Ripper Beams

[Sinapus]

Actually, if you're defending a planet you still need to finish off those cripples since they count as a blockade.

------------------
--
"What do -you- want?" "I'd like to live -just- long enough to be there when they cut off your head and stick it on a pike as a warning to the next ten generations that some favors come with too high a price. I would look up into your lifeless eyes and wave like this..." *waggle* "...can you and your associates arrange that for me, Mr. Morden?"

Good ideas!
For my 27 warp points to be defended I am considering having one or two baseships with heavy shields and armor whose only weapons are three each of weapon and engine destroying weapons. That way I can disable but not destroy attacking baseships for capture. Also I will have a boarding parties base ship with heavy s/a, null space projectors to take out any SDD, a couple shield destroying weapons, and lots of boarding parties.
But I will not build them until I see lots of baseships attacking, because maintenance on three baseships would eat me alive unless I could depend on capturing an average of two baseships per turn. The mothball/ unmothball is almost as bad as regular maintenance if attacks come frequently.

I was not suggesting an attack on a starbase by RB equipped baseships. As you say, it would be foolish. But a baseship can be presumed to have damage stats similar to my starbase design, and I did not take the time to design my own baseship. It will be a LONG time in my game before I can afford to go on the offensive.

[jc173]

LCC if you're planning on capturing enemy ships the SDD can be a huge pain in the rear. It's a relatively small component so it's hard to hit, seems that you almost always nail the bigger components such as weapons etc first. If you're using tactical combat one thing that seems to help for me at least is to give the boarding ships or other specialized ships a large number of low damage weapons and first them singly or in small Groups to pick off the SDD. I don't know if this would be worth the effort for the sort of large game you are playing though.

This is sort of cheesy, but I used it once on the Rage when I was desperate. Use nothing but NSP's or Shard Cannons on the enemy ships, eventually you'll blow everything up onboard except the armor. So you will be capturing a completely crippled hulk, that will require a lot of repairs. In my situation though, I needed the hulls badly and it was worth it for me since I had extensive orbital maintenance and construction facilities.

[Nitram Draw]

You may also want to consider having a shipyard component in the WP. This will allow you to immediately mothball and repair any ships captured. If you captured a lot you could even scrap a few if you capture damaged ones with tech you can't repair.