Are scouts really the counter to lrf?

They technically work, but then you are left with a useless fleet of scouts that will get owned by pretty much anyhitng else in the game.

@Octopus

You're right...except you miss one thing. One Jikara scout ( the worst scout in the game, Vasari really should be making assailants early, not scouts ) is not the equivalent of 1 assailant. 2 are

Ship Slots: 6
DPS:16 vs 13

The story changes. Still, I agree that there are better answers. It really shouldn't be this way, but as the game stands, lrf's are the hardest to counter besides HC's because there's nothing they're really bad against.

Focus firing has worked for me too.

Fighters take too long to kill imo though. There's so much time in between runs. This allows mitigation shields to climb, and that really negates a lot of the damage from fighters. Fighters just don't do the job quickly. Scouts do though, at least kinda. Unfortunately, scouts are so bad against everything besides LRF's that I only make them at the very early parts of the game. There's no incentive to keep making them because LRF's are a better investment once you tech them.

Yeah, traditionally it's best to focus fire on the weaker units (like you did) rather than to focus on the bigger ones, but you maximised your win margin even further by canny maneuvers.

Amish - yeah I didn't think of that, but still, you get my point. I agree with you about fighters too. The only really efficent way to use fighters is to have plenty of them so that they have maul the enemy one run or two.

TheStarChild - maneuvering ships are important, good point. Your carriers will lurk at the rear and often will get attacks, so it's wise to lure the enemy fleet around with them while keeping them out of danger (that's against the AI anyway). Also I try and send my fighters off to whichever area has the least flak frigates, and I'm also currently experimenting with keeping all my fighters/bombers docked until the right time, say when I've destroyed the flak frigates, or taken out their fighters. Not sure how this will pan out though, still trying it.

VahnNoa - to expand on what RagingAmish said about abilities: just pick one that you think might be wise to be in control of yourself and turn off the auto-cast for every ship with that ability (eg the above mentioned Halcyon push). Then try and remember to use it in battle, get a feel for how easy to manage/unwieldy it is as well what the gains are from controlling it yourself over auto-casting. See if you want to keep on with it. If not, turn it back on.

Another important thing to think about is where you get hurt the most. If you come out of all battles totally unscathed then don't worry about it. If you find that all your s keep getting killed or are killed more than the other ships then pay more attention to them and take a more hands on approach, try out different things with them, figure out what they are good and how you can help them in ways that the AI isn't. Much of microing technique comes from simply wanting to improve weakpoints or frustrations in your game eg the Halcyon again: "man, I wish it wouldn't just cast the spell as soon as ANY fighters turn up, how can I stop it doing that....."