AI: Enemy Titan comes back with level 10.

Titans retain their level when rebuilt. So if you get your titan to level 6 and have it destroyed, if and when you rebuild it, it will be a level 6 titan as soon as it's complete. Just the nature of the game.

Pretty much your goal when a Titan comes out is to kill it before it gains any experience. That means you have to be very conservative when fighting one.

Ok. I guess it's done for balance reasons, otherwise the loss of a Titan would mean the game is essentially over and instead they want the game to drag on forever .... or maybe they just want the game to be decided in some other way than a simple battle between superweapons.

I will try some other tactics when dealing with Titans - because just sending my own Titan + a big fleet of cruisers and carriers is obviously not going to work against that kind of thing. It'll just do major damage to my fleet, starbase and planet before it gets destroyed and when it comes back it just goes on doing the same thing again, except that it is fresh and new and my fleet is battered and bruised.

Strikecraft and Corvettes usually work best against titans because their abilities can't target them. Keep your frigates and cruisers away while your Capitalship, Titan, Strikecraft and Corvettes kill it. This video may help if you'd like some in depth stuff.

Well , me and the AI were both Tec Loyalist (by chance) and in my own gravity wells my Titan plus Star Base plus some support could destroy a whole fleet of small ships (because I added light carriers to my fleet - to get rid of bombers and those pesky torpedo cruiserrs); in the enemy gravity well I lost my fleets. I just don't think a level 10 Ankylon Titan can be defeated anymore with just those little ships, especially inside the enemy gravity well. It has over 30 armor and several abilities which reduce damage you deal to it.

I decided to forget about those and just build big capital ships. That worked better. I had a support fleet of light carriers to get rid of enemy bombers, but I still lost too many of my capital ships when I attacked his heavility defended world and my fleet of light carriers was too vulnerable to assaults by light ships and cruiser. For defense it was really good, I could annihiliate his attacks as much as he annihilated mine (I suppose it's because the Tec Loyalist have a big advantage when defending their worlds).

I changed plans and built carrier capital shpis, in addition to the Kols and Akkans and even a Corsev that I had left from earlier tries. I added a second fleet of about 50 Robotic cruisers (with the offense ability disabled) which can repair the damage to the ships during battle. At first they flew away in every direction so that didn't work too well, and having all of them in 1 fleet didn't work either. I put them in separate fleets (capital ships and Titan in one fleet and the support cruisers in the other) and I set both fleets to hold position, so that they would keep still and wouldn't run around everywhere. That helped, the capital ships stayed in range of the robotics cruisers and got healed. In the end I also added a few scouts to detect mines. And that worked very well, I defeated the AI. I didn't need light carriers, I left that fleet near a Dead Asteroid to support my starbases( the AI wanted was very much focused on that world for whatever reason).

Yeah, when using light carriers its assumed you'll have them on the edge of the gravity well, where you can either run them around in circles (AKA kiting) enemy units or at least retreat them if that isn't feasbile.

The AI also isn't great at attacking well fortified planets.

Don't forget to have a Dunov or two. Each race has 1 capitalship that can drain titan antimatter, and the Dunov's EMP abilities is the TEC one. Titans are obviously much easier to deal with if they do not have antimatter to use abilities.

No Bombers are still your best bet to kill any large ship. Bombers have a damage modifier that does best against Heavy Armor types of capital ships.

Get like 50+ squadrons and watch that nice Titan drop like a fly.

If you are going to use capitals than get ones that can drain antimatter and shut down ablities. For the TEC that would be the Dunov.

Capitalships and titans do not use the same armor type. Bombers are better than fighters to use against titans but they are really not that great damage value wise. It just happens they're the best strikecraft to use, but I think Corvettes actually have a better modifier.

In practice though yes bombers can work quite well.

Yes I used that tactic against a regenerating level 10 Titan in a game last week, I think it was a Vesari one. That Titan was simply impossible to destroy once it activated its drain ability, which happened to drain antimatter from all my ships and restored its own antimatter to about 1000. I tried to defeat it with small ships, big ships, until I tried a fleet with about 8 Dunov capital ships, all at level 4 or higher. And I had to be careful too, I had to disable the autocast on the shield restore first, otherwise the Dunovs would just waste their own antimatter on restoring the shields of small ships... and if I let that happen then the Titan would do the opposite to me, it would continuously drain the antimatter of my Dunovs, rendering them useless...

Anyway that wasn't necessary against the Tec Titan, although I suppose it would've been better to have included a few Dunovs because it would've sped up the process of destroying the Titan - it took pretty long to destroy it with just my fleet.

I had carriers and many bomber squadrons, but the bombers weren't really necessary to finish the Titan. The carriers also dropped many small missile towers, which had a really long range and were pretty powerful. I mainly used fighters (about 50 squadrons) to clear the skies in the enemy gravity well so that the AI wouldn't be able to bomb my ships. After a while, when most enemy bombers (and hangars) were destroyed I would turn a bunch of my squadrons into bombers squadrons, but they just flew around killing some turrets, I didn't really need them to destroy the Titan.

I suppose this kind of strategy only works against an AI. A human player would just select all his bombers and ships and take out my capital ships one by one, then my Titan, leaving me empty-handed. I wouldn't know how to win against such tactics, fortunately the AI isn't that smart.

That would be the Kultorask titan. Its nanoleach ability trips up a lot of newish players, it does drain the health and antimatter from all nearby frigates, making it near impossible to kill with a large frigate fleet. The key is again to keep your frigates away while your other ship types kill it, all of its offensive abilities only target frigates, so it is almost helpless against corvettes, strikecraft, capitalships, titans etc. 

It is very easy to figure out that this ability affects small ships, and if you remove those from it's vicinity, that ship will have no food to repair itself from. Not rocket science.

Play nice, its not that easy to figure out unless you play Vasari Rebels yourself and use the titan.   It does seem kind of self defeating to retreat your frigate fleet of doom so you can kill one ship. But that's why its so fun, ever game needs a few troll ships like that. 

If one check from what that titan gains his repairs, he can figure out, maybe it is more difficult to realize for others, dunno.

Once against fully developed Hard AI, level8 Kultorask, man, after 3 rounds of losing my fleet, I had to realize how to remove those repairs on that titan, I though others will realize this too.. It was luck that stupid AI chased my Radiance all the way while my bombers actually killed that ships (though it was annoying as my Coronata stole his ships I constantly had to remove them first world problems..) and my Coronata stole all his fleet, but even this way it started for an hour or so.

I played another game against the AI today and guess what, I faced that Kultorask Titan again. Now just that Titan alone can't do much against my own fleet and Titan, but when I invade the enemy world, I get to face a Titan and his moving starbase... and some other ships like a few capital ships and light carriers and whatever else ... now that's just a bit too much imo. I don't think it is just a challenge to play against such an enemy, I think it's simply impossible. The Titan and starbase are so strong, that they dwarf the importance of everything else. Now my own Titan can cover my fleet a little, with the group shield, but that's just a small area. I don't think it's cool to face such strong enemies which are so incredibly hard to destroy ...

Or maybe I could try to sneak in a few heavy constructors under the shield and construct 2 starbases near the enemy, would that work?

I invaded once a fully developed Vasari Rebel homeworld, level8 kultorask. You can imagine it wasn't an easy story, but I won... So it is possible to defeat it even if it has supporting ships, as a Titan that can remove those (Coronata in my case, but every titan except ankylon is useful as they have AoE attacks). And bombers, 50-100 (or even more) bomber squadrons solve every problem pretty well

Yes I can imagine that. Did you also face a starbase of just the Titan? The Ankylon is not that useless, actually it is really hard to defeat because of its group shield. I could also just go for his planet and bomb it and just ignore everything else until its gone. That would remove the enemy damage bonus ... at least if its starbase has no auxiliary government. Or maybe I could just move my small fleet around and destroy everything, while ignoring the starbase and enemy Titan for a while, instead of just sitting there and watch a meaningless fasc-off which I ultimately lose. Or I could use more Dunovs for shield repair en Kolls for the finest hour or Corsevs for the elite crews instead of the carriers and Akkan ... basically I could go totally defensive and make my little fleet really hard to destroy, even while I am in the enemy gravity well. I'll try some things, which will have to wait till some other day. Anyway it's a really hard game and really strange because of those Titans and Starbases.

BTW. I tried the bomber thing but that's really hard, because the moving starbase is coming after my light cuisers. I also need many fighers to eliminate enemy bombers, otherwise they'll just take out my capital ships one by one (which the AI actually does, I couldn't believe it). That means that I don't have many bombers and it takes forever to destroy a starbase.

Yeah, in that case it maybe best to destroy the Starbase first if the Kultorask is under level 6. It has little offensive power until it unlocks its dissever ability at that level.

And yes, building starbases in enemy gravity wells is something you should use, especially later game when you have enough resources to shrug off the cost.

I killed it with only bombers and my Coronata attacking it, it lasted for 30 minutes or so, but meanwhile I stole his fleet, I had a secondary fleet full of Vasari ships That's why I like Advent Loyalist.

It is a bit hard if he follows your carriers, you have to be careful when selecting their path, but not impossible. If 50 bombers are not enough, try 100, or 150. Trust me, there isn't really another method to kill a starbase and a Kultorask in the same battle Solution: build more carriers, so for your bomber swarm you may have some fighters as well.

One day i need to figure out how ppl keep having these epic games with lvl 10 titans and huge fleets vs Hard AI. I joined a 4v6 HARD AI (same team) game this weekend to see whats it like. and it was seriously the most boring game of sins i have played to date. Killed 3 of the AIs with just disps/vettes and few capital ships...

Because people arn't so "hardcore" as you are. They play much more casually. Plus this is a single player game most likely.

You should just stick to the Viscious AI if you ever play against AI.

Nah, literally none of the Hard AIs even made titans on a big 10 player map. Considering the fact it took quite awhile to kill every AI i would have expected at least the the last of them to have big fleets and titans. Yet they had nothing that could remotely kill 50 discs, vettes and 6 cap ships.

I just played 1v1 against a hard AI. I don't understand how 4 people can win against 6 AIs ...

Anyway I managed to win, but it took a few tries (loading the savegame again ...). I brought my fleet of capital ships, a fleet of light carriers and 2 heavy constructors. I sent the carriers on a tour around the enemy solar system and I focused on my starbases. They were vulnerable to attack, but fortunately I had 2 Akkan Battlecruiser with full armistice and ... well I just activated that manually one after the other and that bought me enough time to get 2 fully upgraded star bases, including level 2 repair ability. Then I just sat back while my fleet and starbases hit the enemy Titan and fleet and starbase and after a while they were all gone. Thanks to the group shield and the repair docks I just lost 1 capital ship and annihilated the enemy completely ... but unfortunately I also lost all my light carriers because during the armistice, the starbase and the enemy Titan pursued them and somehow they were able to slow my carriers down by about 40%. So they had no chance.

After that, I took over a few more planets. The AI didn't build another Titan, probably because it was out of credits and spent it all on a few more capital ships and smaller ships. They had no chance against my fleet. And once I captured its capital, I won...

The AI is very predicatable and easily exploitable. And the strategies created for "competitive" multiplayer play will stomp out any AI in a really quick fashion.

Seriously i think AI bugs or something on ICO, i didnt use any "competitive" strategy. Start with 50 discs, add some vettes + 6 cap ships as when you have credits for them and kill all AI in a row.