Light Frigates

Well, cobalts and skirmishers could be buffed by having their abilities no longer requiring them to face their target...

As for the damage tables...make HCs weaker against medium armor and/or making LFs better against heavy armor is a start...

Weakening LRFs against heavy armor also wouldn't be bad...puts more emphasis on actually countering those ships with LFs instead of just trying to outnumber the enemy....

biggest problem i know of is the amazingly high exp value LF give.

They need a role change, nothing will change if you nerf LRF's or if you buff them they way they are.

I disagree on this about the role-change. I believe that a little bit of stat boosting as well as breaking their abilities free from 'face target' will help quite a bit. Maybe tweaking on the upgrades to them could be beneficial as well. Who knows, maybe they can get a re searchable upgrade that is dependent on Rebel / Loyalist that does different things.

It will help out a little bit, it still will not make them viable because stat changes really do not change anything unless its dramatic. Play any game and you will see this, in LoL for example to actually make Katarina a viable pick you would have to make her ultimate immune to interference but that would make her overpowered, you could not just buff the damage of her ultimate. While they are different games the principle is the same. Small base stat boosting does not do anything.

Also to that last comment, I thought it would be cool to give the Rebel Advent disciples the Martyrdom ability instead of Restore Antimatter. But I don't know that would be a huge trade off and it was just a fun idea. But when the Disciple died it would give a boost to the Antimatter regeneration rates of nearby vessels.

Sloan, they are good against Carriers too (Heavy armor too), and late game when their abilities are teched, they fulfill various roles.  So: flak, carriers, support, and then add special abilities.  So still good against alot, IMO.

They aren't hard countered by HCs, are they?

[Edit:  BTW, Mine Layers, and Starbase Constructors also have Heavy armor.  Light Frigates attack type is AntiHeavy]

Disciples stealing Carriers Antimatter stores<3

i think perhaps people are using them the wrong way, think of them as mid to late game use with their abilities, and perhaps increasing their ability to counter flak?

IMO the problem is they jus tget shredded too easily in late game fleet combat.

LRF deal 133% to them

HC deal 125%

Bombers only do 50%, but bombers shred everthing anyways

LFs are fairly soft and cheap, making them relatively vulnerable to AoE.

Which basically means they are vulnerable to 4 of the most useful sources of damage late game.

Additionally it does without saying titans wreck them like most frigates.

At the very least I think the bomber damage type should be less effective against LF(they are supposed to counter carriers after all).  Reducing composite damage's damage to medium would help too(would make HC & corvettes less powerful against LF).

That said, when it comes down to it, it's hard for them to have any real survival prospects when pretty much everything that gets heavily used in later game fleet compositions for damage is very effective at killing LFs.

Without upgrades, Lights are countered almost identicaly equally hard by LRM and HCs when meansured by supply (note, HC's will cost less than the LRMS, so in cost you could say that HC's counter LF's harder than LRMs).

Adding in upgrades, the LF vs LRM battle should swing further to the LRMS, and the LF vs HC's battle, the hc's counter slightly less hard, though i havent tested it, and would prolly be within the error of my tests if i were to.

the reason they die fast is because they are high up on the auto target priority list for a lot of ships. fix that/make the targeting list more evenly spread and the problem will take care of itself

you'll notice your other ships have better survivability while you have LFs out because your LFs are taking all the hits due to the targeting priority

that said, i wouldnt be opposed to a late game tech for all factions that just make the LFs better in survivability

Heck how about a late game tech that modifies their armor type, perhaps reducing the %s of certain weapon types against their armor.

Yeah, I was going to say... something interesting would be straight up damage reduction, but I would say LRFs might bypass it, though it might not be necessary. (they are designed to kill LFs afterall)

Aye I agree. I meant have a tech adjustting specific weapon types.  I'd assumed anti-medium wouldn't be one of the modified weapon types.

well, i say it might not be strictly necessary because LRFs get all kinds of upgrades and do good damage already, so depending on the about of reduction, it might just be like taking back one of the LRF upgrades... they still counter the heck out of LFs

I'm a fan of the suggestion to give LFs a late-game armor upgrade to make them less vulnerable.

That said: it only makes sense for units like LRFs and caster cruisers to auto-target LFs first, if only because LRFs are designed to eat LFs for breakfast, and LFs are the biggest threat to caster cruisers.

From what I've seen, HCs actually auto-target LRFs first, and then move on to caster cruisers.

I don't have the whole list on hand, but the trouble is that as long as most combat units have LFs on the top of their priority list, LFs will continue to take a beating and will continue to die the fastest. I agree that LRFs should prioritize LFs, but I would have the other primary ships take turns. We have flak, LRF, LFs and now corvettes too as main units... what prioritizes flak (besides fighters for some crazy, twisted, unknown reason)? I'm just advocating spreading out the targeting priorities more evenly.

I once created a mod called Capital Frames for the purpose of doing more or less what you guys are suggesting only it worked on capitals.  It unlocked a passive fifth ability on all capitals that would significantly increase their DPS and health, enabling them to survive longer under the pressure of FF of large fleets.

Doing something for LF would be quite simple.

i dont think auto target is an issue, most players control the fleet and wont prioritise them anyway since they do such insignificant damage, increase their speed to be able to catch carriers, increase their resistance to fighters and bombers... solved :]

They already can catch any unit in the game that's not a scout.  That's why they are sometimes used as scouts...

still not quick enough for my liking

..  You want them to be faster?  Much faster and they will beat scouts.  LF can outrun any unit they can't outgun.

only increase the speed a little bit, not necessarily the straight line, but reduce the turn circle and speed up the turn arc?

problem is they just dont get close to carriers, unless you mass them, in which case they will die to lrf/hcs

Yes, I did mention they are soft counters to carriers.  Too soft though, which is why people just use flak, fighters, or anti-SC cap abilities instead.  TEC and Advent HCs will always beat LFs for cost, while also beating everything else except bomber spam, starbases, and titans.  Diplomacy stated Visari HCs, I'm not so sure since they were the worst HCs and phase missiles > all other Visari weapons.  I look forward to seeing what overhauls Ironclad has for the Visari tech tree for that.

As for the comments about role changes, the problem is corvettes have basically taken the roles LFs should have had.  Fast, cheap units to tear apart the slow, fragile LRFs.  Makes perfect sense, so why didn't LFs work like this and have the long range, high DPS LRFs counter the super-tough flak?  Problem is, it's too late now.  Corvettes are the new LRF counter.  The only path to go is to buff the LFs so the role they're stuck with is at least performed well enough to justify them over HCs.

Light Frigates, Heavy Cruisers, and Battleships are all kind of the same thing.  High DPS output with little fleet support.  LF's kill cruisers, HC's kill capitals, and Battleships in sufficient numbers kill Titans.  LF fill the important role of anti-assist.  The problem so far as I can tell is the combination of them being a high priority target (because they target utility frigates) and the fact that they are countered by one of the best and most spammed units in the game.

Speed has never been the problem though.  They can engage enemies sufficiently quickly that their relatively small range is irrelevant aside from the first volley and retreat quickly from battle.  The problem is that people would like to use them as combat frigates when in reality they seem to lose this role and become a support frigate themselves.  They are too easily countered to effectively be used for DPS, so what is perhaps the best thing for a player to do is to hold their LF back and micro them to disrupt the abilities of support cruisers such that the cruisers.

That may be the only way unfortunately..