[Taqwus]

If you must defend a planet... hrm.

Your options are something like the following, all with good / bad points.

- Ships. Extremely expensive (maintenance is something like 20% base cost per turn, IIRC). But mobile and you may be able to engage attackers far enough away so they don't hit the planet itself.

- Bases. A large, immobile ship variant. Expensive (again, 20% IIRC), and randomly placed, so with only one unless you have a range advantage the attacker can hit the planet from the other side. Benefit can be that it's hard to kill (shields now regenerate fully between battles on the same turn), and can have Massive weapons, but again, you need numbers... which gets expensive.

- Weapon platforms. Big (even the small ones are 200kt, and they don't need engines, life support, etc), but immobile. So you need a mix of something like point defense (to shoot down incoming missiles, as the planet cannot run away...), missiles and good beam weapons (for the enemies who bring enough PD to shoot down your missiles, or are fast enough to simply dodge them). They might be able to chew up many bomber and troop transport designs, however, so at least you might be able to avoid those.

Plus, attacks on the planet itself must destroy all WPs until any damage is suffered to the pop, it looks like.

- Satellites.
Immobile. Weak. Cannot be shot by CSMs, but that appears to be a bug judging from the CSM description. Cheap, 'tho, and they can be stationed at warp points...

- Mines.
Might actually be possible -- mine your own planet, since IIRC you may be able to move through your *own* minefields freely, and they're pretty nasty.


On the whole, 'tho, they translate either to not-terribly-effective, or very very expensive. You're much better off having an active defense with fleets ready to intercept near warp points -- heavily mining a warp point, backed up with satellites or perhaps even a battlestation, can be VERY nasty. The mines appear to silently vaporize fleets (I've lost a fleet of 10 well-armored LCs without so much as a dialogue box or log entry...), and any attacker who survives the mines will be at point-blank for the satellites/bases/ships.

Until your opponents get Stellar Manipulation tech and start creating warp points, the key seems to be to not let them into your systems, rather than have to defend a planet; and have WPs if you're concerned about raids (but note that, unless there are a lot, the odds still favor a fleet...). At least the demo tech isn't as drastic as in MOO2 (an expensive planet-killer could use Subspace Teleport, if not Phase Cloak / [pref. Phase] Cloak / Transporter / Augmented Engines, if not Phase Cloak / Battle Pods / a LOT of Neutronium Bombs. It'd be fast enough to close, and the transporter means that even a surround-the-planet-with-ships approach won't block all the spaces from which the PKer can bomb the planet into oblivion in one attack.) If you can block the warp points, you're mostly

safe. Along the same lines, use this idea to help guide which systems to colonize...

Not against a Darlok-type race. Their reach transcends all boundaries, muhahahahahahaha. Watch as your OWN ships bombard your planets... >;-)

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-- The thing that goes bump in the night