Online skirmishes - watch out on scout EMP !

After reading this short guide I hope you will look on scout in quite different way :-)

Scout is one of the most vulnerable unit but still one of the most underestimated.

Usually in online skirmishes, at the early stage of game, people used to build light ships like fighters, corvettes, bombers etc.
What is most important - losing 'air superiority' or rather light ships superiority at the early stage is dangerous for 2 reasons:

1. Enemy who gained superiority can harass your resourcing operations.

2. High maneuverability of fighters class ships is very adventagous for the enemy. Enemy with light ships superiority has iniciative and sets the rules and battlefield place. In such situation you can only point defense and cannot catch up their light fighters. Enemy can play with you in the kitty-mouse game.

OK so what scouts has to do to help you ?

Generally fighters class swarms are balled up and they move in group. When dogfight is about to begin you see a ball of fighters attacking other ball of fighters.

So... scouts (higgarian and vaygr) has an EMP special attack once discovered. It costs a lot you might say BUT it is very powerful feature if used properly.

I recommend building 2 scouts and set them in group bind key. Keep them close your ball of fighters and when you want to engage enemy fighters FIRST send scouts by pressing E key and pointing enemy balled up units. EMP feature has quite short distance and blows a EMP balls in which proximity all enemy fighters are disabled for about 15seconds. During this time your units can decimate enemy and shoot them like a ducks! In such a short moment you can gain advantage in a dogfight which can lead to gaining superiority in early stage of battle.

Now you can harass enemy resourcing operations and take the iniciative in a battle.

EMP feature has a cool down time on scouts so you need to wait quite long before using them again.

EMP is also effective on corvettes. On larger ships like frigs and above it has almost no effect at all.

Wish you good hunting with EMP!

Please rate this guide and follow me to learn more secrets in skirmishes online :-)

[jmkdog]

Nice, I use the speed burst to out run, now this!

[GetEmBees]

Do you have the original paper manual for Homeworld 1? If not, you should buy a copy. It comes with some very interesting "admiral debates" about fighter vs corvettes etc, and your discussion here would have been very valuable in the original manual circa 2002. Excellent guide!

[gen_maczek]

*initiative

[F*ck Norris]

iniciative? im not sure thats a word

[Me-163 Komet]

If you're playing Vaygr, a good strategy is to send out laser and missile corvettes and escort them with scouts (to disable attacking fighters and corvettes), bombers (to deal with the corvettes once they're disabled) and interceptors (to deal with the disabled fighters).

[Demonic Toaster Strudel]

great guide, for me, one who knows the powers of the scout, its good to see this info spread :D makes for more interesting battles

[gen_maczek]

maybe having much more scouts like 6-10 would do the job in disabling capital class for some period of time

[michup86]

Thanks for comment on that. It's good to know this numbers. When it comes down to capital class ships it would be nice to see EMP disabling for couple seconds targeted modules. It would prove them combat effective for the whole skirmish duration. It could be a difference in BC vs BC fights when i.e. 2 scouts EMP would disable Vaygr missle launch or one of Hiigaran ions cannon for 30 seconds.

[gen_maczek]

ok so here we go:

EMP on scouts, fighters, bombers, resource collectors lasts 35 seconds. To disable larger ships you need more scouts but I dont think its good idea to build many scouts just to try EMP for a short while.

EMP cooldown on on scout lasts about 60 seconds.

[gen_maczek]

I need to do research before I answer your questions but as I remember many years ago I tried to disable resource collectors and it did not last long, circa not more then 10 seconds.

EMP cooldown - I need to find out. Stay tuned and I check this soon.