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
I will play anyone without making carriers.
You make only carriers. I will not make a single carrier.
I bet I will win every time. Why?
LF. It only takes 2 LF to counter 1 carrier.
I spam carriers at start cause most early units I see are either lrms or carriers. I hate playing noobs who get LF at start. Forces me to retreat or make lrms to counter. They made the basic units because they didnt know better (some actually know to make some at start) As the game gets going people now have either carriers and LF or carriers and LRMS to counter the other guys LF. Game gets more complicated. So carrier spamming = lose.
BTW flak will counter fighters. Cykur and I tested it. Takes awhile until the carriers has no more antimatter, but flak is a slow counter to fighters. I rather make LF cause flak takes forever to take out carriers and I rather destroy the carrier with LF then the fighters
I don't mind carriers.. its sometimes annoying when people spam, but that goes for any ship. Those TEC scoutships with mines are brutal for a quick end to a good defence of regen bays.
Just need to poke back, carriers are slow, hit from behind and he'll pull as they are expensive and probably doesn't have additional fleet to defend.
While I like that challenge, I would maintain you need some SC, whether it be from your caps is all up to you.
I was just browsin the forums a bit and decided to read a few of the overpowered carrier threads and I got to say its a bit out of control. Suggestions like sc costing resources to replace,range limits on sc,fuel and ammo limits and major hull and shield point decreases would be horrible imo. I mean alot of suggestions would make them useless. While I think they are op its only by a little. I also think flak is really useless and this fix to both of these was reducing build rates when enemy is present.Anyway the game is so close to being balanced and only needs minor tweaks. I can see why you made these threads with these crazy suggestions floating around and glad you did
No. You will win everytime because you are a tier 1 player going up against tier 3, 4, and 5 players. I bet you could win building only scouts. No tier 3 plus player ever has any hope of ever defeating a tier 1 player, no matter what units, tactics, or strats are used.
The balancing problem was weighed versus Cost effectiveness versus other units of the same tech. And most Light Carrier spams come early in the game before research on a phase jump inhibitor is completed. Combined with the near instant build rate of SC from earlier versions, Light Carriers were grossly overpowered and have since been reduced to a more balanced state.
Light Carriers are still very powerful in Entrench Beta 3 and are often the prefered mode of destruction for fully upgraded starbases (Which now seem extra powerful from previous versions which is cool, finally they feel right) This is obviously a post by a Light Carrier spammer suggesting "Counters" Without any process of logical thinking involved Here are some holes from previous versions in your counters
*Kol Battleship/Halcyon Carrier counter. 3000 Credits 450Metal 250Crystal and not including the EXTRA research to deploy suffcient numbers. Also you must invest in levels because a level 1 flak burst is going to do not a damn thing, so there's 1250-2750 more credits. THEN if you're actually a light carrier spammer, you're going to have enough bombers to destroy any cap ship in one pass, rendering them utterly worthless.
*Flak Frigates. Pretty useless. More for mopping up what the Kol hasn't killed. The Range increase in version B3 was a good boost, though by no means the end all solution.
*Phase Jump Inhibitor. Aside from taking quite a while to research (Not including other more important researches like autocannon or beam upgrades) the Phase Jump Inhibitor has about the armor as the average 1lb block of tofu. So during a Light Carrier raid, chances are this will be one of the first things to go (Probably in a quater of one pass)
The biggest problem is Anti Strike craft is too specialized (Relegated to 1 frigate and 1 capital ship ability throughtout each faction. Some Generalzed counters would be nice, at least for every capital ship to have some basic anti-Strike weapons. Particularly for the Supporting Battlecruisers (Akkan/Rapture/Marauder).
Myself, and I think (or hope) everyone isn't asking for a brick wall for strike craft. If you throw 200 Light Carriers into the battle, it should be able to mop the floor with everything of lesser size, but against a similarly sized fleet, it should still be a toss up (Depending on composition and balance/specialization). That's what makes balancing this game so atrociously difficult I think, because unlike shallow RTS games like RA3 where each unit has an end all counter, Sins is about balancing support-damage instead.
About everything that ppl have said thus far:
are we talking about the vanilla soase? (the one on cd not downloaded,if you can even still do that)
or entrenchment?
When you really want these to work, you make at least 2 of them and have 3 repair bays near them. Serious. And that is just to slow the enemy down enough so your fleet can get some kills.
Yes, basically they suck. Even when buffed from when the game first game out (which was UBER-suck).
What are you talking about PJIs rule if you know how to use em. They can effectively keep enemy from roaming your territory as is. But I only build them if enemy is either roaming or gets lvl 6 egg so he doesnt go around eating my planets. If he tries with a PJI all over my epmire i can send a smalll fleet and he will lose his cap.
Umm...no, they don't suck....just 1 stuck in the middle of repair and defenses will cause a huge amount of pain for a small group of raiders, or a running Cap as Astax points out. If you want to stop a whole FLEET, so you can damage it, you need 2-3.
They have their purpose of course. Namely delaying "rush" attacks, Particularly useful on Dead astroids, making the player fight for longer or waste time charging. In terms of a full scale attack or carrier rush, they're utterly useless and a waste of 3 TP's per. I'd like to see these taken into Logistics since after you get so many labs, it's most of the Logicstics is spammed with Trade ports, but I also wish for world peace. Both are about as likely to happen. Again, this was just in regards to Light Carrier spams.
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