Counter to Arclight cancer?

[jleeming]

They pump out a bunch of arclights with extended range, double attack and elite marksmen, plus fangs with shield. What is the counter to this?

The Arclights eat tanks and have an upgrade remaining to do AA work. Anything that needs to get close will die.

I tried to outrange them with marksmen, doesn't work. Marksmen get bogged down with fangs, don't have a good range advantage and take 5x longer to kill Arcs than Arcs do vs Marksmen.

Storms with fire to deal with the fangs doesn't work either, they just put down shields and anti-missile.

What should I be doing?

[Polar Test 53]

have you tried giant units? a fortress or war factory can make some short work of arcs and can deal with the shields as well as they have enough hp to just tank the arcs. and can apply a shield to chaff which can also deal with their own fangs.
phoenixes are better then marksmen and you get 2 of them and only being able to buy 2-4 units at a round makes the payoff is much greater in amount of units gotten.

wasp and fangs also can get shields doubling the time it takes for an arc to chew through them regardless of charged shot making their tech less effective
you can also get range on your fangs so they can shoot out from a shielded position making the arcs waste time taking out a shield and the wasp range buff also lets you get in and deal some damage wasp upgrades are pretty cheap compared to other units too.

flanks can help too they are able to pull half their army away from the front line for a bit can make a big difference. especially to take away the attention of the marksmen. but it really comes down to how you react to their moves and if you make them react to what you do.
how well you can predict their moves and such. each round builds up so if you dont respond to your opponents actions early enough they can snowball pretty hard.

if they have arcs and snipers and all you keep building is chaff and tanks. you gone lose
storms with fire is redundant if you have tanks to deal with chaff. fires good if they have loads of it but as you found out shields and missile defence works wonders. just buy a vulcan it does the same thing but can absorb shots from arclights. but keep the arty just the fire mod isint always the best choice artys just good cuz it makes the opponent have to deal with it in some way.
and ill say again phoenixes are great you get 2 per unit and the fly making them have to buy the aa tech on top of all the other techs or get their own long range single target

[ente000]

Early phoenix are good, emp on them is very nice against arcs.
You can also buy melting points with emp rockets.
Fortress with shield upgrade can tank them a lot.
In late game, you can try to spam crawler and wasps, if you have a decent backline.
Counter the unit what protects his arcs.
If the enemy reaches all 4 upgrades your done :D

[Mivo]

My approach is to use the strategies that I have trouble defeating and then learn from how other players deal with them. This works with any strategy/builds and it is win-win: you either get a victory and learn more about what doesn't work against your strategy or you learn how to counter a strong build.

I have been doing this lately with various Fangs and Rhino setups that I found frustrating to face. Some of my opponents had solutions that hadn't occurred to me at all, so losing felt pretty good because I had gained new knowledge.

I generally find that this more purpose-driven way of playing cuts down on potential frustration. When I go into a game with just the aim of winning and solely react to how the game goes, without a secondary objective like "trying out Carry Arclight + X spam", I often feel like I don't learn anything.

So, in your shoes, I'd go and play ten games where you'll build around Arclights with range, elite marksman, charged shot and air specialization. See what happens. You'll learn both the strong and weak points, and the counters.

[LagTheKiller]

From a noob(me):

Depends on other units and your starting build. Also if the enemy is overinvesting in Arclights and pull the Arclight Exp card, well roll for anal circumference. Sometimes there is just no comin back. ANd if you picked crawlers n mustangs vs arcs, you might never catch up.

You can try fortresses / hackers to protect yourbackline with shields. Early phoenixes and you need to start investing in range+ranks+range one time tech upgrade.

Stormcallers with flames will leave burns to get low lvl arcs and high explosives will melt fangs. Try to time gap it. If he goes counter, try other thing for a round then buy 3-4 more stormcallers with upgrade 2 rounds later. If he went preventative AntiRocket = wasted resorces. If he didnt he will fight in the RAIN OF ROCKETS. Again if there is a space gap between shield and AR set stormcallers to only hit edge of the shield. If there is no gap try to overwhelm one side and at least force him to constantly rebuy the thing.

Overlord with photonic coating and 120m cannon can act as soaker / buffer and chaff eater. Especially later if he dont expect any flying units sudden 3x Overlord might do the trick.

If he got a a gap between arcs and fangs you can try hackers to keep the Arcs busy.

Fortress with ROCKET PUNCH can tank a lot then deletes one team of fangs / down the shield.

Lvlved up crawlers with subterenan blitz can withstand opening salvo from same lvl (+1) arcs and then acid explosion to leave a thick green line.

Everything depends on your units and his other units. I refuse to believe he only do Fangs and Arcs.

[Fadeway]

Fortresses dumpster arcs, because barriers block the aoe. The meta builds seem to be fortress + fang and fortress + mustang. Arc + marksman + fang sounds incredibly greedy and difficult to pull off; it's a lot of units to buy upgrades for. Plus you need levels on the first two, which requires some snowballing with a composition that is not particularly aggressive.

Fortress in general feels like the most broken unit to me atm. I commonly see massive chaff vs chaff battles and it is scary to buy a vulcan because they will obviously respond with a barrier fort. Even knowing that the fort coming I don't see the counter. Marksmen only work with lots of levels (aka already winning).

Melting points take a long time to get through the fort barrier and also don't have their own defense, so on an even board with some marksmen on both sides, the MP tends to get blown out first as well. Even when the setup for MP is decent, it doesn't feel like a counter when the fortress inevitably chimps out and rocket punches 1000 points of units on its way down.

So I just aim for fortresses every game.

[Kugelfisch]

emp is the way to go. u can use emp on sniper, phoenix or artillerey.
another way is hackers, but that can be very difficult.
in your case u say fangs and arcs, so i suggest stormcaller with fire and emp.

apart from that, leveld fangs with shield are quite strong against lvl 2 or lvl 3 arcs, when in range. often u only need to tank a few shots until your emp hits. if there are too many it is very difficult or course.