap? LRM's FTW. The best thing is, after slapping around the siege frigs you can go spam them at your enemies capital ships and watch him complain about LRM's being over powered. Unless of course he spams figthers and light frig escorts back... which would work unless you... and so and so on.

Whenever I'm stuck for a counter strategy I ask myself, what would Brian Boitano do?

i wanna try the stock up on fighters tactic because i have also had been focusing on bombers. and i have also seen planet bombing problems everywhere, but if you think about it, planet bombing is a very good tatic and you could try using it against comps by using it urself

I personally used fighters against them in the last game I ever played, and it didn't work - 19 siege frigs waltzed in, took down the planet with fighters buzzing all over them, and waltzed out before the fighters could take many of them out. But you are certainly welcome to try it and see if it works out for you.