Core 7 layouts to counter stealth and general advice needed

[Barons]

Hello folks,

Thank you for taking time out of your day to critique my poor network, offer advice, and help make my net boss like a Miami pimp.

With my current setup I defend fairly well in most cases where I'm not plainly out classed. My biggest weakness is vs stealth attacks where wraiths are used to take down either my guns or code gates and/or portal attacks that bypass them completely.

Barons 1.0



After spending some time watching my defense replays I came up with a few suggestions for myself and I wanted to get your thoughts on them.

Code gates by themselves or with sentry?

youtu.be/uqN5L0Ee3CU

I picked this layout uo from someone's help video and I'm either not doing it right or its less effective than just having 2 code gates. Yes the sentry and collector cause a slight distraction but in exchange for allowing my attacker to focus 7 beams on my 2nd code gate? Doesn't seem worth it. Also considering my first code gate is connected to a guardian I know I'm not getting the maximum amount of time out of them, without even taking into account the guardian/code gate bug. Please feel free to give me your thoughts on this. I'm in favor of just having 2 code gates linked off a 3 point node.

I originally tried to place my code gates as far back as possible to make them harder to wraith while setting my main choke pointo up front. However after watching the gates get wraithed mutiple times despite that I've decided it's probably going to happen as long as they are placed anywhere useful. Plus it seems lIke losing 2 code gates is way better than having 40% of my guns taken out before the hack.

All that being said I believe I've designed a layout that is slightly if not much better at surviving wraith and portal attacks. That will all depend on how well my lvl 7+ scanner(not sure how high it goes at core 7) can shut down a portal, 2 wraiths, and 7 access programs. That's what's needed to portal on to the closest black ice and bypass my choke point. This new design hasn't been tested yet but from my limited experience with having one 3 gun and one 2 gun choke point I believe it will pose much more of a challenge.

Without further adieu I'd like to present my new core 7 layout...

The Ball Sack!


I sat around with full loot for a few hours and didn't get hit but now my threads are done so I'll see how it does over the next few days. I look forward to any suggestions I can get.

Thank you for sharing your experience with me.

[Yopee]

Your new network layout solves the portal issue from your old one but you're pretty much sacrificing both code gates to wraiths. Maybe there's another layout you could do to save one of them.

I see two main weaknesses in your network: sentries and resource positioning.


Your sentries are pretty low level. In this sort of layout where everything is connected to everything, you want to attack everything at once. Sentry lets you do that but if your sentry is not powerful enough, then it's not going to put up much of a fight.

That first sentry connected to the second code gate is pointless. We know both code gates will be wraithed. That sentry won't be able to spread its antivirus at all. Move it farther down.

Maybe change one of the connections on the higher level sentry in the back so that it can reach the turrets. Speed up antivirus spread.

In this sort of straightforward network layout, I think two sentries should be enough.



The other major issue are your resource nodes. Only two out of your six resources are 9 nodes away from netConnection. That server is sitting just 5 nodes away on its own. I guess you're trying to use it as a distraction but it's just so easy to reach that it doesn't do anything to slow the attacker down.

The lower level mixer and database 8 nodes out are connected to way too many nodes. Not sure what you're trying to do with them there.


One final minor note - seems like you're using the guardian to actually guard nodes rather than as a chokepoint. In that case, level it up.