[AP] Anti Xenon point defence

[castdead]

Since RRF seems a bit broken in AP 2.0 I decided to implement some anti Xenon point defence to allow trade in the vicinity of Scale Plate Green, Black Hole Sun, Grand Exchange, Getsu Fune, Menelaus Paradise and Thyn's Abyss.

I decided to defend within 10 Km outside of gates going to xenon sectors.
Since I didn't have the cap ship weapon production I needed to do them all I started with Grand Exchange only, since that place was the most problematic because it's close to the Xenon Core.

My original fleet consisted of just 3 capital ships without any fighters, a Megalodon, a Python and an Osaka. This goes fine as long as you don't get a J combined with Q's, since the Q's cause attrition to the shields, and a J seems to do pretty well OOS. After a couple of those packs I nearly lost my Megalodon, so I thought it was time to add some cannonfodder to the mix.

I added a Woden with a mix of L's with PBE's, Aamon's with hepts and Falcon Sentinels with PBG's. This was great for my four capital ships, since they weren't the prime target anymore by the Q's, and without that shield attrition the J's were minced meat. But over the course of 24 ingame hours I lost all my Aamon's, most of my L's and a couple of Falcon Sentinels. I don't want to micromanage all carriers near all gates leading to xenon sectors so I needed another solution.

To solve the huge micromanagement involving carrier reinforcements I decided to see how well laser towers work in AP now. I built a 20 LT complex since there were barely any to be found and started dropping 10 at each of the 3 gates that I was guarding at the time (Grand Exchange, Black Hole Sun and Scale Plate Green). Each of the gates consists of a Woden with 30 ships (PBE L and PBG Falcon Sentinel), a Kyoto and one of my mix of Commonwealth capships and right now of 10 lasertowers just dropped on the same heap oos. Over the last 3 ingame hours I just lost one lasertower, and none of my other ships Also there are no escapees because this box of lasertowers obliterates any ship smaller than an m6 within 5Km OOS.

I'm now going to add 2 more heaps of 10 lasertowers to each of these 3 gates and then I'm going to cover the remaining 4 hotspots (Getsu Fune, Menelaus Paradise, Thyn's Abyss and Eighteen Billion) with the same fleet configuration and lasertowers.

So basically with an investment of 7*400,000,000 you get a Xenon free commonwealth, except for some spawning P groups. Depending your will to micromanage UT's and Cag's that can be worth it, however it is a hefty price ^^. I only lost UT's and Cag's to Xenons and never pirates so I'm going to go ahead with it.

[AL'42]

Mentioned this a few times, 1x M2 (min 10G shield) + 60 M3 (haulers 200MJ protect M2) at each gate will do the job.

What happens is… if the enemy hits first the M2 will survive, after that its your round and 1x M2 + 60x M3 each getting a turn will annihilate the opposition. You’ll lose an M3 now and then, just replace when down to say 50. After 10 hrs I lost ~ 3 fighters at each gate.

[TiGGs]

I sealed of Grand Exchange with 50 laser towers and a Megalodon. I placed the LT OOS at exactly the same position so they all are in range when the fight begins. Haven't lost a single LT with that setup.

Before that I only had 30 LT placed in a ring around the gate. Whenever there is a Q or J, I had to jump to the sector in order to prevent any losses. Which was like every 5 minutes...

[Llama]

Someone needs to write a carrier script for TLs and fighter drone MKIIs. That would be quite imbalanced.

[werewolves?]

I use about 20 laser towers dumped all in the same spot, a M2 like the Megalodon defending it and a bunch of Haulers as mentioned above, Haulers are good because they come with 4 HEPTS, can chuck another 4 on at a super shipyard if you feel like it. Sometimes use an Argon trading station or Boron EQ dock as a "fortress" for the blockade.

[xTemon]

New LTs are kind of nice I'll admit. That 1GJ of shielding really helps, but they seem to suffer from some flaw now and then.

Instead of Default Combat when attacked oos, I have seen them get obliterated while having Command set to none

I only set up 2 on a Pirate base and another 2 on the gate. Lost the 2 on the Pirate Base 'normally' to a Kea and some Novas early on, but the 2 on gate have survived-with almost no hull left-till now, except for that incident on a save that I didn't continue because of Complex building.

That was a little weird, but otherwise they've performed admirably and probably killed more Pirates than I have in the last 2 games.