Defending Warp points...

[Tnarg]

I've been trying to get a grip on my ever expanding empire and have developed a pretty nifty defense system. First I built about ten space yard ships and sent them to all of my borders that could possibly flare up and be the back door for a sneak attack. Once the space yard ships were positioned I had them build small and inexpensive "Warp Point Defense Bases". Just big enough to hold a space yard and all of the other neccessities. Then I had that repeat build mines up to about a 100 thick. Then I had it build a mixture of satellites. Some PD, some PPB, some Missles. Pretty thick too. All the while I had my space yard ship build another "Warp Point Defense Base" to speed things along or I would just move it to another warp point that could be used. Once you feel you have a good blockade you could mothball the Space yard until you possbibly needed it.

If by chance your empire begings to expand beyond the old borders, just send some transports in to mop up the old warp point and move it on to the next area.

I like to use a thick barrage of mines to soften up large fleets. More in likely the mines won't stop them, but they sure do put a dent in the fleet. That's where the next phase of sats come into play. To expand even further you could also use a fleet of fighters as mentioned in a previous post. (I think I'm going to implement that into my doctrine)

This is all very expensive of course, but then again so are heavily built up planets that you don't want glassed.

[Tezzezar]

Don't forget to add cloaking technology to mineships. Kind of fun mining your next victims homeworlds.

Prefer the fighter defense myself. Carriers can relay them to the next starsystem to help conquor and to hold the next WP.

[tesco samoa]

Defending warp points are good up to the mid point of a game.

Then they become too costly.

It is better then to spend those resources on attacking the enemies warp points

[CW]

I usually prefer a mix of static and mobile defense. For a starter I deploy a barrage of satellites with allegiance subverters at my WPs, and if they fail then I scramble my nearby intecepter-battlecruisers fitted with emergency populsion pods.

{edit} forgot to add, I often find myself running short on mines, since my expansion strategy tend to be quite aggressive and too often I've a "fluidic" battlefield on my hand.

[ June 18, 2002, 02:22: Message edited by: CW ]

[Gryphin]

To date I have only used Sattelites. They work great against AI but I have never played against humans. The advantage is that they can be moved. Mines cannot be.
Fighters are the same but I have not used them.

[dogscoff]

Sat- mounted engine damaging weapons are always fun. Keep a few boarding ships handy to mop up those crippled attackers, or just leave 'em there to rot=-)

[Marvin Kosh]

Personally, I like to mine one side of the warp point and put all the guns on the other side. Then you either get the mine sweepers sweeping your minefield but running smack against superior firepower, or some fleet getting smashed up by your mines and finished off mercifully with same firepower

But then I'm just evil like that....