There was more than a "second planet". I had gone on a run to bomb all his planets in that star system. Colonizing them would mean I would leave my caps open to getting LRM rushed, I didn't have any colony frigates, I couldn't bring any in because I was bottlenecked, and two fighter defense bays does not an effective anti-LRM strategy make. Do you want to see the replay? I may have it autosaved.

And that's the thing. Even if he broke his fleet into two LRM fleets of 20x a piece and sent them both ways, I'd still fight him to a stalemate on both planets, lose both my flaks, then get the remaining caps and support ships steamrolled as the remaining LRMs clean up. It's much more difficult to counter: I think it was Frogboy that posted on the IGN blog that "A counter strategy should never be more complicated than the original strategy". He also said that "For those people who think building 10 of the same unit and swarming a player’s base in the first 10 minutes of the game is a strategy, Sins of a Solar Empire is going to be a rude awakening." - and it's only a rude awakening because they swarm your base at about the thirty-minute mark instead.

I have so far played two opponents that build nothing but LRMs and encountered many more that use them as a basis of an attack fleet. It's bullshit, to be honest, and turns off anyone who wants to play MP.

Capital ships cost 3000 credits plus research costs for the extra crew slots. You're looking at well over 4000 credits per additional capship. You shouldn't spend resources on a unit like that unless you can reasonably assume it will kill 4000+ credits worth of enemies. Now, as you pointed out, caps are very survivable and will eventually pay for themselves...eventually. 4000 credits worth of LRMs or whatever is going to pay for itself much, much sooner.

Some main points, then...

- The intent appears to be that spamming one ship type early game should not be a viable strategy. Clearly it is a useful approach right now, so some sort of balancing is in order. A ship population limit beyond what's already in place would be a Bad Thing, so that would mean either weakening LRMs in some way, making them harder to produce en masse in early game, or strengthening early game planetary defenses. Some level of spam should still be useful, I would say, but if the developer's intent is indeed clear, it should not allow a player to beat one at a similar level of skill who has been pursuing a different strategy. Besides, for my part I prefer an economic or technological game, and a small map 1v1 game right now only has enough room for early military tech research accompanied by frenzied ship building (far more RTS and less 4X than later game stages). If someone is posting build guides for the early game and claiming he never lost following them, then that early game is certainly not as diverse as the designer might hope.

- The strategies for countering an early ship spam are either too complex or too simple, depending on who you ask. It's too simple if you just have to spam a single counter unit - the selling point of Sins is mixed fleet engagements, and if you're forced to focus on just one unit in order to survive an early assault, you won't be producing a mixed fleet anytime soon. It's too complex if the only other approach you can take involves producing different units and then micromanaging them so they're maneuvered into advantageous positions to counter the LRMs without exposing themselves to excessive fire. It's an early-game dilemma, so there should be counters that do not involve intimate knowledge of aspects of the game that are not well-documented in the manual or the in-game tutorial.

- Capital ships are too weak. They have their own statistic controlling how many of them you can have at once (the same sort of ship type limit most people are hoping will not be imposed for LRMs), yet fleets can easily get by without them. The impression is that the capital ship in Sins should be as important a part of a fleet as they were in either of the World Wars, but instead fleet combat is dominated by frigates and cruisers. Cap ship special abilities are useful, but the investment required to research/train a crew and to actually build a capital ship should indicate that a fleet with fewer capital ships than another would be at a noticeable disadvantage; instead, some simple focus fire on the part of several frigates can suffice to either drive an enemy capital ship off or destroy it. If the initial capital ship were a deterrent to a rush, rather than just fodder for it, that might solve the problem.

I can't say just what would help capital ships (they just seem too prominent in the game design to be allowed to remain so optional - the choice shouldn't be whether to build them, but which types to build). One suggestion I would make on the subject of spam countering, though: Better documentation is a must.

The strategies I've seen for countering spam involve knowledge of weapon vs. armor counters, knowledge of gun emplacements on frigates, and micromanagement of defending fleet positions. I remember nothing in the manual on the the importance of those latter two points, and only passing references to the former. The more recent patch gave us a simple indication of ship counters, which is a good step, but that still leaves out gun positions and the need for manual maneuvering within a gravity well.

I know that the flak ship's damage is divided among four directions, not because of the in-game tutorial or the manual, but because I read about it in tactics discussions on the forums. Without that I wouldn't know that a flak frigate being deployed against ships other than fighters will depend on proper placement to maximize their effectiveness. Because at first glance it looks like the ships are positioning themselves for an assault on an enemy fleet based on their counters, a novice player will assume that they don't need to intervene beyond selecting a target for focus fire.

Yes, to get beyond the early game a novice will need to learn more of the game's mechanics. The information shouldn't be dependent on going to the forums, however, or on dissecting the game files, or from zooming in on combats regularly to squint at just which ship is shooting which way at whom when. This should be basic ship information, immediately available to anyone, if you expect them to use that knowledge when defending themselves in the early game.

Big suggestions for the ship spamming response then:

** Add a tutorial covering topics that are bandied about often on the forums but are probably not well-known to people just starting to play online. Talk about the location and number of gun emplacements on unusual frigates like the flak frigate and the illuminator. Touch briefly on the ability to maneuver a ship behind an enemy with a front-mounted gun to make them more difficult to target. Also mention the idea of ship counters beyond the more obvious flak vs. fighter pairing. Even with the tooltip describing strengths, using flak frigates as counters to LRMs will not jump immediately to many new players' minds.

** Add ship info to a ship's infocard listing the number of its gun emplacements. Something as flashy as an outline of the ship with its gun emplacements highlighted, or as simple as a "Hardpoints: 4" entry that will at least get new players curious enough to ask others about it, and why it's important to know.

You are very wrong there.
People spam LRMs early BECAUSE there is no strategically viable counter to them.
If you add a hard-counter unit to LRMs, LRM spam will no longer be a good tactic as as a counter-spam will quickly kill them dead and lose them the game.
Once spamming mostly a single unit type is no longer viable due to hard-counters, opposing players will do it alot less and instead build more balanced fleets able thus counter-spamming will not be needed.

LOL, nice work projecting there, son. Try reading my post again, would you? You will not find me demanding other people play some special way for my benefit (did you really read Sirlin? You certainly didn't read my post.) I'm only interested playing the game optimally, and optimal play means "don't make capships." I'm saying that capships ought to be better so they have some kind of high level use beyond "free starting ship." Presently, capital ships are cost inefficient for use in killing other ships, and I recommend that ought to be changed. The only scrub here is the one claiming a capital ship is stronger than 100 frigates (LOL!) and costs only as much as 7 ships.

4000 credits (or more) spent on a capship is a waste. 4000 credits worth of LRM frigates will recoup it's initial cost much more quickly and efficiently. Even though you will likely suffer some losses, successful micro will preserve much of that fleet. The only real purpose to additional caps is for planet bombardment, since 1.03 nerfs siege frigates out of existence. Caps are more cost-efficient than siege frigates at that job, but they are not more cost-efficient than LRMs at killing other ships.

........

Because it can't be countered effectively. Your argument could be applied to anything - if I modded in ten thousand shield points for the Scout frigate and gave it three plasma guns and then started spamming it you'd still be whining about it being a "valid strategy" and how it could be "countered".

Balance doesn't exist: race to the LRM bottom, news at 11.

This argument is getting pretty heated, when 99% of the arguments are either ill-reasoned, or flatout idiotic/wrong etc.

Basically, Advent/Vasari have NO trouble beating off LRM spam mid game.

Here's why:
Malice/Brilliance kills all of them instantly and...
Nanites kills all of them in a few seconds as well.

On the flip side, LRM spam, if you KNOW it's coming, is pretty easily counterable.

Advent can easily counter with defense vessels, and Vasari can counter with Assailants of their own, and then tech to Enforcers or whatever they want to use.

Another good point is that Heavy Cruisers rape the crap out of LRMs. It's a full scale slaughter. So please, stop whining about an easily counterable strategy.

That's not to say LRMs aren't GOOD. They are. They're very good. They make all light frigates and illuminators obsolete. HOWEVER, a pure LRM force is very easy to crush (and so is an LRM/flak force). Just don't use carriers.

Finally, on point with the cap ships.

Advent need multiple cap ships for skill synergy, but that's it. Usually 2 is enough. In fact, I would caution against more, since you want to level them as much as possible for their ultimates/high level malice.

The other races, should never build more than 1. I realize, there are scrubs here who believe differently. And... well it's pointless arguing with them. A 1v1, 2v2, 3v3, etc. where 1 player decides on going mass caps instead of frigates, will cause a quick and humiliating loss. Why? Because the research costs of the cap ships are extremely high, and because low level cap ships are crap. If you go multiple caps, you lower exp gain on ALL caps. And that's a bad thing. If you plan on buying levels, you'll have like 2 caps when I have 50 lrms, and I'll just overrun you. Although, I'll probably overrun you when you're researching your second cap, and I have 1 cap + 15 lrms. Finally, if you play caps vs vasari, subverter + phase pierce assailants will drop your caps in under 10-15 seconds each. That means, your investment of level buying + 3000 + resources (i forget the total, but it's quite a lot) + research will all be wasted in a VERY short amount of time.

Basically, caps are good if they hit high levels, and you won't get high level multiple caps vs good players. In essence, 99% of this thread is just crap people post to hear themselves talk, when they really should listen to better players.

Cheers

As long as you send out scouts to look for the enemy ships I'm not sure why this strat would be that big a deal. You should have plenty of warning if you are looking with scouts.

I assume he's going to take a cap ship (prob mothership) with him?

I have played games where the enemy fields a fleet of LRM frigates and a cap ship and I didn't feel like that was spamming exaclty, I should have seen it coming before it showed up on my doorstep. Lesson learned.

I can see how if you were not prepared for this tactic at all it would seem a bit unsporting. Once you see a fleet of all LRM I'd research cruisers carriers (if I were advent and get them making fighters, and hangars and get fighters on those.) Possibly scuttle my current cap ship and buy a carrier as well.

It might be smarter to just make flak frigates though, but I'm still trying to find a use for fighters...

Well, I definately agree with posters that claim that Capital ships are not worth the money. I love the concept, but the only way they earn back their cost is if they survive for a formidable period of time. However, by the time you've made it 45 minutes into the game, fleets have become large enough to turn any capital ship into space junk in approximately 10 seconds. I engaged in a battle late game with 8 capital ships. The battle lasted upwards of 30 minutes, but every single capital ship was destroyed in the first 3-5 minutes. Made me regret I ever wasted the money on them to begin with. I think an interesting way to prevent this from happening is to give capital ships some kind a "hard shields" that allow only X number of ships to open fire on them at a given time (all excess ships retarget other combatants.)

I love the idea of capital ships, but unfortunately I'm forced to pursue the best strategies, thereby leaving the cap ships by the wayside.

HuntingX wrote:



Its not mid game where LRM's are the problem in my opinion, its early game. Also, the new javelis LRM out-ranges malice, brilliance and repel so they can still potentially drop a cap mid game (and for advent, the loss of a high level mothership mid-game is gg). Early game, yah you can counter LRM with defence vessels, but you can never really strike back and destroy his infrastructure, or kill his cap ship. You yourself have said that advent suck in part because they have no LRM - do you now believe this not to be the case? Vasari are so gimp at the moment i'm not going to discuss Vasari anti-LRM stuff. Also, by mid game a decent TEC player has heavy cruisers due to their amazing eco in 1.03, so you're likely to die anyway. I guess what i'm saying in response to your post is "so?".

Where to begin...

Advent is gimp because Tec won't LRM spam against them. Tec will simply counter whatever Advent builds, while Advent cannot counter light frigates. For instance, if Tec sees disciples go LRM, if Tec sees defense, go light frigates. If Tec sees carriers, go light frigates and kill them. Grab like 4-5 flaks to counter arbitrarily large numbers of carriers.

Advent still sucks, I'm just saying blobs of LRMs are counterable, not that LRM spamming is a bad strategy. However, Advent vs Tec, you will see more light frigs than LRMs in high level play.

Further, Vasari are weaker (much weaker) in 1.03, but still a viable race. I have a few tricks up my sleeve in that department.

Carbon016 is clearly just an idiot, everyone he said is wrong, so I will ignore his comments.

The idea with defense vessels is to contain the tec and not allow expansions. Of course, it fails against a smart Tec player. 1-d LRM spamming is short-sighted and stupid, and easily counterable.

The crux of the game is scouting and counters. The fact that so many people still don't realize this is pathetic.

A few comments on this article: http://www.sirlin.net/Features/feature_PlayToWinPart1.htm

I agree with alot of what was written there. But I lean more towards FrogBoy's comments. The article seems to dismiss the entire "fun" idea as a crutch of the scrub. But I think the "win at any cost" crowd would be best paired with another "win at any cost" player. And the "I just want to have some fun" crowd should be paired with another "I just want to have some fun" player. It is often not much fun for either side when these two crowds cross paths. Not sure what the best solution would be. But one of the current methods of IRC arranged games that are password protected seems like a good idea to me. It's not very fun when these elite players host random games to stomp a bunch of casual fun players though(perhaps these games should include a disclaimer: I am lord of sins, enter at your peril .

That being said, I don't like people whining about one strat or another. If you are trying to be competitive at this game(or any game), you have the wrong attitude. If your strategy is inferior to your opponents, learn how to counter it. Don't cry for unit caps and the like.

Just to relate a story from my own personal experience. Back in the day, I joined my first online game of doom2. I played numerous games against my brother, but was not at the same level as these online players I was up against. The favorite(and to a large extend only) weapon used at the time was the double barrel shotgun. These 1-d players where experts at dancing around you and pelting you with the awesome close range firepower of the double barrel. I tried to match what they were doing but could not compete with these seasoned players on their home terf. So I tried using a different weapon, the BFG. My opponent was fragged over and over again to the point where he called the BFG "cheap" and asked me to stop using it. Fine, I didn't want to upset the guy so I switched to the plasma gun. Same thing, fragged him over and over. Now all energy weapons were "cheap" so I needed to pick a non-energy weapon. This guy was getting annoying, but I decided to switch to the rocket launcher. More frags, more calls of cheapness. Next up was the chaingun. After losing to me against every single weapon except a double barrel, he got frustrated and left. Don't be afraid of a 1-d player whos pet strategy overpowered you the first few times you met it. Odds are they won't be able to compete at a real level once you learn how to stop their pet strat.