Are defending ships worth building and upgrading?

How to build effective Defensive ships

from GalCiv2 Forums
Defenders serve several purposes, but not the ones you might think.
The main purpose of a defending ship is to tell rival civs that the planet it is guarding is not the easiest target. In this case, any ship is better than no ship and Evil Stormbringer's empty hulls work quite well.
The second purpose is that any defender blocks a transport from being able to invade a world. Again, even an empty hull works quite well.

The last purpose, and the most obvious, is to fight off enemy ships. My experience, and that of others from what I read on the forums, is that this almost never happens. In my experience 99 out of 100 defending ships NEVER fire a shot! This has lead many to abandon the idea of the defending ship entirely.

I have come to a different conclusion and now use a different strategy. I begin building each of my worlds one defender as soon as they become available. As I gain military technology, I design better defenders and have these built. I used to then upgrade all the older defender designs to the newest design, but I found this extreemly expensive and unproductive. When I get larger hull classes, I build defensive ship on this hull and have ALL of my worlds build a new defender. As each larger defender is built, I convert it to and offensive ship and send it to a rally point. This allows you to convert your fleet without the massive expense of converting them all at once, while doing a complete conversion.

If 99% of them are never used, what is the point of all of this? The AIs in GC2 are written to look for weaknesses and exploit them. If you have no defending ships, they will send a wave of unescorted transports toward you worlds in the hopes that any ships that get through will give you problems. If all of your worlds have one defender, the AI will send a fleet to pick off your defenders one by one, and then sends the transports.
The purpose of this method is: Every world builds its own defender, which allows your stronger worlds to concentrait on other more important things. With each world having a defender, the AIs don't see easy prey and so concentrait their forces, which are more easily countered. Larger hulled defenders can usually due a good amount of damage to even a large fleet. After two or three encounters, they will stop attacking as they have been weakened to the point that they no longer see any battles that they can win or they are destroyed by a defender. This blunts their offense until you can get your own fleets into position.

How to build a defender:
The 'Defender' design is actually not a very good defense ship, as it is actually a heavy fighter. An optimised defense ship contains the following:
NO engines or life support! These are wasted if the ship never leaves orbit.
One of each of you best defensive systems.(Note: early in the game this is not possible due to space limitations) This can be further refined based on your enemies weapon choices. If no one has beam weapons, shields are dead weight.
Put as many weapons in the remaining space as possible, balancing them between the weapon types as best as possible.
This type of ship has a distinct advantage over enemy ships due to the fact that they need engines and life support just to reach you. You will usually have a 30% advantage in firepower and defenses compared same tech and hull size ship. By the time I get to large hulled defender, they tend to devistate enemy fleets by themselves.

Scincerely,
Scintor
strategies
7,899 views 11 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
While I agree that defenders are a good thing to have,,my approach is a bit different.

Well,,first of all,,I only play on big maps,,and I never bothered playing anything below Tough (Hey,,I had to learn the interface and stuff in my first game!).
That means you will most likely NOT be able to secure your borders,,especially not one HyperWarp is commonplace tech (for instance,,my own transports usually do at least 40).

Since all plantes needs to be protected against surprise assaults even if they have low military production,,the ship needs to be cheap.
Having low maintance is preferable too,,since you'll end up with a ship on each and every planet you have.

On every planet,,I have a Police ship:
Tiny hull
Cheapest gun in the list (usually a mass driver)
Cheapest engine that still can get crammed into the hull along with the gun
Perhaps a sensor depending on what the map looks like

Why bother with an engine on a ship that can only do one damage,,and that only if the target doesnt have any defence?
Simply because more often than not,,the AI will aim for a planet that is inside the outmost ones.
Having a gun let you smack any and all unguarded Transports within reach,,and that engine more than doubles your reach.
You can also hit traderoutes going by,,as well as starbases unless they find time to put guns in them.
Finally,,you can opt to have planets in a starsystem without any shipyards at all,,as you can rebase them within a single turn.


Then why not something sturdier than police craft then?
1) Maintance.
There's always better places to spend your cash.

2) Effect.
The police is there to prevent cheapshots,,not to deal with regular military class ships.
What you have to realise is that no matter how good your defences are,,a determined attacker WILL take them down. However,,you CAN make him pay for it...

Now,,when I encounter a well defended place,,I seldom lose more than one ship.
Why? Because that's why I have my sacrificial anodes: high attack,,low def/hp ships that will take the first volly giving the rest of my fleet free way.
Yet defenders cost me a great deal when attacking...
See,,the price the defender wants to exact isn't hit points but movement points.
Five defenders on a planet without an Orbital Fleet Manager (which by chance is the first building to go on every planet I conquer) will cost the attacker five moment points to clear regardless of how powerful his fleet is.

Applied properly,,the attacker will become bogged down long enough for your real fleet to take care of the problem.


Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
What your defenders remind me of is the "monitor class" ships from the board game Star Fleet Battles.

Slow, not maneuverable, but useful as a stopgap defense until your real fleet shows up to take care of the problem.

Or, alternatively, from the old Star Wars/Tie Fighter games, "System defense ships".

If they didn't have one hp, cargo hulls would be perfect for this role. But they are a little too fragile. Sure, the presence of ships qua ships will slow and inhibit the AI but I still don't like the idea of using freighters defending my worlds.

Offworld Trading Company
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Cool Another SFB player!
My favorite pen and paper game of all time!
Scincerely
Scintor
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Cargo hulls costs 55,,while tiny cost 35...

Why use cargo hulls?


Cargo hulls have as much space as a Large hull, and are available at the start of the game. But due to the fact that they have only 1 HP, they are only useful for non-combat vessels (the special modules need that extra space anyway) or 'hunter' ships that will only fight unarmed enemies.
Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
'hunter' ships that will only fight unarmed enemies.


Now that's food for thought...
Have to look into if you just tipped me off of a "LongRange Raider" replacement.
Quite useful unless UP has banned attacking tradeships lol

Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I never bother building anything larger that a tiny hull with a single weapon. No engines, sensors or defenses. That keeps a wandering transport from invading.

The best place to defend myself is in someone else's space. I start with fleets of medium-size ships covering the likely avenues of attack and I move my fleets forward, gobbling up the enemy fleets and transports as I go.

Admittedly I don't play at the highest levels of difficulty but I've never had a planet invaded.
Reply #8 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Liker Director I build a rubbish cheaper than really cheap chips tiny rowing boat with a pea shooter to garrison every colony. That stops the sneak transport.

The bulk of my defensive strategy is posting fleets around my borders to intercept threats as they close, most of my fights take place further out from my colonies. Unless things go wrong naturally.

If I go through a long period of peace or end up with a small shipyard world I might start adding more defence ships to build up the garrisons in combination with orbital fleet managers. In the long run my defences are more deterrant than muscle, the true strength goes into my 'patrol' fleets. That way when the time comes I push forward and try to establish a front line on the enemies door step so I dont have to worry about defending worlds.
Reply #9 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Fleets are better at countering emeny fleets than single ship planetary defenders. Sometimes I have defenders (with moderate speed) on all planets and then fleet up nearby defenders to counter an emeny fleet as it approaches.
Reply #10 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
For the record, Starfleet Battles is awesome.

This is good info. I don't know why I never thought of making a specific defender ship with the techniques you're sharing here. I usually just put one of whatever ship I'm currently using in my fleets in orbit, but it does seem a much better idea to design something cheaper and perhaps even more effective for the role. I'll give it a go in my next game.
Reply #11 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
wow using the "empty hull" method, it seems to make the most sense to use cargo hulls, which could be upgraded to troop transports.