Light Frigate vs Long Range Frigate Strategy

I've been trying to get this to work as well, but I find you need a resource cheat like the AI has to get it to work.  You need to outnumber the enemy, and that's hard to do.  I think the key to approaching this strategy isn't as a "mature" strategy, but rather as a rush strategy.  You don't need any labs, so that's five extra light frigates right out the door at the start of the game.  I think if you combine that with a carrier capital ship (giving you strike craft to counter LRF) you're actually in a dangerous position.

Light frigates are faster, so you can always kite and let your fighters do the dirty work.  However, if the enemy gets to the two lab level and brings out repair bays and flak, you're pretty well screwed.  LRF are just so much better cost-wise that once they have appropriate backup there's nothing LF can do without a substantial numerical advantage.

mbaron888 - By talking about hoshikos you must be playing as TEC.  Therefore if your trying to devise a LF based strategy without using the established LRM based strategy without doupt your going to need the marza to deal with LRMs after hitting level 6.  As for your fleet structure the odds in early game are against you as LRMs and SC ultimately pwn LF.  Therefore I'd advise you against using early LF but rather go for a full use of Flaks as your early approach (Flak's being a Soft Counter against any LRMs because they're tanks).  Get carriers and SC up so that you may have the SC deal with LRMs (because they most likely have the numerical advantage to any LRFs you may choose to build) only once the LRFs are gone may you go with you're LF numerical advantage.  Do not think that a fleet of 30 Colbots with a marza can kill a fleet of 15 Illminators with a progenerate because you will die and lose your investment.   With LF spam and Flak/SC air suppiriority you should be able to focus your SC on their LRMs and your LF on their flak and carriers and you can add hoshikos for longer investment life.  Beware, this is an anti-LRM strategy and will not work well if the opponet is able to get their SC above 10% hull because his LRMs will destroy the offensive power of your fleet (because flak deals crap dmg).  Also, this changes greatly with the LRM in question, for example you should be more afraid of Illuminators then you are of kanraks (as im pretty sure your familiar with the Javelis).

Unfortunately, this strategy is weak to the kanrak rush as it is difficult to pop out carriers and youll only maybe have 2 of them by the time you trip out about the 16 kanraks on your asteroid.  Like any strategy, you should really scout your enemy, note their amount of labs and what they are (military or econ) as to get an idea of what they may be making their fleet up with.  LF are great fleet support in the end game WITH their researched abilities.  I don't know what your talking about LFs being strong against cruisers other than the support cruisers because HC walk over LF like nothing even with noticible numerical advantages.

@Darvin3

Okay. LF fleets are more of a rush strategy then. That would make more sense. The "winnable" fleets I had come up with always lost all LF and at least one light carrier. It works but I'd be better off with LRMs and carriers. I can see kiting the LFs but then why even have LFs in that situation. The only full win was a 7 carrier spam againt a 25 LRM spam but that's rather obvious. A carrier spam can be countered with only 5 flak frigates. It will lose one flak and 5 or 6 LRMs but it wins the battle. Referring to your rush strategy with a captial ship carrier I'd say having 2 or 3 flak would counter the fighters. The research would have to beat the rush.

You're right and I should clarify. LF are good against cruisers but not Heavy Cruisers. LF are given a 50% boost in firepower against heavy armor only and that is Light Carriers, Repair/guard, and Support.

Which is why you should focus your LFs on their flak/carriers/non-heavy cruisers, let your LRFs, Flak, and SC on their LRFs.  If you have air suppierioity, you should soon also win the over the LRFs, once you killed their LRF's consider the battler won.

I would advise you against rushing with LFs as most online users are LRF spammers and those fleets utterly destroy LF fleets.

Thank you all for your replys. It confirms what I had been experiencing that focusing on LFs will get you killed in MP unless you have overwhelming numbers. I was hoping to hear from EadTaes too. The only early counter to LRMs is The Raging Scout Spam It does work. 2 scouts beat 1 LRM. If you go 2 scouts to 1 LRM the scouts will win and only lose half their numbers.

LF strategy can work

Firstly the LF strategy relies on creating a condition whereby the enemy overspends on its counter which is LRFs. You however limit the damage taken to your LFs and at same time create the LRFs counter which is the Carrier.

So here is how micro works...

Understand that LFs sitting still firing at LRFs sitting still..theres only going to be one winner. So Start circling LFs. Move the targeted LF , then use the other LFs behind it do cheeky kills on LRFs chasing the forward LF.

Now hopefully the enemy will start overspamming LRFs. At this stage get out carriers , and begin hunting the LRFs which are circle chasing the LFs.

Move carriers into a position that they can jump towards the LRFs retreat point.

Be brave with the carriers...follow LRFs back to their Homeworld if u need to. Make sure always to keep Carriers as single entities. Dont be a noob and retreat 2 carriers when one is being attacked.

So hopefully by the end of the conflict...your loss of LFs is much less then his loss of LRFs to your carriers thus giving you profit.

Now heres the crunch. By this time you should move to the next phase of the strategy which is to make your LRFs. Now use your spare and slightly redundant LFs for secondary strike roles. Forexample providing cover at neutrals . If they make carriers or flaks , you can use your LFs to counter them.

Some capital ships augment LFs very well ..such as the Sova which can provide fighter cover to kill LRFs.

I play advent..and one thing i love to do is just spam some LFs in the enemies face just so that they will go crazy with LRFs. Little do they know that theres 3 drone hosts at my homeworld maxing up their fighter squadrons.

I have to add that Advent HCs apparently only have heavy armor.  I got absolutely schooled by a guy using Cobalts to counter my HCs.

All HCs have Very Heavy armor, not Heavy.  Light Frigs such as Cobalts do very bad damage vs Very Heavy Armor, while HCs do good damage against Light Frigs.  In short, if you got schooled by a guy using Cobalts, he must have outnumbered you and outplayed you, because the light frigs vs HCs is very much in the HCs favor.

I tried this last night but failed badly. My microing skills probably need more work. I could not get the LF that I wanted to use as bait to move quickly enough to kite before it got killed. It still sounds like a good idea.

All things being equal, LRM will shred LF, even if you manage to get things a bit in your favor from skillful micro. 

This whole thread about "Light Frigate" strategies is missing the point -- you don't set your fleet composition despite what your opponent is doing, you set out to implement a fleet strategy in answer to what your opponent is doing.  A light frigate strategy is not going to work in the face of an LRM heavy fleet, unless you have them seriously outnumbered, or you have serious carrier support to kill the LRM.

If the enemy has gone carrier, flak, or support cruiser heavy, LF can be invaluable, but there is very little reason to build any if the enemy has made a fleet of LRM or HC's.  In these cases, stop building LF immediately, and build something that is good at killing the LRM / HC's (probably carriers).

That is the answer I've been after. I really think this "I don't research LRMs. I build LFs and always win." is a myth. I can't see an LF strategy working against a seasoned MP opponant. If someone begs to differ on that conclusion I'd really like to see a replay posted of how you can beat people that use LRMs. I think fleet supply to fleet supply, no feed, it can't be done. A properly balanced LRM fleet will win.

Just a side note. I think it's kind of cheesy that LFs DPS is 25% weaker against light armor. Yet a scout which uses the same weapon type is twice as strong against light armor. Is this type of undocumented tweaking typical of most strategy games?

Oh god yes.

Look at Company of Heroes, each units has a damage table in relation to all other units which sets base damage, then their are weapon types vs armour types. The infantry all look vaguely the same constitution (they are ww2 soldiers) but those stormtroopers have 'elite armour' so a flame based weapon will do more damage to them than 'light armour' infantry. all this stuff is just part of the coding and damage tables none of it is depicted in the game itself.

@P5yy

Well I'll be dipped!!! THANK YOU!!

Thanks to your tips I actually got an LF fleet to beat an LRM fleet. 3 carriers with 11 LF vs 3 carriers with 14 LRMs. I ended up losing 2 LFs but I think that was only because I got cocky and turned my fleet to attack the 4 remaining LRMs. I kited my carriers one way and my LF the other. It took some micro but with some practice I hope I can get better at it.

He did outnumber me.  I was fighting him near a world where he was pumping out cobalts.  The guy was quite convinced that destras had heavy armor, not very-heavy like other HCs.  I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it myself.  I've also heard rumors that illums have a different armor class than other LRFs. 

He didn't do anything particularly special as far as microing.. more or less we faced off and my ships went down.  I have no idea how many of his I killed because they were replaced quickly.

Sorry im kind of new, but isn't there a code viewer that lets you pull out the damage tables, so someone can post them and we can all know what does what?

P5yy gave a the perfect texte book strategy on how to do it. It's basicly a case of letting him belive hes goign to beat you by letting him see only light frigates for as long as posisble.

I normaly try to hide my carriers and hoshikos until the battle begins. The LF strategy plays on the element of surprise and outwiting your opponent by leading him into a false sence of securaty. Normaly you keep increasing you LF count to about 20. At that point even if he builds flak or carriers you will be bale to wipe them out as they come into the battle. Also upgrading you LFs is very valuable and an important key part of it.

That person you speak of that says he hardly builds LRFs anymore must be me since I have said it a few times and do follow it. I could provide replays about it but not sure I realy want to do that. Since it would open up the door to counter stratergies too soon. I wanna be able to make LRFs spammer RAGE quit for some time to come still.

Also LF can be used quite effectively againts HC's since most of the time when otehr will reach HCs it will be unupgraded HCs were as if your were using a LF stratergy and have upgraded them you can take them up almost toe to toe againts HCs with proper logistical support. The onyl rance that would have upgrade HCs when gettign there are advent since the weapon on their HC and their LF is the same. Thus making advent the easiest, most effective race to go from LF to HC. TEC and Vasary have different weapons. But Vasary HC and LF share the reintergratio abilaty witch is just discusting. I rarely see it beign used when when i do it's always a pain. Especialy if he's smart enough to have overseers with them.

I hope to see more epople discover the power of the LF. When I say LFs are the new "SPAM" I mean it.

Edit: after noticing a post I missed. Mbaron888 your link to my post is basicaly how it works. But you of course have to dot he right calls. For if you do let the enemy get lots of flak your fighters will die to fast. But then you can instead change yoru fighters to bombers. Which will take lest dmg fromt he flak and do horify damage to them. Basicly it'S possible to counter flak with bombers to SOME extent. Bombers alone will not do it. Also as you've added going scouts would also work or rather could be easyly added to the LFs. Since all scouts for all races ahve the same weapon type as the LFs the upgrades will boots both.

Also earlier i forgot to mention that advent fighters ahve the same weapon type as their LFs. So for advent: Scouts, LFs, Fighters, Support cruisers, HCs all share the same weapon type. I see lots of money beign saved on upgrades and invested in ships instead.

Correct me if Im wrong EadTaes but I thought the HCs for the advent are plasma based weaponary not laser like their LF. I made sure to check this in-game and the weapons on the HC for advent are plasma not laser.

Correct, that's what I thought too. It is exactly the reason why I don't like Advent HC very much, because upgrading plasma weaponry is so damn useless for just about anything else. Not something you want to give priority too. To a certain extend, the same goes for Enforcers, since wavecannons are only useful for Capitals, HC and Seige frigs. But, like you mentioned, at least Enforcers share the reintegration with Skirmishers. The TEC have the easiest time here, since their HC share their weaponry with Fighters and upgrading autocannons is quite cheap as well.

I had thought Advent would be the easiest race to use this way. The research tiers in Advent get to the units and weapons needed quicker. The scouts are so tough too.

Good point. I still think going with a Mazra cap would be better than Kol even though Kol's weapons are mostly auto cannon.

Ho yes indded crusaders do have plasma weapons. And indeed it'S useless for almost evrthing else. But the rest was corect an accurate. Yes TEC ahve a nice time with auto cannons since they ahve them on every cap except the sova and fighters, flak, HC share it.

Oh, yes. That's right! Flaks also have autocannons :p. Nearly forgot about that. Makes upgrading autocannons even more favourable.