Beaten By Y Axis in Multiplayer

Yesterday I played a casual 1v1 against a stranger on ICO.

I knew I would be sending my fleet relatively distant to my homeworld to colonize, so I surrounded it with turrets so it couldn't be sieged without giving me time to get back and contest.

Long story short, my opponent arrived with a marza and used the y axis to avoid my turrets while still sieging the planet. My expenditure on turrets was now useless, and I couldn't recover quickly enough to contest (though I fleeted enough to chase him off before we fought a minor battle and he returned and used the y axis again.

I know the y axis is considered an exploit, and is not accepted in true multiplayer (5s), but do I have any recourse in 1v1? Is there any way for my turrets to surmount this issue?

The whole experience was extremely frustrating, and only salvaged slightly when he minidumped, giving me the win.

Any thoughts?

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It's been a long time since I've been in the multiplayer scene, but back then the only Y Axis abuse was mostly considered something in bad taste and not outright cheating. The only thing that was a huge problem was people who exploited the starbase blindspots, which was considered cheating.

That said, I think putting turrets around a planet was a misplay anyways. It takes 4 turrets to cover the perimeter of a full-sized planet and that cost you 1000 credits, 300 metal, 140 crystal. This is roughly half the cost of the Marza he sent your way. However, the Marza is free to target any planet of his choosing. Even if your homeworld is protected, losing other planets is just plain nasty. Trying to use static defenses to keep up with a harasser is a losing game, you'll end up spending more than he does and may as well have just fleeted up in the first place. Furthermore, those turrets would have been useless if you'd been hit by something else like an Embargo Sova or a group of Ogrovs.

1's plays very differently from 5's in a lot of ways, and while my multiplayer experiences are woefully outdated I suspect it's still true that you need to scout religiously and be ready to fleet up if your opponent comes down your flank. You can't rely on static defenses against a human opponent.

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I had scouted, and I knew he had that Marza but not much else near me. Had he been playing legit, he would've been forced to fight at least 2 of the turrets (enough time for me to fleet up and then kill his damaged Marza). I did fleet up, but unfortunately so did he, and the income loss from my damaged homeworld, and the fact that his Marza was full health, left me at a solid disadvantage, and I would've lost without the minidump.

I can tell you that the y-axis is strictly banned in 5s play, and just one or two uses will see you booted from any and all 5s.

What I can't tell you is where 1v1 falls on the spectrum. I really don't want to have to add game exploits to my toolbox in order to win at 1v1, and If that's how 1s are played I'll simply stop playing them.

What I'm hoping to find, though I doubt it exists, is some method whereby my turrets can target a ship which is not on their level of the y axis.

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It does sound like you didn't have a whole lot of advanced warning when the Marza arrived. The entire point of the Marza is being able to quickly devastate enemy planets, and it sounds like - even ignoring the Y axis abuse - your opponent was in a position to leverage it very effectively against you. Not having seen the game, I'm not going to comment any further than that.

As I said before, I'm not up to speed on the current multiplayer community so I can't speak for either the current 5's or 1's players. The usage of the Y axis was pretty rare back then in any event, and I saw it more often in 5's than in 1's if only because there were more people in the bigger games to potentially use it.

I sincerely doubt there's any way to get your turrets to have more leeway to target enemies above or below. If there was a good countermeasure like that, there would be no need for a clunky unwritten rule in the first place.

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