1.1 Beta Carrier counters- Discussion

from Sins Forums
Alright I thought about posting this in the Beta forums. But there are several "Carriers are overpowered" type threads there now as is. And quite frankly they may or may not be OP. I will leave that for the Devs to decide and I will learn to adapt.

Which brings me to the point of my posting. What counters have we come up with that are "solid" plans for countering the new strikecraft and their carriers? The advent ones in particular I am having problems with when I am TEC. Now advent on advent I can counter them well since we both get them as a Tier 2 military upgrade unit and we both get them with 3 squadrons.

Its the TEC and Vasari that are stumping me. Actually the Vasari I dont really know what to do yet, I get them so rarely when I random myself. (which is how I pick my race every single game btw) I have come up with counters for late game pretty easy and we can discuss that also if you would like. My concern is the early game in close combatish maps. Take Kronac's Cross for instance all 3 of yoru opponents are 2-3 jumps away. (2 jumps to all 3 by going to center star and their homeworld, 3 jumps to the homeworlds on your left and right) Now in this scenario the advent just seem to have a huge hands down advantage with the Tier 2 carriers in 1.1

At best you will have a lvl 3-4 ship when they show up with Carriers. Due to the usually Very limited Metal on the map its hard to mass very many ships also. As you always have 1 asteroid to one side, and one ice planet to the other, the inside has 3 random planets of anytype and 1 pirate base. (For those that dont play the map often) Now back on track. How do we counter teh buffed up Advent carriers at this early junction with such limited resources in the metal department?

So far the best counter I have come up with is to assume they will arrive with 3-5 carriers within half an hour to 45 minutes. This so far has proven true on the smaller 4 player maps like this. Thusly You could fast tech up to carriers yourself. But the superiority of the Advent tier 2 carriers to the tier 3 carriers of the other races is undeniable so far for me. Anyways the best counter I have come up with in this fast teching situation I have been testing is to get you own carriers as fast as you can, and get some flak also. (not alot) Build nothing but fighters, then take over the skys with flak and fighters. While they are doing their anti flying unit thing, you take out the navy leaving the hopefully uselsess Advent Carriers effectivly grounded.

Out of 5 games on Kronac's Cross to test this. This has worked 2 out of 5 times, the other 3 times it pretty much ended in a stalemate with both fleets decimated to the point of being worthless. Which I will point out is in the Advents favor if its thier carriers vs your carriers. In this scenario and Advance to the rear is suggested. (aka retreat)

I would be interested in hearing other counters to this. I will be trying a few games of instead of rushing to carriers of my own, of maybe going with a heavier Light Frigate count early on and make sure they have all the appropriate offensive upgrades and maybe Blitz the carriers down. But without proper anti-air the Strikecraft will still be around long after their host has been subdued.
strategy
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Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
I think, vs the AI we need to lure their SC onto our flak...in this regard having SC of your own in the air prevents this cos the SC will fight each other all over the place.

Perhaps making a seperate fleet with a Cap(kol or akkan?)+flak and see if it can lure their SC onto it.

Perhaps its possible also to use a carrier in your flak fleet, and keep doing a launch->dock routine of your bombers to attract their SC onto them.(in this regard an Akkan with 1 bomber wing might work)
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
I understand where you're coming from, but there's actually two methods I've seen that work and one that you would think would work but it doesn't.

The one that doesn't work is ironically the one that should: flak. They've been nerfed so hard in the Beta that they just can't seem to do the job they should against fighters.

The first is capital ship abilities. Vasari are on the short end of the stick on this one, as none of their capitals have an effective anti-strikecraft ability. The Devastator has jam weapons yes, but it actually doesn't even work in 1.09.

The Kol, Dunov, and Halcyon all have effective abilities that can counter strikecraft. The Kol is the most direct. It does a flak burst which does X amount of damage to all strikecraft in range (best done manually to hit as many targets as possible). The Halcyon has a similar ability, except the strike craft also get pushed away and have their top speed and acceleration slowed for a period of time.

The Dunov is rather comical. Magnetize will hit a target and all strikecraft near it will collide and be destroyed. Fun to watch.

The best option is a very simple one actually. The basic assault/light frigate for reach race does anti-heavy damage. Carriers have heavy armor. Both types of strikecraft only do 50% of their damage to BA/LF because both get 50% multipliers against medium armor. Light frigates will chase down and destroy the carrier before the strikecraft can ever destroy the light frigate. So cheap and simple a counter really.

Basic assaults also got a buff against heavy armor so they're even better at doing this now.
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Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
How are those light frigates working out for you in real practice though? I haven't had the chance to test spamming them and assigning them in their own fleet for anti carrier duties yet.

And if its working for you, whats the ratio of Light Frigates to Carriers you have found to be the minimum threshold for being able to destroy the carriers in an efficient and timely manner?

Just based off of costs alone I am assuming a 3 or 4 to one ratio of Frigates vs Carriers.
Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
It's a pretty lopsided ratio. What's nice though is that even with the glitch, light frigs still do the job.

Let's say you need to take down 1 Advent Carrier, non-glitched.

Advent: 5
TEC: 4
Vasari: 3

1 TEC/Vasari Carrier

Advent: 4
TEC: 3
Vasari: 2

That's 1.09 of course.

Here's what I found in practice. 5 disciples will take down 1 Advent carrier and no disciples will be lost. Can you get away with fewer light frigs? Sure.

There's one veeery big problem with this counter. If he makes long range frigates, you're screwed.

Getting the regen health upgrade for Vasari light frigs helps with the fact that you have fewer in numbers.
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
Yeah dont even get me started on having to face mixed forces with 1.09 carriers backing them up....
Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top
Light frigates aren't an effective counter because they themselves are so easily countered that they are generally destroyed before they can do any serious damage. Of course, the reason why is that there is not a very good hard counter for LRFs. Late game, you can probably use them to some effect, when the battle field is littered with heavy cruisers instead of LRFs. HC's will still chew the hell out of light frigates, but at least since HC's have short range weapons light frigates can, to some degree, avoid the HC's.

I converted the 1.09 entity files to text to update a mod that redresses this problem. I built it originally for my own personal use and that of friends, but I'm beginning to think I should release it as a modder's resource. We'll see, depends on what kind of changes are made when the 1.09 beta test is over.
Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top
I do love the fact that bombers/fighters are now a big part of the game, but it's soooo obvious that about the only counter now to SC is SC, and I can't see why a quick patch giving Flak some teeth again (and crushing the SC scuttle bug, which is making it impossible for most to even playtest this beta in MP) is'nt comming out so we can continue to playtest.

I've stopped playing the beta for now, cause it just ends up being two huge "clouds" of SC in every battle at the time. I've even built 25 Flak once (I play small maps, so that's a lot), and it barely seemeds to make a dent in the enemy SC.

Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top
I'm using the light frigates now and its working definately better then when I tried flak.

I'm finding that 20-30 LFs can defeat 10-15 advent carriers, the problem is that their SC destroys my caps meantime (even after their carriers are down the SC still takes time to decay), so I think the best strat may be to have some flak to help defend the caps while the LFs hunt the carriers.

The best ratio maybe is 4 LF + 1 flak vs each carrier.
Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top
Well the sc die automatically after the carriers are down. I have started advancing to teh rear once my caps nearing 50% damage so that it makes it outta there. I leave the cobalts to finish the carriers then they advance to the rear also. Wait 45-60 seconds then I jump back to the battle. All the SC are dead from hp decay without a supporting carrier.
Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top
As my game progress its getting harder with bigger fleet sizes.

In my current game I have stand off between 2 systems with the AI fleet having 4 caps+40carriers+40lflrm+40hc/support

My fleet is about 3 caps+120lf+40hc/support

At this stage the attrition to my LFs is huge compared to the speed they kill the carriers, if I target carriers first I kill about 5 by the time I've lost 30 LFs.
So now the DPS ratio moves in the AI favor and I have to jump out with the 90 remaining LFS, rebuild, and jump back and repeat, each time, killing a few carriers, and overall relying on outbuilding.

You definitely can outbuild at a high rate especially as the LFs dont cost any crystal. But its a tiresome process.

The best approach would be to engage until you kill just 1 carrier(with those fleet sizes you can probably get a 1:3 kill ratio) then jump out(using akkan armstice)thus minimising your losses each time while mazimising his.



Reply #11 from Sins Forums Top
Lifewaster no offense but in 1.09 not bringing carriers when you opponent has carriers is like bringing a knife to a fight and your opponent pulls out a shotgun. Even if you do the LF strategy you still need your own carriers to try and help with air superiority. As your LF destroy carriers your carriers become more potent in the fight.

Now in this counter scenario I wouldnt try to have as many carriers as the AI if you are going for the kill the carriers approach, but I would have tried to fit about 20 carriers and 10 flak (I know they are not great anymore but they arent a complete waste either thusly just enought to help clear out fighters.) while you hunt down the carriers with you LF's. Just my 2 cents though.

I would say of those 120 ships, switch it to 80-90 lf, 20-30 carriers, and 10-15 flak and see how it works out. These numbers are working fantastic for me so far when I play as TEC or Advent. I haven't tried the approach as Vasari more then twice since I just don't seem to get them often when I random my races.

Mind you I also would still have some LRF's and HC's of course. Though I honestly don't use many HC's I know they are supposed to be good, but I have started dropping their numbers in favor of more Carriers. Why? cause Air superiority is where 1.09 is being won and lost.
Reply #12 from Sins Forums Top
Actually, maybe dont write off flak yet, Just completed a game vs advent without building any strikecraft(no exhaust port achievement)

I went with a build of akkan+kol+flak+lrms

My flak actually performed well in this setup, I think because the akkan/lrm fleet setup suits Flak use a lot more then using HC/LFs

Reason is with the previous hc/lf/flak build, your hc/lf are speeding ahead outside of flak cover.

But with flak/lrms, and the akkan range bonus, you can keep your fleet together all within the flak protection ,which makes a huge difference

This worked an awful lot better then when my fleet was split up and being eaten by SC all over the place.

The largest battle was with 50flak/50lrm vs 20 carrier/30 hc/lf which I won at a cost of 30 lrms.



Gonna try some larger/harder games now, and see if it still works out.