Don't waste your frontline ships on blockade duty. Make a specific blockade fleet instead, with only minesweepers, PDC-ships and some minelaying capabilities. They are cheap, and can be built while the main fleet is in training (or retrofitted from antiquated designs). When possible I will use such fleets to blockade enemy planets in frontline systems my main fleet bypass while it strikes for home.
Move the blockade fleet to the planet and let the PDC-ships take care of any defensive fighters. Drop a few mines, leave a PDC ship for blockade and move to the next planet. Repeat (use shift-click to hit several planets in the same turn). Be sure to have some extra ships in the system as you will loose some ships to weapon platforms as your lazy blockade captains sometimes let themselves drift into range
. Send in the marienes to clean up later.
Be sure to drop the mines though, as sometimes the planet manages to build a siege braker (ship or fighters) before rioting. With a few mines in place over all blockaded planets, the damage will be limited to the one planet.
Done this a couple of times in games, both against the AI's and against humans, and it works like a breeze.
Re: Blockade strategy?
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