Space marines boring meta

[Deep One]

Something is becoming more and more obvious in multiplayer with the space marines metagame. EVERYONE at the higher levels uses more or less EXACTLY the same strategy, that is boarding torpedo spam. Noone is bringing the other ships with lances, it's painfully obvious. I also do it myself of course. You often find the other player is exactly mirroring your build and tactics, and it's getting boring. 2 Battle barges, one scout escort, also of course the same favors (commander & forge).

Clearly SM do this because it's seemingly the only effective strategy they have. I hope they will nerf the damn torpedoes hard, and buff the other aspects, and some extra hitpoints.

[Harukage]

There is no reason to bring ships with lances instead of ships with torpedo launchers and/or bombardment cannons. At all.
Also you can't fault SM for fighting in the way they are made to fight.

[Tyrant]

well least your getting battles, im stuck in the warp and have been there for several hours without escape i just cannot find a player to play against and im now shutting the game down for tonight cause 4 hours of staring at a screen telling me its searching for a match is just pointless

[Kamen Rider]

and so you always bring carriers vs SM?

that is how the faction plays and carrier defensive fighters is how you counter them....

[Deep One]

Hopefully, It might get a little better once people start playing the other races again, maybe.

[Masterhummel]

Boarding torpedoes are the space marine equivalent to pulsars. Not as strong but just too good to not use them.

In todays patch, they almost nailed it but then decided to reduce macro cannon damage for space marines. Well, homing torpedoes it is.

[Deep One]

Originally posted by Masterhummel:

Boarding torpedoes are the space marine equivalent to pulsars. Not as strong but just too good to not use them.

In todays patch, they almost nailed it but then decided to reduce macro cannon damage for space marines. Well, homing torpedoes it is.

Hmm well, at least the mk2 barge plasma battery got buffed to 12k range so that's something, maybe I'll try and stubbornly build a lance fleet around it.

[Sir Fails]

Oh noes the faction that came out 2 days ago is what everyone is playing and they are all using the obvious cookie cutter strategy with the obvious counter, what do? QQ on forums instead of reaping wins with the counter is clearly the answer...

[Deep One]

If you have space marines counter strategies that don't involve spamming your own torps im very interested.

[FeyPrince]

I think it's really funny because in alot of matches where people spam the torps at me I can just bring 3 ships with the fighter squadron skill and just run up to their face without taking any real damage from the torps. I've been playing mostly where double battlebarges aren't the usual go to, when i meet a pair of them they just outclass my fleet of 1 bb and 2 strike cruisers and 2 LC/Escorts that i just can't take them down, usually end up warping out instead of tangoing with them

I just it find it really boring that people think they are so effecitve when against a tight grouped fleet they basically net about 1 successful boarding every 20 seconds or so, out of 12 torps

[Steppenrazor]

Originally posted by Harukage:

There is no reason to bring ships with lances instead of ships with torpedo launchers and/or bombardment cannons. At all.
Also you can't fault SM for fighting in the way they are made to fight.

yep...

in 40k lore/fluff - with space marines..

the most dangrous weapon in their "fleets" have always been the marines themselves...

[Deep One]

It seems the patch changed the fighter skill to a 60sec cooldown, this helps a bit.

I'm running a second fleet refusing to use anything but the lance variants and it's a hell of a lot more fun than torp spamming, I recommend it, develops some tactics of the other things you can do with SM like ramming (very effective when u put on brace, takes almost no dmg even when ramming a bigger ship this way) and normal boarding/hit n run.

Hit and run brawling is very interesting, basically you have lots of cooldowns and long reload on the bombardment cannons so it makes sense. Shield upgrades, and repair crew could be handy.

[ErikModi]

Waitaminunte. . . the best tactic for the SPACE MARINES is to BOARD the enemy ship?

This is earth-quaking news! Someone get CNN on the line!

Seriously though, it's been brought up a few other places that Space Marines are basically prohibited from having truly effective ships for space battles. Their ships are designed to keep them safe getting to a planet, then to drop a bunch of Marines on the planet and support their ground campaign with orbital bombardment and reinforcements. So yeah, their guns are rather inferior when compared to Imperial Navy, Chaos, and Eldar, who are all designed around ship-to-ship combat. It only makes sense that the best (perhaps only) way for the Marines to win a spaceship battle is to turn it into the kind of battle they favor: fighting head-to-head with bolters and chainswords. So yes, boarding torpedoes, Thunderhawks, and Lightning Strikes/Boarding Actions are the main source of Space Marine damage. Altering that just turns them into the Imperial Navy, only worse.