New 1.1 Strats?

Percheron now carries 2 squadrons for 14 fleet supply, and has hull points exceeding those of a heavy cruiser...

1.1 got balanced in favour of carriers

The advent carriers are still worth building. Bombers seem stronger than before but it could just be the ease of fielding more.

1.05 was about LRF and and eventual HC spam.  1.1 is going to be about either having or being able to protect yourself from Carriers.  Carrier spam will be beatable by mixed fleets, but with their versatility, they will probably become the ship of choice for a lot of people.

In general, single ship spam is not that great in 1.1, because everything has a counter now.  It makes for a much more interesting game.

I was concerned at first but I think I dig it. I haven't played multi yet but aside from some cap ships, everything seems useful.

I/we would'nt care, except, no matter what we have tried (just lan games vs AI), it always seems to come down to carriers.  Flak ships don't seem to cut it.  If the flak took care of fighters (we could care less about bombers) things would be balanced to us.  But at least is it MUCH more balence than before 1.1.

Yeah, it usually comes down to carriers for me as well.  But you have to back the carriers up with something.

Flak does kill fighters and thin out their numbers, but you have to build a heck of a lot of it.  The problem I have with Flak is it is almost useless once there are no more strikecraft to kill, and it can't kill the carriers themselves.  I have asked people a few times since 1.095 if they wanted to test out the ships with me, and no one has, so I'm just not certain if an effective flak strategy exists.  Flak is pretty good at suppressing carriers that are trying to rebuild their squadrons.

We'll find out though, now that everyone is playing.

Oh, one side note of this is that all of the various anti strikecraft capship abilities are much more valuable now when fighting a carrier user.

Cool thread!

It could perhaps get sticky...

I will be keeping eye on this one over next few weeks

Keep on posting guys

I've been in a huge FFA teamlocked game for about 3 hours.  And so far I've noticed that the AI will focus fire on my poor Akkan Battlecruiser.  It never did anything to them.  Lost it three times over but currently the Hernandez is doing fine. 

But I don't know if its an AI thing or if they realize the potential which exists in the Akkan with its passive buffs, Armistice, and Ion Bolt.

Has anyone noticed an increase in the AI fleets?  I took over an hour and several attacks from Pirates as well as Vasari, when building a midsized Advent fleet. Only to lose to larger numbers of both Pirates and Vasari in the gravity well at the same time.    1.1 seems tougher, but that is an interesting thing, when before it might have felt a little too easy.  So am enjoying the harder press, even though i am losing more. Haha, doesnt make sense, but there it is.

Any new ideas for dealing with this in the opening game?

-Teal

Someone would have to analyze your replays to see exactly what is happening.  Are you playing against Hard or Unfair AI's?  The Unfair AI has a huge economic starting advantage.

carriers are the new unit of choice for every race i guess.. and again advent takes the lead here

nothing beats carriers atm,  theyve got insnae much health and runnig around with them just to avoid enemys and to let your strike craft kil enemy,   its nuts 

atm the best fleetcombi u can get would be kodiaks  support cruisers and ALOT of carriers, mostly becuase u can change offensive ability to either take out light armor or heavy,   so if enemy masses kodiaks  u make lotsa bombers,  if enemy makes bomber,s  get fighters :/ carriers really are a great thing,  but theyre just not expensive enough,   (nor does flak kil em fast enough)  having 25 flak ships should be more then enough to counter 25 carriers and fleet,  but somehow  the 25 carriers and fleet easily beats flak ships & fleet....   this should really be turned around.....

Does the 1.1 patch which favors strike craft also fix that annoying tactic of "Every single fighter target the same bomber"? I hate it when I have enough fighters to annihilate a Kol but instead of spreading out that firepower to take out many bombers at once, they instead focus it onto a single bomber as if it needed to take 2000 DPS...

Marza Dreadnought's Missile Barrage absolutely owns... I've blown apart all but the most heavily shielded/armored units with this ability. The only other way I know to match its destructive potential is a the Kortul's Volatile Nanites and initiating a chain reaction of explosions.

Carriers are definatley what I saw against the AI.  I guess that makes the flak units useful, which they weren't before the patch.  LRMs are still effective, but not as overwhelming as before.  Overall I like the new patch. I need to play vasari next, and see how they changed, the AI massed more stuff than I was used to seeing before, and that is a good thing.

I have to give the stardock guys thier props.  Sins  ran much smoother during zoom in and out movement, the audio seemed a little cleaner too, and I really like the new Blackmarker UI.

I'd like to at least try some noncarrier approaches. I know it showed flak frigs doing more damage across the board in the changelog and carriers do cost $$$'s.

Actually, the flak frigates all got nerfed. Their base DPS got cut by 43%.

They were initially going to go with 43%, but they ended up going with about 25%... (There are both entries in the Changelog, if you look farther down, you see the other entry).  The Anti Very Light damage type was made more effective against heavier armors than in previous versions, so this is probably what Pherdnut was referring to...the combo of the two resulted in a small nerf to Flak against strikecraft, but left it able to do small amounts of damage to heavy armor ships.

Combined arms seems to be much more important than before.  You can counter carrier spam with flak spam (though you need 2:1 numbers now), so the carriers need support to beat the flak.  The flak needs support to beat the carrier support, etc.  Result is far less mindless spam than before; no more sending 50 LRMs to attack and going to the washroom during the battle.  And no more countering 10 carriers with 4 flak.

Anti strike craft abiltiies are less of the joke now too.  It can also pay to try and catch your opponent in a 'no strike craft' sector.  Hopefully the expansions will allow for building more tactical structures in non-planet sectors, so you can really sucker punch someone who made nothing but carriers.

Vasari carriers > *

Nothing beats phase missiles and almost lightfrigate durable bombers...

Also, the vasari carriers reinforce fastest.

Advents only advantage is that they get truckload of HP, are most cost effective and get them little earlier.

As fighters/bomber goes, i prefer vasari.

Also, the new buff to figters advocates that building bombers on any other race exept vasari is meaningless.

Fighter swarm from 15 carriers is enought to kill even HC in one pass. Rendering flimsy advent and TEC bombers obsoleat.

Only vasari bombers survive long enought against fighters to realy matter...

The last two games I've played, I've rushed out cruisers and both my opponents tried tos spam LRM's and the odd cobalt/deceptor(dunno if that's the right name for the advent equivalent)... If anything it should be the other way around!

Fighters kill LRM's

Cobalts are half decent at killing light carriers

So why are people still spamming LRM's?  Use LRMs when you have something to defend them with! ie Flak frigates

With that said though, I really enjoy the new 1.1 version. It gives the need for well rounded fleets. I don't think carriers are OP or need a better counter, for the cost (resources and fleet cap). Capital ships, heavy cruisers and even attack frigates are good at killing the carriers, mix those with flak frigates and I would argue pound for pound it's reasonably possible to stop a carrier spam. Stopping a spam of any kind is actually much easier to perform.

 The 1.1 patch will change sins form a "follow a strict build order and click as fast as possible" to a "outmaneuvre and tactically strike the opponent". Before Entrenchment is put in, hit and runs will be a very effective way to widdle away at the enemy. We might see less mass fleets and more small fleet engagements. That will depend on how well people perform at hit and runs and if it becomes a common tactic.

Entrenchment will probably eliminate that tactic though with Flak Gaus guns and Battlestations. This will probably bring back the large fleet engagements. It might, however, create a common scenario where the start of the game will be about hitting economic productiong before the enemy can get a battlestation operational and the end of the game will be about massing fleets to bring down the new powerful defenses. I'd be most worried that Entrenchment will actually slow games down and drag them on longer than they already are.

Back to 1.1, has anyone tried using the Akkan's computer ability with flak frigates? (increased range and chance to hit). I'm thinking if you mix an Akkan with 10 Flak frigates, they'd be quite effective against a fleet of carriers. Level two ability gets 10% range and 8% chance to hit? I'm thinking that would equate to 8% more damage against fighters/bombers and giving a much larger area  of cover. I think I'll try it out my next match if someone sends too many carriers.

Ahhh... yes , i usually play now hard or unfair. So that may be it. But it was wonderful to see the more aggressive ai. 

Well... haha, until i lost that is.    But still even after losing one can appreciate the smarter ai as an interesting gameplay opponent.

-Teal

Someone can correct me on this, because I don't play the AI much except when people drop.  I don't think Hard and Unfair AI's are smarter?  They just have more money to spend.

More buffs seem to have become stackable. I've seen stuff like 1400% penalty to phase jump charge time on ships within the overlap area of PJIs, the Incendiary Shells buff on the Marza stacking, ships being Emboldened three times and getting a 30% bonus to weapon cooldown with 7.5 shield/sec restoration rate, damage shared increasing to 100% in proximity of three Iconus Guardians all using their shield extending ability.

If this holds true for Shield Distruption on the Subverter, three hits can drop shield mitigation by 30% and increase chance of phase missile penetration by 75%, which can cancel the Kol's Adaptive Forcefield buff, even at max level.

Yeah, my understanding is the next hotfix patch should take care of it, which the devs are working on feverishly to get to us.  This isn't really pertaining to 1.1 strategies, but 1.1 bugs. 

wait, so the stacking is a bug? I liked my 1400% phase jump inhibition