Im making a mod to add new units inorder to completely overhaul the balance.

Stay Tuned

This game needs drastic redesigning in the early game especially with the roles of the Light Frigate and LRM and the role of Capital ships . I could offer my solutions , but I doubt the devs care.

You'd think they would have put more priority into fixing the balance. What good is the game if there are only one or two viable strategies? It just becomes a real-time slideshow, since the actions are pre-determined and play out the same every game. Mass LRMs, focus fire, repeat. Or you can try for HCs instead. Yawn.

Hopefully, carriers and strike craft get fixed in 1.1. The basic frigates need more of a use as well.

I really wish Ironclad opened the floor to skilled players to get a good discussion on how balance should work in the early game. Ive got lots of very good solutions , including a revamp to the table of bonuses and armour.

LRMs sadly dominate. Its like seeing a Land RTS game where Artillery is so imbalanced that it dominates. Just imagine having a game like Command and Conquer ,going online and seeing nothing but Artillery being spammed all game.

Illus need 3 research labs compared to one for assiliants
the tech cost 800/100/175 compared to 400/0/25 (cause of the higher tier)
illus cost more to build
assiliants have far superior range
assiliants phase missles can bypass shields

So assiliants are better number/cost wise and have additional abilities.

So why should illus not be able to beat assiliants in a close battle even when being far outnumbered?

Or maybe you need to position your ships better just like illus need to be placed right to fire more weapons.

And i wont start discussing subverters or ra. balancing in a game is more than the sum of balanced matchups.

LRM are simply atm the working horse for every early or even mid game fleet because you hardly have any alternatives for dps. light frigates get blown to dust by lrms and carriers are too fragile or get countered by flak. Ok carriers arent that bad but they need to be handled very different than any close combat ship which makes them look rather weak.
Whats left are support cruiser who dont have any noticeable dps and heavy cruiser who come rather late if you dont rush for them.
So i dont consider lrm spamming as a problem as long as i dont see any pure lrm fleets. and i didnt saw any yet. lrm are only the best way to get good dps early. and you always need dps.
I would agree on adjusting the balancing between light frigates and lrm in general because atm light firgate are only used as cannon fodder till you get lrm. they should have some use beyond just that and countering support cruiser a little bit.

Interesting as I'm actually doing the same thing. In your later post, you suggested that you changed the LRMs role. In my mod, I haven't done that, but I've provided an effective way to counter them. Basically, I added an extra weapon to all the flak frigates with AntiLight damage (10 dps for the Garda and Defense vessel, 12 dps for the Sentinel). There are other balance effecting changes, but this is the most radical change. At first I never intended to release the mod (I was just built it for myself) but I'm beginning to see that it's something people might like playing.

Fighters will cut LRMs pretty easily. So if it's just LRMs then fighters are a simple clear and obvious answer.


If small amounts of flak are giving you trouble you might consider scouts.
Scouts are like big fighters, similar damage output and more resistant to flak.


If he has large numbers of flak and LRMs you're going to need heavies, as they are the only that can knock out flack in a reasonable timeframe. You'll need to use some tactics here, and keep your fighters docked until the flaks are dealt with.

Flaks can kill LRMs, although very slowly. They're not the best solution as this is not their primary purpose. But in a pinch, if you find yourself with large numbers of flaks you can use them to engage LRMs.




The important thing to note here is that the counter system in this game is pretty soft. Much softer than most games. The counters I mentioned WILL work, but you must have critical mass. A lower quality force can still overwhelm a higher quality force with sheer numbers.

I think 2/3rds is generally a safe ratio, 3/4 is probably better.

If he has 15 LRMs, you're going to need at least 10 or so fighter squads to knock him out decisively. So if he has 150 LRMs you're going to need 100 carriers.

So the point is, do not wait until he has 150 LRMs to begin pushing carriers. By the time you get 100 he will have 300 LRMs.

If he has 150 LRMs and you have nothing to combat him you've just plain lost.

The fact that the counter system is soft puts a lot more pressure on the economies. You can take him down with the appropriate counter, but your economy still has to match his, and you need to start early enough that he doesn't get a huge jump on you.
Carriers are expensive and are slow to reach maximum capacity. You need to begin pushing carriers he MOMENT you suspect he's going to spend a long time on LRMs. If your production of appropriate combat units lags too far behind it is very difficult to catch up.


If he begins pushing flaks, you need to move to heavy cruisers IMMEDIATELY.

Don't wait for him to get dangerous numbers of a certain unit before you begin working on the counter. Once he's reached the danger level, it's already too late.




People will complain that carriers are worthless but bear in mind that they can easily be repurposed to carry bombers after the LRM threat is dealt with. These guys are your best DPS in the game pound for pound. Once you start pushing heavies, he's going to have to start pushing bombers or he's screwed.

Fighters are your absolutely best screen against bombers. Much more effective than flak (which only do marginally well against bombers). This beautiful interplay between heavys, bombers, and fighters will effectively push LRMs off the main stage by the late-mid game.



I think most of the sentiment that LRMs are overpowered comes from the fact that most people move to carriers too late. THey let the enemy get too many LRMs before beginning to work on the counter, and thus they miss the opporutnity to transition from the early game to the late game arsenals.

I suppose you must be playing large size maps, but at least on the 1v1's in smaller maps i'm finding scouts work very well against LRMS. (once you turn on auto-attack)

they're super-cheap, fast to produce, fast to deploy, immune to anti-flack, take very little fleet supply.

If someone moves on me early with LRM's that's the obvious counter. Then opponent needs to bring light frigates or other units to counter the scouts, so the counter-fighting goes on from there...

i don't know, i'm pretty new to the game and referring to examples prior to the enemy building 100+ LRM's in a single fleet, but the principal of it would seem to work against any LRM + Flak type of attack.

Also, building on mehoo's comments, the heavy cruiser + carrier route seems like it could work assuming you use command groups and are able to successfully target the relatively few flak frigates to punch a hole in the LRM's defenses. I agree with Mehoo about the versatility of carriers being a serious consideration. Still, having said all that the difficulty of pulling off such a tactic successfully leads me to favor scouts + LRM's as a counter to LRM's + flak frigates

OK but curious to hear a good counterargument from more experienced players that explains why scouts are a poor counter to this.

I like what SD did in 1.04 - the slowing of LRMs But they need to do so in an even greater degree. If carrier cruisers could out-accelerate and outrun LRMs I think that would be the best situation. As the LRMs must stop to fire the Carrier may only receive one salvo before it again is out of range. Meanwhile, the fighters tear apart the LRMs. I see this as the best update as it adds more tactics to the game.

I say make LRMs something like a howitzer - low in speed and protection, but high in damage - of which it already has 2 of those things so just slow thier acceleration and speed down.

Not to mention doing this would discourage a fleet of LRMs because they would be so damn slow you could intercept them before they got to your home planet.

As for the scout argument - I always bring along a pack of scouts with my main fleet to take down LRMs and trade ships and what have you... this allows more bomber strikecraft to gank Caps. and buildings.

EDIT: Also the TEC and Advent scouts have nice abilities.

No edit button really fails

3 ideas in my mod to limit the illuminator/LRMs

- The Siege Frigate is resistant to LRMs and are much more powerful , meaning the LRM spammer is risking a counter with a planet sieging strategy.

- Capital Ships are 3x resistant to LRMs and buffed agaisnt them , thus can spend more time rinsing them. Because caps are easier to achieve , then LRM spammers might be facing 2-3 caps they cannot kill.

- The Tier 0 Heavy Frigate is 2x resistant to LRMs and thus the heavy frigate beats the lrm.

- LRM spammers however have the advantage that their ships are great raiders , thus their counter to caps is killing the cap facs , counter to cruisers is killing the military labs etc..

Make a nice long-range Capital Ability that does tons of damage to all ships within range or the primary target ship, then fire it at the LRMs

In other words, revamp the Radiation Bomb that the Marza has, to do just enough damage to wipe out a fleet of LRM's

Anyway, you can only have 16 Marzas (and you might like a couple Akkans instead so you can colonize)