My friend and I play almost entirely 2v2s online and we have lost a majority of our recent games within minutes due to a specific strategy. I play as TEC, he plays as Advent. Every single game we play against any Vasari player are attacked by two Vasari capital ships (carriers) that overwhelm and totally annihilate us. That OR two of them team up on one of us. We need strategic help badly, anything will help, we just want to be able to counter it and beat it. This happens almost every game, always the same thing, a rushing vasari player with two carrier capital ships destroy us and put starbases everywhere.
first off, tell your friend to stop with Advent
they don't stand a chance against Vasari much anymore
second, armor, armor, and more armour, Vasari's secret weapon is phase missiles with walks all over shields but they are still halted by armor, which TEC has in spades
third fighters and flak are your friends, true flak is not as effective against bombers as fighters but they still can hurt them so feel free to invest heavily
congrats. you preety much found the broken unit in the game atm... vasari carrier caps.
however, if you know whats your up against, ya. Carrier caps of your own can be effective, along with flack.
an akkan+targeting uplink+flack is amazing vs strike craft, and to a smaller extent, LRMs.
hoshikos are your friends. always. Vasari players will never have the counter to these, and yet, they will focus fire on them. The effective hp of a tier 3 upgraded hoshiko vs stardard vasari stuff is over 5000+ repairbots... and then of course you want carriers of your own, either fighters to counter his bombers, or bombers of your own to start going on offence. TEC carriers in their culture are REDICULOUS at being able to replace strike craft compared to the other races.
Advent can beat Vasari, but it's going to be extremely difficult. Basically you gotta flak spam and prey on the fact that Vasari have weak light frigates. Honestly, this is an immensely challenging matchup now and I don't recommend it even for seasoned players.
Your two options are flak spam and LRM spam. Basically this comes down to using flaks to kill the bombers, or using LRM's to bring down the Skirantras. Both have their challenges and counters. As has been mentioned, hoshikos are your friend and a TEC player who isn't using hoshikos is just being silly.
Scramble Bombers needs a downgrade. Two Skirantra can field so many bombers + they can regen in a pinch. Plus good players know how to kite them well. They are broken as Pbhead already stated. Period. (Even though I will admit to abusing them as a VAsari myself).
My issue when I watch some replays is some people have it down to a science to get two Skirantras online. They skip almost everything else just to get that 2nd Skirantra up and ready. While fighters + flak can counter the bomber spam, the Skirantra show up so darn early. As TEC are you suppose to forego econ entirely at start just to get hoshikos and some percherons out the door? Aren't most people who play Advent forced to go for disciple rush and then carriers (if they survive)?
I hear people in MP are going TEC to counter the Skirantra rush, what timetable and protocol are they using? Any replays available? I'd like to study them.
Edit:
@Pbhead: So as a Vasari player are you recommending that (unless I have subverters) I not target the Hoshikos?
Well, yes and no. It depends on your goals. If you are up against nothing but a fleet of heavy armor (hohos, flack, carriers) definatly target the hoshikos first. so they stop repairing things as soon as possible. You see, if everything have heavy armor, you have the exact same modifier vs everything.... e.g. poor.
Now, if you want to, say, sink the capital ship (which is what EVERYONE wants to do.) and your enemy has, say, 10 hoshikos... if you target the hohos first, thats a lot of tank you have to eat though before that capital ship loses its 20hull/sec.
that 20 hull/sec is about (ish, depending on cap ship level and armor) 6 assailants worth of damage. In other words, If you lose more than 6 assailants in the time it takes you to kill the hoshikos, then you have LOST dps on that capital ship than if you ignored the hohos and just ffed the capital ship.
it gets even trickier with say, lrm+hohos. ya see, if you target the hohos, the reduction in damage of the tec player is negligible, while his lrms can attack your lrms without losing numbers. you see, hohos are very beefy compared to a javillis, i mean, come on, a hoho has 3/4 the hp of a HC, for 2/5ths the fleet supply. (mind you, much more than 2/5ths the cost!! 56% using 4.5 rule), and your assailants have the same modifier vs hohos as heavy cruisers.
SO, lets assume the tec has tier 2 upgrades. for every hoho you kill, (not including repairs here) you could have killed...
and this is a little on the low side due to shield mitigation/time changes... but 2.1 lrms.
now, if you kill 1 hoshiko instead of 2.1 lrms, you have saved the tec player 500ish credit equivlants (using 4.5 rule)
now, remember these numbers are on the low side. hoshikos are much better at repairing themselves than LRMS, so that skews things further towards the tec player, AND, that shield mitigation thing... it takes a significant portion ofthe javillis's hp to reach max mitigation, during which time you will be doing more damage.
and if you can do enough DPV to pop a LRM, (which is not hard), well, repairing doesnt do much then, does it.
so, wow, ya, thats intresting. as odd as it seems, youll hurt the tec player more by killing javillis than the hoshikos...
SO, yes, I am saying dont target the hoskikos. (that just feels so weird, to say that, it kinda goes against everything doesnt it... i feel like this should be tested somehow.)
Hmm thanks for the analysis. I guess I always gravitated to killing the LRM before the Hoshikos since like you said you are taking dps from the enemy and the hoshikos don't repair lrm well. I just never knew why I just found the battles went better lol. But if there are carriers and Kodiaks I always felt I had to do something about the Hoshikos or I take too long to shred his Kodiaks or Percherons which in turn rape my LRM.
I will reconsider the hoshiko + cap scenario. I guess it makes sense to focus fire the cap to the exclusion of the hoshikos. Otherwise like you said you stand to lose dps against the cap. I had often taken to using my bombers on the cap while the LRM spams the hoshikos and the Enforcers get in close and smack the LRM silly, but probably I need to rethink that now. Thanks, it isn't obvious at first glance, at least to me. The first inclination is always to kill the 'healer' lol.
Guys, skirantras should NOT be nerfed))) Or I would not win al MP with 16 Skiranras and ten dozen Lasurak)
I play advent exclusively myself. It is possible to beat them still. It is a lot harder for the non vasari than it is for vasari though. If you are on the front and expected to fight, you must build at least 1 carrier cap yourself. LRM spam is usually the way to go with this. Carriers with bombers(not fighters despite the fact that you will see mostly bombers and lrf from them, what fighters you can muster will not clear the skies well enough) to snipe caps. Flak is not adviseable for me at least except for a handful to remove what fighters they end up building for your lrf spam. Flak does shit against bombers and ok in masses against kanrak assailants. That still leaves the caps basically unharmed(flak also does crappy against caps) and free to level up for more bombers and heals for those bombers. If you can, the main goal should be to kill the cap. If you don't think you will be able to manage it before they can escape(they are next to repair or the grav well edge with enough health to survive to jump) focus on the assailants. They can and will snipe your caps thanks to the bomber/kanrak phase missle spam with relative ease so be prepared to jump out to repair yourself. This means staying at the edge of the well pointed in the direction of the jump(yes they will kill your cap that quick). It isn't just skirantra spam that makes vasari OP. It was just the straw that broke the camel's back. You better get used to fighting vasari though because thats what most of whats left of ICO plays and from the lack of a patch in months it is likely the devs have given up on sins and moved on.
[_]-Greyfox
As Advent, what if you do this? If you know you have a Vasari opponent make your first cap a Halcyon with fighters and Telekinetic Push. Then immediately build two military labs, research carriers, and make a couple carriers with fighters. The Telekinetic Push will damage the bombers some and the fighters will help clean them up. I suppose you could also make a few flaks. If the Vasari guy makes more than two Skinatras, it will be more expensive for him to make the third Skinatra than it will be for you to make more carriers with fighters. Also, research the Level 1 hull upgrade; it's cheap. You can also research the first two levels of the increased damage for fighters.
I do think this can be countered if you anticipate it and plan properly.
The problem with that is it takes at least 3 level 1 telepush to kill off a vasari squad(assuming he doesnt repair the SC, scramble more, or rebuild like they are doing constantly due to AM independance). Granted that is not going to be the only damage they receive if you have flak or fighters but still telepush early on is only slowing the bomber dps down by pushing away and a small amount of damage that is pretty quickly fixed. Building carriers with fighters to go along with your halcyon sounds like a reasonable thing but there are a few reasons that it is not effective. First off is the fact that as mentioned before, cap squads are AM independant. Whatever squads he is building will keep on building with the exception of squads coming from scramble. Unless you have more fighters than he has squads, the bombers are still going to be damaging. 2nd is the fact that carrier cruisers and caps are both killed well by bombers and assailants. He can just kill off that stuff before the fighters significantly thin them out. 3rd is the carrier cruisers are AM dependant and a handful of flak can nullify any built squads pretty quickly running it eventually out of AM and leaving you with an expensive meat shield. The vasari can and WILL build flak the minute fighters show up in any meaningful amount since that is the greatest threat to his bomber and assailant spam. He does not even have to equal the resources for flak you put into carriers to eliminate them. 6-10 flak will cover twice that number in fighter squads before they can do much damage to bombers or assailants. As I mentioned, if you build carriers they should have bombers in them and just hope that you can snipe a cap with them. Hull is of course nice because of the phase missles and because of strike craft using it for health but its not gonna make a huge difference in the course of things. Just my opinion whatever its worth
both bombers and assailants have rather bad modifiers vs carrier cruisers. equal fleet supplies of carrier cruisers and LRMS left in a gravity well together, the carrier cruisers will win.
@Greyfox2:
So are you suggesting to basically skip disciples (i.e. no rush then) and flak and focus on carriers (with bombers) and illuminators? Sadly I find the punch of illuminators quite lacking early on. What proportion of carriers to illuminators are we talking to go alongside your Halcyon?
It doesn't matter what kind of modifiers they have. There will be enough of both around to kill it quickly and waste the large amount of resources and time that drone hosts take to be a threat. Jumping carrier cruisers in and out of the well or repair is less effective due to the antimatter requirements for the squads. We aren't just talking about 1 fleet of carrier cruisers alone versus 1 fleet of lrf alone either. We are talking about skirantra being there too and possibly flak once the vasari sees the cap cruisers. If you target the assailants with fighters, the bombers are left unfettered and will beg for your caps to die. If you target the bombers, you will thin them out slightly but they will be quickly rebuilt while your fighters will be killed off by whatever fighter squads or flak he chooses to build and the AM on your cap cruisers run dry. Once flak shows up, it forces a switch to bombers just to preserve any amount of SC dps. Ever tried switching from fighters to bombers on carrier cruisers? It is pretty painful. You have likely ran your AM out jumping to the fight and regenerating battle losses and plus you have the build rate penalty for the combatted grav well.
Actually this is not what I suggested. Disciples are ok so long as there are no assailants(read never). Carriers are ok with bombers. The bombers have to be in sufficient numbers to assure a kill before the cap jumps the well which is difficult to do in an early 5v5 rush. You should definitely have more illums than carriers. Illums suck at killing single targets but side beams can be doing damage to assailants or the cap. Killing his cap won't do you much good unless you whittle away at the assailant spam as well. Unfortunately for you, killing his assailants is less meaningful for the benefit of your cap because of the skewed paltry experience you get from killing assailants(20 exp) as the vasari gets from killing any other race but it has to be done.
I suppose thats enough talking more players into playing vasari for now as sad as that would be. They are an easy win race. They have so many advantages the entire game nowadays. Good players from other races can give them a fight but its still an uphill battle for the nonvasari.
What about micro manage? If you go with carriers, and then to illums, keep the strike craft close to the battleball. Any strike craft coming close will get sniped at by your fighters, and if they bring their flak in, the illums will kill them quick with mulit beams. A swarm of fighter/bomber set to stand ground can get deadly quick!
There is no killing flak quick with any lrf unless there is an overwhelming number on the lrf side. Flak sorta counters lrf anyways so wading flak in would not be a bad idea for the flak heavy player. A proper battle ball(using repulse) would prevent flak from getting close enough anyways. Stationary strike craft are good when what you are fighting comes into range regularly(IE when fleets are slugging it out or defense of SB or any other stationary unit against bombers). There are a few problems with a battle ball in these situations. First off is teh assailant spam which goes along with the skirantra. Assailants outrange push and they outrange illuminators. A battle ball mostly staves off HC from doing their job. LRF have long been the bane of a battle ball. Also with guardians, they have big shields but practically no hull. This is ideal for phase missles to kill since their whole benefit is to skip shields and vasari have phase missles on practically everything(including assailants, fighters, and bombers). Even with repulse and a battle ball, it is still likely they can pop your cap before you can neutralize the bombers and lrf. Repulse can buy retreat time certainly and actually enable you to kill a cap by keeping it from running if you have the foresight to position the guardian in front of any avenue of retreat. As to stationary strike craft, it is situationally useful but far from a real solution to this problem.
As a Vasari player I love being able to get my flak into the mix of things. They are amazing at absorbing damage.
@Greyfox2;
Any tips as an Advent player how to position illums in the battle ball to best exploit side beams? Is there a range / orientation requirement? The reason I ask is if I am getting forward beams only their dps is underwhelming until it is already too late in the game I find.
Since as you said disciples are raped by assailants, do you still rush some disciples at the start and then scale back when you see assailants or do you mostly hold off entirely till you have scouted thoroughly (in which case what do you do?). I am curious since I am still befuddled somewhat by the opening phase for an Advent player. Vasari seems much more straightforward.
I build 7 or 8 disciples at the start to help with militia clearing. To get all the side beams firing, the illums have to be close range and as close to the middle of the enemy as possible. You do not have to get directly into their formation. A little bit away will do. Sometimes it is advantageous to be right in the middle though depending on the situation. Sometimes its even acceptable to run illums back and forth through the enemy formation to take advantage of side beams and the fact that turn rates are so slow that illums can fire the majority of the time but less so for other races due to theirs being all front.
Hmmm thansk for the tip Greyfox2. I think I have been using my illuminators wrong (i.e. long range fire) meaning I am not getting the benefit of the side cannons.
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