Part of the thing that makes them overpowered is their duplicate ability since it ends up meaning that half the time you're not doing any damage so it works out to about an additional 50% damage reduction.

RTS games in a nutshell.

This is why the Zerg were the first race most players got good with in Starcraft early on. Spamming tactics are easy to learn and easy to execute. They are not necessarily the dominant strategy, they are just one of quickest ways to get above average.

So the question is - Does Ironclad need to nerf single unit spamming? Or do they just need to wait it out and have the player-base realize it's not as dominant as they think?

Tough Call.

Followup: Of course - they could just add in some defensive structures or abilities that make single unit spamming of any type less viable, without nerfing the ship types directly.

What about a planetary defense structure that can disable any *one* ship type in their gravity well for like 5-10 seconds a burst. Some sort of large EMP blast wave. This would be minimally effective in large balanced fights, while incredibly strong against anyone who brought in a pile of one unit.

It would counter mass LRMs, and mass siege spams.

Correction: Bad RTS games in a nutshell. I must be the only person here who thought Starcraft was absolutely terrible. It and Warcraft III were some of the worst RTS games I've ever played because they promoted rushing. Being rushed by zerglings, carriers, or those walking tree structures is no fun. Good RTS games prevent this from happening. Take Rise of Nations for an example. Someone can try to rush long-range MLRS/artillery but all you have to do is counter with helicopters or bring tanks right up against the MLRS where it's too close for them to get targeted. What Sins needs is something similar. LRM's and other long-range vessels need a minimum and maximum on their range. Right now there's only a maximum so they can target anything anywhere in their range. It would give opponents more of a fighting chance if they could close the gap with the LRM's while taking hits, and then get inside the minimum range to pound away while the LRM's have to reposition or break up into groups in order to get their targets within the effective min/max range. If they have a range of 8400 right now, something like a minimum range of 2400 or 3200 would work.

I think what the original author of this thread's other problem is that he/she was not prepared to handle LRM's as they exist in the game right now. It would seem like fighters and bombers should counter, but they don't. What's the solution? Stock up on long-range vessels of your own. Have one battle fleet and one long-range fleet. Personally, I've found the Vasari to be hard to play as well. The LRM thing is a problem right now, but there are alternative tactics to handling them. My favorite is having some other group of ships come in from behind. Also, try selecting those bombers/fighters and having them concentrate their fire on a single LRM at a time.

yes rushing (as in attacking pretty fast with a lot of units) works quite well when all players involved are quite new to the game and have no idea whats going on, otherwise it doesnt always work and theres a reason rush tactics are not always used in starcraft/wc3..etc.

rushing does not imply the enemy masses one unit type and brings them 12-20 minutes (sc time, not sins) later to your base (you referred to it as carrier rush...), thats spamming.

Theres already a counter to LRM's in this game (you failed to bring it up, meaning your ignoring the posts that mention it and didnt try it), nerfing them to be extremely bad and require significant micro to use is a bit drastic and silly, at the most tec LRM might require an increase in supply by ~1 and ~20 to ~50 more resources (not 50 to each resource type).

atm sins doesnt promote spamming one type of unit, the reason LRM spammers do so well is that the developers didnt make it easy to figure out what counters LRM's (the forum is full of misinformation too, but many people have realized what counters it) and most people spam light frigs (easy kills for LRM's) in early game and would never ever build the counter.

I semi agree with your correction. I loved SC, and I think rushing is definitely a strategy every strategist needs in his toolbox, but I also loved Rise of Nations. I was hoping Sins would have a comparable combat system (or even better, very tactical like Company of Heroes, but that'd be asking for too much in a space game), but so far I'm starting to think it's more like SupComm with just waves of units.

Fortunately the posts here on this thread are giving me hope. I'm still new so I'm just hoping it's just misguided early impressions of the game. I think one reason I feel that way is that units take a relatively long time to die, so you don't really get to see counters happening "right before your eyes" so to speak.

Just commenting on the qoute from the guy above me, LRM's do sort of have a minimum range. When they shoot, if the ship is really close the missles will miss and then have to fly around in circles untill they eventually(if they ever?) hit. So if you fly in real close, you might not stop being hurt entirely, but the damage the LRMs do will be less. Not to mention, if they are firing missles at one ship, and then that ship blows up, all the missles that were aimmed at that ship but were still flying around in circles, I believe, just miss and don't hit anything.

Also, I don't know why LRM spam is considered a good stratedgy. I had 5 repair bays and 20 assailants + 3 enforcers and I held off 83 LRMs. Thats 23 agaisnt 83. I've only seen the Iluminator spam in one game, which was my absolute first game online, and the guy that did it quit after my ally and I took out his "awesome" fleet.

My question is whether spamming single unit types should be considered an issue or not. In other words, should spamming single unit types be considered legitimate strategy, albeit poor, ill-conceived, crude, [insert adjective] strategy?

I'd say that spamming single unit types should be allowed, with no special nerfs to stop the practice. There should, of course, be effective counters to units, so that if someone spams all units of one type, they could be open to getting their entire force slaughtered.

Here's something sort of ironic and funny to think about: spamming seems to beget spamming. I played a game once where I knew my opponent was spamming carriers. I countered by building a crapload of flak frigs, which annihilated his force. But to counter his spam, I had to spam myself, which meant I was left with an all one-unit force, and was open to other players' attacks! Now, I'm not saying that something needs to be done about this, it was just an amusing situation, and something to reflect upon.

To respond to the OP's initial post, vasari is harder to play than other factions. That in itself could have been part of your problem.

The thing about Rise of Nations was that diversity was much more emphasized because you didn't have to have equal amounts of one unit to counter another. If someone brought in a bunch of, say, artillery, you didn't have to spam an equal amount of helicopters, though that would be quicker. A few helis would take out those artillery units quite easily.

Here, we not only have to have similar amounts of units to counter single-unit spam, but nobody can agree on WHAT UNIT TO USE. Which makes me, as I stated before, very hesitant about thinking that anyone has any idea what they're talking about.

okay heres a replay of one of the counters of illuminators.

10 defense vs 10 illuminators

10 illuminators: 3500 credits, 500 metal, 400 crystal and 60 supply
vs
10 defense: 3500 credits, 400 metal, 200 crystal and 30 supply (could have made it 11-12 and not 10).


outcome:
10 dead illuminator, 7 alive defense (one barely).


http://files.filefront.com/illumvsdefenserecord/;9674236;/fileinfo.html

I consider it a decent counter if for cheaper price and half the supply, ~68%-72% survive.

It sounds like you aren't even trying what people are suggesting and instead just pouting about your loss. It was mentioned several times and if you seriously tried it, you'd see that it works. Flak ships and/or fighers - not bombers.

There's no disagreement on what to use. Some are saying fighters, others are saying flak. They're both right. I use them all the time against TEC LRM spammers and Advent Illum spammers, and honestly, I have yet to lose unless I'm messing around testing something. Most people, only knowing the lrm spam tactic, quit when they find their assault's not nearly as potent as they think it is.

It's true that against mass illums, it's a bit tricky because illums do 100% dmg to flak just as flak deals 100% to illums. However, pound for pound, without external help, flaks will still win. If they have support, you may very well lose. Thus, you need to counter their support with yours or simply take out their support ships as quickly as you can.

Needless to say, rts games are all about micro. Move your wounded ships "through" them to force them to turn around to shoot the focus fired ships. Of course, they'll still hit you with the other beams, but they'll only be shooting 2/3 beams once their target is destroyed. This trick is even easier against TEC and Vasari LRMs since they completely stop shooting and need to turn around to face the rest of your fleet.

If this is too hard for you, you can simply take your entire flak fleet and drive it "through" the enemy lines back and fourth. this will force the enemy fleet to keep turning around to shoot meaning you'll only really be getting hit by their secondary beams, whereas the flak ships' offensive ability won't be that hampered.

Rushing is and always will be a gamble. Your gambling the game that you can catch your opponent and either end him and/or cripple him with your initial attack. Problem with rushing is when your opponent anticipates it and counters it. You put all your eggs in one basket. If you fail, you probably will lose.

Basic rushing is only effective when:

1) The game first comes out
2) Your opponent is new

This game just came out. Finding a ship that is effective and massing it doesn't take a rocket scienetist to figure out that its probably pretty effective if and this is a big if, your opponent isn't prepared for it.

No disrespect, but I hope the balance folks are disregarding these posts. We need to exhaust all of our tactical options before we ask for balance changes, and from the looks of it you have several to go through.

Also, incase you didn't see this;
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=rtEgzzKP0iE

Stop trolling and read the thread. The suggestions here vary from "flak!" to "frigates!" to "spam scouts!" to "spam heavy frigates" to "spam light frigates". If there's some consensus, or a replay (constructively posted right above yours), I'll accept that. Otherwise, I dismiss it as speculation: anyone can come on here and post "well spam constructor frigates! lol!" in five minutes, but maybe 5% of those have actually tried the strategies they espout experimentally. I was waiting for that 5% to prove it, and look what happened! I'll be using flak frigates from now on, even though that's wildly counterintuitive (the definition of flak isn't really to tear apart other frigates).



I have an empire to run. I don't care about micro. If I want micro I'll mod it in. Regardless, it shouldn't take concentrated micro to beat someone who just hammers down shift-click on the Illuminator. The fact that each player should have to put in equal strategy to win is a basic tenet of every game.

Uh oh, someone's being a big meanie to you on the internet!

Being rude != trolling. Put that knee-jerking defensive attitude away and accept that you simply didn't play well that game and used no tactics at all. I suppose since you had an empire to run, you couldn't bother to send in your units at once nor go through the incredibly hard process of clicking them and moving them to better tactical positions. I hear you man, building those trade centers sure requires a lot of concentration!

You expect your information on a silver spoon and when it's not delivered, you complain instead of trying it out yourself like archpsi did. Seriously, the best way to learn is to simply do it yourself and find out. Considering how many people spam lrm frigs these days, how hard is it to try using flaks or even fighters against them? This thread has been up since the 13th. You've had plenty of time to try it out. It seriously takes only about 15 minutes to get attacked by LRM spam in online games these days. Are you afraid of a loss? Make a new account to do testing. Even if the unit's ability against lrms is "counterintuitive", looking at the damage chart makes it painfully obvious that flak is actually the BEST choice. The problem with fighters is that if the enemy has swarms of light frigates, the fighters get completely ripped apart. Flak frigates are a little harder to kill and completly shut down as they're pounding the lrms.

While it's true that there sn't a true hard counter to LRMs, just use your head a bit and you'd be able to figure out which unit works. There's diagrams and charts at your disposal. You have all the unit information you need. The ones who say scouts are counters are only looking at the chart, seeing "oh scout = anti-light, therefore scout = LRM killer" but if you think about things a little more carefully, you'd realize that scouts deal very little damage and other than possibly putting up a fight against lrms, they have no utility. Thus, flaks, which also serve to kill fighters/bombers are much better. Carriers are also good - fighters deal anti-light and deal 150% dmg to lrms. when there's few/no light armored targets, you can switch to bombers can kill something else.

Finally, of course it's always about micro. In any rts game, the one who focus fires and moves his wounded units to the backlines will always win if both groups are of comparible sizes and aren't counters to the other. Further more, sending your fleet in single file is the opposite of micro. It's basically "reverse micro" because by doing that you're decreasing the effectiveness of your fleet.

That's the thing, it doesn't take concentrated effort to stop lrm spam. You need to scout them. I don't think you can deny the tactical reasons for scouting. No matter what your excuses may be, the fact that you didn't scout means you didn't have tactics. You complain you want to win with tactics but then you don't use tactics?

After scouting and finding they're shift-clicking lrms, you can then in turn, shift-click flak frigs! Even better, you can shift click flak frigs together with carriers. That way, although your army will get chewed up by anti-heavy, you'll still have good utility and firepower once you've killed all the lightly armored targets.

I never watched the original game, but he didnt scout??



anyway I just did a test via modding the game.

made it so illuminators start with self clone ability, while the defense got nothing tech wise (no hp/armour/damage), but I made 11 defense instead of 10 to at least make resources close to each other (resource cost of ships ignoring any teching up to illuminators or the clone ability).

10 illuminators dead, 8-10 clones dead (new illuminators appeared like ~9 time, however I was watching and counting at ~8 speed, so might have missed 1) and 8 defense alive.

Im not gonna upload the replay.
you need the mod to watch the replay, otherwise it crashes.

i disagree with you because of a single thing: u will never encounter 10 illuminators, u get 40+.

I just lost a game against one good advent player which attacked me in the end with 110 illuminators. i had battles over battles with him and only thing that keeped me in tha game was to spam LRM`s i ussualy engaged him with 60+ against 40+ and i would had losed every time. carrier spam do not work cause illumi are faster than carriers and carriers died tooo damn fast to their concentrated fire. I was micro as much as i can trying to single/ 2 salvo kkill each of his ships, i had good techs, but u simply cannot counter a good advent player using this zerg tactic unless u get a better empire (i never had problems with money and crystals and almost none with metal, and me and him alyas getting reinforcements into battle).

so 10 defences will not get`s u anything, u need 40 carriers but until u build 40 carriers he has attacked u 2 times with 40+ illuminators.

sorry but are imbalanced, all lrm are but with illumi in front of all.

Yeah playing advent lately has shown how rediculous overpowered illuminators are.. You can get them to do upwards of 25 weapon damage on their stats.. Thats rediculous.. Thats rivaling cruisers..

I think the best thing they should do is either A) Increase the pop req for them, 6 isn't doing it.. or
make them a glass cannon, they have more hps then discple vessels for crying out loud..

your post never mentions using nearly equal numbers of defense vs illums or even a mixed combination of defense + illums vs illums, you mentioned carriers which have nothing to do with my post. I also hope you didnt think I meant that you only need 10 defense vessels to defeat any force of illuminators.

The idea is not to start making defense vessels like a few minutes before he pops in with 40 illuminators, you need to use scouting (many players who make these posts usually don't).

44 defense vessels vs 40 illuminators

without clone ability results were:
40 illuminators dead, 12 defense dead.
http://files.filefront.com/44vs40record/;9688688;/fileinfo.html
it might crash at *8 fully zoomed in

with clone ability:
40 illuminators dead and over 3x clones dissapeared/died, 11 defense dead (not sure why less defense died).



This is just to show defense effectiveness, but a better fleet composition is defense, illuminators and support (e.g. LRM, flak and support) which will easily beat illuminator only fleets and do damage to medium+ ships/structures.