Corvettes (Help)

Light frigates are good. They are not hard counters of corvettes, but you really don't want to mass flak frigates unless you really know how to use them. Light frigates are decent against corvettes, can be accessed immediately in the game and not very expensive while still gives you enough firepower to deal with bigger objects like capital ships. Corvettes have negative multipliers against light frigates while light f. does not have this penalty against corvettes.

Late game it's better to build some flak instead, as light frigates die fast from long range fire. or maybe fighters. But Your case is not late game I know.

Best way to counter vettes early is a mix of LFs and Flak. Start with LFs/Discs and add Flak/ Defense vessels as required. Dont go for just one type as its not as effective and very open to a counter.

You shouldnt need more than 10-20 flaks to stop any vettes rushes and you can add more depending on the number of vettes. Generally you need 1 Flak ship per 4 vettes to be on a safe side.

I say he can go pure LF if he wants, it is open for change any time as he can switch production to corvettes if enemy tries long range, and corvettes build fast.

Edit: I always have 2-3 factories so maybe that's why I think in another way than Jingly, can easily switch ship types in my fleet.

thanks guys, i'll try it

FYI, your faction matters significantly....TEC can get away with using their corvettes to beat up on other factions corvettes...other factions can't....

Flak is to be avoided if you can, mainly because it is useless for many of the essential early game tasks (killing SBs, focusing on caps, taking out structures)....it also is the most expensive and builds the slowest of the 4 early game frigates (on per fleet supply basis)...basically, you are investing a lot of time and resources into a ship that it good at only one thing....

I just use fighters for this.  Just throw a carrier capital ship and some light frigs and the fighters take care of the corvettes most of the time.

Early game, most players avoid carrier starter capital.. Light carrier cruises are lightyears away..

Haven't had a problem with it so far.  Also not sure why you would be worrying about speed, if you are assaulting it's not much of an issue.  If they are assaulting there is always defense turrets to hold them off.

EDIT:

I realized I might have been mistaken about the last part.  Are you referring to the research or the speed?

Original post was about EARLY GAME, so my part was about research. Light carriers are pretty expensive units early on, tier3, and they are hard to get in higher numbers while your opponent can build tons of corvettes. Defense turrets are very lame structures, and especially weak against corvettes if you try it, they only damage 30 or so on them.. So you will never have enough fighters to deal with corvettes only in the middle game where people don't usually build corvettes at higher numbers and your carriers should be building bombers against structures and bigger moving stuff.

Oh and btw OP is talking about defense, not his assault.

No offence but this is not good advice. Its not a personal attack so don't have a fit and why don't you go back and think it over so you can give us a proper answer as to why you have to have even a few flak in a fleet to deal with corvettes? Ok dear?

I didn't say you have to have flak...I said the exact opposite....

I'm really disappointed in you RiddleMooLight...your trolling just isn't what it used to be....

Flak's essential in a balance fleet, honestly you shouldn't listen to half the answers here. They're wrong. 

Firstly corvettes are a great starter to pull away and help clear planets and such. They are great at sniping early lrms and their debuff helps a great deal. If you aren't using them, you should. 

Light frigates are the current meta, if you don't have 60 within 10mins, you're doing something wrong, or eco. Now to balance them against lrms grabbing corvettes is great. However when faced with someone with a very high amount of corvettes, no.. let me start again, if you're scouting and they have lots of corvettes and lights, getting lights and a 5-1 ratio of lights to flak, you'll decimate. Also with the current game flak beat mass lrms. 

But anyway.. not using flak is a sin and you need to be punished.

There are cases when they are not efficient, you seem to forget the one who wrote the post does not seem to be an expert player (he can't defeat corvette swarms though I may be wrong, then I am sorry), and it needs some skill to use flak properly, balancing their numbers right, not to waste huge firepower if you build too much etc. I advice him only build flak if he has the sufficient money and can build them fast from2-3 factories. Flak only works if they are in larger numbers like 15-20 (or even some more) and their enemy is spread out (shooting at 4 directions grants max efficiency). They are medium against long range and are bad against anything else, only raise mitigation levels of enemy ships without causing real damage.. And if your opponent switches ship types to say bombers and titan/capital ships, there goes your useless flak.. In a close fight when you go to battle at the very start against corvettes pure light frig fleet is the best you can do, no need for researching and to have 2 military labs, and your factories build more firepower in lesser time. After a while thogh it may be necessary to build some.. Having some of them is always good, In multiplayer games where I faced corvettes I always had 10-20 (if heavy corvette fleet and strong eco of my own even above 20), they did good work on corvettes when I didn't want to build light frigates as they are dieing fast when facing long range.

Not everyone likes to build that much of light frigates, as TEC I always preferred long range (sometimes even as my first frigate built), and most of the times it worked, bought me enough time to properly balance my fleet against my opponent, countering anything he could send at me. Light frigates are stopped cold by long range frigates and cause you heavy economic damage (high losses), but for Advent they are excellent (Vasari is a bit different though I hate playing them in multi..). For TEC they can be good starters too, but only if your opponent is corvette-heavy or building corvette-light frig fleet (who has more light, he wins), but against long range they are ridiculously weak if you don't have extreme advantage in numbers.

I guess all the skilled players who use LF+Corvette fleets early game are just stupid and continuously do well due to sheer luck...

I shall defer to this from the OP...

"2. Which ships should i use in early game against them"

We are talking early game...and in the early game, there are a lot of disadvantages with flak...when you consider pure LF beats pure corvette, I'm not sure why you would always default to flak in your fleet for the early game...I'd only go for flak if I felt I had an advantage economically and wanted to prep myself for a better fleet for the mid-game (since that's when flak is really really useful)

This has actually been debated extensively and much testing has be done in regards to this issue...on a per fleet supply basis with large fleets, this is true against LRMs and kanraks (not illuminators)....but for more reasonable fleet sizes (such as what you'd see in the early game) and on a per cost basis (and per construction time basis), LRFs are better....not to mention that your flak will be terrible at focus firing on anything such as caps...

Maybe that's why I beat the skilled players when playing then.... 

<3 Freyja

You are mainly correct in everything you say altho getting flak early vs only LFs massers would lose you the game vs an equal player. I know they can tank and all but you will just surrender your initiative for no reason. But yeah Flak are underated for sure.

Oh yea I agree on that too, which is why I will go lf/corvettes first and then change depending on the game. I know flak lose hard for the time spent investing into them and ofc the cash.

and <3 Cat

your beginning to sound like someone who doesn't play on ico lol. Remember those days when you would give me those same responses but now I know better and your argument about flak being a poor investment against late game titans is a booboo. Your only defense against corvettes from sniping your titan is flak..

There's a misconception that people think they can survive lf & corvette builds without severely beating the corvettes with flak which always depends on scouting.

Anyone who hasn't scouted will just opt to build lf & corvettes to counter the lf & corvettes. Differences in skill levels are involved because you can wipe the other half of your opponents fleet and defeat him/her before they build titans.

Perhaps in last month or two game changed

but here is my 5 cents

Start of the game spam lf and keep scouting him if you see him building lrms go for corvettes yourself

As why not to build flak early on

• needs to be in sufficient numbers to be effective
• they are easy to counter and you will loose them fast if you do not micro well enough
• they need heavy and proper micro management (eg hold position keep them clustered together predicting enemy moves)
• they are slow and if you invest in them you are open to harassment from corvette fleet to attack where you are not
• no serious damage to any other ship than corvettes 

I could go on but that roughly sums it up 

EDIT:

above holds true if you are not vasari.

If you are vasari strategy has to depend on map (eg neutrals, choke points....)

I'd always have 10-20 corvettes for the debuff and the ability to jump into a contested well and snipe the constructors.. need be jumping to back wells and doing the same. This can be incredibly damaging at early game. 

I never build flak until I have scouted someone and disciple malice is still a powerful combo.

The OP asked about early game, I responded with advice for the early game....but I guess you are so skilled you have titans in the early game...

I like them for constructor sniping, though honestly you don't need anywhere close to 20 for that to work out...I find most of the debuffs to be pretty weak even when fully stacked (not that they don't help) and not necessary to kill caps...TL debuff is about the only exception, that is really useful for dealing with caps even early game....

I've gotten a titan in the early game.  Frankly it isn't that hard, not sure why you think it requires that much skill.

Early game there is an option, big enough fleet to withstand your opponent's attack, or titan, obviously you lose in a ridiculous way if you choose to build titan without a fleet to stay alive until your titan is finished, so an early titan most of the time is a bad investment, again, when fighting humans, and obviously someone who is not as noob he can colonize the planets around him and knows how to attack the other player..

And maybe you forgot, but here people are talking about games against human players, AI doesn't matter here as it never spams corvettes in annoying numbers and is stupid as hell, completely different from playing vs humans.