Better Planet Defenses for just Home Planet

I agree, I find that taking over a home planet is about as difficult as any other planet. I've destoryed several, and quite frankly my home planet is extermely well defended. However it should be uber defended. Turrets that can touch anything in the gravity well, larger hangers, etc... \

When a enemy invaded a home planet it should be hell for them.

Terrible idea. It may seem "cool" for your comp bashing games, but it would ruin MP.

On a side note, your homeworld is very sturdy. It starts with 4500 health, and it has 15 tactical slots from the start.

As long as it's just the homeplanet and the rewards aren't too crazy, it sounds like a logical idea. A simple option might be to just give all tactical structures at the home planet, say, +2 or +3 armor, representing the higher concentration on certain materials. Heck, it could be a level 1 military research item. That prevents a defender from being too powerful to immediately conquer during a well-executed rush, which is important in random large-map games where it turns out an enemy AI is just one jump away.

Giving the turrets the ability to cover the entire gravwell is way overpowered. You'd lose a capship just getting to them.

[edit: I'm an SP player, and after reading the post above, I could see how it would wreck MP if overloaded bonuses were given. However, a very small bonus like the homeplanet armor upgrade wouldn't change things that much, would it?]

-- Retro

I must admit I am a single player as well, but I think the home planets should be (Correction, I would like them to be) stronger as your last line of defense.

I can see the point regarding defense platforms being too strong if they covered the whole gravity well. Maybe just give a little extra like theRetroboy's suggestion "+2 or +3 armor, representing the higher concentration on certain materials" which seems a good compromise.

Any other ideas for a slightly more robust home planet?

Cheers MarkL

the real solution would be to add tactical slots to a homeplanet. wont happen though

Don't know if this will help but in the mod section theres a mod called x10 that lets you get 210 tactical slots and huge fleets. Much more is in the mod but don't rememeber it all.

Its not really a tactical slot problem, its that defenses are pretty weak. The orbital defensive gun placements can simply be flown around, given their short range.

I think there's a happy medium between completely overpowered defenses and the current useless against anything but pirates ones.

What if you could engage an "Action Stations" Mode where all of your structures temporarily lower production and switch to a pseudo defensive installation. I'm pretty sure if the objective in the game is to kill your enemy and I was a citizen of working on ore refinery, I'd want to have access to a cannon if someone started shooting at me (even if it was wimpy one). And if your culture is so advanced, to the point of interstellar travel (and you are surrounded by potential hostiles) can't you figure out how to make a surface to air/space missile or ground installation that can point upwards?

I think the surface to space defense systems of Planetarion work really well (ION Cannon ect). I know Planetarion is all about stats and what-not but that game has some truly epic battles when it comes to the numbers!

Please let's not look at defending gaming design choices with realism here? If realism is an argument, there's no reason why an attacking ship can't fire planetbuster missiles from the edge of the gravity well, or heck, just slap a phase drive on them and deliver them entirely from another planet too.

-- Retro

I like the idea of Missle bases but they should come out of your Supply points.
So if you want a uber defended planet, you have to pay by lack of Offence.
It would work for me because I like to use mostly Capital ships for my standing fleets.

The capital city is a unique planet improvement. You can mod it to have an increased number of tactical or logistics slots. This lets you have the homeworld be better defended than the rest.

If you max out the facilities and change homeworlds, you won't lose the extra structures you no longer have the capacity for. That would be a sort of bug, but it wouldn't be a cheap option either.

Missile defenses or planet based squads would be nice. I'd like to see this for all planets, maybe as a seperate research, or tied into the health bonus. As the planets health is lost, missiles would fire slower or less per barrage, and fighters wouldnt rebuild, since their base was destroyed. This would also make planets a better choice then asteriods, due to more "natural" defense. As a bonus, home planets could get this doubled, or something to make rushing them suicide.

Bad idea, planetary defenses are not supposed to go head to head with a fleet. As the game is now planet defenses can defeat a pirate attack alone, and thats good enough. If you make them more powerful, then a fleet at a planet with your idea would be indestructible. Infact even as it stands right now to take on a fleet + defenses is extremely difficult. I think perhaps you do not understand that planet defenses are there to buy time for the cavalry to arrive.

Even if I have a fleet close by I like to wait a bit, let them close in and get hairy with my planet defenses then I drop the fleet on them, between a rock and a hard place, turkey shoot while they try to run.