Scouts & Scout Rushing: The Explanation (Developer Input would be appreciated)

from Sins Forums

For what it's worth, I'm going to throw in my input. I've scout rushed more than anyone, and I can tell you, this strategy isn't designed to be the superior late game fleet. Massed scouts in late game are overall weak, and I do not think this is the fleet you want if you're going to be going on the offensive.

Scout rushes should only be used on a map, such as single system 5v5's and 4v4's, where youre homeworlds are 5 jumps or less apart. Scout rushes in my book are making a ton of scouts when you see someone going straight to LRMS, Assailants, or Illums.

The point of doing scouts to fight LRF's  is this. You get to buy a cheap fleet that allows you to invest in your economy so you can not only have a sufficient fleet to knock him back, you also have a better economy that will allow you to overwhelm your opponent with your next wave of ships.

To be clear, I hate LRF fights because I HATE FIGHTING ROCK WITH ROCK. That's what LRF battles are. It's a mindless battle of who can make more, instead of who can make the better fleet. As many of us have noticed, Fighters no longer do the job. I'm sorry devs, but I just don't follow your logic when you made carriers SLOWER than long range frigates. I was ok with the fact that HC's were faster than carriers. They're good against anything. Now, all someone has to do is make some flak (not alot), and they can crush the fighters, and all that person is left with is carriers gobbling up ship slots that can be chased down by the very unit they were designed to counter. 

So, fighters don't do the job. Flak are too strong against them. I wanted a counter. I don't want to outproduce someone, I want to out wit them, hence why I'm playing a STRATEGY game.

I figured this strategy out when I noticed the anti-light bonus that scouts get. This bonus is ridiculous. You need to match production in ship slots (three tec scouts per 1 Illum, or 4 vasari scouts per 3 lrms, etc). There's a BIG drawback though. Scouts are good against ONLY long range frigates. If you're still making Long Range Frigates and/or your own scouts to fight against other scouts AND you're losing, that's your own stupid fault.

I designed this because it's the only counter I've seen that sufficiently pushes back the annoying LRF rusher. You know what I mean. The person who gets X number labs needed for LRF's, techs them, and sends as many as possible your way.

Scouts aren't for assaulting. They do 50% of their damage to anything not with light armor, and their dps is pathetic to begin with. The only reason they're any good against LRF's is the 200% damage multiplier they against light armor. That's +100%. Lethal.

If there is a developer reading this, DON'T you dare nerf these scouts. If anything, the Vasari scout needs a light buff in damage (up to 4 to 4.5 dps per ship instead of 3.5) and a slight buff in shields. Advent scouts are incredibably tough. TEC scouts are incredibly strong (Best Scouts for countering LRF rush). Vasari scouts get neutrals, but hold the worst combat value. They can do the job, but overall are just a tad weaker than Seekers and TEC Scouts.

Oh, for the record, to whoever is pissed that somoene is building scouts instead of frigates, guess what? They're frigates too.

As I see it, this game rewards the person who has the better understanding of how to play. The counters are as follows as the game stands.

Light Frigates --> Flak --> Fighters --> Scouts --> Long Range Frigates --> Light Frigates

In this loop, I remove scouts from it once you have the econ to support massed long range frigates with carrier support. Carriers work as support, but not as a stand-alone fleet.

There's also this chain.

Fighters --> Bombers -- > HC's --> Anything besides strikecraft (Including HC's oddly)

I've also left out

Light Frigates --> Support Cruisers.

Devs, the biggest problems in this game are the good damage mulitpliers the LRF gets (It's lowest  one is 75% agaisnt anything, including caps, only frigate besides HC to get that). That's why everyone spams them. This is also why most people mix in flak with them. Flak stop fighters hard and let that person keep their long range frigates that are free to terrorize.

That's why I looked so desperately for this counter. It's the best answer I've seen to knock back the "unbeatable" long range frigate spam. It's the only one that works.

So some of you say it's too hard to beat late game? Are you kidding me? Make anything that doesn't have light armor and you'll beat them. ANYTHING. If you're cap died to scouts that's cause you kept making targets with light armor. Scouts are pathetically weak against caps. To get through a cap's armor, high mitigation, and high health and shields, that means you made a fleet of lrf's that the scouts just mauled through.

My parting words? Learn the counters, and nothing in this game will phase you.

Changes I'd like to see in the game:

1) Vasari Scouts get 30% more shields, 10% more health, do 4-4.5 dps. Need the buff to compare to TEC and Advent

2) Illuminator Needs to be nerfed slightly. I think the way to do this is to either adjust the stats on the Illum, OR make them more expensive. I think the Illum SHOULD be the strongest and toughest LRF, but right now, their cost is very very comparable to Assailants and LRMS. Illums should be 10%-25% more expensive than assailants and lrms. They're strong and cheap. It shouldn't be that way.

3) Repulse is completely broken. It affects all ships, including caps. It uses almost no antimatter (6 per second). It's to easy to fire it, move, and then fire it again. The simplest fix to this is to just up the antimatter cost. I don't mind that repulse makes ships that it effects stop firing. I don't mind that Repulse has a range bigger than light frigate countering abilities. I don't mind that LRF's get a 75% multiplier against Guardian heavy armor. I don't mind that Fighters/bombers, which are "immune" to repulse, only get 50% multipliers against them. I mind that the ability costs so little and allows people to completely ABUSE the ability. They just don't stop. I'm ok if they use it strategically, but I hate it when they lean on it to stall because I'm  crushing them and they need a broken ability to make a stand.

strategy
50,935 views 81 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

An interesting and well rounded argument. Much better than some of the rants that I have seen on this forum.

I do agree with the repulse fix and buff to Vasari Scout. Scouts grouped with fighters would actually be much more effective and you might not even need a nerf to the Illums.

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

i cannot agree on the fact that SCOUTS should be able to FIGHT nonetheless DEFEAT a heavy combat unit and do 200 percent of the dmg against it? that just sounds, and is, completely wrong. sorry amish. but i feel you need to find a new way to counter your rock vs rock scenario.

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Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top



1) Vasari Scouts get 30% more shields, 10% more health, do 4-4.5 dps. Need the buff to compare to TEC and Advent

really? sounds like we are balancing vasari's paper against that of the other to races. i'd say the neutral cap ability makes them stronger. maybe...mix in some assailants with your scouts?

Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top

Glad to know I'm not the only one to notice that Vasari scout's are in desperate need of a buff. BTW, pound for pound, Advent scouts are wicked.

Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Ascension, reply 2
i cannot agree on the fact that SCOUTS should be able to FIGHT nonetheless DEFEAT a heavy combat unit and do 200 percent of the dmg against it? that just sounds, and is, completely wrong. sorry amish. but i feel you need to find a new way to counter your rock vs rock scenario.

If they were named anything other than scouts this would not be the case. If for instant they were called Specialist Assault Ships, they would fill that niche and people would not complain, it's just the prejudice associated with the scout class that is stopping you from taking them seriously as an actual attack vessel.

Like say if the TEC scout was called the Foreign Espionage Unit (since it has timed explosives as its speciality) or the Advent Seeker Vessel was named the Vessel of Everlasting Hope because of the martyr ability. It's just a matter of putting yourself past the knee jerk 'scouts should not fight' mentality.

Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top

i've never done a scout rush before so my logic maybe flawed, but....

it sounds like you are using the very tactic that you don't like...the massing of LRFs, except you are massing scouts.  for the sake of a counter argument, maybe scouts do need to be nerfed, if you are going to use them for that purpose.  scouts are ment for scouting.   they are very fast ships so they can get in and out of enemy territoy quicker.  if they were buffed at all like you suggested with vasari,  they would become just a powerful as light frigs, as well as having the ability to capture mines.  that is quite a bit for a scout don't you think?

Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top

Ok, Scouts is a good tactic to use agiesnt lrms, however if You put it into a commen sense sceniro, scouts cnnot be able to do that. But hey, I dont really care, I either use them or dont, I always find another way round.

And to the Advent Part

I am geting sick and itred of people saying nerf illums and guardians. The fact is people have to buid 3 miltary labs as it is and ASSILANTS only need ONE miltary Lab. So in theory you should have a bigger fleet then people who played advent.

Ok Maybe the repulse is a little powerful, but how mnay times have I seen idiots not attacking my guardians? they have a fleet of mass bombers and fighters, but still they choose to igonre them, even expervcianced players. If ur just gonna work into an advent fleet with HCs, then what do  u expect us to do?

People need to understand going ahead agiesnt illums is not a good idea. but using something in the fornt of ur fleet like gardas and sentinals will help to withstand most of the punshment, while ur irms from range take them out. Thats what I tested and it works.

All this is an Vasari player moaning about how OP repulse and illums is pissing himoff, well I dont like the Vasari SB becuase that is also very OP.

 

Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top

really? sounds like we are balancing vasari's paper against that of the other to races. i'd say the neutral cap ability makes them stronger. maybe...mix in some assailants with your scouts?

I think you just missed the whole point here - the point is NOT to build LRMs to fight other LRMs...

Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top

One day Quar attacked me with scouts and annihilated my assailant fleet. I saw their power first hand. So I saved the replay and figured out why I lost. Now I know what to do, and since, haven't been beaten down by a scout fleet.

Learn the counters, and nothing in this game will phase you.

Amen. Scouts are NOT just for scouting, and anyone who believes this misses the point of them. The devs included abilities for them for OTHER purposes, don't you think they included the buff against light armor for that very SAME reason?

I beat a fleet of 50+ scouts and 3 caps  vs my 22 illums, 25 seekers, 6 disciples and mothership. How? I had better fleet balance and did a slightly better job micromanaging. Its that easy.

BUILD SOMETHING OTHER THAN LRFS to fight off scouts, you could even throw 10-15 scouts in WITH your LRFS and come out much better. Had I just built illuminators, I would have probably lost, but guess what! I didn't, I built scouts and a few disciples and it made all the difference.

Scout frigates are still frigates, tier 0, and it just so happens one of their worst enemies, the light frigate is also tier 0. It's not like you need a higher tier research unit to beat them (like lrfs and carriers, or lfs and lrfs).

Personally I like the fact that scouts have forced early game diversification in fleets. It's better than just building a bunch of LRFS til you can build support frigates. I think people just need to respect the scout as a frigate, and not just some unit that you send off to its inevitable doom at some point.

Scouts are meant to be included in fleets, I think the devs made that pretty clear with the inclusion of mines and abilities that give them greater purpose. What Amish has done is show what they're capable of.

If they were named anything other than scouts this would not be the case.

Agreed. If you want we can take a real life scenario: Anyone heard of those little unmanned aircraft US troops are using overseas (Predator UAVs)? They began as a simple scouting tool, now they have weapons and can both scout and attack. Some are now armed with missiles that can destroy armored vehicles. A lightly armored, cheap (comparative to other aircraft), unit thats serves as reconaissance and can destroy specific unit types. That sounds familiar, why is it so hard to believe?

As for late game scout fleets: If the backbone of your fleet is LRF, then it only makes sense that the backbone of your opponents fleet is scouts (especially since carriers can't do their job as well now). If you didn't have LRFS as your primary damage dealer, then you wouldn't have a problem. It has been discussed and agreed upon that reducing the carrier nerf will cut down on late game scout fleets. But until that point that comes, your lrfs are going to be targetted by something that does the job better.

Change your strategy, we've all had to do it many times, this is no different.

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Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top

As many of us have noticed, Fighters no longer do the job. I'm sorry devs, but I just don't follow your logic when you made carriers SLOWER than long range frigates.

Thank you. I know I'm not the only one but I think your voice and the voice of other more experienced players carries weight. The LRF could keep up with carriers just fine before anyway because they didn't have to turn as big a circle to keep up.

Glad to know I'm not the only one to notice that Vasari scout's are in desperate need of a buff. BTW, pound for pound, Advent scouts are wicked.

Indeed! They have the same shield and hull points as a Disciple yet cost less. They make a great meat shield and are nice against capital ship abilities that have a number cap.

Reply #11 from Sins Forums Top

Really, TEC dont have many options at this point besides scouts and HCs.

Reply #12 from Sins Forums Top

Carriers, flak, hoshis, kodiaks, cielos and ogrovs are all pretty decent ships depending on the situation. I'm not a big fan of the scout rush, but that's more due to me disliking rushes in general, not because of the tiny little ships that rip apart my expensive illuminators ^_^

 

Still, great post/explanation, Raging Amish.

Reply #13 from Sins Forums Top

Scout rushing is BS.  I have said as much on other threads.  They are meant to scout and have the odd secondary abilities of limited use.  They are not meant to be a large part of your fleet.  They are meant to scout.  The fact that they have an ability to make mines targetable does not mean you should use them as your primary attacking unit.  I have never talked about scout spam being a late game tactic because that is suicide.  It is a very early game tactic that one has to correspondingly build scout spam crap to counter.  If you research at all with an enemy thats within 3 jumps hw to hw then you are behind in spam because they have that many more scouts to hit you with.    You don't get much of an opportunity to research anything or you will be behind the 8 ball in fighting it back.  If you don't want to fight rock with rock then by all means build fighters.  That at least isn't such a cheezy tactic.  If you argue that fighters don't work then carriers/fighters need some of their mojo back still.  Just because it is something you came up with/made famous doesn't mean its a good thing to do and should be protected. 

 

[_]-Greyfox

Reply #14 from Sins Forums Top

You do get that scouts are ONLY good at taking out long range frigates and other scouts right? I mean it. That's it.

Quoting Ascension, reply 2
i cannot agree on the fact that SCOUTS should be able to FIGHT nonetheless DEFEAT a heavy combat unit and do 200 percent of the dmg against it? that just sounds, and is, completely wrong. sorry amish. but i feel you need to find a new way to counter your rock vs rock scenario.

Ok, let's see. Flak work too, but they're expensive, and good luck going on the offensive with flak. They can't destroy anything besides stuff with anti-very light and light armor. Same weakness as scouts.

Long range frigates aren't heavy combat units. They're meant to be more like the archer AOE in my book. Long range, easy to take down. If they had heavy armor, sure, I'd call them heavy units. They have LIGHT armor, as in LIGHT, not heavy, as in EASY TO TAKE DOWN. One thing that seems to be agreed upon is that fighters just can't quite do the job, so your otions are either flak to play defensively, or scouts to take the fight to them.

You have games like Rise of Nations where the scout doesn't do much of anything except scout. Sure, if you want a scout to just do that, go play RON. You have other games like AOE where the scout is a good anti-lightly armored unit.

Different games have different feels. Watch me play. I only do the scout rush when my opponent is predictable like EVERY OTHER PERSON OUT THERE who just rushes to long range frigates. If your opponent is going to be predictable and make one type of ship, and make nothing but it. Then guess what? I'm going to make the counter. And nothing but.

Quoting Greyfox2, reply 13
Scout rushing is BS.  I have said as much on other threads.  They are meant to scout and have the odd secondary abilities of limited use.  They are not meant to be a large part of your fleet.  They are meant to scout.  The fact that they have an ability to make mines targetable does not mean you should use them as your primary attacking unit.  I have never talked about scout spam being a late game tactic because that is suicide.  It is a very early game tactic that one has to correspondingly build scout spam crap to counter.  If you research at all with an enemy thats within 3 jumps hw to hw then you are behind in spam because they have that many more scouts to hit you with.    You don't get much of an opportunity to research anything or you will be behind the 8 ball in fighting it back.  If you don't want to fight rock with rock then by all means build fighters.  That at least isn't such a cheezy tactic.  If you argue that fighters don't work then carriers/fighters need some of their mojo back still.  Just because it is something you came up with/made famous doesn't mean its a good thing to do and should be protected. 

 

[_]-Greyfox

Ok. Scout rushes aren't hard to counter at all. Why this is pissing you off I don't know. It's so easy to embarass a scout rusher. You do get that right? All this tactic does is stop your opponent from making long range frigates. That's it. Scouts don't destroy buildings, are horrible against caps, and can be easily destroyed by anything not having light armor.

 

ONE MORE POINT

I can't speak for everyone who makes scouts, but I can speak for myself. People accuse me of spamming scouts. For the love of god shut it. If I'm making scouts, I'm not spamming, I'm countering. You were the spammer. You made only long range frigates. I made the counter. I'm not spamming, I'm countering. It's cheap, effective, and my way of saying "Aint gonna work on me" to the person who was predictable.

Reply #15 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Azrak_Navarion, reply 12
Carriers, flak, hoshis, kodiaks, cielos and ogrovs are all pretty decent ships depending on the situation. I'm not a big fan of the scout rush, but that's more due to me disliking rushes in general, not because of the tiny little ships that rip apart my expensive illuminators 

 

 

True Azrak, however, of those ships listed, only Kodiaks and Ogrovs are offensive.  The rest are support.  Carriers are not offensive any more.  Fighters dont work vs. LRMs that well because of flak being so powerful.  Bombers really dont counter HCs anymore, since the HC is faster than the carrier.  Flak isnt offensive really, except vs. lrms and as a meatshield, so it's basically defensive. Hoshis are defensive, tho their special ability is arguably offensive.... Cielos are support.  Ogrovs only wok vs. structures, so you cant really count them.

Thus my statement, HCs and scouts are pretty much all TEC has atm.  Basically, if you play TEC, you have to play defensively and turtle until mid to late game.  Without scouts, TEC will lose to basically EVERY decent rush.  TEC is the whipping boy of Sins...thus the reason VERY few decent players use them.  Sad outcome really.

Reply #16 from Sins Forums Top

I wouldn't go that far. LRM's are actually still a very very good unit. The problem with them is they don't work on Illum spammers.

TEC has the best scout and light frig. LRMS are good, it's just Illums crush them. LRMS beat Assailants though. Garda flak is second only to Vasari flak. I say that because Vasari flak get phase missiles.

TEC carriers are poo though. Lose to Advent fighters. Bombers just aren't my thing. Hoshiko's kick ass. Mobile repair bays. Cielo's are great, but the Hoshiko brings so much to the table that it's rare they come about. Kodiaks are the best HC's in the game. Ogrovs are awesome too.

TEC options aren't limited. It's just that they suffer the fact that LRMS lose to Illums, and every advent player out there goes straight Illums.

Reply #17 from Sins Forums Top

i find it funny how it seems like only advent players are complaining about scouts....

guess they just cant handle having the unit that just kills everything else actually get destroyed

 

but seriously, if you lose to scout spam it is your fault, you are the one who spammed a ship that is countered by scouts. 1 vasari LF was in a battle against 40+ scouts with a repair bay (15 hp healed per sec) my supporting 6 or 7 LFs killed all of the scouts. they never killed that 1 LF. now if you are complainging that scouts are OP maybe you should stop spamming the unit that is countered by them.

thats my rant for the day.

Reply #18 from Sins Forums Top

if you are complainging that scouts are OP maybe you should stop spamming the unit that is countered by them.

Couldnt have said it better myself.

Reply #19 from Sins Forums Top

Oh, for the record, to whoever is pissed that somoene is building scouts instead of frigates, guess what? They're frigates too.

I wish you were in the game I played the other day. My ally was totaly ignorant and got pissed at me because I had scouts in my fleet aginst my Ilum spaming enemy. I told him their good aginst Ilums and you know what he told me? "spam asailants!"

Reply #21 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Raging, reply 14




Ok. Scout rushes aren't hard to counter at all. Why this is pissing you off I don't know. It's so easy to embarass a scout rusher. You do get that right? All this tactic does is stop your opponent from making long range frigates. That's it. Scouts don't destroy buildings, are horrible against caps, and can be easily destroyed by anything not having light armor.

 

ONE MORE POINT

I can't speak for everyone who makes scouts, but I can speak for myself. People accuse me of spamming scouts. For the love of god shut it. If I'm making scouts, I'm not spamming, I'm countering. You were the spammer. You made only long range frigates. I made the counter. I'm not spamming, I'm countering. It's cheap, effective, and my way of saying "Aint gonna work on me" to the person who was predictable.

 

Amish, I have played against you in the past where you have rushed me with scouts.  You had 20 or 30 scouts headed for me before I had 2 or 3 illums built when the bit of fleet I had built already was mostly disciples to clear militia.  That wasn't responding to any sort of spam of illums on my part.  That was rushing me with scouts spam plain and simple.  You can deny it if you like but that doesn't make it any less true.  I didn't say it was uncounterable because it can be beaten but it isnt all that easy.  I have seen 150 scouts take down a SB pretty handily(unupgraded of course).  I say that scouts are scouts and shouldn't be the main component of a battling fleet.  If people are using scouts as the main component of their fleet on a regular basis(as is being done a lot now) then something is dreadfully wrong with that state of the game, in my opinion.

 

[_]-Greyfox

Reply #22 from Sins Forums Top

I wonder if people know that scouts are called scouts not for the job they do, but for the class of ship they are. Small, nimble, and fast. The actual name of each ship varies by race.

It is actually the most versatile ship in the game. It can attack LRF and constructor ships, it can attack buildings with appropriate tech, and it can scout out enemy movements, and certain races can nab neutral extractors. It does the primary function the best (scouting) but does each of the other jobs less than another class of ship. I for one think that the process of building a fleet is just fine how it is. Real life militarys always send in the scouts first to see how hard the enemy bites back before they send in the real fleet. This is no different in Sins.

On a final note the scout rush brings back the importance of have some defense turrets. Those turrets will eat alive scouts LONG before the scouts could kill a force of LRF if you position your ships next to the cannons to protect each other. Hell you could put up ONE repair bay and solve the problem even easier. There are lots of ways to stop a scout rush. Learn how to counter it and you can go back to enjoying your games.

Reply #23 from Sins Forums Top

Codan--great reference to "the last starfighter"  :)

Reply #24 from Sins Forums Top

I don't remember the game, but I can guess what my logic was. You had made disciples. Everyone makes those to expand, but the fact that you started making illums is why I hit you. I wanted to stop them from coming out at all. Not to mention they're a good cheap first fleet. I wasn't rushing you cause I wanted to hit you with scouts. It's cause I had the opportunity to attack you and gain the upper hand and seized it. No idea if it worked, but that's why I did it. You didn't have a fleet. I did. Wanted to hit you before you could get one.

Reply #25 from Sins Forums Top

The point being made was you said you built scouts in response to spam.  There was no spam of illums at that point.  There was a shitload of scouts made by you thus scout spam rushing.  The way that game played out was you killed my labs with time bombs and ran the scouts around my hw well forcing me to chase you.  You didn't attack the few illums I had up.  You used the superior speed to slow down my killing of scouts.  I rebuilt labs on my roid and other world that i had and built some drone hosts after exasperatingly chasing you around with scouts, discs, and illums and trying to block the scouts path with my ships.  The fighters killed the scouts(after the game I questioned why you never built flak to counter the fighters).  The game ended shortly thereafter due to teammates losing but it wasn't decided between me and you.  The point being that you were spamming scouts before you knew there was a spam to counter and you saying you only spammed in response to LRF spam.   So whoever accused of you scout spamming is quite believeable at least from my point of view because you have done so to me.

 

[_]-Greyfox