Given the INSANE cost of STO weapons, are they even worth it?

[Panpiper (OP)]

I'm starting to have a fair number of colonies, and the cost of producing STO (surface to orbit) weapons for each of them is virtually impossible. Just how useful is it in people's experience having them? Are they not perhaps moot if an enemy decides to just nuke your colony? Will they stop an invader better than a robust garrison division?

[Zap0]

Sure, a couple of them take a year or three to build, but that's not insane - a destroyer holding as many guns would take about as long and be much more expensive. It just looks long because the build rate of each GFTF is so slow.

In my experience they're quite OP. There was a reason why beam weapons could not interact with planets in VB6 (except mesons).

Even a single STO gun of any size can stop an unescorted troop transport (not dropship) from landing it's cargo as it has days to fire at the thing. Put a battery there and you can beat back a dropship that would unload instantly, forcing the enemy to come with an armada.

So put some on every colony worth a damn, but don't feel compelled to station hundreds of guns everywhere. Reserve that pleasantry for your homeworld :-)

[Panpiper (OP)]

What about Gauss cannon on point defence duty? Is it a waste of resources to try to defend your planet from missile bombardment? They are the cheapest of STOs, but they are still a lot. I'd think at least a half dozen would be needed, and might themselves alone deter that lone troopship.

[Jorgen_CAB]

What about Gauss cannon on point defence duty? Is it a waste of resources to try to defend your planet from missile bombardment? They are the cheapest of STOs, but they are still a lot. I'd think at least a half dozen would be needed, and might themselves alone deter that lone troopship.

No... it is certainly worth it.

I just recently had a colony attacked by an NPR using missiles and my planetary point shot all of their missiles down... I think I had about five batteries (4 cannons in each battery) of 35cm Plasma Cannons and 15 batteries of 12cm Railguns each with 7 railguns. They easily destroyed about 100 missiles in one salvo... I had not had any time to build up any defense stations or maintenance facility but I had had some run in to this alien before and I was worried they might try attacking the colony, so I shipped a large defensive ground to orbit defense force to the planet. It was only about 40k tons worth of defenses (roughly).

Another good thing with ground defenses are that they only cost you wealth to maintain, no extra resources. Although you don't get any resources back when you scrap them which perhaps even things out a bit in that department, depending on how often you want to upgrade them. As I play with 10-20% research that is not too often so not a big problem.

Also given that ground training facilities often are not doing that much I have no problem using that downtime producing STO defense systems and not ground troops.

[Kristover]

I think they are absolutely worth it particularly in the early game.  I was recently 15 years into a slow research game (15% speed) and I had an NPR fleet just show up and started blasting civilian ships.  I was clearly out-teched and outgunned by them (15 warships in the 5K-25K range carrying gauss cannons and railguns and several large troopships, 7,500KPS speed).  Against them I had a small fleet of Frigates (5K, 10cm lasers, 3,000KPS), 36 obsolete gauss fighters, 24 FACs with Box Launchers, 4 large orbital monitors around Earth (20K, no engines but huge shields, armor, and lots of small railguns), and 30 STO units (x2 12cm beams each).  My forces met the enemy pretty just short of in orbit.

My frigates died without scoring a single hit - I don't even think they got in range.  I timed it wrong and my fighters got there just after the Frigates were blasted and I lost half of the fighters before they even got in range and the rest weren't doing much damage at all.  My FACS launched their salvo of size 6 missiles (144 missiles) and they managed to destroy two of the smaller warships and damage another but now missiles expended, they were no longer a factor.  The fight moved into orbit and the NPR started to go to work on the Monitors.  The Monitors were scoring hits the whole time with their rails but it wasn't enough - but they were soaking up lots of damage and it took each one a minute or so to die.

The champs though were the STO.  Once the enemy fleet got in orbit, every 15 seconds 60 lasers would open up and completely destroy or cripple an enemy warship.  The Monitors were obviously going to die (I lost 3 and the last one was essentially wrecked) but those STO lasers were lethal.  The whole orbital battle last less than 5 minutes but the NPR lost all but 2 of their warship and my surviving fighters managed to run down a couple of the troopships which were now heading away - their only contribution.

Bottom line, I would have lost against a spoiler but those STO weapons were absolutely a lifesaver.  I think they allow you to survive until your technology catches up and you can build a credible fleet.   

[nuclearslurpee]

There are a few reasons why STO units work well despite their apparent high upfront cost:

• Despite the build cost and time, they are built from ground forces facilities rather than shipyards or industry, both of which have many other demands on their time. The only thing STOs directly compete for time with are other ground units, and one would think that keeping the enemy away from a core world is better than defending it from a ground assault, so as long as you have sufficient offensive and colonial garrison formations STOs have a very low opportunity cost.
• Planetside mounting makes them very difficult to hit/kill from space especially with supplementary CON elements to bring them up to max fortification.
• 25% range boost makes them difficult for similar-tech enemies to approach without taking a lot of fire, especially if you use lasers (particle beams also work but lasers have the longest range in the game generally).
• No maintenance or MSP consumption, just an annual wealth expense due to being a ground unit.

The major downsides of STOs are really those common to all fixed fortifications since time immemorial - namely, the enemy can just go around them (obviously JP stations are somewhat of an exception in this game, but that is not relevant to STOs).

[Malorn]

All I want is the ability to have multiple ground force facilities build the STO's together... so it doesn't take a year and a day.

[Black]

You could have individual STO weapons as formation and build them like that in facilities and then move them together to make bigger formation. Total construction time will be same but you will get individual weapons faster than if you build formation of 10 weapons at once.

[Droll]

You could have individual STO weapons as formation and build them like that in facilities and then move them together to make bigger formation. Total construction time will be same but you will get individual weapons faster than if you build formation of 10 weapons at once.

If you do that it won't take decades to build the STOs. It'll just take decades to organize them...

[Malorn]

You could have individual STO weapons as formation and build them like that in facilities and then move them together to make bigger formation. Total construction time will be same but you will get individual weapons faster than if you build formation of 10 weapons at once.

I mean... you are right, it's annoying as crap to do it that way, but you are totally right.   

See... it isn't even cheating, if we could just do it that way originally...

[Jorgen_CAB]

For the majority of time in the game it should not matter if it takes a year or two to build a specific formation. It should only be in times of immediate war that this should matter at all.

When it is important that it also should not be huge issue speeding the time to move the elements manually. Not in my opinion anyway...

You probably also could use the reserve functionality to make some of this work easier as well.

[misanthropope]

a single substantial force of STO makes for a rugged fast response force.  beyond that?  building STOs is generally better than letting your capacity sit idle, but STO lack the broad utility to warrant major expansion to your GFTC.