How to not get destroyed by aliens sneaking into Sol

[Plumage Holder (OP)]

I've been trying to learn Aurora, but I keep getting obliterated by aliens I'm unprepared for.  In my latest game, I had platforms with two different types of active sensors, thermal sensors, and lasers set up on top of my jump points in sol.  In 2039, not even 15 years in, a fleet of like 4 decently large ships got into Sol without being detected and destroyed all of my fleets.  They outclassed me in range and energy tech, even though I invested a decent amount into energy weapon technology.  How can I prepare for this in the future; should I just turtle in Sol for decades? I get that I should be using Insta-build more, but it was so early on.  They didn't even seem to have cloaks.

[Zap0]

Sounds unlucky. Do you know if it's spoilers? If so, you can turn these off during game creation.

Turtling isn't going to help much if you don't know what direction an enemy will come from and can't concentrate your forces behind a JP. Tech level (speed first and foremost) is what really decides battles. Fighting an enemy one tech level higher than you is very difficult without a great tonnage advantage or the defensive advantage of a JP. Fighting one two levels higher is nearly a death sentence.

Using your instant build points at the start is smart if you're worried about early combat, since the NPRs also spawn with an instantly spawned fleet.

Did you start with a conventional setting? Contrary to what many people take it as initially it's not the default setting but rather an extended game or challenge mode - the NPR competitors start with what would be balanced around your stats if you had a TN start. The normal TN start offers a more equal starting position and involves less waiting to get to the fun parts of the game.

[Plumage Holder (OP)]

Probably is spoilers -- I had no clue they could just randomly appear with no warning.  I started TN. 

[AlStar]

If you're going against technologically superior energy-equipped ships, you've got three main routes to defeat them:

1) Overtuned engines - you need enough speed to get into your range, punch up those speed modifiers. Fuel just needs to last long enough to engage your target. Fighters are usually a good choice here, since they can be built cheaply, in bulk.

2) Missile spam. If going against the AI has taught me anything, it's that very fast size one missiles that do even just a single point of damage can sandpaper down even the strongest armor. Tiny fast missiles are favored here over actual ASMs because you're looking to fire as many as possible, all at once, hopefully to poke your target full of (tiny) holes.

3) STOs. Turtle up! As ground units, STOs have the advantage over your mobile fleets in that they can dig into the planet to protect themselves. Depending on the terrain of the planet and if you have any construction vehicles around, they can be extremely hard to dislodge and destroy. Note: Only works if your STOs outrange the enemy, since otherwise they'll just sit at the edge of their range and plink you to death.

[Ulzgoroth]

What kind of tech level did you have when you started facing them? Their tech is slightly advanced, but their warships are not very big or capable. In my own game, I've never lost when fighting them with ships of equal size, though they can do considerable damage to beam fighters and FACs.

Also they seemed to not understand the threat of STO very well and lost ships to them, but if you're counting on STO for defense you'll lose lots of commercial shipping.

[Garfunkel]

If you do not start with any NPRs, then Sol is safe until you start exploring. The only way to have aliens sneak into Sol if you have not started to explore yet, is to start with an NPR at game start and be unlucky enough that one of them then finds their way into Sol.

[Ulzgoroth]

If you do not start with any NPRs, then Sol is safe until you start exploring. The only way to have aliens sneak into Sol if you have not started to explore yet, is to start with an NPR at game start and be unlucky enough that one of them then finds their way into Sol.

There's a certain threshold that might be possible to set to zero that could change that? But I doubt the OP did that.

[Garfunkel]

That's true but as you said, it is unlikely he did that. Starting NPR, most likely.

[Ulzgoroth]

That's true but as you said, it is unlikely he did that. Starting NPR, most likely.

That or they ran a sufficiently aggressive exploration program to hit the threshold in that timeframe. I could see that being possible, especially if running jump-capable survey ships?

I don't think the OP indicated how much exploration they did beyond planting sensors on all the jump points. While a hidden jump point in Sol is possible I think it's quite low-probability, so I'm looking to the alternative.

[Garfunkel]

Oh right, it does seem that they explored beyond Sol, I misread their post at first. So yeah, the aggressor could be anything, really.