for tec and advent, flaks come before Long range ships.

bingo.

just try a mixed force with flaks, you will be surprised.

Assailants are LRM equivalents. They probably lasted longer because Illus didn't target them; ships generally try to target enemies that take the most damage from their weapons. Anticapital weapons do only 75% damage against light armour.

Anyways, against just Illuminators you would have done fine. It was the Progenitor / Guardian shield bubble that you had problems dealing with. I suggested a couple of Subverters earlier because they would have made the two Progenitors easier to kill with shield disruption thingamajig (not for shutting down Illus like someone said earlier.)

Interference for Skirmishers might have helped with Guardians, but you didn't have that researched.

The Illuminator has Light Armor, not Capital. That chart is off (though only on that). It does have anti-capital damage (which reduces it's damage against other LRMs, and lacks the heavy damage bonus of other LRMs against medium targets).

well.. i don't really know which chart to believe in.. the 3 i just checked displayed 3 different lines for the illuminators. doh.

Still i do feel that there is something odd about them. Maybe it is just the fact that their capitals have supporting abilities you can barely break without using anitmatter draining or special ability disabling ships yourself.. but fact stays:

a single mothership with 30-40 illuminators is a force you dont want to confront head-on. Not with a similar sized fleet that is.

i think there would really be no problem with the illuminators, if they would have the same anti-med damage as all the other LRMs. Given their armor is really just light.

I simply dont see a reason why the illuminators have the capital damage. Sure they are high on the tech tree.. lvl3 i think, but their price does not reflect that at all.. so once you do the initial investment to research them, you can just pump them out like any other LRM out there.


Yeah, if you have time to maneuver and if the enemy has not anti-fighter ships mixed with his fleet. A handful of those tears your dozens of bomber/fighter squads to shreds. Then there you are without a 'counter' again.

And as for not fighting.. if they are knocking on your colonies door, then you hardly have a choice.. its not like there is much headspace in a medium galaxy to get more than 2 jumps of warning before a fleet like this strikes at you. So you hardly got enough space to maneuver and kite them, not to mention the fact, that you can't afford the luxury to lose colonies permanently if its 1/10, or 1/12 of the total colonizable planets in the galaxy.

I'm not saying they are unbeatable, im merely saying, that comparing a fleet of 40 human LRMs with 1-2 caps to a similar fleet of the advent, the advent are a much more fearsome opponent to fight against.

Maybe it is merely me picking on the advent as they were the ones causing me the most trouble until now.. maybe it is just that i havent seen really goot tec players yet, while i have met some decent advent ones.. still.. those are my impressions.

Bottomline:
You can't just ignore the circumstances when you suggest a counter or tactic.

By having capital damage, they lack the +50% damage to medium armor anyways (and have a 75% damage to light, instead of 100%). They're just better against heavy targets than other LRMs. Changing them to Anti-Medium without adjusting their damage output would probably be more of a buff than a nerf.

As for the chance to hit comment, nothing beyond Flak, Fighter/Bombers, and specific capital abilities can actually target strikecraft.

Probably old beta stuff they tried and didn't bother to remove when they changed it.

So you are essentially saying, that if someone is presenting a problem by taking a one sided approach to it, then you are also allowed to make half-a$$ed attempts at providing a solution?

You think that "OMFG! Look at all those Illums *despairs* I can't beat them *cries* My Ships! My Ships! wheredidtheygo??? *surrenders*" is lame?

Well then. I think that: "OMFG! Noob, there is nothing wrong with them illums!" is just as lame, if not even lamer.

While i do not agree with people who just cry about stuff not going their way and always reserve the possibility that i might be wrong, i also expect people to not just give blanket answers for specific scenarios as it is not only counter productive, but outright bordering trolling in which they are knowingly trying to degrade a topic by making fun of the issues presented in it.

Can we stick to the topic then without the useless posing and general smarta$$ remarks please?

Sarcasm <> Humor m8.


I would like to stress: "jest or mock a person situation or thing" + "intended to insult or wound"

How could you possibly know how I intended my statement?

Did I try to make fun of some situation or another? Yes.
Did I do it to insult, mock or whatever anyone? No.

If you can't take a joke please, don't communicate. Fun eventually happens.



So, you didn't like my opinions about carriers or not fighting at all. Well, what about the following:
a. Don't present a Target. Mainly, build stuff that capital damage isn't good against and thats good vs LRM's (mainly other LRM's and Scouts (Surprise!)).
b. Don't let the enemy build up such a fleet. I know, I know ... we all want big fleets and bigger battles, but honestly both the RTS genre as well as the 4X genre basically teach that battles are won before the first shot is fired. Put in a different way: if you let the enemy advance to a point where he can field big numbers of units you did something wrong. This is mainly true on smaller maps. See c. for Large Maps.
c. Yeah, "not fighting" again. If the Map is big enough for a long build-up phase, simply go away. Split your fleet, harass his planets ... something like that. Works for me ...

It sounds to me that you sadly had jumped in at the wrong time. THe moment you saw that fleet you should have retreated and got your bearings.

Now depending on the situation you should have time to pump a few extra ships and a single reserach, sounds like you had most of them though...

store up your Anti Matter and I would produce more Enforcers (kodiak equivelent)

Then jump in and take out that mothership and the iconus guardians first. After that, you should be able to take down the Illums, though it will still be at a heavy loss.

I think you had a decent fleet, you just stumbled into the wrong place at the wrong time, and didn't rectify it by getting the hell out of dodge.

But don't sweat it, knowing when to retreat is one of the hardest skills to learn in this game.