Advice on dealing with strikecraft spam Advent

[Vim]

So I'm playing TEC, and I got attacked by a fleet of Advent from an AI. They have 8 capitals, against my 5, and our fleet supply is 1700 (them) vs 1500 (me). All my capitals have flak bursts, and I have 40 Garda's in my fleet and a starbase in the gravity well they are attacking.

When the battle is over, my fleet is uterl decimated and my planet lost, and the enemy's lost no capitals and their fleet is still unscathed. At no point did it seem like I killed any strikecraft and I was swarmed by them.

What can I do against this? What else do I have in my arsenal as TEC to counter this kind of spam?

[Riepah]

If I am not mistaken, the experimental branch addresses this. I think Gardas and Point Defense in general are buffed versus strike craft and strike craft damage lowered a bit as well.

That aside, I recommend to throw Gardas away and spam your own strike craft. You can also make use of pause to make sure your units focus targets to kill them faster. Focus their carriers - AI doesn't prioritize important targets, but you can.

[Mander]

...More capital ships with flak burst, especially of the Sova type.
While the Flak Burst item is active, rush the carrier position, trying to destroy as many of them is possible.
Fall back to Starbase when you've decimated enough of them (assuming you also have repair platforms behind it to work as secondary lines). Dig in, and hope that trench doesn't fall.

[Vandom]

The Garda doesn't do enough damage to kill strike craft. It is there mostly for missiles and Corvettes. Advent Corvettes are very weak, and their missiles hard to shoot down, but do little damage. Garda isn't that useful against Advent.

To kill strike craft you want flask burst, high damage PD, and fighters. You sort of need all three. Flak does AOE to soften, PD kills fighters, then your own fighters spawn kill the Advent ones. The Sova carrier covers all these, so always have a few when going against Advent. Switch your bombers out for more fighters if the enemy has a lot more than you.

Another useful thing to do is focus fire the Advent carrier cruisers. They are weak for their cost, and how much damage their strike craft do.

[RaozSpaz]

Yeah. The Gardas are pretty well worthless. Even in their role of anti-missile they aren't the greatest. Partially just because of how most missiles come in as walls rather than volley fire. Also because of how their flak are positioned without being 360.

The Sova is a better option, but fair warning after lots of testing, its PD also isnt the greatest. Its still better than Gardas, but not by a lot. The problem is a lot of the Sovas PD is under it. Its actually more effective at shooting things directly to its sides [the right side the most IIRC]. Due to its PD damage though it generally does well enough in most cases. I really wish they'd move some of the autocannons to the sides and put more of the PD on top though where it'd generally be more useful.

And then yeah. Focus the cruisers. The Marza is a really good option for long range damage, possibly able to snipe carrier cruisers while your fleet is fighting other threats. Its level 6 is also extremely powerful.

Lastly, always make sure you have Hoshinkos. I dont know if you did or not in this scenario, but they are an absolute lifesaver. They drastically raise the life expectancy of most everything in your fleet.

[Katitoff]

Spam Sova with fighters.
Sova are best PD capital in game.

[HappyCamperBubbleBelow]

Sova dont work well against mass Advent strike craft even in the patch...

TEC and Vasari got massive nerf while the Advent got a nerf it was less.

the reason for this is simple
TEC and Vasari shoot missiles, the longer delay means less missiles, less missiles means PD gets saturated less and can shoot more missiles down.

So Advent Bombers are now just outright far better.
TEC are "OK" on mass
Vasari just suck, the Vasari Carrier is effectively worthless as a carrier, its great as a support ship, but it lacks extremely badly as a carrier.

Mass strikecraft still seem to be the end game build even in the patch for Advent, but they are kinda underperforming before critical mass for TEC and Vasari are pretty much screwed.

*Edited* to fix a typo where I said advent instead of TEC about shooting missiles.

[Wuorg]

IMO, the best way to deal with Advent strikecraft swarm is to kill the carriers. Easier said than done, sure, but still better than going the flak/PD route in my experience.

[DaRagingLunatic]

My last game was as TEC Enclave and i had 3 capital ships, 1 Titan and 408 garda. They decimated strikecraft and everything in their path. Playing against impossible ai’s. I ended up scrapping the garda and went all Kol capital ships. Decimated everything too but much much faster.
I did the same thing the previous game. 3 caps plus titan plus as many of those 1000 pierce torpedo ships. Starbases were just demolished. Capitals and titans demolished. Everything demolished.

I’m going to try mass shuriken next time

[mr.bouh]

The solution to advent carrier spam is sova with flak burst item. Sova has PD and fighters, and the flak burst will annihilate clouds of strikecrafts. You need enough fighters and PD to prevent the flow of new strikecraft to overwhelm you, but the flak burst should take care of the initial swarm. You need several flak burst, especially if there are halcyons in the enemy fleet ; I guess 3 should be good for the initial wave, and some more for the next ones.

[Fendelphi]

Dunovs and Sovas with Reserve Hangar Squadrons and Rapid Reload(it affects PD as well) items can drastically improve their anti-fighter capabilities. The Dunov can also "heal" the shield of a capital ship or Starbase that is getting focused, prolonging its life(giving you more time for Flak, Fighters and PD to do their thing).
With Flak item on a few "rush" ships(like the Kol, which can tank a bit of focus fire), you can very quickly reduce the number of enemy strikecraft, especially the Advent ones, since they have no Armour(no damage reduction).

Gardas are fairly cheap and low cost in terms of supply(4), but are overall better vs missiles and should be kept fairly spread out to maximize their effectiveness(by default, they tend to hang out in the backline). They do become "ok" if buffed with range(Aura item) and rate of fire buffs(Akkan).

And of course, there is the option of removing the enemy carriers themselves. Again, the Kol can be very effective at dealing single target damage, while still surviving. The Marza Dreadnought with its missile barrage is also pretty good at pressuring enemy carrier cruiser groups.

[fragbucket]

8 SOVA will make short work of them. some antifighter maybe and your own strikecaft, then kite the capitals

[RaozSpaz]

I think the big problem with Advent strike craft spam is less so killing them, and more so keeping them dead. Even if you can effectively kill them [aka Flak Burst and heavy PD from things like Sova], keeping them dead is another matter. The Advent have a larger access to strike craft than other factions and thus are able to more readily replace losses.

[kissblade]

There are many wrong claims here so I would take caution when taking these advice.

If you can find the replay and send a screenshot of the fleet composition, I can give thoughts with more information of the compositions.

Also, I want to ask if you know about how to focus fire using the fleet panel card on the top right? (alt right click)

[Wuorg]

Originally posted by kissblade:

There are many wrong claims here so I would take care of taking these advice.

If you can find the replay and send a screenshot of the fleet composition, I can give thoughts with more information of the compositions.

Also, I want to ask if you know about how to focus fire using the fleet panel card on the top right? (alt right click)

Chill my guy. In a post with minimally useful (and/or likely hyperbolic) details, you'll always get responses that are kind of scattershot like this. Everyone will give different advice depending on whether they play singleplayer, or multiplayer, or various difficulties, or team games vs FFA, or small vs large maps, etc. Giving advice on a post like this is tricky!

I think asking for more details is definitely the right move, though. Edit: And, ideally, there would be a replay as the issue could just be micro related, which people asking for advice like this probably don't realize (through no fault of their own).

[RaozSpaz]

Originally posted by kissblade:

There are many wrong claims here so I would take care of taking these advice.

If you can find the replay and send a screenshot of the fleet composition, I can give thoughts with more information of the compositions.

Also, I want to ask if you know about how to focus fire using the fleet panel card on the top right? (alt right click)

Also just saying advice is wrong does no one any help. Its better to actually state what might be wrong so that people can discuss things. Though like Wuorg said advice varies from scenario to scenario.