defending your empire's borders: what do you do?

[Silent Sorrow]

Originally posted by Arkcon:
Against the AI, heavily defending the frontier is the best defense against an incoming fleet. A human would attack anywhere just to trip you up. Something to defend the interior is always a good idea. In just about every sci fi picture, the planets on the boarder are always screwed ... and that just doesn't seem right to me. You want these colonies - or you wouldn't have sent colonizers there.

I almost never use bases, either at warp points or in planet orbit. I build'em occasionally but they aren't often useful. A small mobile fleet to attack enemy ships that break the line are best. Have at least a sensor level 1, the AI will always cloak once it gets stealth armor.

But you gotta send an expeditionary fleet into enemy territory to snipe at colonies. No matter how well you defend.

Yeah, my issue with border defence is that, given the sheer size of the borders (I always play huge galaxies), it's not too difficult for the AI to pick a spot, mass forces and break through. And if one of you defence fleets happens not to be close by, you can be screwed as the AI can wipe out several sectors just in the time it takes you to get there.

So this is why I wonder if I should try a different strategy of heavily defending my core worlds, which would be a logistically much easier task for a variety of reasons including travel time and population growth and transport.