So I've about go the hang of this game, but there are a few things that are giving me trouble. Mainly that goes with assulting planets other people control and it usually takes too long for me to destroy planets. Planet bombers are very expensive even compared to heavy cruisers.  Using Cap Ships just seems to take too long to bomb a planet where I could use their support abilities elsewhere. This seems to give my opponents the excess time needed to rebuild their fleet and mount (a sometimes effective) counter to a fleet I once had a massive advantage with.

I really have two questions about planet bombing and assault on worlds occupied by an opponent:

1) Are planet bombers worth the cash you spend on them? If not, what should I do instead? I usually run out of creds just building the things, but it seems like they are a necessary expense in order to win a game.

2) At what stage of an assault on a world do I bring them in to occupy and do their time bombing? How many should I use? Sending them in alone just gets them destroyed, but leaving them alone after I move on sometimes leaves them vulnerable to a counter-assault the same way. They are expensive ships to lose just using them to do their job. Should I even be bothering with bombing fringe worlds? Should I chase down his fleet and cripple his homeworld instead, without even bombing outer planets?

I suppose the real question I'm asking is once you realize you have the upper hand what is the most effective way to exploit that advantage and not lose it once you have it? How do you start killing an opponent and go about making sure they end up, indeed, dead?

I am, of course, talking from the perspective of large maps here, I can kill opponents effectively on small maps. Large maps just seem to give people too many places to run and hide.