When to micromanage, or when to trust auto-cast

The more I play the more I'm noticing that many of my ships don't always use their abilities as quickly or wisely as they should when I keep them on auto-cast.  Most Titans I quickly realized are very bad at deciding when to auto-cast their abilities, but it was much more obvious to notice it with them.  The Vasari Rebel Titan for example would use pretty much any of its AoE abilities even if only a single enemy ship was nearby. 

That being said, which ships abilities should you never trust with auto-cast? 

Also, is it worth it to turn off auto-attack for any of the support vessels?

12,996 views 6 replies
Reply #1 Top

That being said, which ships abilities should you never trust with auto-cast? 

I always micromanage titans. Cap ships I will also initially micromanage but as my Empire expands I may turn auto cast on some of the more reliable abilities like the Dunov's abilities (except magnetize), the Skirantra's scramble bombers etc. 

Also, is it worth it to turn off auto-attack for any of the support vessels?

The Celio command cruiser's designate target is the only one for TEC, I usually have a pair late game just to manually use that ability on key targets. Repulse is perhaps the scariest ability in the game when manually used by a good Advent player. And of course microing a large number of overseers can make nearly any ship immortal, and Subverters should always be microed so they don't just disable a single ship.

Reply #2 Top

Quoting GoaFan77, reply 1
Repulse is perhaps the scariest ability in the game

Goa, I agree.  What is the counter to Repulse?  And why hasn't it been nerfed yet?

 

Most micromanagement is simply Focus Firing ships on valuable or vulnerable targets.  Often good micromanaging simply involves ship placement/movement, and then turning autocast on.  For example: keep Eradica's Chastic burst off until it gets into the middle of a fight, and then turn its autocast on so it affects as many enemies as possible.  Or move your Akkan to the jump out point, focus fire, and turn on Ion Bolt's autocast, so it delays and kills the fleeing Cap ship.

Reply #3 Top

Quoting SageWon, reply 2
Goa, I agree. What is the counter to Repulse? And why hasn't it been nerfed yet?

 

people say.. Repulse of your own :D or try to snipe those things out with strike craft (good luck with that, low efficiency of SC damage type against these..).

Nerf? It's multiplayer only, in singleplayer that ability is totally useless (for me it seems this way, I only used this once and did not find it to be useful), I don't think it will ever be changed unless everyone starts crying this is OP (but considering Advent still have many weaknesses.. I don't know). And the majority of players are from the SP group.

Quoting SageWon, reply 2
Or move your Akkan to the jump out point, focus fire, and turn on Ion Bolt's autocast, so it delays and kills the fleeing Cap ship.

 

Better to use it when the fleeing ship is 2-3 seconds before initiating phase sequence (so almost facing the right direction), hit it with ion bolt, meanwhile focus fire with everything, hit it with another ion bolt when the cooldown is over and his ship is in the middle of opening the phase window, almost guaranteed loss of enemy capital ship (assuming you have the necessary firepower there). Ion Bolt alone is not enough to stop a ship from jumping, the cooldown is just too slow, you need to use it carefully to have higher chance of success and not having to chase the escaping capital ship having 100-200 hull points left..

Reply #4 Top

Quoting SageWon, reply 2
Goa, I agree.  What is the counter to Repulse?  And why hasn't it been nerfed yet?

I believe it has been nerfed. Several times. And it doesn't effect titans, so they might be able to blow a hole through a repulse line.

Quoting Turchany, reply 3
Nerf? It's multiplayer only, in singleplayer that ability is totally useless (for me it seems this way, I only used this once and did not find it to be useful)

You need to experiment more. Besides the obvious things like keeping ships out of range of carriers/illuminators, they are also great for scattering fleets out of formation so parts of it can be picked off (or thrown into a mine field if you want to get creative), or you can put your guardians behind them to say push some Ogrovs into starbase range or push an entire fleet out of hyperspace jump range (sometimes guardians work better than PJIs).

Reply #5 Top

Repulse DOES affect titans. Thats one of the reasons why its so dangerous.

Reply #6 Top

Quoting Sinkillr, reply 5
Repulse DOES affect titans.

Yeah, Repulse does affect titans. I can confirm this. It shouldn't.  Thus first candidate for Repulse nerf. 

And No, I don't think repulse has ever been nerfed, at least not recently, despite many cries for change.  I will go back, and review old posts for evidence.