Most people reading this probably know more about this situation than me. Two planets, two teams, each team has full control over a single planet. Each team builds a massive amount of defenses for their planet, and then looks to attack their opponent, but finds gaining ground difficult at best. I have attempted here to compile a list of strategies for this sort of situation. This is related to another active discussion at the moment, but that thread is looking at the topic from a very different angle. Bear in mind that I have only played against the AI so far, so I don't know how things tend to work in practice in competitive situations. Somewhat thankfully, right now, the AI is normally equally terrible at defending planets as it is at attacking defended planets, a quality which appears to me to be essential for galactic war scenarios. Strategies for defending a planet: 1. Air swarms, possibly patrolling the entire planet. 2. Avenger swarms/blobs 3. Nuclear missiles (primarily concerned with getting rid of teleporter invasions) 4. Anti-nuclear missiles 5. Continually traveling commander, possibly via teleporter. This is crucial for defending against orbital lasers, among other things. 6. Various turrets (anti land, air and especially orbital) at key locations. With a long enough game, and enough failed attempts by one team to invade the other, a planet may be locked down completely with anchors and umbrellas. Options for attacking a planet: 1. Orbital Teleporter Construction. Constructed from orbit by orbital fabricators (in extreme circumstances, more is better, whether dozens or hundreds). Other means may be used to make the construction more feasible, including deploying anchors prior to teleporter construction, or deploying on multiple areas of the opposing planet simultaneously. 2. Orbital laser drop. These can be dropped directly onto a stationary commander, but is very, very difficult when the commander is in constant transit. Furthermore, a large number may be required to survive defending orbital defense. 3. Nuclear missiles. Similar to orbital lasers, but invulnerable to anti-orbital countermeasures. Countered by anti-nukes instead. 4. Hally Engine. Given a situation where you only have one planet under your control, this may require evacuation of your commander and other units to space via astraeus *immediately before* initiating planetary annihilation (the faster you are on initiating planetary annihilation after your commander has left, the better, and the game is much more forgiving with the timing when the planet being chucked does not orbit the target planet). The game can lose track of units evacuated in such a manner, but those units are not destroyed (on one test of this, my commander and astraeus warped to the inside of the sun before continuing on his merry way towards the devastated planet). Once planetary annihilation is initiated, it is impossible to initiate the transport of units between the doomed planets. If only two planets/commanders remain, the conditions for victory are less clear for me, but it seems to me that the annihilator may always win. 5. Asteraeus teleporter construction squad. It is possible to load up hundreds or even thousands of units given enough asteraeuses (asteraeii doesn't really work either), and with area load commands and factory queued orders, it shouldn't be as onerous as you might think. That said, it doesn't give you much more hope than a normal teleporter beachhead, since it is countered by avengers in a similar manner. 6. Gain orbital superiority. With enough avengers and orbital lasers, it may be feasible to destroy your opponent's anchors in a local area of the planet, and then creep anchors and attack with avengers yourself to make his commander (and everything else you deem important enough) vulnerable to orbital lasers. Destroying energy/metal production on the way is critical. Now I will attempt to examine, theoretically, the general effectiveness of each of these six options for offense, and in particular attempt to note what sort of things are feasible or not feasible, given that the players involved do not make any (significant) mistakes. It seems to me that it should not be very hard to defend a planet with area patrol orders and anchors such that options 5 (astraeus) is effectively impossible to pull off. Given the amount of time it takes for the astraeus to deliver its payload to the ground, theoretically there should be enough air waiting to destroy even the largest astraeus drop. Option 2 (orbital lasers) requires being able to drop directly, with pinpoint accuracy, on the enemy commander. Otherwise it suffers from being massively vulnerable to avenger swarms, with the added complication that the places orbital lasers . Option 3 (nukes) is a bit more interesting, but may very well be futile against people who know what they are doing. Anti-nukes can help mitigate the effectiveness of option 3, but it is really a betting game in terms of how many fabbers need to be assigned to anti-nukes in order to cancel out his fabbers building nukes. Too little, and you get nuked, to much and you lose by attrition to other methods. That said, having a constantly moving commander can probably render even this largely ineffective. In most circumstances option 4 can only be initiated by one of the players, but should result in that player's victory, assuming the player can pull it off reliably. This option should generally be open however, with the exception of custom maps designed to prevent this. I note again, it is probably that only one player will be able to do this in most maps with two planets. Interestingly, that player will generally have a slightly weaker economy due to having a smaller planet size. Unless the surviving planets are completely or near completely defended by anchors, options 6 (Orbital superiority), and therefore option 1 (orbital teleporter construction) are possible, even if difficult, given enough constructors/avengers/orbital lasers. The advantage is given to the player or players with the largest economy, which usually will be the players with the largest planet. However, it is easy for either team to not make full use of their production, or use production too defensively/aggressively, which could still cause their defenses to be overrun, or their commander to be sniped. If the planets do get to the point where they are well defended by planet-wide anchor deployment, what then? It seems that the longer the game gets, the harder it becomes to progress, and the longer it takes before either side is able to attempt a move. However, I will say again, I have played only against the AI, and therefore I have never gotten to the point where anchors become problematic on a global scale. How does the late-late game progress in practice? Has anyone experienced a true stalemate with anchors being a global presence, or is this generally a problem only for those who are not experienced in dealing with this? Does allowing people to chuck planets completely resolve the issue? I am sure I'm wrong about something here, and if someone could illuminate the victory mechanics when one commander initiates planetary annihilation against the other, I would be very grateful. Is there another option for victory that I missed?
Halleys. Once asteroids and proportional damage from different sizes of celestial bodies are implemented, things will get easier. You'll be able to nuke orbital once they fix it (it's supposed to be in PTE right now but it's broken). Also, there's the unit cannon, which could help. We don't have much details about its implementation though. Also, you can transport air units with Astraeus, which definitely helps when trying to establish a beachhead. From a little of my own experience, nukes are probably the most effective without Halleys, if only because anti-nuke range is so pitiful. A decent-sized planet gives you easily enough money to build enough nukes to area attack a moon or half a planet, and the amount of effort it takes to rebuild is much higher than the effort it takes to fire a second salvo a few minutes later.
From all we've read it sounds like in the final product (post 1.0 release) we'll be able to build a unit cannon and a halleys on a large asteroid then, instead of KEWing it you can move it into orbit around the target planet and use it as a launch platform for your invasion by cannon.
