The 12 emplacements
Defenses need no crew, and 80% of them repair automatically after fleet combat. Once built, they cost you almost nothing to keep.
| Defense | Metal | Crystal | Gas | Attack | Shield | Structure | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Flak Battery | 3,200 | 1,920 | 640 | 72 | 20 | 1,700 | A cheap basic gun. Holds by weight of numbers. |
| Beam Refiner | 2,400 | 1,440 | 480 | 90 | 25 | 1,700 | Cost-effective first line. |
| Heavy Beam Refiner | 9,600 | 5,760 | 1,920 | 225 | 100 | 6,800 | Thicker armor and more firepower. |
| Ion Etcher | 3,200 | 9,600 | 640 | 135 | 500 | 6,800 | A heavy shield that endures fire for a long time. |
| Mag Barrel | 32,000 | 24,000 | 6,400 | 990 | 200 | 29,750 | Coil-accelerated. Very high damage per shot. |
| Rail Ejector | 56,000 | 40,000 | 12,800 | 1,710 | 250 | 51,000 | High penetration — punches through thick armor. |
| Plasma Forger | 80,000 | 80,000 | 48,000 | 2,700 | 300 | 85,000 | Hurts any fleet badly. |
| Void Photon Cannon | 480,000 | 320,000 | 160,000 | 13,500 | 2,000 | 340,000 | The top of the fixed-emplacement line. |
| Small Shield Dome | 16,000 | 16,000 | 3,200 | 1 | 2,000 | 17,000 | One per planet. Adds shielding. |
| Large Shield Dome | 80,000 | 80,000 | 16,000 | 1 | 10,000 | 85,000 | One per planet. Adds enormous shielding. |
| Interceptor Missile | 1,500 | 900 | 300 | 1 | 1 | 8,000 | Shoots down incoming missiles. |
| Spear of Ruin | 15,000 | 9,000 | 3,000 | 40,000 | 0 | 5,000 | Strikes enemy defenses directly. They do not repair. |
Defenses have matchups too
It is not only attackers that get rapid fire — turrets fire repeatedly at specific ships. What you should build depends on what is coming.
| Defense | Target | Rapid fire |
|---|---|---|
| Flak Battery | none — it holds by weight of numbers | – |
| Beam Refiner | Spark | 5 |
| Heavy Beam Refiner | Ember | 4 |
| Ion Etcher | Wanderer | 3 |
| Mag Barrel | Steel Bastion / Shatterer | 3 / 2 |
| Rail Ejector | Wanderer / Steel Bastion | 3 / 2 |
| Plasma Forger | Steel Bastion / Shatterer / Fallen | 3 each |
| Void Photon Cannon | Steel Bastion / Shatterer / Doomstar / Fallen | 5 / 4 / 3 / 3 |
The cheap Beam Refiner shreds Spark swarms with five shots a round. Building only expensive turrets is not always right — and the Flak Battery has no matchup at all; it exists to add firepower cheaply.
How much defense is enough
The point of defenses is not to win — it is to make the maths not work for the attacker. They lose ships; you get 80% back. If there is nothing in it for them, they stop coming.
- Value — the Beam Refiner has the best attack per resource. It is the backbone of an early first line.
- Staying power — the Ion Etcher's 500 shield holds far longer than its price suggests, bouncing small attacks entirely.
- Shield domes — small and large, one of each per planet. A cheap way to add a lot of shielding.
- Mix them — stack a single type and the ship that rapid-fires it takes the whole line down at once.
The Fallen is a bomber built to break defenses, with rapid fire against fixed emplacements. If your opponent fields them, a wall of turrets will not hold — from there you need a fleet.
Missiles
The Spear of Ruin strikes an enemy planet's defenses directly. With 40,000 attack it destroys turrets outright, and anything it kills does not auto-repair. The Interceptor Missile shoots them down one for one. They are cheap — keep plenty.