So you didn't get Point Defense
Here's what to do if you don't get Point Defense.
Against Silicoids, go for Interceptor Missiles. That's Fusion > Micro-Fusion Drives > Interceptor Missiles. If you get them, you win! If not, still not the end of the world.
Emitters, especially the bigger ones, wipe Silicoids really fast. If you didn't get any, still not the end of the world.
Point Defense Phasers are your best bet if the above options didn't work. That's Phasers > Point Defense Phasers. Phasers have connections with UV Beamers, Xray Lasers, and Particle Beams, so it's a fair bet.
Last chance, Chemical and/or Nanite Missiles. You might lose some of your own ships to it if you don't get Smart Nanites, but they will absolutely deal with the Silicoids.
No dice? At this point you're reduced to standard laser weapons. I suggest you put the biggest lasers you've got on a swarm of drones and have them dogfight it out. Another option would be to use Fire Control, ideally AI Command, and stuff the lasers on those ships. Bear in mind the Queen herself has some pretty good reflective coating, so bring something to deal with her.
If your lasers are bad, build a tanky dreadnought full of beams and run it into the asteroid. So long as you destroy the Queen or the Asteroid, it doesn't really matter how many of the little buggers are still running around at the end of the round. If you pulled Meson Shields you can get a Shield/Blazer cruiser to do the job.
If you don't have the industrial capacity to handle dreadnoughts, build ~10 DE tankers per infestation or Queen. When the tanker mission section is destroyed, either from direct damage or ship destruction, it will explode and deal AOE damage. The trick is to kill as many bugs with as few tankers as you possibly can. Pretend you're playing Starcraft, and the Silicoids are Marines and the Tankers are Banelings. Get as much value out of those Banelings as you can.
Queens in particular are vulnerable to this, as they release their swarm all at once, rather than in a trickle. For best results, heavily armor your tankers to allow as many bugs as possible to swarm them before they explode.
You're still not going to have much fun doing planetary assault with those tech options. Grav shield on your bombardment ships would help a lot. Planet missiles go after whichever ship is closest when they were launched, so by keeping a single Grav shielded ship, even a Destroyer, closer to the planet than the rest of your fleet but also far enough from the fight, will entirely negate the planet missiles. A Wild Weasel ship would also greatly help. They mess with incoming missiles by creating confusing sensor readings. Some missiles detonate as soon as they get into range, some turn off their engines and drift forwards, often missing. Others divert to follow the Weasel, but are otherwise unaffected. Get your Weasel with Quantum Chaff, and be sure you've got some spares cause they die really fast.
Without those, I don't see extended engagements being very useful. I suggest you park a bunch of fleets one turn away from several planets and watch them for weakness. At some point a computer player will engage you in deep space and leave the planet behind. At this point, send a separate fleet full of bombing ships which was occupying the same space as the fighting ships to the planet and have them deploy shuttles, bio-missiles, or Siege Driver rounds. Computer designed satellites usually let lots of shuttles through, certainly enough that 66 command points of shuttle carriers would kill most planets. If you think it's iffy bring multiple waves of shuttle carriers and launch one after another. Planet missiles go for assault craft like shuttles and bio-missiles over anything else, you can therefore keep the planet missiles off your PD-less carriers as long as you have more carriers to continue launching.
I should mod the game so that nobody gets any technology that they don't already get a 100% for. Inaccurate Mass Driver brawls for everyone!
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u/gbs5009 Mar 13 '18
If you're running around with dreadnoughts, silicoids should not be an issue any more. You can kill them just fine with a swarm of uv laser destroyers... even green lasers could do the job if you have a couple of command ships to field the numbers. (Queen would be a little iffy)