Planet Bombers need to be weaker.

With standard game speed and resource settings, it takes a bare minimum of three and a half minutes *just* to get the mere capability of building siege frigs if you go straight for them at the cost of all else. It then takes 45 seconds to build each one, and that's if you have the resources to do so (If you dropped everything, you won't).

In order to finance a seige rush, you'll at least need to get your flagship up and send it out hunting so you can get additional mines up on other planets. That will delay the initial availability of sieges a fair amount (not enough crystal to do both, and one mine gives you a pretty sad trickle).

Financing aside (and that's a big aside), it will take you seven and a half minutes to build ten seige frigs. For the cost of an extra frig factory (built while researching Krosovs) you can halve that... but that puts the total cost past 10000 credits and 1000 crystal, which is a very difficult price to ignore early-game.



For less money than that, a bit more metal, and a LOT less crystal (crystal being a big limiting factor early game), you could make TWENTY cobalts in less time, and have a strong fleet for creeping and colonizing to boot. By the time the siege player is ready, you'll have multiple colonies with resources rolling in, gained at least a couple of levels on your flagship, AND have a fleet strong enough to rip his to bits and be in shape to crush his homeworld shortly thereafter (regardless the status of your own capital).


It's all a matter of strategy. Siege rushes may be powerful against an unprepared player, but they're a huge gamble and are hardly unstoppable. Much like rushes in other games, a failed rush attempt pretty much guarantees your own loss against a competent enemy.

Ok, so I am spanking the AI around a little bit and I send my army off to deal with some pirates. Next thing I know I have a MASSIVE enemy fleet that comprises of 100% Planet Bombers (I don't know their actual names but the ships that are good for destroying planets). So I think, Ok, lets send an fleet to deal with them. So I do. My fleet gets there. They shoot at them for a good 30 seconds and the bombers just keep on bombing. They get damaged but not enough. These things need to be VERY weak so that they are gaurded by other planes and the AI cant just mass them and not actually fight me but just destroy all my planets. Its not that they do too much damage. Its that they have WAY to much health. Am I the only one who thinks this?

I ran into the same issue as the original poster. It's frustrating, and all this talk about how much siege frigates are setting back the empire that uses them to rush with, are frankly bull.

What's 'bull' about it is that those siege frigates are not sacrificed in the strategy. Once they encounter something that can actually destroy them, they either flee or move onto the next planet and commence more bombing. They can keep wrecking up sh*t.

I didn't actually lose my homeworld this way, though the population was knocked down to zero. My two colonies were nixed though, despite the enemy fielding no actual combat ships. They knocked down my homeworld to 0 pop with 4 siege frigates, then sent 4 more siege frigates. I had about 8 combat frigates and a front-line battleship but I wasn't able to pump out enough damage.

All my colonies had a fighter hangar(bombers) and a gauss cannon. In one case the siegers were within range of the gauss cannon, but it made no difference. This was very early in the game, and this, combined with early scouting of the enemy homeworld, gave me the strong sense that the standard AI was cheating its ass off. Or at least, had a perfect build order.

Considering the expense of placing those defenses around all my worlds, I would've been better off just building more ships. If I could've researched and built three carriers that would've been many times more optimal than placing hangar bays. It still wouldn't have stopped the siege-rush from being a runaway success though.