Anyone can raid an unprepared banker. It is not rocket science. The 20th ranked family can save and kill a big banker in the top famly. Even bankers can raid bankers. You can raid attackers as well... but they tend to have fewer planets...

The key to killing a banker is the Max Kill. A max kill on a banker is 15% of his ground and 30% of hisair. A good way to guarantee a max kill is to have attackers hit with 150% of the bankers fleet and for non-attackers to use 200%.

A banker with 200 planets to be taken (and presumably razed of infra) will require about10times hisforces. With 8 resourcers/attackers coordinating this is usually easy.

However there is a way to reduce this significantly. An attacker with 2.8 times the targetsfleet hits the target twice while the target isasleep.He resends fleets then and plans to hit two more planets. The target isreduced in fleet by 47.8% of his fleet. Now you onlyneed an additional 5 times his original fleet to carry off the attack. Better is if you can get two attackers to hit him. Between them they need 4.78 times the enemy fleet and they can solo the banker if they can get their fleet out over enough planets.

Never be afraid to have a player(s)send out microfleets of 100 figs, 100 bombers, and 100 soldiers/droids to every planet of a banker. Sometimes bankers will forgoportals forfarto long.The surprise of losing 50 planets can be demoralizing.

Banker Raid Defense, Banker raid defense involves three lines of thought. There is the laser defense, the no portal plan, and the stationed forces method I created rounds ago.

The laser method involves a random layering of lasers. Usuallya planet will have just a couple, but some willhave as high as 50 lasers. The idea is that attackers must either plan for the random laser amount or else they risk losing a fleet and screwing up the attack.

The answer to that however is to send more bombers with bigger fleets, to send to far more planets than pmode would require and eat somelosses on lesser fleets.

Some people rely upon a few unportalled but highly lasered planets for defense. This actually occured on a one man raid I organized on an underdefended pop banker recently. The attacker got 50 planets but faild when he found the unportalled system due to his remaining fleets being too small.

The answer for this is a bomber jump if you find them doing this. Per planet if 400% OB (1100 infra) and 5% are unportalled your 1000 bombers for a 200 planet player... you take 10planets (using your existing figs for protection of the bombers) and destroy11000infra and he has 0 lasers left if you wish to do a new BR.... yeah... a new BR

You probably had 8k bombers for your needs... now you have 200k. Go blitzing on bankers fig/bomber wise and you have set up future banker raids. Yes expensive, but planets are life.This provides a means to get planets.

Stationed forces presents the best defense against attacks. There are three main methods for stationed defense. Static, Random, and Structured. Then there is the level of forces to be stationed. Static is the use of a specific number of fighters and soldiers/droids per planet. Random involves an unpredictable amount of soldiers/droids and/or fighters per planet. Structured is where you make a combat plan based upon likely threats and adjust your stationing accordingly (typically with ground on planets likely to be hit early and figs on planets likely to be struck later).

Additionally there is the method of hiding that you are prepared for a banker raid. Using Stationed forces you should leave the outside 10% of your planets unguardedfrom stationed. Only rely upon portals on the periphery. Why? So no one detects with a pre-hit or three that you are using this defense system.