Vasari Defensor Spam: How to counter?

[pietro.z]

Lately every Vasari player that i play against is spamming defensors. They don´t even care to make another unit. Since it is a very early, cheap and fast unit i don´t see a cost-effective counter to them, specially as Advent. Carriers+Fighters are late, slow, expensive and will be overwhelmed by the masses by the time you have them. Tempest shots take too much time to reach these fast moving targets. Vigilis are tier 3. Even as TEC: Garda or Corvettes don´t seem to be cost-effective effective enough.
Hope someone with real experience against it can answer (and please no hypotetical ideas).

[Howell-Barrex Soldier Ja'kala]

Publicado originalmente por z|A|bik2:

Tempests will counter defensors.
Many advent players make the mistake of going for both economy and military, while Vasari are in an all-in situation.

If Advent goes for mono tempest fleet against mono defensors, while not overspend on economy, you will win both the military AND economy.

But if you overspend on economy, you will be snowballed, and left with ashes. Since defensors can shootdown missiles you cannot afford to have a non critical mass of tempests.

Even more so, vasari are capped at 600 supply in T2, while you have 1000. Yet you need just the same amount of supply to achieve the critical mass with tempests.

Hope this helps, commanders!

Wait how does a missile ship counter a PD ship spam?

[RaozSpaz]

I was about to ask the same question.

[mr.bouh]

because the tempest is medium anti-corvette ship. The tempest missiles are very low pierce, so the counter to the tempest is actually heavy cruisers.

[Hurricane]

Tempest has never countered the vas corv spam in every game I've played...

So a dev is saying this but it doesn't actually work lol.

Their missiles hit nothing and then vas capitals beat yours.

Also much harder to match numbers to start with but yeah doesn't work.

Especially when you mix both vas corvs into the mix which is really no effort.

Better to go disciples and carriers and just focus down their capitals then their corv spam has no big damage behind it. Killing vas capitals is big

[Fendelphi]

Publicado originalmente por Howell-Barrex Soldier Ja'kala:

Publicado originalmente por z|A|bik2:

Tempests will counter defensors.
Many advent players make the mistake of going for both economy and military, while Vasari are in an all-in situation.

If Advent goes for mono tempest fleet against mono defensors, while not overspend on economy, you will win both the military AND economy.

But if you overspend on economy, you will be snowballed, and left with ashes. Since defensors can shootdown missiles you cannot afford to have a non critical mass of tempests.

Even more so, vasari are capped at 600 supply in T2, while you have 1000. Yet you need just the same amount of supply to achieve the critical mass with tempests.

Hope this helps, commanders!

Wait how does a missile ship counter a PD ship spam?

Because Vasari PD is high DPS, but low rate of fire. which makes it good against strike craft, but less efficient against missiles.
The number of missiles fired is also a clue. The Tempest fires more missiles per salvo than any other ship of its class. It can basically overwhelm PD, but each individual missile has no pierce, so overall deal less of the listed damage against most targets. While Defensors do have some Durability, it is not a lot(30), so most of the missile damage will go through.

And the Tempest can kite and shoot. This forces the Defensors to follow in a rough line, meaning the relative time given to the PD to shoot down the missile is shorter(as it is the shortest distance possible AND the missile and Defensor is moving towards each other).
It also means the missiles do not have to do this crazy dance that happens if the Defensors are allowed to constantly circle them at high speeds.

A single Defensor can not stop all the missiles of a single Tempest. 2 Defensors "might" be able to, if they circle(as that buys them some time, meaning more PD fire), but then you are paying 8 fleet points(2 Defensors) for 1 Tempest(6 fleet points). In a scenario where they do not circle(as described above), you will instant kill several defensors trying to close with you, which will gradually lower the amount of PD, while it will take a while for them to get just 1 of your Tempest down.

Of course, if you just sit still with the Tempest, the missiles will sometimes overshoot and they constantly have to curve to track the mobile Defensors, meaning more flight time(meaning more time for PD to shoot them down, or even run out of fuel/range).
So it mostly comes down to micromanaging your ships and having enough Tempests to actually remove the Corvettes at a decent rate.

[Howell-Barrex Soldier Ja'kala]

Publicado originalmente por Fendelphi:

Publicado originalmente por Howell-Barrex Soldier Ja'kala:

Wait how does a missile ship counter a PD ship spam?

Because Vasari PD is high DPS, but low rate of fire. which makes it good against strike craft, but less efficient against missiles.
The number of missiles fired is also a clue. The Tempest fires more missiles per salvo than any other ship of its class. It can basically overwhelm PD, but each individual missile has no pierce, so overall deal less of the listed damage against most targets. While Defensors do have some Durability, it is not a lot(30), so most of the missile damage will go through.

And the Tempest can kite and shoot. This forces the Defensors to follow in a rough line, meaning the relative time given to the PD to shoot down the missile is shorter(as it is the shortest distance possible AND the missile and Defensor is moving towards each other).
It also means the missiles do not have to do this crazy dance that happens if the Defensors are allowed to constantly circle them at high speeds.

A single Defensor can not stop all the missiles of a single Tempest. 2 Defensors "might" be able to, if they circle(as that buys them some time, meaning more PD fire), but then you are paying 8 fleet points(2 Defensors) for 1 Tempest(6 fleet points). In a scenario where they do not circle(as described above), you will instant kill several defensors trying to close with you, which will gradually lower the amount of PD, while it will take a while for them to get just 1 of your Tempest down.

Of course, if you just sit still with the Tempest, the missiles will sometimes overshoot and they constantly have to curve to track the mobile Defensors, meaning more flight time(meaning more time for PD to shoot them down, or even run out of fuel/range).
So it mostly comes down to micromanaging your ships and having enough Tempests to actually remove the Corvettes at a decent rate.

So missile ships beating their explicit counter at equal fleet supply is good balance noted.

[shde2e]

Yes, anti-corvette ships beating corvettes when used properly is good balance.

[Fendelphi]

Publicado originalmente por Howell-Barrex Soldier Ja'kala:

So missile ships beating their explicit counter at equal fleet supply is good balance noted.

Defensors are not the supposed "counter" to Tempests. Tempests are supposed to be a counter against Corvettes. That is their role. Vasari counters Tempests with Skirmishers(good Durability, decent armour and damage, good speed).
Did you just ignore everything I wrote?

Vasari does not have a dedicated PD ship. They have several ships with PD, but that is not the same thing. Their PD has high DPS compared to other factions, but slightly lower rate of fire. This put them at risk of being overwhelmed(cant shoot down every missile), but makes them hit harder vs Strikecraft and standard ships.
Against missile ships like the Javalis or the Kanrak, which both fires fewer missiles per salvo, the Defensor is efficient enough. And neither of those ships can kite, so your Defensors get to circle them very easy, making them even more effective.

[Vandom]

Publicado originalmente por Hurricane:

Their missiles hit nothing and then vas capitals beat yours.

I actually find the same thing. Tempests waste so much time chasing corvettes with their missiles that the Vasari is allowed to play to their strengths. Tempests may win the battle against Defensors, but that fight drags out so long that they will lose the larger battle.

[Asuzu]

Publicado originalmente por RaozSpaz:

The Sovas biggest issue is its skills are in a really weird place.
The missile battery even with the fix doesn't always want to autocast itself. Ive had several battles where the missile battery will never cast.
The buff ability is mostly only useful in friendly gravity wells. Thus giving little benefit when on the offense.
And the ability to build corvettes is 'nifty', but the TEC corvette is pretty lackluster.
Its ultimate is pretty good, but even its kinda eh. Its basically the hangar item, but I 'think' it can go over your typical hangar cap temporarily.

If the Sova had its passive from the last game I think it'd be in a much better place but it seems its new identity is leaning towards a 'production focus' type ship. Which is really weird since the thing was initially built as an anti-pirate ship.

Yeah Sova skills are trash compared to Halcyons. It is what it is, there's no sugarcoating it.

[Asuzu]

Publicado originalmente por z|A|bik2:

Tempests will counter defensors.
Many advent players make the mistake of going for both economy and military, while Vasari are in an all-in situation.

If Advent goes for mono tempest fleet against mono defensors, while not overspend on economy, you will win both the military AND economy.

But if you overspend on economy, you will be snowballed, and left with ashes. Since defensors can shootdown missiles you cannot afford to have a non critical mass of tempests.

Even more so, vasari are capped at 600 supply in T2, while you have 1000. Yet you need just the same amount of supply to achieve the critical mass with tempests.

Hope this helps, commanders!

Very sensible advice. Many players seem to make the mistake of trying to push their economy before maxing their fleet cap, and get punished hard by Vasari.

Essentinally, it doesn't matter if you make 10 or 12 crystals/sec, just use all of it on the fleet tech + ships, not waste it into 10 technologies in queue.

[Brannagan]

This a viable strategy now? I did this from the get-go cos once I was rich enough to have too much surplus to know what to do with it I scuttled everything bar my colony capital and just built a blob of doom consisting purely of defensors and it was glorious