Star Forge - good planning = much less troubles later on
I enjoyed the game, unlike some (not calling any names here) who said that it gets "frustrating".
I encourage you to find your own way, but for those who are lazy or are having trouble, here is >--v v------------------------< my strategy:
1. - Build 12 towers in a circle, at the hour positions on a clock (approx. *halfway to the edge of the map where the edge is closest*-distance) and give them 5 armor/damages and 1 range. Since ships attack the towers closest to them and never any other, these towers will be your shield-wall (call it what you like), taking all the fire so that you do not have to worry about the other towers' health and they don't need armor upgrades.
2. - Build 3 towers that will act as damage amplifiers, just inside the ring, almost between 3 pairs of 2 armor towers (e.g. at 1:30, 9:30 and 17:30 o'clock positions). Space them out evenly and just right, and 4 damage amplifiers each will be enough to amplify all 12 the towers' damage, though you will quite possibly have to use 5 in some cases. Fill the other slot/slots with range so that they can help shooting.
All remaining towers inside the ring now gets at least 2 range amplifiers.
3. - Make 3 frost towers whose main goal is to slow down ships so that they can hopefully be destroyed before they even reach firing range. Since these towers' main goal is to slow enemies and not destroy them, they do not need the damage boost as much and so you can place them in the same way as the damage boosting towers, but so that they are in the farthest possible spaces (e.g. with previous amplifier positions - 5:30, 13:30 and 21:30 o'clock positions) because these spaces are probably unamplified. You might want to keep at least one spot open for an anti capital ship module later on so that it will rather target capital ships if it can.
4. - Make another set of 3 towers, the same way as before, and augment them with 2 range and 3 explosion mods and whatever else you want to in the last, or keep it open for later (shock or capital ship). It might be better to do this before step 3, but it doesn't really matter.
5. - Make the last set of 3 towers with 2 range mods, 3 shock mods and an anti capital ship mod. These towers are excellent when there are capital ships about, as that guarantees that quite a few shots will hit and thus many other ships will be shocked, many times. Later on, if you have some free production time and you don't need anything specifically, you can build more* of these, (or even replace some other inner towers with them) as they are about the best towers you can get. You might want to make them with 3 range though, as they will now be farther from the edge of your tower-circle. *If you're playing normal mode, these towers are enough and more isn't necessary.
6. - Lastly and MOST IMPORTANTLY: Keep an eye on your outer towers' health and always have two or three healing packs ready. If a tower's health goes below a quarter, heal it (if it had more, then more of the heal's potential goes to waste, because if you had used it later it would also be fully healed, but would have absorbed more damage by then). It is a fine line. Optimal healing time is at about 1/6 health, but if you have trouble remembering to check them all, all the time, then you could heal sooner. As soon as you use a healing pack, start making another one as soon as the current production is finished, or immediately if it is less than a quarter of the way or not that important. After you are done with your tower set-up (esp. normal mode) you can just mass-produce healing packs. Bombs shouldn't be necessary, though you could build a few for emergencies once you have enough healing packs stocked up.
Well this is how my strategy works (and it does work). Hope it also works for you ;-)
