when early in the game like this it is hard to defend yourself because you only have enough cash for 1 small fleet and a capital ship. this fleet will almost always out and about conquering planets. the only logical way to get rid of this is to scout, a good way to see whats coming is to scout, and if the enemy is close and your fleet isn't as close, you gotta find some way to buy urself time. i think you can normally buy yourself some time by:
having scouts engage
building scouts to engage enemies outside ur own planet well. these siege fleets should engage if attacked and even if you only have one weak scout, it can buy you time.

for people that say you should build planet shields-
by this time in the game your enemies shouldn't even be able to reach your capital planet and you should have a big enough fleet to fight off attackers.

it also seems that this siege spamming strategy only works during the begining of your game. it would not be likely that your home planet would be destroyed after playing for 1 and 1/2 hours, by now you should at least have a sizable fleet and ships on each planet.

ProfCS101, may i make a suggestion, create the same situation to the AI and see how it respond. You can do it by making your own map with certain starting advantages to yourself and starting disadvantages to the AI, build the same exact number of seige frigates, etc and go attack the AI capital world, and see what it does. Make sure you raised the difficulties setting for the AI. After seeing the results, why don't you come back to the forums and post the result and see what the various members response analysis will be.

Any effective defensive strategy should not be defending a planet, it should be defending a chokepoint or two that lies outside of your main planets. If the fight is at your planet, (especially a capital) then it seems that you have already lost.

That being said, something should be done about the relative equality of all the frigate ships. They are all capable of taking large amounts of punishment, and all relatively the same. What bothers me the most is this:

Should an opponent attempt to run my blockade, there is not much that I can do about it, especially near planets I do not own. The ship AI does not chase very well, and the only ships I can run down are capital ships. I realise this is so that retreating actually works, but ships can just as easily run through my fleet and attack deeper colonies.

My proposed solution? Create an actual dispairity between ship speed. Scout frigates should obviously be the fastest, and I think their speed should remain probably the same. Gun frigates are fine as well. Missile frigates move nearly as fast as gun frigates, and I think this needs to be slowed based on their range. Siege frigates should probably move about half the speed of gun frigates. If you have a planet locked down, then siege can occur, otherwise, why do they need to move so fast? Anti-fighter frigates should be on par with gun frigates, or maybe scouts, as they have to chase down fighter squadrons.

This allows siege frigates to remain a valuable part of a full scale, one-jump attack, as they will be able to close the range to a planet within a reasonable amount of time, but they will likely be the ships that are lost should a full scale retreat occur. If this needs to be amplified, shorten their siege range.

Additionally, I believe the ship AI should be changed to not prefer maximum range when dealing with some types of vessals. If your fighting relatively defenseless ships, or if the ships are retreating (dunno if that is detectable), then you want to be matching speed and right up on them, not chasing them helplessly once they are out of range of your weapons.

I agree that siege frigate spam is a little insane right now. Personally the main problem I have with those ships is their HP is so high that even maxed out defenses can't kill off more than 5 or 6 before the planet is lost.

Had a nice desert planet in my last game right off the star, had maxed out emergency infrastructure, maxed tactical points and filled every last tactical spot with hanger bays and gauss cannons. I had my main fleet 2 jumps away destroying a pirate outpost and was watching the star for signs of enemy attacks as the AI's weren't happy with me at the time. I caught a glimpse of a few siege frigate icons so I ordered my fleet (hanging out on the edge of the gravity well because they had a lot of fighters) to head back to the star so they could follow the enemy ships. I took a glance at the enemy fleet, exactly 20 siege frigates (Advent). They headed for my heavily fortified world, destroyed the planet, and then made good on their escape with only 6 lost ships. That's just absurd that a maxed out defensive planet could be so easily ninja'd when a huge fleet was hovering just 2 jumps away (with quick jump calc. mind you).

First, let me clear up some misconceptions.

I said that I was siege spammed at my capital with my entire fleet and numerous defenses. This indeed did nothing to stop the death of my planet, it did indeed die. I DID scout (you guys can't get over this "you need to scout" issue), thats why my fleet was WAITING for the siege spam attack. The simple fact is that a large fleet and defenses can do nothing to prevent the death of the planet.

At this point I rebuilt my capital.

Later on there was an occurance where my fleet was a few systems away when the siege spam arrived AGAIN and my defenses did nothing to stop the killing of my capital. This ALSO happened.

They are not mutually exclusive.

Also, to the people whining "WHY DIDN'T YOU SCOUT"

1. I did scout, I knew they were coming, I moved my fleet in to a defensive position around my planet, and my planet still died.

To the people whining "WHY DID YOU LET THEM GET THAT CLOSE"

2. Ever play a small map? Sometimes your capital is only one or two jumps from an enemy planet. If you actually played the game you would know that all one has to do is simply bypass any planets and/or defenses in the way. YOU CAN FLY THROUGH ENEMY SYSTEMS TO GET TO A SYSTEM BEHIND THE FRONT. Sorry, but this game has absolutely no tackling, rooting, or anything worth stopping crap. Yes, you can slow down jumps, but that gives you SECONDS and stops nothing.

To the people whining "WHY DON'T YOU KILL THEM FIRST"

3. Uhh, because when fighting two AI's, you can rarely attack both in strength to get to their home production planet and kill a fleet of siege frigates that tank like heavy cruisers before you are taken out.

Anyone who says siege frigates are fine either don't understand that there is zero defense against planet nuking, or have never played this game versus more then one AI.

playing against 2 opponents , sure that isnt the problem lol?

Failure number 1.


Failure number 2. Failure to deal with problem after initial, identical failure. You survived, why did you not relocate your fleet to dealing with the obviously greater threat?


Failure number 3, identical to initial failure.



Failure number 4. Small maps work both ways. Siege frigates may only be 2 jumps away, which means their world producing said siege frigates of doom are also only 2 jumps away. EASILY reachable FAR before 30 minutes, and one scout would have found said cache early on.



And now, the real root of the problem. We are now supposed to assume nerfs be made based on playing MULTIPLE opponents. He freely admits he can't attack them because it was two AI, but argues the logic of his defense is flawless, despite being unable to do exactly what we told him to do- attack first.

You have just proven this is a meaningless cry for nerf. Thank you.

What a dick

My thoughts exactly.

Yup. Effective isn't it?

theres is also completely unupgraded.

Again, why do all of these battles you refer to take place at your world? Likely because if the story was, "I jumped in to my opponents world while he was assembling his 12 siege frigates that I scouted and saw him constructing, thus ATE HIM ALIVE" doesn't work as a "nerf" arguement.


Because I don't believe it's broken. A ship designed specifically to bomb planets, and NO OTHER FUNCTION, should do exactly that. Destroy planets. Sometimes "sitting on your duff" and turtling doesn't function as a valid defensive tactic versus something. You don't wait for a planet killer, you find the planet killer before it has time to KILL.


Last I checked, I've never stated I was "right", "better" or "master of strategy". I've provided a counter arguement to your obviously flawed tactics that you find offensive. I apologize, but unfortunately I'm also not the only person who has NO PROBLEM with siege frigates. I don't even use 'siege frigate rushes' because I play people who scout.

Edit: And I'd recommend you never assume someones registration date on a forum is a measure of their ability to play strategy games. It'll save you from sounding like a fool down the road.

My biggest problem with the tactic is that it's the only tactic the AI has ever used in the games I've played. I've never had a real fight with the AI. Every single time I'm chasing their siege frigates around. Frankly, it's pretty boring.

A big reason I bought the game for was because they promised large scale space battles, but I have yet to have a single one. I want to see some real action, but instead it's the same thing every time. I build up defenses, build a nice fleet, attack the enemy, they send in a fleet of siege frigates, I attack the frigates and they run away. Even when I start attacking their main planets, it's the same. The only time I've ever fought something other than siege frigates is the pathetic defenders around unclaimed planets and pirates on occasion.

Is it too much to ask that maybe they use more than 1 tactic? If this is all I can expect, I don't think I'll end up playing the game much longer and I'd be very disappointed because I had high hopes for this game.