Long range frigate madness!!

Im making a mod to add new units inorder to completely overhaul the balance.

Stay Tuned

Are there any counter ships to long range missile frigates? the starting frigates dont seem to cut anything. Turrets and Bombers / Fights don't seem to kill em either. So what exactly will counter them? Flak frigates?

I mean in starcraft every zergling rush was easily defeated if you used the workers to fight back - isn't there something in sins to stop it?

I don't really want to fight fire with fire and simply push back with more long range missile frigates - so lame

This game needs drastic redesigning in the early game especially with the roles of the Light Frigate and LRM and the role of Capital ships . I could offer my solutions , but I doubt the devs care.

Fighters are the intended counters, but due to their total fragility and slow DPS they tend to be countered so cost effectively by flak frigs that they are never used. This encourages a 3 ship mentality: Heavy counters LRM, Support counters Heavy, LRM counters Support.

You'd think they would have put more priority into fixing the balance. What good is the game if there are only one or two viable strategies? It just becomes a real-time slideshow, since the actions are pre-determined and play out the same every game. Mass LRMs, focus fire, repeat. Or you can try for HCs instead. Yawn.

Hopefully, carriers and strike craft get fixed in 1.1. The basic frigates need more of a use as well.

Ok LornNarcosis. So tell me how will this not lead to cobalt spamming?

I really wish Ironclad opened the floor to skilled players to get a good discussion on how balance should work in the early game. Ive got lots of very good solutions , including a revamp to the table of bonuses and armour.

LRMs sadly dominate. Its like seeing a Land RTS game where Artillery is so imbalanced that it dominates. Just imagine having a game like Command and Conquer ,going online and seeing nothing but Artillery being spammed all game.

This happens to every RTS, especially at the higher skill levels of gameplay. As noobs who sit back and build huge armadas and attack at the 2hr mark, this probably doesn't affect them as much. To advanced players who are rushing with the most easily accessable high damage dealing unit, such a unit was found in the LRM.

But you guys need to quit bitchin' about it.

As soon as the LRM starts getting chants from the streets to be nerfed, it will get crushed to hell, become unusable, and people will talk about the good ol' days when people used to make even one LRM. Suddenly, unit XYZ will surface as the new dominator unit because as good players we look for such exploits to use against each other, and before you know it that will be the new LRM.

The same thing happened multiple times in Age of Empires 3. Every new patch would throw a new civ at the top ranking by a good margin.


Now what we really need is some sort of slight nerf to illuminators.. when a 2 to 1 ratio of assailants vs illums still loses, something's a little quirky. Maybe slower speed? Slower ROF? A more narrow attack radius?

Illus need 3 research labs compared to one for assiliants
the tech cost 800/100/175 compared to 400/0/25 (cause of the higher tier)
illus cost more to build
assiliants have far superior range
assiliants phase missles can bypass shields

So assiliants are better number/cost wise and have additional abilities.

So why should illus not be able to beat assiliants in a close battle even when being far outnumbered?

Or maybe you need to position your ships better just like illus need to be placed right to fire more weapons.

And i wont start discussing subverters or ra. balancing in a game is more than the sum of balanced matchups.

LRM are simply atm the working horse for every early or even mid game fleet because you hardly have any alternatives for dps. light frigates get blown to dust by lrms and carriers are too fragile or get countered by flak. Ok carriers arent that bad but they need to be handled very different than any close combat ship which makes them look rather weak.
Whats left are support cruiser who dont have any noticeable dps and heavy cruiser who come rather late if you dont rush for them.
So i dont consider lrm spamming as a problem as long as i dont see any pure lrm fleets. and i didnt saw any yet. lrm are only the best way to get good dps early. and you always need dps.
I would agree on adjusting the balancing between light frigates and lrm in general because atm light firgate are only used as cannon fodder till you get lrm. they should have some use beyond just that and countering support cruiser a little bit.

Well actually my ideas on balance arent to nerf the LRM , but to redesign its role. The difference between nerf and redesign is that nerf doesnt change the role , it just changes the effectiveness of the role so that role is useless . A redesign doesnt change the LRMs effectiveness but reevaluates its role in the game. I understand the dangers of nerfing , which can make the LRM a forgotten unit.

I wont bother going into details because the interest level is so low.

Interesting as I'm actually doing the same thing. In your later post, you suggested that you changed the LRMs role. In my mod, I haven't done that, but I've provided an effective way to counter them. Basically, I added an extra weapon to all the flak frigates with AntiLight damage (10 dps for the Garda and Defense vessel, 12 dps for the Sentinel). There are other balance effecting changes, but this is the most radical change. At first I never intended to release the mod (I was just built it for myself) but I'm beginning to see that it's something people might like playing.

Developing an effective counter sounds like a good idea. Nerfs aren't really that bad. The only problem with them is that devs tend to "over-nerf" or "under-nerf". The former is far more prevelant although I will also say the "perfect nerf" is often lumped into that category by the playerbase.

Developing an effective counter id. flaks is a great idea. I might have put it as a support cruiser at first if I knew how to mod, then again I'm not sure how the AI would calculate to make it an effective counter. If you have a lot more firepower they tend to cast more and shoot less, but you'd want every one of them shooting and not casting if you encountered LRM spam...which means separating your support cruisers from fleet Flak's a great idea.

Fighters will cut LRMs pretty easily. So if it's just LRMs then fighters are a simple clear and obvious answer.


If small amounts of flak are giving you trouble you might consider scouts.
Scouts are like big fighters, similar damage output and more resistant to flak.


If he has large numbers of flak and LRMs you're going to need heavies, as they are the only that can knock out flack in a reasonable timeframe. You'll need to use some tactics here, and keep your fighters docked until the flaks are dealt with.

Flaks can kill LRMs, although very slowly. They're not the best solution as this is not their primary purpose. But in a pinch, if you find yourself with large numbers of flaks you can use them to engage LRMs.




The important thing to note here is that the counter system in this game is pretty soft. Much softer than most games. The counters I mentioned WILL work, but you must have critical mass. A lower quality force can still overwhelm a higher quality force with sheer numbers.

I think 2/3rds is generally a safe ratio, 3/4 is probably better.

If he has 15 LRMs, you're going to need at least 10 or so fighter squads to knock him out decisively. So if he has 150 LRMs you're going to need 100 carriers.

So the point is, do not wait until he has 150 LRMs to begin pushing carriers. By the time you get 100 he will have 300 LRMs.

If he has 150 LRMs and you have nothing to combat him you've just plain lost.

The fact that the counter system is soft puts a lot more pressure on the economies. You can take him down with the appropriate counter, but your economy still has to match his, and you need to start early enough that he doesn't get a huge jump on you.
Carriers are expensive and are slow to reach maximum capacity. You need to begin pushing carriers he MOMENT you suspect he's going to spend a long time on LRMs. If your production of appropriate combat units lags too far behind it is very difficult to catch up.


If he begins pushing flaks, you need to move to heavy cruisers IMMEDIATELY.

Don't wait for him to get dangerous numbers of a certain unit before you begin working on the counter. Once he's reached the danger level, it's already too late.




People will complain that carriers are worthless but bear in mind that they can easily be repurposed to carry bombers after the LRM threat is dealt with. These guys are your best DPS in the game pound for pound. Once you start pushing heavies, he's going to have to start pushing bombers or he's screwed.

Fighters are your absolutely best screen against bombers. Much more effective than flak (which only do marginally well against bombers). This beautiful interplay between heavys, bombers, and fighters will effectively push LRMs off the main stage by the late-mid game.



I think most of the sentiment that LRMs are overpowered comes from the fact that most people move to carriers too late. THey let the enemy get too many LRMs before beginning to work on the counter, and thus they miss the opporutnity to transition from the early game to the late game arsenals.

I think it neatly kills two birds with one stone. Right now, the flak only has one use; as an anti strikecraft frigate. You have to build them against the possibility that the enemy might have strike craft, but if he doesn't, then they aren't much good to you except as mobile targets. Most ships in this game are good at at least a couple of things, flaks being one exception. What I realized is that what this game needed was a destroyer. So I changed the name from flak frigate to destroyer, and added a second weapon to the flak that is effective against the LRM's armor type. Now these new destroyers are effective at fighter defense and for LRM hunting. I also somewhat nerfed the various anti-strikecraft frigates' shields and hit points. Not hugely, but enough that they can be destroyed in reasonable time. Now, to protect your LRMs you'll need light frigates to counter destroyers. I also buffed up light frigates' hit points and DPS somewhat to make them more surviveable. LRFs still beat the crap out of them in a straight up fight, but they can last long enough to be useful. You should still expect to take heavy losses in these units, but you'd expect to in a cheap, disposable unit like that anyway.

Also, most units in the game have something that counter them. Technically, LRMs are countered by interceptors in the stock game, but interceptors flying from light carriers are very easily stopped cold by flak frigates or even just capital ship special abilities (if you're TEC, getting a Kol with flak burst and a Dunov with Magnetize guarantees you can easily keep space clear of enemy strikecraft with minimal fuss). Light carriers are expensive in terms of supply, and the strikecraft are too easily countered to make them worth it. To this end, I've greatly reduced the cost of light carriers so that they are viable in this mod. Light carriers now cost about 1/3 less and 5 supply as opposed to 8. This makes it viable to field them for either interceptors, bombers, or both.

I also made a signficant change to the battleship caps. Battleships in my mod now have frontal firing arcs more comparable to that of siege capitals while retaining the more powerful side and rear arcs that other caps don't have. This makes battleships clearly more powerful in direct ship to ship combat, as they should be. The Kortul Devastator using Power Surge is truly a terror brought to life now.

The problem is that I don't have time with my work schedule to properly test this mod for overall balance in MP. I'm concerned if I release it publicly it's going to get ridicule.

I suppose you must be playing large size maps, but at least on the 1v1's in smaller maps i'm finding scouts work very well against LRMS. (once you turn on auto-attack)

they're super-cheap, fast to produce, fast to deploy, immune to anti-flack, take very little fleet supply.

If someone moves on me early with LRM's that's the obvious counter. Then opponent needs to bring light frigates or other units to counter the scouts, so the counter-fighting goes on from there...

i don't know, i'm pretty new to the game and referring to examples prior to the enemy building 100+ LRM's in a single fleet, but the principal of it would seem to work against any LRM + Flak type of attack.

Also, building on mehoo's comments, the heavy cruiser + carrier route seems like it could work assuming you use command groups and are able to successfully target the relatively few flak frigates to punch a hole in the LRM's defenses. I agree with Mehoo about the versatility of carriers being a serious consideration. Still, having said all that the difficulty of pulling off such a tactic successfully leads me to favor scouts + LRM's as a counter to LRM's + flak frigates

I think it's fairly safe to say that it just needs to be re-designed. The best example I can think of is the game World in conflict. where each unit is only effective at fighting one other unit etc etc... planes kill tanks, tanks kill infantry, infantry are balanced...

so Lrms kill defense structures - but weak at attacking frigates

frigates kill lrms - but weak at attacking caps

caps & fighters are balanced

Its very obvious what im trying to say and perhaps i said it wrong, i'm just trying to imply that the units need to be far more orientation based, one type of unit in an rts should never be allowed to actually counter everything in large numbers  :NOTSURE: 

During WW2 although huge numbers of infatry attacked 1 or 2 pill boxes, they still lost, because in reality numbers dont mean a thing if the enemy has the systems to counter it.

OK but curious to hear a good counterargument from more experienced players that explains why scouts are a poor counter to this.

Every problem in Sins is derived from this badly designed table of bonuses and armours

WWW Link

I think the key to balance lies here...

I like what SD did in 1.04 - the slowing of LRMs But they need to do so in an even greater degree. If carrier cruisers could out-accelerate and outrun LRMs I think that would be the best situation. As the LRMs must stop to fire the Carrier may only receive one salvo before it again is out of range. Meanwhile, the fighters tear apart the LRMs. I see this as the best update as it adds more tactics to the game.

I say make LRMs something like a howitzer - low in speed and protection, but high in damage - of which it already has 2 of those things so just slow thier acceleration and speed down.

Not to mention doing this would discourage a fleet of LRMs because they would be so damn slow you could intercept them before they got to your home planet.

As for the scout argument - I always bring along a pack of scouts with my main fleet to take down LRMs and trade ships and what have you... this allows more bomber strikecraft to gank Caps. and buildings.

EDIT: Also the TEC and Advent scouts have nice abilities.

Light Frig Heavy Frig Flak Frig LRM Frig Siege Frig Support Frig Hvy Cruiser Capital Structures
L/H Frigate vs 75 125 125 75 125 150 75 50 50
LRM vs 150 75 75 50 50 75 75 25 150
H Cruiser vs 100 75 125 150 150 75 125 75 125
Capital vs 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100
Siege vs 100 125 125 75 75 125 50 300 50
Fighter vs 25 25 25 200 200 25 25 25 25
Bomber vs 50 75 75 50 50 100 125 75 100
Turret vs 150 75 75 100 75 75 75 75 75

This is basically my mod.

Turrets assigned own weapon class .Structures assigned own armor class
Supports assigned own armor class. Sieges assigned own weapons class
Implications of this table…

• LRMs are very good Structure Killers and Light-Frigate Killers. LRMs cannot counter LRMs anymore. LRMs cannot counter Capitals anymore.
• The NEW Heavy Frigate is identical to the Light Frigate stats but a new Armor Class. It’s more resistant to LRMs and H Cruisers, but suffers against Bombers, Light Frigates and is a counter to itself.
• Bombers are now buffed against Flaks , Supports and Heavy Cruisers
• Support Frigates are now less vulnerable to Heavy Cruisers , but are more vulnerable to Frigates and Bombers
• Frigates are buffed against supports and also have better chance against Heavy Cruisers
• Sieges are now multi-role anti-cap ships , also giving them the ability to support Capitals vs Capital fights

Also included in the mod is cheaper Crew costs.

No edit button really fails

as far as longrange frigrates are concerned the advent illimunator still has no counter in any race. The only sure way to kill an illimunator is with heavy cruisers or other illuminators but then the person spamming illuminators will be able to make more of them then you can of heavies.
The fact is the table of counters and balances in this game is a mess. It seems like you can't really tell what ship is a light, medium, heavy or anti whatever to clearly.

3 ideas in my mod to limit the illuminator/LRMs

- The Siege Frigate is resistant to LRMs and are much more powerful , meaning the LRM spammer is risking a counter with a planet sieging strategy.

- Capital Ships are 3x resistant to LRMs and buffed agaisnt them , thus can spend more time rinsing them. Because caps are easier to achieve , then LRM spammers might be facing 2-3 caps they cannot kill.

- The Tier 0 Heavy Frigate is 2x resistant to LRMs and thus the heavy frigate beats the lrm.

- LRM spammers however have the advantage that their ships are great raiders , thus their counter to caps is killing the cap facs , counter to cruisers is killing the military labs etc..

spiralblitz people making more illuminators than you have heavies is not a problem cause you lose fewer ships by far. Only problem is that the illuminators are still too good at killing caps compared to heavies. So in an even resource/supply fight, the illuminators will send your cap fleeing.

I slaughtered a fleet of 60 illuminators with 20 heavies and 20 subverters. And by slaughter I mean I lost 1 or 2 ships :/ But getting subverters is pretty tough if he's breathing down your neck the whole time.

Any way ny idea was to change the way long range frigate damage upgrades. Have it start of low dps but high multiple vs medium armor. Then as you upgrade the damage, the dps goes up significantly but the multiple vs medium goes down. That way at the start of the game long range frigates have great dps vs light frigates which have medium armor, but suck vs everything else. However, you can upgrade them so they gain back the awesomeness vs buildings/caps they have now. So building a lot of em early won't be like tossing your money out the window.

Make a nice long-range Capital Ability that does tons of damage to all ships within range or the primary target ship, then fire it at the LRMs

In other words, revamp the Radiation Bomb that the Marza has, to do just enough damage to wipe out a fleet of LRM's

Anyway, you can only have 16 Marzas (and you might like a couple Akkans instead so you can colonize)