Basically you just want fighters and flaks to be better vs LRMs

innociv you are right in theory, but your overlooking my main point. Yes if you let a flak fight 2 or maybe 3 LRM it may kill them but it will take like 3 minutes! A hard counter would mean the counter damage is severe enough that they cannot just fly past them ignoring the damage for a while and target whatever they want. If the counters were hard enough it would mean you keep them away from the flaks with the same urgency you would keep strikecraft away from the flaks. Flaks vs fighters and bombers, NOW THERES A HARD COUNTER. LRM's have no problem getting right in flaks face. If flaks are the counter they should pop a whole group of LRM the same way they decimate hordes of fighters. This would force the LRM to use their range to stay behind a screen of light frigs to protect them from flak rushes. And light frigs should also decimate flaks rather quickly. The harder the counters the more important positioning and formation micro would become, thats a good thing in my opinion. If 1 unit can kill 15 counter its all by itself but it takes 10 minutes to do it, that means the weak units can fly around with impunity for 8 minutes doing whatever they want before finally deciding to back off. So even though those 15 units cant kill the 1 unit that counters them, they can fly around for 8 minutes killing structures and whatever units they counter. THats an exageration obviously but thats basically the way the lrm vs flak n fighters works right now. LRM should be fragile and stay behind a screen of light frig to protect them.

Its about the lenght of time it takes to kill the units you counter that makes positioning pointless and turns the LRM range advantage into a more important factor than .75 damage bonus. Flak vs strikecraft is a true hard counter more counters should be like that. IF you send a whole horde of strikecraft to attack 15 flaks they will get shred in no time flat. It should be the same with flak vs lrm, light frig vs flak, lrm vs light frig, etc. Make it more extreme more severe. And ive seen the damage bonus chart most damage bonuses are pretty dull 1.25 1.5 1.75 at max (2 for fighter but there damage is 2 or 3 so what)they could be a lot more like 3x or 4x damage.

And whats hard to understand about my tooltip description. Its ala Warcraft 3, you dont just list armor and damage values u list armor and damage types and what there reistances are. It makes a hell of a lot more sense than your dps vs ____ idea. Lasers - double damage vs light armor, medium armor - weak vs missles and beams, strong vs autocannons. Simple descriptions like that much more helpful.

gimp its not about rock/paper/scissors when you add in cap ships, abilities, flying units which can only be targeted by certain units, weapon ranges, etc. etc. not to mentions theres more 3 unit types. Theres so many variables that still make this interesting, but when counters are weak it becomes about massing the unit with the longest range and damage as that becomes the more important factor. Its more about formation, and strategy not rock/paper/scissors which this game will never be because of the 4x element. I dont want all the ships to just die instantly vs their counters there should obviously be a chance to retreat or move them behind some kind of protection. But seeing how LRM have superb damage and the longest range shouldnt they also be glass cannons? Its silly the way they can tank decently enough to not need any kind of screen (meat shield).

I haven't been victim to huge LRM spam .. all I know is that in the last multiplayer game I was outnumber 4 computer (team) vs just me while my other team members where in another system and LRM spam pretty much saved my bacon.

Spam in general in this game is frustrating. I get frustrated on the computer tactic of building up tons of siege frigates .. running to a planet .. bombing it down quickly (even if you have some defenses up) .. if you don't have a fleet nearby .. the system is toast .. even if you did .. the siege frigates just ignore your attacks and keep pummeling the planet.

So while I felt I had enough defense or effective counters or bring in my capital ships .. they simply died TOO slow and they could continue to pummel the planet.

This has been balanced by simply making them more expensive .. which isn't the best approach (as they are pretty much worthless to make now).

But same thing with LRMs .. even if you bring in flak ships .. how fast will the LRMs go down? Will they still be able to take down a capital ship or other stuff to be "worth" the losses?


It will be tough to balance though .. I don't want this game to turn into other RTS's where its a race to tech up the fastest because the upper tier ships dominate the lower ones so much. I didn't like that about Sup Comm .. the first tier stuff was so dominated by upper tier stuff you often were better off just skipping that initial tier. Besides spamming a few units this game does support diversified fleets pretty well.

Light Frigates are alot better against Flaks than Flaks are against LRMs.

And the problem with LRMs isn't that they can't be killed.
The problem with LRMs is that while LRMs are very good against everything but planets, the counters to LRMs are both not very effective (they kill LRMs slowly for their cost) AND not flexible (scouts are useless against everything but LRMs, flaks can kill LRMs and strike crafts, carriers must slowly switch to bombers to hurt anything but LRMs).

Light frigs don't kill flaks THAT fast, not like how fast LRMS kill light frigs.

But yes you're right.. that's the point i've been making. LRMS do a lot of damage before you kill them, when the same isn't so for other units.

I'd like to see LRMS building damage nerfed, but problem with that is the buildings share armor type with heavycruisers and it'd make lrms too weak against HC's, and illums would do too good in comparison vs. buildings and hc's unless they're given a real damage type.

When was the last time you played SupCom? That teching issue hasn't been an issue since Forged Alliance came out.

wow so the strategy of scouting out your enemy to see what hes making, then making the counter unit is noob stuff? If somebody insists on massing 1 kind of unit doesnt it just make sense to mass the counter. If he makes a balanced army you cant do that. Anyways I think phobeus hit the nail on the head the problem is how much damage they do as your "killing them" which is also a joke, flaks kill so slow u can retreat them back to your planet 1 by 1 as they get low on health. And to the guy who said hard counters would make the game involve less micro you obviously havent played a game with hard counters. Its all about flanking, formation, position, and units supporting each others weaknesses with hard counters. More micro although in a 4x game battle micro is hard to keep track of thats why I said i shouldnt be so extreme that you cant retreat. just punish them if they stay to fight with the wrong units. I have had 20 flaks vs 35 lrm and they werent afraid they killed my factory, a reasearch base, and my cap with only minimal losses even while my flaks were right up in their face.

I totally agree with this. If there were hard counters, it means the units that do not counter the spam would be usless. I will have to spam the counter unit. That is not cutting down on spamming.

I would want a weapon that would be good against the snowmen, and any other weapons they throw at me, cold or hot. There is already a thread about changing LRMs so they use more fleet supply to try to take care of the spamming.