Missile ship spam and Fighters.

[[FuFo] Da HALOSHOCK]

The more i play this the more i notice the AI spamming Missile ships like no tomorrow and with PD not being able to keep up then i thought, Why not let Fighters also target Missiles their weapons would be much better off shooting down missiles then strafing a capital ship and doing no damage.

[Mr.Kill]

Missile ships still tend to lose out against heavy cruisers. I find its often better to just have a more durable and dps heavy fleet than waste time with point defense. Advent missile ships can be ignored since they fire too many missiles to be stopped by pd and they have zero pierce so its better to focus on building higher tech ships with higher durability.

[Sir TOG]

get more flak on capitalships

[Sifer2]

I'm no balance expert but it's probably a good thing if pd cannot completely invalidate carriers and missile units. I know in Stellaris that was a thing. So strategy shifted to not using missiles just tons of corvettes for a while.

[[FuFo] Da HALOSHOCK]

Originally posted by Sifer2:

I'm no balance expert but it's probably a good thing if pd cannot completely invalidate carriers and missile units. I know in Stellaris that was a thing. So strategy shifted to not using missiles just tons of corvettes for a while.

Its got nothing to do with invaladating something. its got to do with the ai spamming nothing but missile ships to the point where no fleet can fight back because everything gets one shot by 140+ missile ships.

[Magnnus]

This is probably cognitive-bias. Missiles stand out more than any other projectile, so it may appear a force consists mostly of missiles even when they are a minority of the projectiles.

[Bonga]

on unfair, just fought an advent -- it was literally 97 tempest, 30 anima, a few mishmash of nothing and capitals. Insane spam you'd expect from a player, not from the ai.

[Prisoner 76561197992841073]

Originally posted by Bonga:

on unfair, just fought an advent -- it was literally 97 tempest, 30 anima, a few mishmash of nothing and capitals. Insane spam you'd expect from a player, not from the ai.

they spam it because tempests are dirt cheap

[Mr.Kill]

tempests have zero pierce on their missiles. You literally don't have to do anything except build ships with a higher durability to counter them. PD not needed.

[K]

PD to counter Tempest is a fool's errand. They are swarm missiles, they are designed to overwhelm PD as a means to cover for the real threat, the bombers.

I think flak ships do need a buff, but not because of Tempest, but because of other missiles. Tempest do need a slight nerf or Disciples need a buff. Because with only 2 frigates to choose from, Tempest outclass Disciples in every way.

[singingdragonlord]

Originally posted by Mr.Kill:

tempests have zero pierce on their missiles. You literally don't have to do anything except build ships with a higher durability to counter them. PD not needed.

ah yes, of course. just kill the frigate spam with the higher durability cruisers instead of building the literally designed counter frigate. Why didn't anyone think of that. I'm sure the 7 cruisers you can pump out by the 25 minute mark whilst severely crippling your early economy will be able to hold off the 300 supply tempest spam the AI sends at you.

[K]

Originally posted by singingdragonlord:

Originally posted by Mr.Kill:

tempests have zero pierce on their missiles. You literally don't have to do anything except build ships with a higher durability to counter them. PD not needed.

ah yes, of course. just kill the frigate spam with the higher durability cruisers instead of building the literally designed counter frigate. Why didn't anyone think of that. I'm sure the 7 cruisers you can pump out by the 25 minute mark whilst severely crippling your early economy will be able to hold off the 300 supply tempest spam the AI sends at you.

Tempest counters flak, not the other way around. If you spam flak to counter Tempest you're asking to lose.

[jdpvagabond]

Originally posted by singingdragonlord:

Originally posted by Mr.Kill:

tempests have zero pierce on their missiles. You literally don't have to do anything except build ships with a higher durability to counter them. PD not needed.

ah yes, of course. just kill the frigate spam with the higher durability cruisers instead of building the literally designed counter frigate. Why didn't anyone think of that. I'm sure the 7 cruisers you can pump out by the 25 minute mark whilst severely crippling your early economy will be able to hold off the 300 supply tempest spam the AI sends at you.

I don't think you're understanding how the 'counter' is working, here. Tempest are cheap and meant to swarm / overwhelm PD, so they are actually the counter in this scenario. As others have stated, the counter to that counter is more durable ships which is not a counter you'd necessarily take with other missile ships.

The balance might not be perfect but it's nice that there are multiple avenues to success / defeat instead of a bland, one size fits all 'build more PDs' approach.

[Mr.Kill]

Originally posted by singingdragonlord:

Originally posted by Mr.Kill:

tempests have zero pierce on their missiles. You literally don't have to do anything except build ships with a higher durability to counter them. PD not needed.

ah yes, of course. just kill the frigate spam with the higher durability cruisers instead of building the literally designed counter frigate. Why didn't anyone think of that. I'm sure the 7 cruisers you can pump out by the 25 minute mark whilst severely crippling your early economy will be able to hold off the 300 supply tempest spam the AI sends at you.

advent literally only have the tempest as their missile ship. They don't have anything else for your PD to shoot than the tempest's missiles and strikecraft. It is basically not worth your time to build PD to fight their tempests. PD is going to buy you time, it won't ever kill the enemy for you. This is the same concept that was in sins 1.

Heck Advent seemed designed so you have to burst DPS them out of the fight with their shield burst abilities preventing low dps ships from doing any significant damage.

If you do somehow win with PD against those tempests the advent will then just switch to their long-range cruiser which fires beams at which point your PD is completely pointless.

The tempests already do well against PD frigates so why build a PD ship against a faction that seems designed to punish any attempt at building PD? Going pure capital ship would be a better idea and with TEC it really isn't that difficult at all.

[Drumroll]

Originally posted by Sir TOG:

get more flak on capitalships

Problem with this is all flak cannons tend to target the same missle. So u could have 1000 cannons but they will still only shoot the same missle wasting much of their potential,

[p00ky]

Originally posted by Mr.Kill:

Missile ships still tend to lose out against heavy cruisers. I find its often better to just have a more durable and dps heavy fleet than waste time with point defense. Advent missile ships can be ignored since they fire too many missiles to be stopped by pd and they have zero pierce so its better to focus on building higher tech ships with higher durability.

Sorry but this is not correct in the current state of the game. Ive tried multiple strats to counter the only missile ship spam on multiplayer games and heavy cruisers loose to it even with higher fleet score. I have as of yet not found any counter to an opponent who solely goes missile ships even if Im ahead in resources and total numbers, when the battle starts, its just a sh*t show.