Ok, with so many people moaning and complaining about carriers (and even Agent of Karma's lame-o test https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/340117), I need to point out that there are great ways to counter carriers. Here they are:
1) USE CAPITAL SHIPS AND THEIR AWESOME ABILITIES. Capital ships are cheap, take very little fleet supply, can be retreated before dieing, and can counter 100's of fleet supply while only costing 50 fleet supply.
2) FLAK
3) BUILD PHASE JUMP INHIBITORS (PJI). Come on people, think up. If your opponent jumps in and out, do the research, spend a few hundred on a PJI and you're ok. When coupled with ION bolt or grav bomb, this combo is deadly: I call it the meat grinder. In all seriousness people, man up, grow some balls, and think strategy here.
4) YOU NEED TO BUILD FIGHTERS. If the opponent has 20 fighters and you have zero, you are going to lose. Build a few fighters just so the opponent can't just fly around without a challenge. Countering LRFs sometimes requires LRFs, and countering carriers sometimes requires carriers. Use your brain.
Ok, so now that the SC are dead, the carrier can start rebuilding it's SC. BUT WAIT! Carriers need antimatter (AM) to build SC and it takes time. Every jump the player makes costs 100 AM and if you are smart, your light frigates (LFs) will have the AM counter abilites teched. If you see a player continually jumping his carriers around, just laugh at him and follow him with the LFs. LFs counter carriers like no-ones business. Also, if you are going against a pure carrier spammer, DO NOT build long range frigates (LRFs). LRFs suck against carriers; DO NOT have them unless your opponent has LFs.
So there you go. Stop complaining everyone, and learn to use cap ships and/or counters.
BTW, I was the original guy that said carriers would be spammed in v1.1, so you can see how time can change things. https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/317041
This is where it might be more advantageous to have flak now and let them assist fighters.It might help the caps getting raped by giant hordes of fighters now if there is an anti-sc cap in the area as well.
No, you misunderstand. My friend built one fleet, and I built another. Everything equal fleet points, just changing composition. We had 18 different fleet compositions (for each stage) and ran all 18 against all other 17, and the one that won the most often was the one with the (2nd) most carriers.
Also, my percentages were in FP, not in number of ships.
Also, if that is your logic, then why wouldn't the AI build the carrier counter if I had 60% carriers?
Bottom line here carriers are too strong. i would much rather have lrm spams than carrier sapma because all this carrier upgrade has done is cause fighting. this isnt ploitics this is a game. somon guys settle down. carriers need to be nerfed because none enjoys the game anymore.
srry double post
Good. I always thought the PJI was underused and underloved.
Quoting Howdoiduthat: "Advent and TEC SC are especially suceptible to flak frigates. With proper positioning, they will quickly wither the opponent."
Could you become a little more precise on the "propper positioning"? Just tried to counter massive strikeforce with a moderate amount of Garda-Flakfrigades but with not much success...
Yo
You have to put the Flak near where the strikecraft are attacking.... and a massive group of strikecraft will not be stopped by a moderate amount of Flak. You have to make more Flaks than the enemy has carriers -- that will whittle down the enemy strikecraft. Of course, the carriers will just run away and rebuild, but that is another issue....
Can we just Get LFs to have 175% vs Heavy Armour.
Its so simple. Do a small balance change like this. See how it goes in games. Its going to be a bit easier for LFs to kill carriers (which is the problem) , but the strikecraft are still the same.
LF's chew carriers up right now!!! I don't understand why people think they don't! Just like LRF chew up LF! The only people who I see having a problem with this are the ones who don't bring enough LF to the fight...you have to have more LF than carriers because LF are cheap and carriers are expensive.
You just pointed out yourself why LFs need to be buffed, and you don't realize it.
"Just like LRF chew up LF!" See, LFs need to kill carriers as fast as LRFs kill LFs and in current they are not fast enough.
And come on, no want wants to build one of weakest units in a large amount because of a single kind of unit that they can counter.
It seems like most people here are just talking about how to counter the strikecraft, while ignoring the fact that you still must deal with the carriers.
Sure Phase Jump Inhibitors are great for hampering any retreating fleet...but carriers have great enough armor/health/shields for only a few to die before the whole fleet finally leaves the will.
I'd agree that the anti-SC capitals (like the Kol) are great for fighter destroying...but seeing as the carriers can just hang out at the edge of the well and dance around while you try to send your slow ships over (assuming you're not using carriers to counter carriers), while rebuilding their SC for free, all you've managed to do is force the other player to wait ~1 min to recommence his SC attack. And if they're supported by a few other ships for LF/Flak counter...well, you'll have a problem.
PJI's unfortunately can't be built on un-allied planets...so all the player has to do is wait on edges of the well, micro his ships around a bit, then send them to the next well and repeat...while the capital ships run out of antimatter and flak can't kill large amounts of SC for their life. The opposing player is sure to take a few losses, at the expense of some strikecraft for the carrier fleet commander.
I personally like of giving capital ships minimal flak protection (like the power of 2 flak ships) and dropping the durability of carriers, so that if you actually managed to get to the carriers that are dancing or phase jumping away too slowly, they can be appropriately punished instead of one or two dieing at most.
I think carriers as a whole are right around where they need to be. However, I think a small increase in flak power agaist fighters (only fighters, bombers are fine) and a small decrease in a fighters damage modifier agaist armor greater then the lrm (medium) would be a good thing. The idea is not to make the carrier weaker, but it makes the fighter less effective agaist larger ships and flak.
My problem is not agaist the carrier or the the fighter, but the fact the bomber is overlooked because the fighter works so well (still need the numbers game but you get the idea).
No, I didn't point out why they need to be buffed, you are just reading into it what you want. LRF kill LF kill Carriers kill LRF.
I kill the enemy LRF with my carriers so my LF can kill the enemy carriers. Done it many a time. I'm not kidding, LF's already chew carriers up pretty effectively. If you think LF are too weak to build, don't build any.
BTW, I'm on the "Carriers are a wee bit Overpowered" bandwagon.
I think I take back what I said. I saw something in the one of the other threads about slowing carriers down and upping the damage the lf will do agaist carriers. The lf is pretty easy to pop so that may be a good thing. Just one thing is needed not to many,
I have been playing beta 3 where they have decreased sc build time to 75% when enemy present and increased flak range 20% and I like it so far.Nothing else needs to be done to carriers or lf except reduce it to 60% build times and increase lf damage to other armor types. No damage increase to carriers is neccesary now.They are still a bit relentless but at ~60% I think they would be perfect.You can checkout my replay where I spammed many carriers(22 hosts by end of game) and flak did pretty well against them considering it was basically all he built to counter them.They defended his sb and i had to dock them a few times to let them rebuild. If you watch towards the end you can see even at 75% there was a continous stream of freshly built sc pooring out of my fleet and thats why i say go to 60%.
I just hope the carrier is not nerfed.
I used to play a game for the xbox called chromehounds. There was a built called the double that was consider overpowered (just like the carrier). Any skilled player knew how to kill if off, it was easy enought to counter. The most effective counters where the sniper and the close range cannon build. The 2nd needed some one that was pretty skilled since you had to get close to kill it.
However, it was pretty easy to use and was hard to counter (new players and the ones that did not play a lot). Plus you always had to beleive some one would bring them and need something in it to counter. I mixed team could win agaist team spamming doubles. However, even a less skilled person could win easily with it.
The devs ended up doing 5 things to nerf it. (the nerf also screwed up other parts of the game). Like I said a skilled mixed team could beat it but work was needed to do it. To me and most skilled players felt the game was balanced. A reduction on health was all that "needed" to be done. Since the cannon vs double, cannon was going to win anyway to the reduction did little to nothing to hurt the skilled player.
Back to sins. Small changes is all you need. The skilled player already knows how to take down carriers. Keep the carrier is a very effective build. Just change like one thing, but keep it small. Like slighlty stronger LF attack, or slightly slower speed or something. Just please don't nerf them. The game is in the best balanced state it has ever been in.
Agreed. Just a small buff to LFs is all thats needed. I am more for a DPS increase than a damage bonus increase.
It seems like this issue breaks down very simply:
It's very easy to spam carriers.
It's very hard to counter spammed carriers.
This is the essence of a balance issue.
No, the true essence is that it requires 2 to 3 ship types to counter carriers, and people are still locked in the LRF spamming meme because of balance issues prior to v1.1, so they don't know how to build more than 1 ship type. Carriers are abused now because most people still build LRFs, and carriers counter LRFs. In order to counter carriers, you need carriers of your own for fighter cover, flak, and LFs. Also, a cap with anti-SC is useful.
On another note: after beta 3, I think that bombers have actually become more useful. For carrier spamming to work against a moderate fleet with flak support, you now need to succeed fast in crippling his capitals and structures. With the build rate decrease, you won't get a second chance.
In fact, I experimented with an all-bomber SC force against the AI (with a good amount of flak support). It actually did better than an all-fighter one: The bombers were essentially behaving like kamikaze- destroying as much as possible before fighters and flak bring them down. Neither attack managed to win the field, but the bombers eventually did more damage before I had to retreat my empty carriers- and a more balanced task force I had prepared met less resistance than on the previous spot.
So, I tend to think that, not only SC have not become useless since the 'nerf', but they now allow for more versatile tactics- but only playing online will tell for sure.
I feel any LF buff should be some sort of research at tier 4-5. Maybe make the current researchable abilities work better on carriers? Cause if you make light frigates super effective vs Carriers out of the gates with no research needed, then the carriers will never get used sicne they require research.
Good point Astax. Maybe the AM ability should become a Lvl 3 one to make LF more effective vs carriers as you can get it a little sooner, thereby encouraging people to field more LF???
Well issue with their abilities now is that they don't work so well on carriers, even the most effective one which is the antimatter drain of the disciple really doesnt work so great cause the carriers have lot of AM. The itnerference one from Vasari does absolutely nothing. If they worked and worked well then that would be a better buff than a simple damage icnrease. If they could prevent SC from being built or cause damage when strikecraft is built/deployed that might do the trick.
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