Endgame (against rips, aka Death Stars)

One thing you should be very careful with is the fact that only plasma turrets and shield domes do not have a rapid fire from RIPs against them. This means that if you have no or very very little of these compared to the rest of your defenses (lots of fodder) the rips will really go to town and can fire up to 160 times a piece in a single round shredding everything to bits. Whenever a rip hits a plasma turret or a shield dome, its turn will end however. (test this on a simulator if you need to)

Therefore the rules change when rips come into play, albeit this sort of defense won't disappoint against bombers either as their rapidfire can be annoying too.

Ratios

* Build Light Lasers as your fodder.
* Build Rocket Launchers when you have spare metal but no spare crystal (Consider 2 Rocket Launchers as being 1 Light Laser)
* Build 1 Heavy Laser for every 3 Light Lasers.
* Build 1 Ion Cannon for every 3 Light Lasers.
* Build 1 Gauss Cannon for every 4 Light Lasers.
* Build 1 Plasma Cannon for every 5 Light Lasers.

Of course, you should have both domes and as many ABMs as you can fit.

That means when you acquire 3000 Light Lasers (or 6000 Rocket Launchers), you should have:

* 1000 Heavy Lasers
* 1000 Ion Cannons
* 750 Gauss Cannons
* 600 Plasma Turrets
* 1 Small Shield Dome
* 1 Large Shield Dome

Total Cost of this method:

* 57.560.000 Metal (65060000 using Rocket Launchers)
* 50.810.000 Crystal (49310000 using Rocket Launchers)
* 19.500.000 Deuterium

You now have a plasma to fodder ratio of almost 1 to 10 and the point here is that the plasmas are numerous enough to actually be hit by rips, but have enough fodder to be fairly safe from the rest of the attackers' fleet.

The above defense by the way will kill 23 attacking RIPs (with no other ships as fodder) and kill most when 24 were to attack. More importantly, the attacker needs a minimum of 155 RIPs(!) to even have a chance of winning in one battle. Needless to say, you'll be needing massive amounts of ABMs.

One last note: Ion cannons are indeed pretty pointless against RIPs. You might as well build 1000 extra LL instead of the 1000 Ion cannons to save a significant amount of crystal, but since the attacker may send other ships they can still serve their purpose as heavily shielded fodder. In any case, it's up to you what you do with these.

In all of the posted defense types, it will be up to you what you want to build on your planets in the end. I just hope that these posts will be of use to you when you are looking to build up your defenses against those who would raid your planets for what you have struggled to create! Remember that Knowledge is power! the more you know about O game, the better you can become & the higher you can rise! good luck!