How do you counter an Embargo rush? Menu --> Quit Game

They'll be too pissed to try it again.

If done early enough, there is no real counter for the Embargo rush. If you don't have your own capital ship yet, because you played a preset map and your opponent built the cap factory first, queued up the ship, and headed straight for you, there isn't really a counter available. So in that case, I'd actually have half a mind to quit.

If you have your own capital ship out, and it has some form of damage ability, you should be able to beat the carrier down, or chase if off.

Otherwise, see the first line of my post.

A Radiance and some Defense Vessels is the best counter I've seen for it.

In a straight up fight, the Radiance will wipe the floor with the Sova, but if the Sova is orbiting the gravity well, you can pull out Detonate Antimatter and literally prevent your opponent from using the ability while you pummel the Sova. The Defense Vessels may be needed to sit around your structures just to be safe in case they try to take them down, but a couple strikecraft wings take a nice bit of time to down any real structure, so they might just be used to defend the Radiance from too much damage. Flaks still appear to be decent counters to the LRMs (for Advent at least before you can get Illuminators) and still have a good amount of hit points, so they should be able to counter an LRM escort of the Sova or reasonable size.

Done right, this leaves your opponent with a wounded capital that is generally inferior to yours in a straight up fight (as opposed to a Kol) and you have a bit more room to expand while it is out of the picture. There are a couple downsides though.

The first one is that you can't do a Progenitor Mothership early due to this risk, which allow for faster expanding and really pretty superior fleet support capabilities. Although ultimately the Radiance is a strong opening capital, and the longer you have it on the field the more experience it will have, and the closer you can be to your ultimate prize, Cleansing Brilliance, an argument can really be made for either as your opening Capital, it just requires a change in strategies.

The more significant one to me is that your Capital cannot expand with your fleet and support it (support is the key to an Advent fleet, after all) until the Sova is repelled. TEC's LRMs and Cobalts can much more easily stand alone early game, and although Illuminators seem to be pretty respectable now, you likely won't be able to match their strength early game, particularly without the support of your capital.

So I think you can basically counter a Sova rush as Advent and come out even. Not ideal, it would be nice if crushing a Sova rush would be the end of the TEC's game, but since it can be done fairly easily and the Sova can usually escape without too much difficulty, they can continue the fight with or without it's success.

As vas: use Kol, 1 Mil lab then mass LRM. A sova with cobalt support can't match the LRM blob. It takes TEC 1 more Mil lab than vas for LRM so you've a temporary advantage, plus local frig factory has a huge advantage over a factory 2-3 jumps away.

Scouting is key. Hanger defense, not so much. Some players refuse to scout first so they lose to bum rushed 10 different ways, but that's their own fault.

Advent:

If you're econ, you're fucked. Of course, you're fucked anyway for going econ as Advent, so whatever.

If you're military, try steal antimatter. That's about really all you can do (esp if you went Mothership). Benefit is that if it's early game you'll usually have a large Disciple fleet anyway.

You aren't going to have steal AM by the time someone hits with embargo rushes... what the hell.

Jesus if you don't know strategy why do you post on the strategy forum? You're confusing newbies.

Heres one fun tactic against a sova rusher (For someone to really rush you with sova and not meet your lrm/assailants/mass-units, you have to be like within 3-4 jumps max of each other's HW right?)...

When you start, if their that close to you (and your scouts see a sova)...Make like 3 light frigs along with the colony ship..Send those to clear out the asteroid near you. Send YOUR cap ship (Marza works great here for example) to their asteroid. Pump your cash into upgrading the asteroids with extractors/etc. Once your cap kills his asteroid, colonize it and get extractors there too.

If his sova is in your homeworld? IGNORE IT! If its level 1-2, its a 30% drain and the asteroid economy very much offsets any of that loss...If you have HIS roid too, you have better economy (just use the black market effectively)... If his sova is level 3, he bought levels and wasted a ton of cash on that too. It will be a long time before the 30% to 70% sova ability "jump" pays for that level-buying.

While his sova is probably demolishing your factory at your HW, your cap is done with his roid and going to HIS homeworld to kill his factory/labs. By then your 3 light frigs can go support your cap too. So now you go and upgrade one roid, making a frigate factory and maybe military labs to get LRM if your tec...whatever works depending on race. Make units at the roid, get enough forces together, go kick sova out of your homeworld.

I've beaten a number of sova rushers this way before, not that hard. Sure, having the RIGHT capital ship helps alot here... Marza is good at taking their roid fast, vasari evacuator is great at killing his stuff with DOT's and can colonize fast (plus no colony frig woot!)...If your advent, going with HuntingX's method stops their embargo cold with proper micro too (radiance).

This is a method to stop VERY fast sova rushing. Before they have LRF class ships, etc. If they wait till they have LRM/etc before going in with sova, you should have enough units to scare off the cap ship by then too... Or you should be the one being aggressive and attack him first...Kinda hard to use embargo on defense .

Hope this helped a bit.

-Drexion

Its a tough issue, Arc . Sova embargo is definitely a pain to stop when someone is only a few jumps away, specially if they know what their doing. If nothing else, someone with sova can simply use it as a "harassment" while they expand their economy and make LRM. This gives them an economic advantage certainly, which if they use properly, is a pain to beat if your opponent is of equal skill.

I just posted that thing above as a possible "sova rush counter" because I find many sova rushers ignore their economic expansion(roids, etc) in their efforts to finish you off...and its possible that you can exploit that.

NO, don't take his 'roid. Waste of time. Seige the homeworld. Kill like 150 people, and he's screwed monetarily too. People take awhile to regen. Then you can take your capital back to your own world.

Are you sure? He still has income from your world and he can bomb your home world too if there is no one to defend.

Marza will probably do a bit better. It's frontal arc is much stronger than the Kol's frontal arc, giving it something of an advantage in 1v1 capital ship duels.

You need to realize that unless your have -antimatter abilities on a cap (radiance), its useless to try and get the sova out of your HW until you have significant "forces" there to harass it. Even if they only manage to stay in your HW and dodge for 5+ minutes before running to recharge, thats a nice economic benefit AND forces you to waste resources on cobalts/etc while they get the much more cost efficient LRM.

Which is why I leave the sova alone at my HW in those situations .

Alright guys so i've done a couple of tests in-game.

Kortul devastator mana burn is worthless, but the radiance works well. Assailants counter it but critically this ability depends on number of jumps the sova has to make to get to you. Also, assailants don't work nearly as well in 1.04 since the sova is actually faster than them now.