Incoming Missile!, or how to face Kanrak Spam?

I played a game recently as Advent and found a incompatible threat for everything of mine - Vasari LRMs. It was big map with 6 players, 2-2-2. 4 other players were in other star system, so I had to face Vasari one-on-one.

So, problems:

1) In the beginning, after 10 minutes, we had a small fight: my lvl 3 Halcyon and 8 Disciples vs his lvl 2 Skiranra, 4 Assailants and 2 Skirmishers. I was heavily punched away as my frigates fell very quickly (much quicker than I expected) to ones of his. The system was critical - the only jump to star and a wormhole - not including one besides pirate base. We both! lost our caps, but his 4 assailants were alive, WHY?

2) What a dig with Illuminators. 75 of them against cherky 51 assailants with high research though, but why Illums are so weak? Do I have to build them anymore, if not, what to build? Destras are too far away to get.

3) I finally got out of the system, and another battle near the star - 7 Halcyons + 109 Illums + 35 Dominas+ 25 Drone Hosts against his 50 Sentinels and 250 Assailants. Few minutes - and I am running as a rabbit. Any ways to counter such fleet as my enemy had?

Thanks, valuable answers +1 Karma

13,660 views 16 replies
Reply #1 Top

1) No experienced player would lose a capital ship to such a small force, especially a carrier, which does not need to be close to an enemy to fight.  You should always build repair early otherwise you lose some of the value of having a capital in the first place.  Retreat your capital to repair it.

His Assailants will counter your Disciples.  The AI will have the Disciples fire on the Skirmishers for the better damage modifier, you want them to fire on the Assailants because taking out one Assailant will remove more striking power than taking out one of the Skirmishers.

A level 3 Halcyon should defeat a L2 Skirantra handily and have strikecraft left over, as with its passive ability upgraded it has 6 squadrons to 3 (base), and even Scramble Bombers isn't very effective at only its first level.  You don't mention how you both used your strikecraft?

2) Assailants with four levels of research... thats up to the third tier, where Illuminators can be built, get approximately +100% striking power, so fifty hit like 100.  You might lose firepower if you do not ensure your Illuminators are mixed up with the enemy, or 'shaking' to fire side beams.  Flak would survive longer than Illuminators, and hit harder.  However, see also the next point...

3) This sort of scale of forces just does not happen in games I play in.  The 4v4 replay I just commented on, Warfleet was in the game for 48 mins and spent perhaps 75% of that time in full fleet combat.  Capital ships are cycled in and out of the combat, as the number of frigates is kept far lower.

If I had to fight 250 Assailants and 50 Flak as Advent, for some unknown reason, I would know that I needed some kind of area weapon.  Advent have such weapons on their starbase and their battleship, though a battleship would not survive long against that many frigates unless they are disabled... nor would a starbase  The area effect weapon on the support cruisers is Repulse on the Guardian, which can be used to disperse enemy fleets.  The Dominators are best used against single high-value targets.

Seven Halcyons cost a lot.  You are outnumbered 2 to 1 in frigates and by far more in firepower.  Having fewer capitals helps them level up.

Inexperienced players use fighters against LRF where the better counter is often flak.  Not always.. a carrier capital can run rings around a grav well ( though carriers no longer can), but against numbers like those flak would be useful.  Also, combined with Repulse your heavy fighter concentrations might work better.  A sacrifice of one Guardian at a time is cheaper than one capital ship at a time.  Your Illuminators could pick on an isolated portion of the enemy fleet.

With that many frigates even mines might work well, I'd have a go- though mines badly need more explosive power, they are area effect and 250 Assailants might pack into a small enough space to multiply their explosiveness somewhat.

Reply #2 Top

1) Assailants hard counter disciples.  Any lrm type frig hard counters any lf type frig.

2) I didn't do the math to see which should win out, the illums or the assailants in that scenario.  Just know that you have to put your illums inside his fleet so that the side beams get to shoot.

3) Again, didn't do the math here, but 250 assailants is an absolutely huge number of assailants.

As you see here, the name of the game is "lrm spam."  The only other game played is "bomber spam."  This is what finally caused me to stop playing the game.  I just don't feel like out-spamming my opponent with a bigger fleet of lrm than what he has.  It's retarded.

EDIT:  By the way, I would recommend not using any capships, except the free capship for colonization only (for advent, that would be the mothership).  Caps will do nothing but die to hundreds of lrm frigates, or bombers, thus they are an absolute waste.  The exception would be an OP capship - for instance if you were playing vasari and wanted to abuse the skirantra.

Reply #3 Top

Best way to counter kanraks is...prayer...

If that doesn't seem to work, your best bet is HCs....destras are much better than illums and more cost effective per fleet supply point....

If you don't have HCs (such as in the early game) then honestly you're screwed...I could try and give good fleet compositions and good strategies and blah blah blah but it really wouldn't do you much good...if you don't have HCs and guardians with repulsion, you are going to lose no matter what unless the other player makes huge tactical errors or you have a much larger fleet...

Until HCs, Advent are severely gimped right now...if (and this is a big if) the enemy builds literally nothing but kanraks, you might get away with a fleet entirely made of scouts...but if your enemy has even a small amount of any other ship time, you are pretty much screwed...

I hate to say this, but any strategy that other people tell you is likely just a good way to lose with style and give them hell so your team has a better chance...some things work better than others, but without HCs nothing is likely to work successfully....

 

Reply #4 Top

As advent if you had scouted him properly you could spam scouts. Advent scouts especially are very good against any kind of lrms. U should get them 40 in fleet assign numbers and micro throughout his assailants. You would need massive amounts of them ..... 

And ilums are better than assailants you just need to move them around his fleet since they can fire from side beams and assailants can fire only on certain angle. 

And as advent right at start scout and disc spam is very effective against vasari player......

You might also want to search for counters threads on this forum....

As mentioned before assailants are counter for your disciples and all new or not skilled players really need to learn to retreat repair and fight another battle instead of loosing ships.

Against 1 skirantra and 4 assailants and 2 skirmishers you should really not loose your cap and even with fleet you had you should be able to beat him provided you had fighters on your carrier cap. 

What you should do is to focus on assailants first take them out and then go for cap ship. All the time moving your cap and disciples away from his assailants until they are destroyed. Disciples should focus on skirmishers afterwards. As you are describing I got a felling that you both focused on each other caps first. Mistake..... Focus on cap only if you are sure you will kill it and in reasonable amount of time. ......In your first battle if there was a skilled player on either side he would had not lost his cap and win the battle. 

Why you died so quickly? He probably had phase missile research done...... but you can always watch reply of the game to see what he was doing.

Reply #5 Top

3) I finally got out of the system, and another battle near the star - 7 Halcyons + 109 Illums + 35 Dominas+ 25 Drone Hosts against his 50 Sentinels and 250 Assailants. Few minutes - and I am running as a rabbit. Any ways to counter such fleet as my enemy had?
End of quote

Cap ship against 75+ assailants with fully upgraded phase missiles die before they can leave gravity well if you retreat them as soon as he jumps in. So against 250 of them...... well they die and they are waste of resources. Once you scouted and saw what his fleet consist of you really needed to build counters which are fighters but in this case not viable since he had flak and probably area effect upgrade on them as well.

What I would build is flak of my own mixed with scouts. That means massive amounts of flak 150+ and about 100+ scouts. And I would leave all my cap ships away from fight since they would die in 5 seconds. SB with LVL2 meteor shower and LVL2 spin control would work as well but it would die very quickly as well and it could be easily bypassed. Mines would work wonders in this case as well..... but that strategy depends on economy health since they are very expensive....

But really 250 assailants especially if they are properly upgraded and accompanied with subverters and flak are almost impossible to kill. TEC SB with red button upgrade is an option but skilled player always expect RB on TEC SB.

Reply #6 Top

And ilums are better than assailants
End of quote

If you do the math, kanraks with even a few phase missile upgrades are better than illuminators...add on the special abilities, and kanraks will easily outperform illuminators...if you take into account that illuminators have only half their firepower as frontal, they are very poor at taking out capital ships...

I've pitted large amounts of illuminators against large amounts of kanraks, and even if the illums are in the middle firing all sides of their weapons, they lose every time...you could make the argument that illums are cheaper, but Vasari have a much better economy...

Reply #7 Top

Its funny how things have changed. There was once a time when the opposite was true

Reply #8 Top

Illuminators had a damage bug for a long while and good stats, so they just destroyed Assailants & LRM's.  Then their stats got reduced a bit, and then the bug finally got fixed.  I haven't played enough to really see for myself, but maybe they need help again.  It is just the way of things...there was a time when the game first came out that Illuminators were the weakest, and if they can't beat Assailants anymore, maybe they have come full circle again after two years.

Reply #9 Top

Seleuceia lets not make this thread another we must nerf phase missiles so we will be able to beat vasari player thread.

 

Reply #10 Top

Thats not what it is. I have always been a vas player and must admit that now the need a nerf. Several things need tweaking to ensure balance

Reply #11 Top

Only thing they need to nerf is scramble bombers not whole vasari fleet.

Phase missiles were always there and only after scramble bomber update pple started complaining about Vasari being OP.

Reply #12 Top

I like the Skarovas' buff, it makes it stronger and it makes it worth the cost.

Reply #13 Top

Quoting Greg30007, reply 9
Seleuceia lets not make this thread another we must nerf phase missiles so we will be able to beat vasari player thread.
End of Greg30007's quote

Bad day?

 

 

Reply #14 Top

Lol..and how is the testing going?

Reply #15 Top

So far so good...some of the last few changes were rushed so that it could be done by this weekend...but for the most part, pretty good...got some good battles with the Kol and the Vulkoras, and the Space Eggs colonize is very nice now...

Reply #16 Top

Thats good cuz the egg is my favourite cap