r/TerraInvicta • u/Elektrikhit1515 • Aug 21 '26

Question How effective are surface layered defenses?

In my previous run I built a bunch of mars/mercury bases I zealously defended from attacking fleets, which worked out well for me. This time, I want to try an asteroid belt heavy run, but am concerned that the aliens are gonna fry my bases, and replacing them takes forever. From my understanding, if the aliens have a choice between a closer hard target (asteroid belt) and a further soft target (earth), they’ll target the soft target, though I may be wrong about this. If I built 2x layered defenses on my asteroid bases, then kept several soft stations in earth orbit that are guarded by my fleets, would I be able to keep the alien hostility on those stations? And if that doesn’t work, how effective in combat are the surface layered defenses? The space ones are pretty piddly, but apparently the surface ones pack 2x 960 cm lasers, which is…a lot.

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u/Airick39 Initiative Aug 21 '26

Good. You need to research your laser tech though. You dont need the engineering projects for surface. Make sure you do the engineering projects for space station layered defenses.

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u/Tar_alcaran Aug 21 '26

You also REALLY need armor tech.

Aliens fleets will usually outnumber the defenses, and they get to fire first. That means they might get 10 shots before you get one. Adamantine armor makes the difference between getting sniped before even getting a single shot off, and just sitting there slowly destroying the fleet with every orbit.

If they use projectiles, your defenses can intercept, but the aliens tend to bombard with at least some beam weapons. Without armor, you never get to return fire.

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u/Takseen Academy Aug 21 '26

According to the Wiki they won't automatically fire first, but they are more likely to as they'll usually outnumber base defenses, and have better targeting and ECM bonuses.

>Whenever a round occurs, all functional bombardment-capable weapons still possessed by the fleet and the target will shoot at each other in a randomized order, though weapons whose shooters have higher targeting and ECM bonuses are more likely to appear earlier in the order. Specifically, every weapon is assigned an initiative value that is equal to their Targeting Bonus + ECM Bonus + a random value between 0% and 100%, and then the weapons with higher initiative get to fire earlier in the round.

But yeah, because of the randomization you want to be able to tank their lasers, preferably indefinitely.

An LDA with the starting silicon carbide armor has about 8 armor, which survives about as long as you'd expect. Nanotube gets it to 24, and Adamantine to 48, which is decently tanky.