Planetary Defense

[DanteMartinez]

Are they worth building? How many?

And has anyone else noticed that conquering a home world eliminates ALL of your Planetary Defense improvements?

I need to crunch the numbers but it doesn't seem like a good use of Metals really. They don't seem to add much and my fleet is usually the best in the galaxy anyway.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

Generally, no, I don't think they are worth it. In most of my games, my fleet is good enough to defend any of my worlds. You should save up your metals to build wonders as soon as possible. Also, you should build the warp nexuses on all your planets so that your fleet can join the battle sooner if you are attacked. If your homeworld is adjacent to another empire, it does not hurt to build some planetary defenses on your homeworld (since that planet is so important) but that would be the exception to the rule.

 

[DanteMartinez]

So after playing many more games I find myself rarely building these. 1 or 2 in some key chokepoints as they can come in handy especially if your territory gets cut off from your fleet. Otherwise, there are more useful things to build with my metal.

I did also find them useful for a torpedo strategy. If you have stealth torpedos they make great bait to lure in their ships to your torpedo's paths. I use fighters for this as well though.

 

[JDrizzt]

I think the problem is the difficulty. I haven't had the AI attack my empire successfully. From my experiencing attacking the AI the y would be much better off building a lot of these. If you defeat there main fleet on your first invasion from then on they are on the back foot and normally you can push them back too much for them to get revenge later.

With more defenses on each planet I think this would even out...

 

[Olleus]

I don't see why I would build them rather than a warp nexus.

 

[Minor Annoyance]

No reason. Except if the planet is cut off from your other planets and can't be reached by nexus. Defense battles end as soon as all the defenders ships are gone, even if there are still reinforcements on the way. In that case you may need a defender to stay alive until your fleet starts to arrive and then draw fire until you reach comparative strength.
Not a situation that happens often though so yes, mostly you'll build nexuses and only defense ships if a nexus has nothing to connect to.

 

[Stylesrj]

Sometimes I found the ships defending undefended AI worlds to be more challenging than the Megabots I'd normally face.

Megabots have standardised hardware. A marauder carrier or a salvager might pose a greater challenge.

But yeah, don't invest in planetary defences. They're not really that worth it.

 

[DanteMartinez]

I'd really like to see them strengthened but also more expensive.

Or the other idea I had was to abstract it somewhat and base planetary defense on your current energy reserves. Adding planetary defense would then become a multiplier effect on this instead of actual ships. This would also make you have to choose between upgrades and defense levels during war.