UPDATE 2/24/09 __11:40
Ok I'm actually going to go into details even though I said I was not. First update will be later today On how to use Capital ships FOR GREAT JUSTICE against SC.
I will also Be adding a Basics of the Basics section on how to limit micro and how to micro combat against SC.
ps: I probably won't be fixing spelling errors so don't pm about those unless they confuse the hell out of you.
UPDATE 2/24/09__1:11
Added basics and Light micro mini-guides going to lunch and will post capital ship guide later.
Up-note: If your looking to play a teaching game with me I'd be happy to help I'm usually on From about 6:00- 9:00 in the morning to 8:00- 1:00 at night thats U.S eastern time(yes I only get 5 hours of sleep). Apprentice positions all full so no more asking that.
I will also include an abrevaition index at the end if requested.
this is In no way a very detailed guide but its should work in helping out people who for some reason have problems with carriers.
Introduction: Stuff I'm going to say (read at your own doom)
Hi I'm spiralblitz the unofficial intermediatary consultant to stuff on sins. (lulz just joking around but give me some Kharma so I can redeem them for godmode like annatar.)((lulz just joking again serious about the kharma though I need to make tyr jealous.))(((anti-lulz joking again. these Addition parenthesis must be making you angry i will stop now.)))
Right well I hear that the carrier is overpowered and difficult to counter even with other carriers but i'm here to tell you that it is possible, but highly situational.
Its easy to beat so stop whining
Carrier spam alone is just plain easy to beat, but what is really causing you the problem is catching and killing the carriers and the units around to support them.
Carriers are like capships in the sense that large focused attack will bring them down. How do you bring something down that is running away and is faster then all your ships. Well I will say use the cheapest fastest ship in the game that the carrier just happens to be weak against. What is this you ask. IT'S THE LIGHT FRIGATE.
Carriers are weak against light frigrates and since the light frigrate buff.(they still need another buff) they are highly resistant to strike craft. A smart player however will bring Long-Range Frigates to counter your Light frigates. This in itself is a huge problem for you see how do you stop carriers with a large number of the stuff that kills the thing that kills carriers in your way. That my friends is why I am writing this mini-guide.
The Basics: How to get on your way to obtaining Air superiority
YOUR ULTIMATE GOAL SHOULD BE AIR SUPERIORITY. What is air superiority? well that is when your enemy has SC but they are so feable and beat up by your awesome carrier countering that 5 carriers full of fighters can mop them up like an old nickel hooker in mexico city.
Not simply beating back SC. Get it out of your mind that you don’t need carriers to counter carriers. You will always need the same type of ship your enemy has to be on even footing. From an even stance its your knowledge and skill at the game that determines who wins and who loses.
Players are worried more about Eliminating SC then the thing that creates them. This is a problem but with these basics you should have no worries. You will be able to defend against strike craft of any size giving you enough time to get at the carriers and kill them. 5-10 carriers is enough
Step1: Build 2-3 Light frigates for every carrier your enemy has
EX.:: Enemy 1 has 10 carriers you should have 20 -30 light frigates. (Seriously though You probably will only need 15 -20)
Step2: Build enough to fight back 10-15 flak and 5- 10 carriers (4-9 for advent) with fighters only, this is the most basic anti SC set up you can have.
Step3: If fighting on your own planet build a phase jump inhibitor to provent Carriers from leaving (because they will run once you have air superiority)
Congratulations with these 3 steps your on your way to obtain air superiority.
Light Micro Management: For dummies
Now On to light micro which is very easy even beginners have some knowledge of light micro. Please don’t confuse all micro as heavy micro cause that’s just plain weird. Being as heavy micro can induce orgasms.
Now Now I know big daddy blitz just dropped the mega dues on you big O big OOOO o.0 (what not anime fans? Brief interlude for a story conducted in game on sins chat. True convo you can skip it it’s not really important but funny and kind of obvious)
Tec general: Micro you say what this “micro” is
Spiralblitz: it’s the stuff I’m doing to your mom right now with my index and middle finger in one hole, thumb on the cruise control button, and pinky in the stinky.
Tec general: lol, you know my mom?
Spiralblitz: yeah, let’s go with that?
Sykia: lol, he means how he’s managing his fleet to kill your carriers with LFs while using Hoshi’s to repair his flak that’s being chased by your LRFs which is protecting his LFs from your SC. All while using his Kol to flak burst your SC to pieces and Donuv’s magnetize to cause SC to collide into your LRFs
Tec general: Oh you mean the stuff that you’re doing that’s pwning my fleet.
Spiralblitz: No, this is still your mom where talking about here
Sykia: lol
Badakas: lol
Tec general:
Tec general: really now I don’t see anything? Is that what you’re making your fleet do or is that what its doing automatically
Spiralblitz: that’s what I set them to do. It’s kinda like setting the alarm clock to do something and leaving and coming back before it rings so you can set it again.
Tec general: what?
Spiralblitz: *sigh* just use The alt button to select ships of the same type in the grav well the use the Shift button to give them a long line of targets and orders to do. Comeback before it’s finished and ensure the success of said tasks then set them to do something else.
Sykia: that’s pretty much what micro is
Tec general: why didn’t you say so that sounds easy as folk?
Spiralblitz: *gasp* I know
Badakas: how have you been playing without micro?
Don’t be intimidated by MICRO. It’s really easy.
The ALT button selects all ships of a certain type. Be sure to do this on the overview or else you might not get all the ships in the grav well unless that’s what you want.
EX.:: Select all of a group of ships like flak, fighters, or what ever you have in the grave well ( *gasp*best used when you need to counter a ship and you have that counter.)
SHIFT key ques up orders. So hold it down and select lots of targets.
EX.:: set a long list of attack orders for your LFs to target all the carriers individually or as a group.
Press the M key the Move button to have ships follow other ships
EX.:: Have your flak follow the ships that are getting attacked by SC
Congratulations you just learned micro
I’m not going to go into fleet commands and ability order linking unless someone request that I do. That’s not light micro. That’s the orgasm inducing heavy micro.
C-C-C-C-CCombo Breaker!!!!!
Breaking the TEC Carrier Combos:
The TEC Carrier combos are the Deadliest ones you can have the displeasure of facing. First TEC can Spam LRFS(Long-Range-Frigates) for a rather cheap amount. Then they have their repair ships The HR(Hoshiko repairship) that can easily support and repair both Carriers and Longrange frigrates. This combo Is easily countered by the stupidity of the person using the carrier itself and one of the most basic rules of the carrier commander. Run the carrier around the grav well to aviod it being destroyed.
The countering begins the moment you bring a large number of LF (light-frigates) to battle. The smart Carrier user will protect his carriers from your LFs with his LRFs and start making his carriers run. Bingo! LF are the fastest ship in the game and if you brought Flak which is a medium Vessel slightly resistant to LRFS you are in the winning zone.
How you ask? well have your Flak follow your LFs to protect them from fighters(the fighters wont eat up your LFs since they are a bit resistant but they are pretty damaging). Since LFs are fast they will outrun the LRF almost immediately but it is a given that some will be slaughtered. its a given that on each strifing pass that strike craft make they will swarm behind the group they are attacking Right untop of the waiting flak that is following the LF and since the LRF can't catch up to the LF they begin to attack the Flak which are closer to them and slightly resistant to LRFs. Bingo! again you are in the win! Since your large group of LFs are Making pincushions out of the Carriers and they will be reducing the number of strikecraft being rebuilt if they have the appropraite LF ability researched.(most likely if you are playing TEC fighting a TEC you will upgrade Defense and Laser research as much as possible to improve the damage and survivablility of your LFs facing carriers). from this point on it gets even better for you if you throw in carriers and support ships to even the odds. Remeber knowing your races advantages against certain ships is essential. This is just a basic guide to countering a very basic spam setup.
OK, this is where it gets tricky. When a TEC player is using the hoshi repair and carrier spam. REGARDLESS you will need to build A large number of LFs and some carriers (not with bombers) yourself. Make sure to include the same flak strategy above and better yet when the opposing player sends his LRF's to kill your Carriers(which is a really stupid idea if he is not playing advent) you have some time to close in on his carriers and Hoshi repair to shread them. Why does that seem simple because strike craft will always attack strike craft first. unless the Enemy manually targets the ships with the strike craft this is a given. use your flak wisely and you will come through this in win since Hoshiko Repair ships and Carriers are both weak agains *gasp* (you guessed it) LFs!!!! Even better if you use the appropraite abilities, upgrades and support ships.
Breaking the advent combo:
Wow your facing an advent carrier spammer. All I have to say is build True to the Strategy and pray he doesnt know the Deus ex Guardian strategy cause that will make it godly hard to counter. I will say this is highly overpowered but can be countered with some dedication.
Breif interlude to tell a story (you can skip the parts in Quotation marks if you just wanna know how to kill advent carrier spam) all about how I faced an advent Carrier spammer with 118 carriers (plus the holy trinity advnet capships) with just 40 LFs, 25 LRFs, 10 overseers, 15 flak, 10 carriers and 3 capships (Vassari evacuator, carrier, and Kortul.) and this was all done on my enemys planet with all his 7 repairs 2 frigate factories and 5 hangar stations.
"If you did the math and know how many strike craft im dealing and said bullshit on how I beat him. then you have probably been beaten alot by carrier spammers and can't believe a balanced fleet will always win. This took a hella amount of micro but I managed to do it in the process losing all my capships and having to rebuild them yet I still won with more of my fleet intact and his completely destroyed. using the same strategy against TEC with Advent, but Vasari is sorta geared toward killing carrier spammers and thats why I won to tell the truth (vasari carrier capship has the ability to make its strike craft in the vicinity slip into phase space and aviod damage making it easier to keep them alive against 118 carriers).
Any way I digressed enough. That guy was easy to beat cause he used only carriers and I appropraitely countered by using overseers to buff my LFs hullpoints and flak to keep them alive while I used all 40 to shread his carriers(the vasari LF has an ability to make carrier spammers shit their pants I suggest always using it when dealing with Repair ships and carriers.) honestly there is more to it than that and an impressive amount of micro but lets just keep it short for now."
Ok to counter the basic advent Carrier player you will need to use Flak and LF's in the same manner as you would do with a TEC carrier player. Advent may have more strike craft but they are weaker and their carriers can produce them relatively faster than any other race so you will need the LFs ability to drain or disable antimatter use if you want to succeed. This is as easy as its gonna get vs Advent. Their carriers cost so much that if they are pure carrier they have very little of anything else to defend them
Now a smart advent Carrier fighter will do the the Deus ex Guardian strategy and rape your immortal soul by the power of the UNITY!!! yes thats right you heard me the advent ships work best together *gasp* yeah really. the synergy of Advent ships is astounding you have to give Ironclad props for that but its also an incredible pain in the arse when fighting. The basic part of this strategy is carriers, guardians, LFs, and some LRFs thrown in for good measure. The advent player will be using the gaurdians to great effect by pushing your LFs away everytime they get close giving their LFs time to grab your ships antimatter and using the illums broadsiding ability to move back and fourth wreaking havoc in your fleet. The progenitor capship will be restoring shields (pray to god they don't have the holy trinity or you will be losing alot of ships). This can be beaten even though it seems impossible. The smart advent player might not be lured into chasing after you and just let his strike craft eat you up before coming in to finish you off but try to break apart there fleet as much as you can. If your playing tec the LRMS cluster bomb ability will either get rid of the Advent LFs for you or do enough splash damage to make him spread his fleet. Getting at the carriers is gonna be the hardes part with the guardians mitigating the damage done and the illums broadsiding you. yet, it can be done Guardians Are medium level ships that just happen to be weak against LFs and strike craft so go to town on them first before taking on the carriers. make sure you use the proper Support ships preferably anything that can disable the guardians so you can get at the carriers even for a moment.
An experienced advent player will run once they start losing guardians so make sure you have a ship to either disable their away jump or a phase inhibitor. Remeber support your ships and manage them well cause the Deus ex carrier strategy is one of the hardest to beat. it may not be able to be a nuasance as the TEC overpowered combos but in any scale encounter in a game a battle with this strat will be devastating. YOU ARE Guarenteed to lose almost your entire fleet.
end note here practice makes perfect. Practice taking on large AI fleets with a smaller fleet. I personally owned an AI fleet of 50 ships with only 21. if you can do shit like that you will have no problems.
Breaking the Vasari combo:
Oh god its vasari. If your lucky enough not be rushed in the pregame /early game moments then you will be in a good position and will see a vasari player with some amount of carriers. However, I find most vasari players are reserved in the amount of carriers they build. I'm pretty hard set on finding a vasari carrier player but the ones I did find were pure genius.
what you have to do is counter the same way with all basic carrier attacks. use flak to protect your huge amount of LFs (cause vasari ships have good deal of unpgraded defense and hull points). your main worry with a vasari player is the LRFs. You will need carriers of your own to counter the LRFs (remeber when countering LRFs use fighters). Vasari players with heavy cruisers are known to be a problem cause more often then not they use the heavy cruisers abilities to keep the LFs from getting to close to the carriers. This is a pain cause the HCs will rape your LFs. but again you can work around that by arming your carriers with bombers and having your LRFS focus fire on the Heavies.
honestly I really don't have much info on vasari carrier fighters cause they are a rare breed. But the Vasari carrier capital ship and heavy cruisers can make it difficult for someone trying to get past Strike craft and get at the carriers. Just be cautious and make a steady aproach. Remeber if Advent is stationary combat then Vasari is all about mobility. More often then not the vasari fleet will be broken up and easy to tear apart with their respective counters.
TL;DR
Lol I lied so this isn't a mini guide its huge as folk but you get the picture. happy hunting.
Well here it is all done
Every faction has a capital ship that has a powerful anti-strikecraft ability. Kol especially is able to wipe out huge amounts of strikecraft on its own.
Ball up your strikecraft next to Kol, wait for enemy fighters to engage, click Flak Burst, win air superiority.
Hey spiralblitz
Some good points in that. It was worth the read.There are many ways to beat carriers and I dont really find them overpowered.(wheres the fun, if everything is always easy)
You are absolutely correct in that any encounter is highly situational. If you cant plan an attack (or defence) properly you should go back to playing starcraft and other spamable games.
I personally think that the ballance in sins (non entrenchment) has been properly adjusted and works rather well. Like you stated somewhere in the guide thingy. a ballanced fleet will always beat spam.
I play for the pleasure of facing carrier spam. I do it slightly differently, but a few new tricks can turn the tide of battle in different situations.
Thanx for the dedication and insight. +1
Ha ha, really cool story but I don't believe a word of it. 118 CARRIERS? You were toast. Your whole fleet evaporated in seconds. Plus he had repair and hangers?
Sadly that is true. he is like a wave of evil on steriods. There is no way someone can humanly micro manage a win like that but he does that and gets off on it like a bitch in heat. Next time I will make 200 carriers and you will never win Spiral. hear me nevar win nevar forget.
srsly just no, please stop. go back to 4chan and stay there.
Neromise, instead of 200 carriers, how about adding some heavy cruisers and a few subjugators next time?
Sounds like if you had some kind of anti-medium ships, you had not lost that game.
Remember BOTH bombers and fighters do relatively poor damage to light frigates, especially Vasari ones with rapid repair....
you know I told him the same thing and he refuses to listen.
@wnmnkh:
You reminded me I have to make a thread to teach people how to use carriers to pulverize your enemy into the ground. Its gonna be epic cause i'm finally gonna release the secret of illums that is better than broadsiding.
yes you heard me Im gonna reveal how to do the Illum roll.
On that remark, I find the against the AI (which spams virtually nothing but LF) it's often better not to kite carriers at all, but rather just suck up the losses while microing LRF's and caps to take out the LF's as quickly as possible. I find that typically you'll lose a few carriers, but the LRF's will deal with the LF's before they take out everything. How would this situation differ in a player vs player scenario?
I'd be interested in reading that!
i'd luv to see 118 drone hosts ... (2360 supply + 150 supply = 2510 supply ... how did you do that? ^^')
anyway ... 118 carrier means you have 118 bomber squads and 236 fighter squads, witch means you can say bye bye to the long range frigs in no time, and the bomber squads means the 3 caps go down same way, 15 flaks? goes down as fast as lrm whenyou have so mucj fightr squads, and light frigates? by the time they kill 5 carriers they're all dead long.
excuse me but if you face me with this carrier fleet, and with the fleet you have ... i don't even have to micro to win
(no idea About the fleet supply but was playing seven deadly sins on hamachi ask neromise about it)
lol I won because he was only targeting my caps at first. I used the Skirmishers abilititeis to drain as much antimater as possible from the carriers.
When I jumped into the grave well I had my fleet all grouped up and mad sure to use hold position so they didn't run to engage anything. using my own carriers and flak to thin down the hoard of fighters and bombers. The skintara capship carrier and overseers made sure my fleet survived long enough to win the battle but I still lost all my capships.
This guy made the ultimate mistake by running his Fleet of carriers around the grave well in a bunch of clumps in opposite directions of each other so I could kill them easier.
He didn't focus fire period he just let his bombers and fighters do what they wanted.
it was easy once I had weaken the fighters and bomers to the point where 10 carriers had enought fighters to maintain air superiority.
I was telling this story to prove that most Carrier spammers don't know a lick of strategy.
........
impossible, simply not right ^^'
even without micro how can you loose that battle ... no serriously i don't believe a word, maybe because it was 7 deadly that it worked but i assure you its not possible on 1.13
One well placed jam weapons would pretty much make a whole lot of those SC worthless for 30 seconds wouldn't it? Coupled together with charged missles from the flak..... I could see how alot of strike craft could be having a very bad day considering how weak each Advent SC is individually.
See even they say its true. There is no way you could have beaten me. You had to have cheated some how. 118 carriers is impossible. YOU CHEATER!
BTW Kosutra cannon does Damage and Disable strike craft you LIAR!!!!!
There is no cheat in SOASE, as far as I know.
And seriously, you need to listen to other people's saying.
srsly why do i even bother sometimes.
while were on the subject Neromise how did you get 118 drone host and 3 capships since KL3MZ says that is impossible. I Myself have checked drone host take up 20 fleet supply and the limit in the game is 2000
The Advent something cap has the level 6 ability to permanently steal frigates, above and beyond the unit cap.
Maybe the limit is much higher in Deadly sins?
2000 is limit? larger fleet?
Nice spiralblitz, I am interested in your opinion how do you coutner someone spamming massive amounts of disciples against you?
Well, obviously if the enemy is going heavy on LF, you should go heavier on LRF. Aside from that, I'm just not sure how it would pan out and I'm interested in this case. My experience with the AI is that LRF's with capital ship support eat those LF's alive, but the AI is really stupid, so it really doesn't count.
the answer is cap ships. a fleet of lights and flaks is purely defensive, you won't have enough fleet supply left over to push the assault on your enemy. you really won't make a dent in his cap ships, structures, or cruisers without your own fleet of heavy cruisers, lrfs, or bombers. the goal shouldn't just be to defend against someone attacking with carriers. sure, that can be done with lights and flaks. the goal should be to immunize your fleet against squadrons so you can succesfully attack even against an enemy who defends/counter-attacks with massed carriers.
i'm pretty sure that 2 Kol's with level 3 flak burst can destroy any number of squadrons within range every time they double burst.
a dunov with magnetize hull will murderize carriers as well if you can get within range. the kiting thing becomes an issue here, i realize that.
a kortul with jam weapons can totally turn the tides and let you wipe out a very large strike-craft force with a relatively small number of junsurak sentinels and your own fighter squads.
a skiranta carrier with repair cloud and microphasing guarantees air superiority within its radius. again, its a multiplier allowing a relatively small number of your own fighter squadrons to take out much larger number numbers of enemy squadrons.
a halcyon with level 3 TK push will totally dominate any number of squadrons. similar effect to flak burst on a kol, the entire zone within range of the TK push around the halcyon is basically clear space and you won't be seriously threatened by squadrons within it.
so yeah, build some more caps. you're not gonna be able to fend off massed carrier squads with just your 1 free cap. it takes 2 or 3 minimum, levelled up to level 3 minimum (level 5 is best). if ever there was a strong case for multiple cap ships in a fleet its this one. the caps provide the best defense against squadrons without eating up a huge amount of your fleet logistics to do so. judge for yourself, what do you think provides better performance: 1 Halcyon with level 3 TK Push or 6 Disciples + 6 Defense Vessels? I know what I'd choose.
I believe someone has been reading my posts.
This is a pretty good read.
After reading it, I think the problem lies with the fact it needs a lot of micro. The more causal gamer would rather not deal with the mirco. I have often heard the devs say something to the effect of the game trys to limit mirco.
The game has the option to turn of and on pirates, change built speed, research speed...... perhaps they could add an option for "strong" carriers and weaker carriers, to allow for people who perfer less micro to play people with less micro?
I should not I only play the ai and on lan. (being that I don't have the time for a online match.)
I was playing a game (lan). I was vasari and he was Tec. (couple of ai around as well). I needed to start pushing back the tec or he would do it to me. I jumped in with my space egg fleet. Circled the grav well to a safe spot and started building my star base. I was going to use it along with the fleet to take down his star base and anything else. (I allowed him to lvl it up to much). I did not really need the asteriod but the star base needed to go.
He jumped in a rather large fleet of carriers and capitals carriers and repair cruiesers, two heavies and three lrms. (around the time I got the star base up and running with lvl one weapons upgrade). My fleet was mixed but lacked the means to turn a fleet as large as his. As his fleet was jumping in I jumped in my combat fleet from my grav well. It had a krotal, multiple flak and carriers, lfs and hcs plus a few support. He still outnumbed me by a good amount.
I microd the jam all weapons and kept my flak near my cap and the caps escort. Let the fighters take car of bombers while my bombers where attacking the star base (still needed to get rid of it)
Sent a a couple of flak with some lfs and hc after the carriers. Seeing as his SC could not do anything he ended up fleeing.
Other then his carriers he had to capital carriers and a couple of the hoskias and what not.
After seeing the buff with flak for the current entrentment, and the mixed fleet worked better then I expected. He out numbered me ship an sc wise but his sc could not do anything while the cap was around, and with out the other ships to kill the cap he lost the battle.
We saved the game and will contiue on another day.
edit
I did forget to add.
Laslty I had two of those mine layers and had him lay some mines near by. Idea was to keep the attack ships from flanking, but he did not bring enoght to make it worth it.
I also added what happend before the battle.
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