How to counter heavy cruiser spam?

LRMs, bombers?

FOr me I think just use another matching fleet with better upgrades (armor, shield or weapons etc.). Using Capital ships abilities usually help. There is no fast rule. The best person who is better at micro a battle with similar fleet usually wins.

I think bombers are good against CAs, but I find that bombers die too easily in large battles. If I use carriers to any significant degree, they're loaded with interceptors to suppress enemy bombers and long range frigates.

As mentioned before, try to get better upgrades, do a better job with micro, and use your capital ship abilities more intelligently.

If he has no fighters/flack then spam carriers with bombers back up by LRM's. If your advent a capital plus one of the cruisers gets a push ability that will keep the heavy cruisers out of weapons range, though this can be counteracted with the kodiaks researchable intercept ability.

If he has fighters and flack, well i'm not really sure the best way to counter that.

have more heavy cruisers than they do.

This poses a very interesting question. Because there really is no sure fire way to counter them. Sure LRM's could work IF you can keep him away from them. The question is what is there weakness? You might say there range but with the intercept ability that gets pretty much nullified. I'm of the opinion that LRM's need a boost, I don't find them overly useful anyways so I don't think it could hurt. Perhaps more range and a slight damage boost.

Bombers. '

Also, does anyone know if the Advent Domina Subjugator's ability works on them, or just frigates?

... the whole point of a counter is a different type of ship that does beter. Just telling the guy to build more ships doesn't answer the question. As said befor, LRM's and Bombers do very well in this situation. Unless they have ALOT of flack frigs. kodiaks + flacks + fighters is a very hard combo to counter. But its also very expensive to build so, in this situation, i would avoid said fleet. I would go around with Sovas and take out his economy, running like heck whenever he shows up. Use the embargo plus a good supply of bombers to take out his infrastructure. go for his research stations first, if you take out a research station and he drops bellow the amount needed for a tech, that tech becomes useless. its a great way to screw over his upgrades and keep him from building more kodiaks. then when your ready with an upgraded compareable fleet, and youve taken out alot of his research stations. Hit him head on hoping your supperior techs will help you win the day.

Bombers, support cruisers, flak(counters their fighters), light frigates(counters their flak). The last two are me presuming you aren't playing against some noob that is making nothing but kodiaks.

Kodiaks are only really directly countered by bombers. They are indirectly countered by using a good mixed fleet with good survivability.

LRMs rather suck against kodiaks. Illums do alright if you can keep them from being killed in one volley(again, as I said, mixed fleet)

Depends on the race... usually the counter ends up being out zerging them.

For avent, the iconus guardians have an amazing ability to push them back. It pushes the heavy cruisers out of range of your ships (just put the guardian in front of your ships) and you bombers/illuminators will do the killing.

For vasari, the counter is essentially to just have a bigger fleet or RA. Microing your units definately helps, but if they've managed to amass such a huge fleet, you should already have RA.

For tec, you don't really get amazing unit combos like advent and you don't get the unlimited ships like Vasari, so you're pretty much stuck with either getting a bigger fleet, or massing the "direct counter" ship, which still requires micro

LRM's aren't really the best choice against them. They have light armor which means that heavy cruisers hit them for 150% damage. If you don't want to micro and you want to just mass one unit to counter, carriers with bombers are your best choice. The problem with carriers is that they're very slow and kodiaks have the ability to rush forward, getting into firing range quickly. If you do use carriers, you need to have them run all over the gravity well and hope that your bombers can dispatch the heavy cruisers before you lose all your carriers. When you do run your carriers around, don't run them all in one big clump, split them up into multiple groups. If they focus fire a carrier, move it away from the group. It's going to die anyways, so at least use it to make the kodiaks get away from the current group. If they're not focus firing, scatter the carriers in the group that's getting chased.

Also, remember to micro your bombers and focus fire the support ships, followed by the kodiaks. If the enemy is smart, they will have lots of flak frigates... in this case, just pray your bombers can overwhelm them.

Aside from the advent unit combos, there isn't really a counter to a fleet of heavy cruisers, flak frigates, and support ships.

I have had so many bad experiences with using a mostly carrier fleet. Your right if he has flaks also you will most likely have a very nice carrier fleet but with no bombers.

It seems to me that using heavy cruisers supported by flak frigates and support cruisers isn't really spamming any more. It's creating a balanced fleet in which the different elements cover each other's weaknesses. This just seems like good strategy.

Very true. And sometimes the better fleet will just be the bigger HC/flak/support one.

LOL YES!!!

Bombers are best (but that has been said a couple of times now).
The Vasari and Advent disable support cruisers also work quite well. Each one can keep one Kodiak disabled but they cost less and take less supply. So you can keep his Kodiaks quiet while finishing off his flak and then launch your bombers to kill off the Kodiaks.

you're not supposed to counter heavy-cruiser spam after-the-fact. you should notice *far* before your enemy gets to heavy crusiers that he's been teching up, if he's been matching your armada tech up yourself (so that you can get to the technique I'm about to tell you about) or if he has a smaller force, or fewer forces, bash into his base and take down as many research stations as possible. even if he barely gets to heavy cruisers before you wipe out 3 research stations, he cant use the tech if he doesnt have the right amount of military hubs online, so from there you've got him at a significant economic disadvantage

*if* and I stress this as a last resort, *if* he gets to heavy cruisers and you arent significantly above him in terms of military strength rely on support cruisers (very effective for the advent, if you're TEC or Vasari I venture to guess you're screwed) support cruisers can make even weak ships last quite longer, and then a few high level capital ships should be enough to hold him back. use ICONUS as much as possible (if you're advent) the enemy tends to ignore them, but they can give you incredibal survivability.

As Schod points out, foreknowledge is the first counter to any spam technique. After that air superiority can significantly swing the battle.

Fighters (not bombers) can keep the air clear for only your air support, once any opposing bombers are gone you can concentrate on their LRMs. Use your CA against his Flak to keep as many of your fighters in the air as possible. As soon as you're able to limit his support his fleet will fall apart quickly.

Depends on what you play.
As Advent I'd bring Progenitor + Rapture, and a mix of my own HCs and Illums.

Then have the HCs stop him, fly in the Progenitor, use Malice, shield up the HCs with the aura (this makes your HCs nearly equal to his despite lower numbers), and then go depending on what he does.

If he focuses on your HCs, blast him to shreds with the Illums + Malice.

If he chases the Illums, kite him while killing his HCs one by one with yours.

And if he attacks one of the caps, Malice + Vengeance and he just killed his entire army himself, pretty much.

For Vasari, the counter is to have an Antorak and lots of Bombers. The Antorak can use Distort Gravity to keep the carriers safely out of HC range while the Bombers pound the cruisers with Phase Missiles. Enemy fighters can be countered by fighters and/or Jam Weapons(Devastator ability), and enemy flak can be countered by Ravastras/Assailants + Kortul Devastator.

The simplest solution though is to spam Skarovas Enforcers and Stilakus Subverters and just fight it out straight. All these counters require intelligence that your enemy is building an HC fleet, so the overall counter basically comes down to scouting ability.

If you have a smaller military, you're toast. A Combined arms fleet consisting of mostly kodiaks is quite frankly, a good combined arms fleet. You can't win against superior combined arms without a numeric advantage. That's like saying "How do you outsmart someone smarter than you are?" Well, tough.

If it's isolated heavy crusiers, use bombers. carriers can hit and run. Support crusiers, particularly Stilakus Subverters and Domina Subjugators, are effective against smaller numbers of heavy crusiers because they have disabling abilities. Simply disable them and you can take out a large chunk of the fleet.

That said, if someone has 50 heavy crusiers, he has quite an economy. Typically this turns into a strategic rather than tactical argument. If you must fight him defensively, do it on home turf. Use repair bays to protect your forces and increase their HP. If you're Advent or Vasari you can try playing around with Antimatter stations/Nano defenses. With the terrans, straight repair bays will do.

It's best if you go on the offensive. If you're geared to fight HC, you should have many carriers. Take your carriers and attack their base, cripple their economy, fight from many sides. If HC has a weakness is that it's alot of strength coupled into a small force. This becomes a liability when battles are taking place everywhere. Spread your tech out across your empire (Which should be expansive by the time the fight reaches this level, if not, you've been outplayed) and don't make a single planet particularly 'valuable' in terms of orbital structures. Make sure you can rebuild quickly. Try taking it to his territory, using a 'contested planet' to keep him occupied with.

The best counter to any spam in Sin is to have a fleet with a better comb arms system. This game is made so will that there is no one type of Uber ship, not even for the capitals. I run in to the same problem when I attacked a pirate base. They had a fleet mostly of heavy cruisers with some support ships ( the ones they always have around the pirate base(flaks, Siege and that support ship of theres)). First I sent in a fleet of 16 Kortul Devastator at level 4 and lost the entire fleet, while only destroying a fewer ships! Then I sent in a comb arms 40% heavy cruisers and the other 60% made of support ships(Lasurak Transporter, Stilakus Subverter, Serevun Overseer, Junsurak Sentinel, Kanrak Assailant, Ravastra Skirmisher). At a ratio of 3 to 1, (3 being the pirates) I won the fight with very fewer losses. That when I learned, that it not the size or type of unit you send in to battle as a fleet, but how you build that fleet. A good comb arms fleet, will always win against a spam(one type) or counter(that one type, with other support ships to counter thing that the one type is weak against) fleet.

Bombers+support cruisers. Having LRMS doesn't hurt, as lrms have high DPS and dont do much reduced damage to them(75%), but they aren't exactly a counter.

Run for the hills and hope a mod with mines comes out!

Heavy cruisers are countered with your original medium frigate.

I hope some of you realize that when someone complains that their opponent's "heavy cruiser spam is backed up with flak and carriers with fighters" that it's not really "spam" at that point, it's called combined arms.