I guess this goes here. So here is what i see in a normal multiplayer game.
1.Research carrier
2.Spam carrier
3WIN
This is what i saw when i played today and the scary thing? Most of the time its too effective to be countered! Lets say for a moment that I just suck and normally most people can counter it. That doesn't change the fact that it ruins the game for people who want to enjoy some actual strategy! I think that it has to stop. /end rant
Views? Opinions? Etc.
Which means that now that he's gone, you can take out the enemy planet undisturbed. Take the fight to the enemy, attack him early. Don't wait for his carriers to visit you.
Edit: sorry, doublepost
It's not quite so simple. I just had Carrier Spam used against me myself. I couldn't defeat it. I spammed 26 Defenders against his 54 Fighter Squadrons (supported by 1 Capital Ship) and I only managed to take out about 1/3 of his fighters before my defenders were overcome. Meanwhile I attacked his carriers with Illuminators but he just kited them around the planet until his fighters took them out.
Defeating the carrier spam is a lot more difficult that simply, "Build Flak/Defenders/Sentinels" or "Attack the Carriers".
I am no expert but it sounds like your anti-fighter force was not nearly strong enough. You had no carriers yourself and Illums would do 75% damage to carriers compared to Disciples doing 150%. If you had built flak, carriers, and light frigates, I think you would have faired better.
Go read what Howdidudothat posted earlier in the thread...
Edit: Ignore that link... for some reason, I can't get rid of it.
Here, I'll just repost my advice:
Carriers are easily countered.
Your fighters and flak will drain his carrier's dry of anti-matter because he will continually try to rebuild his SC. Your HCs and LFs do the damage to the carrier itself and game over, you have air suppiority and you win. If he is purely spamming carriers, there is no need to build LRFs (assails, illums, and LRMs).
I would also like to point out that even though the game is very balanced now, YOU CANNOT expect to win if your fleet is half the size of his. 26 flak for 54 fighters squadrons is not going to hack it. Think about it, during WWII, did the British just fire flak forever, or did they build fighters to intercept the German bombers?
EDIT: By the way, I have been playing a lot of games lately against people who seem to think that carriers are all that. They have learned that they aren't. It's the funniest thing you'll ever see, and I'll admit I was almot thinking I was going crazy, but building crazy numbers of cobalts (or race equivalent) will SHRED carriers.
Totally agree with Howdidudothat and MartialDoc. USE LIGHT FRIGATES! Not only do they deal the most damage per unit cost against carriers, but light frigates also don't take much damage from strike craft. 3/carrier against advent, 2/carrier against TEC and Vas. You only need a marginal portion of your force as flak (against a mostly fighter air force) and/or fighters (against a mostly bomber composition), mainly because even after you kill a carrier, it leaves squadrons that take a while to die. It's like residual damage that needs to be mopped up in most situations, unless of course your fight takes place away from your other assets. Then you just leave the gravity well after you finish off the carriers. I wouldn't use anything else if they don't have anything other than carriers.
You can still win playing the way you WANT to play against people who happen to want to play in a way that your favorite strategy does well against. But you will (generally) lose against everyone who plays a strategy that is somewhat unbalanced. But unbalanced strategies are easily exploitable (except for mine spamming, currently). If you want to win the majority of your heads up matches, you need to start playing in the most OPTIMAL way, not the way you WANT to play. Building a well mixed fleet is much more satisfying to me and most other people, but it's not always the most optimum play, given your opponent. You must learn to adapt, which almost always entails doing a little scouting early in the game. Find out what your opponent is up to and adjust your play accordingly.
Don't forget Light Frigates are paper to LRF's while Carriers are still tough to kill even for LF's and easy to retreat to a repair bay. If the enemy has a decent amount of LRF's it's probably a bad idea to build Light Frigates.
If the enemy builds nothing but Carriers then Light Frigates will dominate them.
The best prevention is early detection of enemy fleet composition.
Send scouts find out quickly what they have.
More early your detection, more you can prepare against it, you can launch
counter attack earlier.
Are you blind or dumb? Didn't I say you need to build mixed fleets now. Oh, and expect to actually lose a ship or 2.
Losing ships is generally considered a bad strategy.
yes, but better to lose 2 ships to the enemy's 4. if you kill more than you lose, then you are well on your way to winning
Starhound, I've said this before in a different post on the same subject: we are talking about CARRIER SPAM, right? Ok, if your opponent spends a considerable amount of resources building LRM's as well as carriers, then he will have less carriers than he would if he built no LRM's. Also, the way you put it makes it sound like the mere presence of LRM's is like a trump card against LF's. As Howdidudothat mentioned earlier, if you don't have enough of a unit to counter another unit type, you'll be fairly ineffective. For instance, if you think that 10-20 illuminators and 8-10 advent carriers is enough to slaughter 100 advent LF's "like paper", think again. Also, subtract 40 LF's and add 6 advent carriers (all fighters) w/ 15 flak frigates. You're going to have problems as the illum/carrier fleet, since fighters do awesome damage vs both illums and bombers. The illum/carrier fleet would have to do such things as (oh no) add LF's or HC's in order to trash the carriers and flak.
Best way to avoid losing ships is to stay in bed. Or maybe just play vs the AI and build all capships.
'tis true. but it sure is a lot of fun.
edit: screwed up that quote, i guess
Very insightful. This is the best answer to avoiding carrier spam yet.
Well I'll just go with everyone alse and say it carriers aren't broken. Maybe damage dealt by fighters/bombers could be just slightly lowered but not by much.
Light frigates are actuly very valuable now sicne they counter carriers marvolesly as well as flak. So even if you have carrier light frigates are valuable to you if the enemy has flak since the light frigates will also eat them up.
Since 1.12 came out i am more and more often force to research and build all ships in my reserch tree. Why because they all ahve a role to fullfill now. In 1.5 if i got to research 3 ships it was a good game.
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