Orbital defenses vs local defense fleets?

[Paragon]

I feel like a defense fleet wins in almost every case. They can intercept enemy fleets individually and take initiative, save you space and power on stations (which saves the resources needed to build and maintain both), and can prevent attacks on nearby undefended assets. Their only downsides would be MC cost and propellant cost; but you save MC by doing more with fewer stations and most engines consume primarily water, a plentiful resource in space.

Is there any reason to invest in defenses? I know you need them anywhere with space debris, and I can see some use for them on small installations on remote asteroids, but for anything with multiple sites I feel like a fleet does everything better.

[Skrain]

Unless you have top tier drives and can intercept aliens before they arrive at a station to blow it up defenses are always a good deterrent, and they will be needed for important mining sites. Having beaten the game, I couldn't imagine not using defenses for my stations/mining facilities.

[Kadrush]

Ground defenses are seriously bugged in 0.3.35

Orbital defenses could use a lot of love, as I have seen single rail guns from alien ships being more than enough to bypass the layered defenses PD and being able to take down an entire base with a single ships, taking down the defenses one by one. They need more HP and armor, same goes for alien defenses on bases, also very weak when it come to the same factors.

Local defense fleets the issue is arrive before the attack on the targeted station, specially in eraly game. Still, there is a small window to arrive after the attack, but before the aliens can destroy the station.

[ulzgoroth]

Local defense fleets are harder to build and require a lot more MC. Certainly they're where you want to go, but they're not always in reach.

If you don't jump aliens the moment they enter local space every time, station defenses can buy time to allow a reaction fleet to get on site before the aliens blow up a station. Plus with the right stuff they can beat toy fleets on their own.

Originally posted by Kadrush:

Orbital defenses could use a lot of love, as I have seen single rail guns from alien ships being more than enough to bypass the layered defenses PD and being able to take down an entire base with a single ships, taking down the defenses one by one. They need more HP and armor, same goes for alien defenses on bases, also very weak when it come to the same factors.

Put your defenses close enough together to be mutually supporting.

[Kadrush]

Originally posted by ulzgoroth:

Local defense fleets are harder to build and require a lot more MC. Certainly they're where you want to go, but they're not always in reach.

If you don't jump aliens the moment they enter local space every time, station defenses can buy time to allow a reaction fleet to get on site before the aliens blow up a station. Plus with the right stuff they can beat toy fleets on their own.

Originally posted by Kadrush:

Orbital defenses could use a lot of love, as I have seen single rail guns from alien ships being more than enough to bypass the layered defenses PD and being able to take down an entire base with a single ships, taking down the defenses one by one. They need more HP and armor, same goes for alien defenses on bases, also very weak when it come to the same factors.

Put your defenses close enough together to be mutually supporting.

Not all bases can support each other and still, seems unbalanced to be forced to use more than half of your space on a t2 base in defenses just to be able to survive 1 or 2 ships.

[ulzgoroth]

Originally posted by Kadrush:

Originally posted by ulzgoroth:

Local defense fleets are harder to build and require a lot more MC. Certainly they're where you want to go, but they're not always in reach.

If you don't jump aliens the moment they enter local space every time, station defenses can buy time to allow a reaction fleet to get on site before the aliens blow up a station. Plus with the right stuff they can beat toy fleets on their own.

Put your defenses close enough together to be mutually supporting.

Not all bases can support each other and still, seems unbalanced to be forced to use more than half of your space on a t2 base in defenses just to be able to survive 1 or 2 ships.

No bases can support each other.

Defense modules, on the other hand, can. But like any collective point defense they need to be in close formation. And the effective scale means an orbital is hundreds of kilometers across. You want to stake out directly adjacent slots for your weapons.

My typical load is two layered defenses.

[Premu]

Also - for your defense arrays make sure to research the weapons which increase their damage! Two layered defense arrays firing Mk3 plasma can stop small scale raids by the aliens easily.

If the aliens come with large fleets against your station, these will not be enough, of course - but these should be your primary target for your main defense fleet, while not being forced to chase around single alien ships to guard your bases.

[Paragon]

These are all good arguments, and none of them are wrong, but my question was more of its opportunity cost vs a fleet instead. T1 defenses won't do much, and T2 and T3 stations have a massive energy cost, meaning you likely lose multiple slots on a station per defense you construct. Then you need to consider the cost of building all this on all your important infrastructure, the upkeep costs of all that, and the opportunity cost as well.

Meanwhile defense fleets can engage enemies on their own terms and notably fight off superior enemy fleets with proper maneuvering or in detail. You can split the fleet such that any group is both well suited to an engagement and falls below a threshold for aliens to accept the combat. If that's not an option 2 interceptions in quick succession will make the aliens unable to evade due to their operations cooldown after the first. With even an early drive (such as adv pulsar) you can make decent patrol boats, with enough KPS for transfers to boot! These vessels can do basic planetary transfers and thus be useful elsewhere as well.

They are also more resource economical, especially for important resources such as noble metals and fissiles - but also come at a lower upkeep of only a few credits a month. The only thing they burn more of is your propellant resource, but most drives use water which is very easy to aquire.

[Siger]

i put 1 battlestation on everything,i have not done the math but i think a battlestation is cheaper than running a fleet with comparable combat power.

for ground defenses 2 T2 is better than 1 battlestation for some reason,but im not sure if thats true because it seems random if they work or not.

i think for ground defense its probably much cheaper to have a fleet in orbit of a planet with lots of sites,for orbitals allways go for battlestations they are simply too strong not to

[BrowneHawk]

You have to have some type of PD on every base by the time invasion happens, or else they get wiped. My current run I'll be doing 2 LayPD to buy time, then respond with defense fleet.

4 Defenses for my nano factory stations, because they can't go.

[ulzgoroth]

Originally posted by Paragon:

These are all good arguments, and none of them are wrong, but my question was more of its opportunity cost vs a fleet instead. T1 defenses won't do much, and T2 and T3 stations have a massive energy cost, meaning you likely lose multiple slots on a station per defense you construct. Then you need to consider the cost of building all this on all your important infrastructure, the upkeep costs of all that, and the opportunity cost as well.

What? No. Layered defense array takes only 40 power. That's less than baseline output for a pre-fusion T2 powerplant.

Battlestations I think are significantly more power-hungry than average for T3. If you've got fusion power, which you should, it's still not nearly as bad as you're saying, but it does boost your power investment.

Originally posted by Paragon:

Meanwhile defense fleets can engage enemies on their own terms and notably fight off superior enemy fleets with proper maneuvering or in detail. You can split the fleet such that any group is both well suited to an engagement and falls below a threshold for aliens to accept the combat. If that's not an option 2 interceptions in quick succession will make the aliens unable to evade due to their operations cooldown after the first. With even an early drive (such as adv pulsar) you can make decent patrol boats, with enough KPS for transfers to boot! These vessels can do basic planetary transfers and thus be useful elsewhere as well.

They are also more resource economical, especially for important resources such as noble metals and fissiles - but also come at a lower upkeep of only a few credits a month. The only thing they burn more of is your propellant resource, but most drives use water which is very easy to aquire.

Well, yeah. If your fleet can win and you're not worried about the construction time and MC cost, the fleet is definitely the way to go.

Note that's more than a few conditions, there.