Part of the thing that makes them overpowered is their duplicate ability since it ends up meaning that half the time you're not doing any damage so it works out to about an additional 50% damage reduction.

This is why the Zerg were the first race most players got good with in Starcraft early on. Spamming tactics are easy to learn and easy to execute. They are not necessarily the dominant strategy, they are just one of quickest ways to get above average.

So the question is - Does Ironclad need to nerf single unit spamming? Or do they just need to wait it out and have the player-base realize it's not as dominant as they think?

Tough Call.

Correction: Bad RTS games in a nutshell. I must be the only person here who thought Starcraft was absolutely terrible. It and Warcraft III were some of the worst RTS games I've ever played because they promoted rushing. Being rushed by zerglings, carriers, or those walking tree structures is no fun. Good RTS games prevent this from happening. Take Rise of Nations for an example. Someone can try to rush long-range MLRS/artillery but all you have to do is counter with helicopters or bring tanks right up against the MLRS where it's too close for them to get targeted. What Sins needs is something similar. LRM's and other long-range vessels need a minimum and maximum on their range. Right now there's only a maximum so they can target anything anywhere in their range. It would give opponents more of a fighting chance if they could close the gap with the LRM's while taking hits, and then get inside the minimum range to pound away while the LRM's have to reposition or break up into groups in order to get their targets within the effective min/max range. If they have a range of 8400 right now, something like a minimum range of 2400 or 3200 would work.

I think what the original author of this thread's other problem is that he/she was not prepared to handle LRM's as they exist in the game right now. It would seem like fighters and bombers should counter, but they don't. What's the solution? Stock up on long-range vessels of your own. Have one battle fleet and one long-range fleet. Personally, I've found the Vasari to be hard to play as well. The LRM thing is a problem right now, but there are alternative tactics to handling them. My favorite is having some other group of ships come in from behind. Also, try selecting those bombers/fighters and having them concentrate their fire on a single LRM at a time.

I semi agree with your correction. I loved SC, and I think rushing is definitely a strategy every strategist needs in his toolbox, but I also loved Rise of Nations. I was hoping Sins would have a comparable combat system (or even better, very tactical like Company of Heroes, but that'd be asking for too much in a space game), but so far I'm starting to think it's more like SupComm with just waves of units.

Fortunately the posts here on this thread are giving me hope. I'm still new so I'm just hoping it's just misguided early impressions of the game. I think one reason I feel that way is that units take a relatively long time to die, so you don't really get to see counters happening "right before your eyes" so to speak.

My question is whether spamming single unit types should be considered an issue or not. In other words, should spamming single unit types be considered legitimate strategy, albeit poor, ill-conceived, crude, [insert adjective] strategy?

I'd say that spamming single unit types should be allowed, with no special nerfs to stop the practice. There should, of course, be effective counters to units, so that if someone spams all units of one type, they could be open to getting their entire force slaughtered.

Here's something sort of ironic and funny to think about: spamming seems to beget spamming. I played a game once where I knew my opponent was spamming carriers. I countered by building a crapload of flak frigs, which annihilated his force. But to counter his spam, I had to spam myself, which meant I was left with an all one-unit force, and was open to other players' attacks! Now, I'm not saying that something needs to be done about this, it was just an amusing situation, and something to reflect upon.

To respond to the OP's initial post, vasari is harder to play than other factions. That in itself could have been part of your problem.

okay heres a replay of one of the counters of illuminators.

10 defense vs 10 illuminators

10 illuminators: 3500 credits, 500 metal, 400 crystal and 60 supply
vs
10 defense: 3500 credits, 400 metal, 200 crystal and 30 supply (could have made it 11-12 and not 10).


outcome:
10 dead illuminator, 7 alive defense (one barely).


http://files.filefront.com/illumvsdefenserecord/;9674236;/fileinfo.html

I consider it a decent counter if for cheaper price and half the supply, ~68%-72% survive.

Rushing is and always will be a gamble. Your gambling the game that you can catch your opponent and either end him and/or cripple him with your initial attack. Problem with rushing is when your opponent anticipates it and counters it. You put all your eggs in one basket. If you fail, you probably will lose.

Basic rushing is only effective when:

1) The game first comes out
2) Your opponent is new

This game just came out. Finding a ship that is effective and massing it doesn't take a rocket scienetist to figure out that its probably pretty effective if and this is a big if, your opponent isn't prepared for it.

No disrespect, but I hope the balance folks are disregarding these posts. We need to exhaust all of our tactical options before we ask for balance changes, and from the looks of it you have several to go through.

Also, incase you didn't see this;
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=rtEgzzKP0iE

Uh oh, someone's being a big meanie to you on the internet!

Being rude != trolling. Put that knee-jerking defensive attitude away and accept that you simply didn't play well that game and used no tactics at all. I suppose since you had an empire to run, you couldn't bother to send in your units at once nor go through the incredibly hard process of clicking them and moving them to better tactical positions. I hear you man, building those trade centers sure requires a lot of concentration!

You expect your information on a silver spoon and when it's not delivered, you complain instead of trying it out yourself like archpsi did. Seriously, the best way to learn is to simply do it yourself and find out. Considering how many people spam lrm frigs these days, how hard is it to try using flaks or even fighters against them? This thread has been up since the 13th. You've had plenty of time to try it out. It seriously takes only about 15 minutes to get attacked by LRM spam in online games these days. Are you afraid of a loss? Make a new account to do testing. Even if the unit's ability against lrms is "counterintuitive", looking at the damage chart makes it painfully obvious that flak is actually the BEST choice. The problem with fighters is that if the enemy has swarms of light frigates, the fighters get completely ripped apart. Flak frigates are a little harder to kill and completly shut down as they're pounding the lrms.

While it's true that there sn't a true hard counter to LRMs, just use your head a bit and you'd be able to figure out which unit works. There's diagrams and charts at your disposal. You have all the unit information you need. The ones who say scouts are counters are only looking at the chart, seeing "oh scout = anti-light, therefore scout = LRM killer" but if you think about things a little more carefully, you'd realize that scouts deal very little damage and other than possibly putting up a fight against lrms, they have no utility. Thus, flaks, which also serve to kill fighters/bombers are much better. Carriers are also good - fighters deal anti-light and deal 150% dmg to lrms. when there's few/no light armored targets, you can switch to bombers can kill something else.

Finally, of course it's always about micro. In any rts game, the one who focus fires and moves his wounded units to the backlines will always win if both groups are of comparible sizes and aren't counters to the other. Further more, sending your fleet in single file is the opposite of micro. It's basically "reverse micro" because by doing that you're decreasing the effectiveness of your fleet.

I never watched the original game, but he didnt scout??



anyway I just did a test via modding the game.

made it so illuminators start with self clone ability, while the defense got nothing tech wise (no hp/armour/damage), but I made 11 defense instead of 10 to at least make resources close to each other (resource cost of ships ignoring any teching up to illuminators or the clone ability).

10 illuminators dead, 8-10 clones dead (new illuminators appeared like ~9 time, however I was watching and counting at ~8 speed, so might have missed 1) and 8 defense alive.

Im not gonna upload the replay.
you need the mod to watch the replay, otherwise it crashes.

Yeah playing advent lately has shown how rediculous overpowered illuminators are.. You can get them to do upwards of 25 weapon damage on their stats.. Thats rediculous.. Thats rivaling cruisers..

I think the best thing they should do is either A) Increase the pop req for them, 6 isn't doing it.. or
make them a glass cannon, they have more hps then discple vessels for crying out loud..