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.

[Silent Sorrow]

Originally posted by Rojero:
I usually gather a group of ships and they go on a suicide mission. My borders arent super strong, but what I do is i go on an incursion usually hitting enemy planets and destroying them. I dont stop to invade, just slaughter their economy so they would not be able to support a military

This is a good idea. But those ships are expensive. Even a decent light cruiser is going to take 3 turns to build at a space yard III facility. Then you've got to marshall them, get minesweepers, supply ships ... yikes, even a suicide mission thus turns into a major operation and losing all those ships at the end of it seems like a poor pay-off.

[Fyron]

I have sent 120 BB fleets on suicide missions through WPs opened into the enemy's core systems before. Nothing wrong with that.

[Stone Mill]

--The AI never really figures out mines.

--Look to colonize areas of the map with logical chokepoints, and work to garrison each point. Resist colonizing what you can't defend.

--You cannot defend everything.

--Always stay on the offensive in some way. Give your foe something to worry about. Wage war at the economic level.

[Krsqk]

Natural chokepoints are the obvious choice--the problem is in quadrants such as grid which have few if any systems with fewer than 3 warp points. IMO, border defense in these situations becomes an economic issue--if you can outproduce the other guy, you can support fleets to defend larger borders. Larger borders, in turn, mean greater economic strength, which means larger fleets, which mean larger borders, etc... It feeds off itself, usually with diminishing returns as your borders grow geometrically.

[Will]

Large satellite stacks on warps, concentrated around the choke-points first, then all warp points within my space. Rotate older satellites out to the borders, and have newer designs produced both on borders and deep inside.

Big fighter stacks (usually 100), and several carriers dedicated solely to ferrying fighters from one system to the next. A few of these are usually enough (with satellites) to repel any AI attack.

Small fleets (no more than 15 ships) attacking targets of opportunity wherever possible. I've taken to putting a cargo container on ships and keeping some troops in them, and setting secondary strategy to capture planet.

Larger fleets always available to go into an enemy system, seal off with fighters and satellites, and proceed to destroy all enemy units and capture all planets.

Several BSY's in the core always producing ships, mothballing when they're completed. Just lost some ships? Unmothball the older designs and send them off as replacements.

[TerranC]

Originally posted by Stone Mill:
--The AI never really figures out mines.

That doesn't apply when fighting against TDM AI. Why? every ship is a minesweeper.