AI War:Force Fields
How Do I Kill Force Fields?
A: Bring a lot of bombers and/or space tanks. By a lot, we mean 40-60+, with a technology level equal to or greater than the force field. You can defeat higher-level force fields with lower-level ships, but you'll need to bring more. Any ships other than bombers or space tanks will take hours to destroy even just one force field, so you might as well not even bother trying to attack with them.
EMPs or Counter-Missile Turrets
If a force field has too many ships under it, this can be a real challenge to take down even with bombers. In these situations, your best bet is either to set off an EMP Warhead on the planet (thus taking down the force field for 30 seconds and allowing your ships to go in and clear out the ships underneath the force field before it comes back on); or to unlock Counter-Missile Turrets and build one of those near to your bombers (since it is usually missiles that will be killing them off, and this will offer them a bubble of protection; or to bring a Force Field of your own to the planet (the player force fields are mobile, the AI force fields are not), and hide your bombers under those.
If you fire off an EMP, just make sure that any of your non-starship ships are not on the target planet when it goes off (since it paralyzes your ships as well as the enemy ships). Have your forces waiting just on the other side of a wormhole, or use starships, and then after the EMP goes off you will have 30 seconds to destroy whatever you want with no force fields up and no ships able to shoot at you (unless the enemy also has starships, or the ships in question are core ships).
Sniper Turrets
You can also use Sniper Turrets to directly target the ships inside a force field, since sniper turrets fire straight through force fields. Be careful, though -- if the AI player is still able to reinforce the planet, they will likely add counter-sniper turrets to prevent this. So you probably want to take out the Command Station and all of the Special Forces Command Posts before building sniper turrets to attack a force field. If that's not possible, try to first target the command post/station under the force field. If that is destroyed, then that will prevent the AI from building any more ships under that particular force field, and thus you'll have free reign to keep whittling down the other AI ships there.
Avoid Placing Firepower Under Your Own Force Fields
Player force fields are repairable, while AI force fields are not. However, player force fields also have the disadvantage that any shots that are fired our from under their protection damage them 2x as much as the shot will damage the target it hits. Thus, player turrets and other offensive ships should be placed around force fields, not under them. Player force fields are extremely useful for providing defenses over fragile targets like command stations, advanced factories, and other economic ships, but they are not effective as a "force multiplier" because of how protected ships' shots interact with them.
Protection Radius
How Much Of A Ship Needs To Be Covered By A Forcefield To Get Its Protection?
A: The center point of the ship must be inside the radius of the force field in order to be protected. So, about half of the ship can be sticking out of the force field and it will still be under its protection. You can always tell if a ship is protected by a force field or not by whether or not it has a green circle behind it. If there is not green circle behind it, it's not inside the force field enough to be protected.
Also note that as a force field is damaged, its protection radius shrinks (the force field itself visibly shrinks to indicate this). So it is a good idea to position force fields so that the most critical ships to protect are near the center of the protection area.
Mobile Force Fields
What Uses Are There For The Mobile Nature Of Force Field Generators?
A: There are many, many, uses for a mobile force field generator (all three levels of the player force fields are mobile), too many to list here (and players are constantly discovering new uses for them, too). But here are some:
- They can be sent first through a hostile wormhole, providing cover for all the friendly ships to cross into the planet.
- They can be used in conjunction with "group move" to protect a convoy of ships on the move.
- They can be moved into position near an enemy force field to protect bombers firing at the enemy force field.
