This really should have been my 1st thread after signing up. Made the n00b mistake of dumping GPs into a very nice Metallic from my 1st scan, thinking it'll last me a long time and only need to defend against others of similar ranks(i.e thought it was like BT). About 20 ranks back, it got taken by a rank1k+. This also got me thinking about playing GL seriously. Now I'm ~rank80 and researched +6 structures.

Is there anything I can do?
Read about "bricking". What is it exactly?

Okay, if u want to defend it, then planet flux it, and then add enough cloak to keep it invisible, 25k is good. Or spread them all over your planets.

that was the most nonsensical answer ever..

bricking refers to putting pretty much solely defence buildings on a planet, or defence and population.
at your rank, even bricking a planet, is probably going to be useless against a rank 1K player. unless you are in a good legion, giving you a good planet bonus to def/att/cloak.

im not rank 1K yet, but i can hit nearly 40K invasion attack, and last night lost a semi bricked planet to a guy sporting 80K and a bit...

honestly, unless you have a natural dyson or x10+ ARTI planet, dont bother defending, cloaking, or adding population to ANY planets.

A lot of new players seem to think that an extra 20, 40 or even 200 population is going to deter someone from stealing a planet.. all that is to someone 2-400 ranks higher is 50 or so energy.
get what you can from your planets, whilst you own them, sooner or later, someone will steal a few of them.

end note. NEVER use ATTACK as planet defence, unless you are going full out attack and have 2 landmines, and the other att % increasing artis.
reason being, att gets debuffed by 30%, which means less protection for (usually)the same space that could be used for defence, which only gets debuffed by 15%.

Oh man, can I find some of your planets? xD

Not to mention having all attack and 0 defense makes your population even less valuable. You can just click attack a few times and it's ready to invade no matter who you are.

A few thousand def will deter many players, but no use against higher ranks. So getting max production would be good.

My general planet building strategy:
1. relevant AP structures (refining lab chassis, space elevator chassis, etc)
2. as many of your most efficient standard production structures as you can fit
3. fill the rest up with your best def. structures

It wont stop someone who really wants your planet, but is enough to deter most low levels from just taking it on a whim.

Also, don't bother with expensive/rare planet upgrades until you are a high enough level to completely hide it through max cloak structures as a nice upgraded planet is a jackpot find for anyone above level 150 given the pittance of a defense you can put up at your level.

While icarium isn't known for high defenses on his planets I do believe he was referring to the fact that most low ranks do not have the artis and res done to properly defend a planet and get any production, so its better to nit defend as the very likely pitiful defense is worthless.

Even for lower ranks, a few thousand def may not be an issue, given the prevalence of sabs...

Well... not a ton of legions have a ton of those... but yes, sabs do change the tactics a lot.

A Good start for any planet you want to keep all you need is a Decent CT lab which most legions have, not hard to gather the needed supplies from legionmates

Astrobiology Ward Population: 500, B Population: 50%
HyperSensor Satellite Research: 2, Artifact: 2
Isolation Bureau Mining: 2, Research: 2, Artifact: 2, Cloak: 400
Resonance Inhibitor Cloak: 250, Invasion Defense: 500 x2
Galactic Concord Station Mining: 1, Artifact: 1, Defense: 10%
Heist Dispatch Center Mining: 1, Artifact: 1, Attack: 150
Space Elevator Artifact: 1, Population: 50 x2

a little bit harder to acquire but not unaptainable:
Dark Pylon Shifter Defense: 400, Cloak: 90
Dark Anti-Beacon Defense: 500, Cloak: 150
Barrier Nexus Artifact: 1, Defense: 300, Defense: 20% x2
Hypergate Mining: 2, Research: 2, Artifact: 2

Start with those if you can and then build from there for a decent planet defence, there are a plethora of other artis you can use but i shant name them all be too long but they are such a great basis to start out with.

For the CT lab structures, can I just join and use the lab or do I also need to have researched Legion tree deep enough to use CT lab 1st?

Slightly different Q: What if I'm online while an attack/invasion is going on? What can I do?

You have to have Hybrid Theory Dynamics researched and have been in a legion for a week to use it.

For planet guarding, it's important to make sure that the population doesn't drop. 10 population or fewer is required for someone to attempt an invasion, so if all else fails, just keep using cloning pods.

For specific steps...
If you're online while the attack is going on, restore the population and guard/alert for your legion to guard. Build any population/defense structures you need, and activate population (longevity serum), defense (shield sentries, ion repulsor charge), and attack (sentry guards) artifacts you have. Don't forget traps as well.

Once you get the population/defense up high enough, make the planet immune to artifacts or the attacker could keep warping you and the guards off the planet and could use artifacts to reduce the planet's population.

Edit: The most important thing, of course, is to stay calm and go through your plan systematically. I lost my first planet while I was online because I panicked and tried to stack defense on it when the population was already low. Haven't lost a planet while I was online since then, though I'm still keeping my fingers crossed

I also plop on Quantum Accelerators for more cloak and production.
Cloak is seriously king.

I hope Dan doesn't put in any more scan bufs in the game because it's nearly impossible to defend against big 1K players.

Ok speaking as one of those high ranking players I have to put my two cents in here.

First off defense does nothing when someone like me tries for your world. I have taken worlds with over 100K defense on it. If we are going to try and invade a world it will have to be a pretty good world or have some really good arti's on it. I say this because it cost us Billions and billions of creds to invade. So the world will have to be worth the cost. Most of your mining and research worlds are safe unless they have great arti's on them or are Massive and 16x or better. Arti worlds on the other had are a bit dif. Most high end players will take any arti planet that gives 250 arti's or more on avg. If you really want to save your planets then try and get in a legion that has a high end player in it or try and become friends with high end players. Most high ranking players are ok people once you get to know them. lol They will help you out of a jam and give a lot of good advice. (depending on who they are. lol) Also size does matter when it comes to your legion. If you join a legion that only has like 16 members in it. Then you should join a new one or try and grow the one your in. 50 or more is what you really want when in a legion. This buffs up your planet a lot and will help you protect your world better against most lower ranking players. You see while you don't need to worry about most high ranking players taking your avg worlds you will have to worry about those that are low ranking or avg ranking. But they do not have the invade power that high end players do so all you really need is a couple K of defense to protect against most low ranking players. Or better yet 1000 cloak or so. I don't know what the avg scan is for low and avg rank players any more but I think that 1000 cloak would help a good amount. Now I do know that that may seem like a lot to you at rank 80 but it will get better faster as you grow. Lastly to be sure you don't loss good planets there is on thing you should not do till you are a higher ranking player. That is do NOT use Gp to upgrade your planets. lol I get why you did it this time but from here on out do not untill you feel you can protect your stuff better and you have all ready great planets to use them on.

Also if you want to get to be a core GL player there is a few things you should do. First off try and get in to many of the GL group chats on FB. Then make friends with other active players. The more friends you have the better. Also become more and more active on the forums here.

Hope this all helped. Good luck in game.

Contrary to the advice I see on using no attack structures at all. When I see a planet that has no attack, I just remove all my hull and defenses to pile on as many weapons as my ship can possibly hold since the planet can't harm me at all, doing this I have stolen a few planets that only had no attack this way. Of course someone over rank 1k probably doesn't need to use this tactic but I'm just saying, 2 mines at the very most, the rest into defense so you're less likely to have your planet taken by someone of a mid to low level range.

Isnt that what everyone does? If it has mines, then repair naaodrone. I have like 30 rep nanos stocked up, they arent that rare.

For people around our rank (i.e. around 200), if you see a planet with 3000 defense and 1000 population, and another planet with 3000 attack and 1000 population, which would you be more likely to take?

The defense will slow down the amount of population you can remove per hit by maybe 10 or more, making that planet a huge energy drain; in addition, you can only debuff it down to 2550 invasion defense, so you'd need 6885 invasion attack for a 90% change. On the other hand, the same planet with 3000 attack could go down in less time since you're killing 20 pop at a time, and can be debuffed to 2100 defense, meaning you'd need about 5670 invasion attack for a 90% chance (since the invasion chances caps at 90%, it's really a factor of 2.7 rather than 3 when calculating invasion attack. I think. Let me know if my math is off). There's a lower chance of those mid/low ranks taking the full defense planet than the full attack planet.

Obviously, a mixture of both is best, but if I'm trying to maximize production and put up a decent defense, I would go with as many barriers/other defensive artifacts as possible

The +Atk% arties are hard to grt, but +def% is easy, 10 silvers for one.

10 silvers is a lot for a player under rank 100.