Taking out Orbitals
by Andy

I used to build purely missile ships, but those were ineffective against a planet with 5 moons and 3 orbitals each. So what I was facing was 18 orbitals (extra 3 orbitals around the planet), 1 missile base, 1 beam base, 1 fighter base (and possibly 1 planetary shield building). That, and the enemy TFs they have out.

This tactic is used against the situation:

• Use your largest hull possible (Leviathan preferably)
• install 1 standard mount stellar converter (or disintegration beam) (code patch recommended because of the point defense fix)
• install 1 of your heaviest missile at the heaviest chassis (1 because you'll have an armada of these and that will do damage to 1 target) missile armour + shields. You don't want to wait until your second volley because at that time, the enemy's second volley of missiles will be launched, leave room for something else.
• install the rest of the ship with the best fighters you have. fighter armour + shields.
• design a medium size ship to be your picket ships (try cruiser, ECM, ECCM, zortium no armour, no shields, ultimate detector).

I've had immense battles with enemy fighters before, so I must say, if you have room to install a lot of point defense weapons, do so. Else, just stock up on fighters.

The purpose of this, is to do as much damage as possible as early as possible. Knowing the enemy AI, it would have used fighters in waves/volleys. You should try to take out most, if not all, of the enemy TF/orbitals before they launch their second wave. This is done by firing all your weapons out.

1> The missiles will take out a target each (16 ships + 2 pickets, in 1 armada, can generate 16 omega warheads(torpedo chassis) + armour + shields, and fire it at an enemy taskforce). Having 10 TFs, you can take out 9 targets since the enemy's point defense will fire at one of the missile volley.

2> The fighters will attack the remaining targets. The missiles travel faster than fighters so the missiles would've drawn most of the fire at first and weaken the enemy. The fighters can also drawn enemy fire from missiles/fighters/beam weapon.

3> While your fighters are drawing fire from the enemy, hit them with your ship weapons (stellar converter or disintegration beam, << long range, relatively powerful, weapons).

In theory, you should be able to launch more fighters than they can right now, if you've installed more than 3 fighters per ship. If the enemy fighters swarm your TFs while your fighters attack the enemy, help the fighter kill the enemy structures first. Your beam weapon don't do much against the swarm of fighters at that size. You'll have to wait until your fighters are done before they fight the enemy fighters.

If you're having trouble with the large amount of orbitals like me, then the purpose of this attack is to bomb the planet, no matter how little the damage, so it will not have as many orbitals in the next battle. You see, a rich planet can produce many many orbitals, but only 3 are placed around a planet/moon. When you bomb a planet, it will lower the planet's resources to put more orbitals up.

NOTE: At your first attack, you might want to send in missiles and fighters to target the orbitals, then retreat. This will weaken the enemy a bit, so you can attack a second round, will another full 100%.