Static Defence

Only make static def vs pirates or extreme 1v1 chokepoints. otherwise, useless

Understood.  Thank you!

Hopefully, Entrenchment would fix the static defense of the game, b/c right now with bombers and fighters those things are useless, even in the beginning. 

I HAVE noticed, even playing only against computer opponents, that the entire structure of the game seems to heavily favour offense over defence.  This is not uncommon in MMOs, and frankly any real military strategist will tell you that as a rule you'd much rather your opponent reacted to you than the other way around, but in this game the disparity is MASSIVE.

Err, RTS games rahter.  Never post on more than one forum at once.

They're fixing that with the expansions.

Ahh, keen!  Here's hoping to see it soon then.

On a note completly unrelated to the original question, or even the purpose of this forum (but in the hopes of not having to start yet another n00b thread), is it just that I can't find it, or am I correct in beliving that there is no single-player campaign (except in so far as the background blurbs provided with the various maps that can be played versus AIs)?  Bit of a pitty, if so, since the setting seems really cool, but then, it IS a strategy game after-all, so I suppose it should focus on being a competative excercise.

Here is the thing I think: I am trying to learn so much in this game, and having so much fun posting my strategies and experience on this forum, I don't really miss any campaign whatsoever.  My mean, do we really need a campaign to teach our all the little details of this game?  Figuring out the cool researchs and ships on my own is one of the greatest joy this game can ever give me.  I love how I finished my very first Novalith cannon and watch it turns to my hated enemy planets and destroy them one by one, I didn't need a campaign to kill off my high by just throw in a Novalith in one of my settlement.  It wouldn't be the same, you know what I am saying? In fact, I would rather to read some science fictions or watch battlestar galactica, and be inspired than go through an in game campaign lol. 

In my experience no single-player campaign of any strategy game ever made has been any good at actually teaching you how to play in order to defeat a human opponent.  Thats not the point.  The point is that the plot is good and the setting is an interesting place to explore.  When I played the SP games for Starcraft of Homeworld 2 or Warcraft 3, it wasn't the game-play that made it interesting, it was the story.  For really interesting strategic game-play you'll always need a human opponent behind the wheal (although admitedly in some cases - *cough* Warcraft 3 *cough* - there's a bit too much of the opposite direction, and the game isn't actually mcuh good at all as a strategic and tactical excercise).  This game has a cool setting, and its a shame its not better explored.  But as I said, life goes on.

I dont know how effective static defense is against human players but it can definitely be effective against the AI.  The balance works pretty nicely if you are the TEC.  The Advent dont seem to have as strong of defenses because they dont have the planetary shield.  I dont play as the Vasari much so i cant speak for them really.

You have to fine tune defenses though and just like fleets there is no one size fits all roles, nor is there any way to counter everything.  You have to have reasonable goals with your defence, you cant expect to stop an entire civilization's endgame fleet with planetary defense.  There are three ways the TEC's planetary defense can help you do achieve tactical goals or counter enemy tactical goals:

1. Buying you time.  Maybe they just destroyed part of your main fleet and your are regrouping, or maybe you are on your way to a planet that is under siege.  Either way you need to keep their fleet preocuppied while you gather the means to counter-attack.  Their are a multitude of ways to do this with the TEC.  Build multiple repair stations, maybe planetary shields if you want to hold the planet and the rest on turrets, no hangars.  The repair stations will make any attack take a lot longer as long as the enemy does not ridiculously outnumber you.  Only the strongest figher oriented fleets will be able to break the repair station tank, and it will still give you the precious time you need.  Any fleets that get in close you blow up their planetary bombardment vessels then go after their capital ships if you have enough firepower.

2. Preventing groups of cruiser bombardment groups from running through your planets out of control.  Maybe it was only when i was playing easy but sometimes the AI sends these groups of cruisers that only bombard the planet until it is destroyed then move in the rest of the fleet.  By throwing up at least two shield stations and putting at least 10 turrets in range of the cruisers you can save yourself from as many as 20 cruisers.  And 3 shields with 10 turrets can save you from even more of the cruisers.

3. Destroying enemy capital ships, or fleets in general.  Build shields, but this time they should be viewed as bait and not planetary protection.  Surround them with turrets and focus the fire of the turrets on whatever you want to destroy.

I thought the TEC defenses were a joke when I first looked at them. The whole idea of fixed defenses is to defend. And short of a full fleet jumping in, they should be effective at defending. The Gauss is a short range pop gun that you cannot build enough of them to adequately defend the entire gravity well, and you cannot build enough hangers to be enough of a defence either.

So I modded the guass so that fully upgraded it hits with about 90, and in a range that covers the entire gravity well. Now 25 of these will adequately fend off a medium sized fleet for the loss of 4 or 5 gauss. That saves a whole lot of unnecessary fleet movements. Also modded to hit strike craft, and they are an effective defense in numbers. 5 will prevent most single scouts from getting out of your gravity well. (I do not like enemy scouts knowing whats behind my front lines !).

TEC might have been behind in gizmo development, but I see no reason why they couldnt have better fixed defenses on a pure grunt basis. After all, 1,000 years of peace it might have been, but pirates and militias and infighting between factions would have been common place before the TEC came together because of the Vasari threat. So while they wouldnt have the gizmos, traders would know how to defend themselves, and short range pop guns wouldnt have lasted the first 100 of those 1,000 years ! Hence, I changed them !

Moding is certainly one way to address a dislike, but some of erfer to wni without cheating.

Those are good points above, however, I hav found number 2 to be part of th problem; its too easy to simply go around the defences and destroy the planet.  Now, granted, trade ports supply more income than planets do in the mid to late game by a wide margin, but its still annoying

Also, planetary shields sound useful, but I have never been able to build them.  Am I just missnig them on the tech tree (definately possible) or are they not a structure Advent have access too for some reason?

The advent do not have planetary shields.  The planetary shield devices are only built by the TEC.  I think the advent have an anti-matter recharger that no other race has, but it is useful mostly just when working in conjunction with a capital fleet.

With the TEC you are likely to have a good economy, so if their planetary bombarders are just going around your turrets then quickly delete most of your turrets or stationary defense and rebuild them next to the planetary bombardment vessels.

With the Advent my approach to defense is a lot different.  I feel almost like im cheating with the advent because it is real simple.  The computer will often concentrate on attacking one planet then eliminating the buildings at that planet then it will colonize the planet.  I use the advent's cultural bonuses to make sure they are never able to colonize the planet.  I have seen easier enemies sit there like lame ducks at an empty uncolonizable planet until my fleet shows up to scare them off.  I havnt played as the advent as much against more difficult opponents so i dont know if that strategy will still work at higher levels.

Where do you build your stuff? Most of the time there is only place where the enemies phase into you planet. They will then fly in a straight line towards your planet. Just put every single one of your buildings in a big blob between them and your planet. Then stick some repair bays and 20 turrets there. This will easily hold of any pirate force with almost no loss to you and can hold off significant fleets for quite some time. I remember a planet like that held for over 10 minutes against a fleet with 40 HC plus 20-30 support ships. The enemy AI is stupid enough to fly its carriers and healing ships in range of your turrets so you can completely wipe out their weak support ships in minutes so by the time your fleet arrives there will just be a bunch of HC with no support.

With TEC is is especially easy to build masses of turrets because of your gigantic economy but I think their repair bays take up more space. Plus you could even put in a frigate factory or two and leave some shipcap free so as soon as their ships arrive you can pump out some ships to help counter it. On larger maps where it could take some time for your fleet to get there that last tip could be quite useful. If you want to be really mean a phasejump inhibitor can help you mop up when they finally decide to run away. Nothing like your own 40 HC shooting them in the back while they charge up their engines
.

I found the planet shield to be pretty useless. Some special ability just turns it off for long enough to take the planet down anyway. Having multiples just means no other defenses, making the shields vulnerable to conventional attack, and in any case, more ships wiht the ability will just turn them all off long enough to take down the planet. No point imo.

Defenses should be real defenses. The game doesnt really have any I'd call a serious defense. As someone said, its designed for offence. As a defensive player, I resorted to modding to rebalance the game for defensive play, and thats not cheating as far as I'm concerned, just rebalancing decisions made by offensive devs. (Maybe I should rephrase that ! )

They're adding starbases.

I once had seven hangars at a planet (no turrets at all) and I blew away an Akkan Battlecruiser

5 turrets and a repair bay could probably kill a single cap ship too. The problem is when the fleet has flak frigate support. Hangars become useless. One or two hangars may be ok to hunt down annoying ships outside the range of your turrets but pure hangar defence doesnt work too well imho. And the point of most defence is to stall the enemy fleet as long as possible to give your own fleet time to arrive. PD with repair turrets lasts longer than hangar bays. Plus if you are careful you can build back the PD as they are destroyed and stall the enemy for a long time. A fully upgraded planet has 4 construction ships so that is 4 PD built at a time. You can be nearly constantly replacing lost defences within seconds of them being destroyed.

I find that one of the best uses for static defenses is to back up a battle fleet. It is always best to fight under cover of turrets and repair bays when possible, the turrets will draw fire, soak up damage and keep your expensive fleet intact. Nevertheless I agree the defenses ARE pretty pathetic. For one thing I think the limits on how many turrets and whatnot you can build are way too low (4x as many at least would allow for more realistic coverage.) How much stuff you can build should be determined by your economy, not hard-coded limits. That said I really hope Entrenchment addresses these issues; starbases and minefields would be good, making them cost less in capacity would be excellent.

Yes. Its the hard coded limits that always become the game breaker for me. How big a fleet you have, and what defenses you have should all be a factor of your economy and how much money you have, not a obitary limitation by a dev.

The gauss guns are ineffective in small numbers. If you could build 100 of them, then they would be very effective. Building that many should be the players decision, not the dev's.

Planetary defenses can be very powerful when properly used, especially in games against the AI.

The main point to remember is don't build them unless you need them.  They are just wasted cash if they never get used.  Against the AI, they are great to create chokepoints, since it won't fly past.  Against real people, it takes phase disruption to create a chokepoint in a multiplayer game.

Some things to consider for multiplayer ...

Repair bays are extremely powerful at keeping your fleet alive.  2-3 repair bays can totally swing the course of a battle when you are defending a world with your fleet.  A couple turrets sprinkled around your repair bays and key structures is also handy.

A few hangars sprinkled around your empire with fighters will chew up scouts trying to cross your system, denying the enemy intelligence.

If you are playing on a big map, it starts to become useful to have some defenses to protect against raids.  Yeah, the defenses will die, but they should give your fleet time to arrive.  Would you rather lose some defenses or the planet to a small raiding force with siege?

Fleet upgrades start to seriously hamper your economy at some point.  If the fighting seems to be happening more at your worlds, defenses are actually very economical for the cost.  They are meant to bolster the strength of your fleet.

The thing to keep in mind is defenses don't win you the game...but if you know when to use them, they CAN keep you from losing.

I'm also interested to see what Entrenchment brings to the game as far as strategy.  I'm a little apprehensive, since the last half of the game can already be a grind against players who have no hope of winning because they did nothing but load out their few worlds with defenses instead of building a fleet.  For people who play epic length games against the AI, I  think Entrenchment is gonna be pretty great.

Oh, forgot to comment, this is all very true!  And it is the main reason experienced players take out those pesky construction ships ASAP!

As one of the former posters points out: defenses don't use up fleet supply. This is the main reason defenses still have uses. Rather than constantly making your fleet bigger, you can save some money on upkeep by building some defenses instead and trying to lure the enemy into it and then fighting him on your own turf. For this reason, I also like the Phase Jump Inhibitior defense. It stops scouts from jumping through your system (unless they research the expensive abillity) and traps enemy fleets. What I try to do, is lure the enemy in a false sense of security, so they think they can attack a planet (pretty easy against the AI), then warp in my own fleet and pick them off while they struggle to get away.

All in all, defenses can give a nice boost to your fleet if you fight on your own turf, but without costing you upkeep.