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ship spammers-A Guide to Fighting Back

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ship spammers-A Guide to Fighting Back

annoying b*tches

from Sins Forums

You all know them, and you all hate them.  You call them ship spammers.   For most of you that word probably has a meaning.  But let me explain it to those of you who have never had a game ruined by a spammer.  A ship spammer is someone who build a crapload of one type of ship (such as 150 LRMs) and attacks.  I am writing this fresh from a particularly stinging defeat at the hands of a ship spammer.  It is important to know that these people CAN be beaten, and playing a game with a ship spammer is not the end of the world.

All ship spammers are n00bs, they spam because they know that they will not win any other way.  Often, it is easy to make a ship spammer stop spamming simply by telling them that they suck and won't amount to anything.

If that doesn't work it's time to go to Plan B.  The whole idea of spamming is to start building ships (the most popular one is the torpedo frigate or it's equivalent), as soon as possible.  Therefore, spammers will sometimes not even bother to colonize other worlds.  They will build 2 research facilities, research torpedo frigates, and start building.  Often times, they will build between 3-4 more frigate facilities to speed up the process.  Their greatest weakness is that they spend ALL of their money building ships, so while you're going out there and colonizing worlds, they're sitting in their one little world building more ships.  This means that often times when a spammer attacks you, the best strategy is to simply attack his world.  They never have more that 3.  Spammers send ALL of their ships in for an assualt, leaving none behind for defense.  Go around his fleet and attack.  Just bomb his planets and he's done.

If that doesn't work, you have to give them a taste of their own medicine.  Spam a ship one level above his.  If he's spamming light frigates, build torpedo, if he's building torpedo, build flak, and so on.  When that's done, there will be nothing left of him, and you can walk all over him.

Please make replies on the Ideas for v1.03 post and tell them that there needs to be a unit cap for individual types of units.

Get admins and hosts of servers to boot spammers and let them know that their n00bey ways are not appreciated.

Beating a spammer is actually easy if you know what to do.

Good luck!

120,684 views 186 replies
Reply #126 from Sins Forums Top
Penalties on building too many of one type of unit? First let me say that I don't think Supreme Commander is a better game than Sins; I love Sins, but, in SC, there are such "natural" counters that anyone spamming one thing is usually easily defeated. For example, if a player builds lots of point defences, artillery is a great counter; bombers easily take out artilery; fighters easily take out bombers, and on and on it goes. It's easy and almost "natural"

With Sins, it's not that way (so far), cause when I see lots of LRMs, there is really no definitive counter; there are ways to "beat" the spam, but in my opinion, it should be easy to punish a spammer; you should'nt need to read a deep strategy thread on the subject and then practice it for weeks to do so. In SC, you spam bombers, and even most noobs know naturally to build fighters to wipe them out.

For just one type of example, if flack ships had a 50% chance to destroy incomming missles, they could both protect a mixed fleet by staying near the core fleet, and also take the battle to the LRMs. That just feels "natural", and does not put all these cap limits and penalties on how many of one ship type you have, and naturally punishes a spammer.

Basically, I wish there were a few more hard-core, definitive counters in Sins. . .
Reply #127 from Sins Forums Top
I'd really rather not counter spams with spams, and often I don't have many ships early-game to attack their planets back. Usually just my capital. What about a good way to defend without spamming?

And to everyone here saying there's nothing wrong with spamming: why then do players ALWAYS choose assault frigates over other ships? And why can't a mixed force beat an assault frigate spam when it easily beats every other?
Elemental: Reforged
Reply #128 from Sins Forums Top

All rules are fair in love or war... just not cheat codes  :p 
That's all I have to say
Reply #129 from Sins Forums Top
Fighter strikecraft dominate LRM spam tbh, if you get enough fighters to destroy a missile frigate in one fly-by you can take down fleets extremely quickly.
Reply #130 from Sins Forums Top
The reason SC does so well on the front of counters, is the counter unit simply pwns. The original unit does 0 to negligable damage, meanwhile the countering unit wipes the floor.

This means that the counter to LRM will kill them really fast. This means you need to have a counter to that LRM counter. and so on. this means, fleets will be diverse and balanced.

End of story. So just make ships do more damage to the unit they are countering, and problem will be solved.

Devs. think a balanced game is a game where all the units do pretty much the same damage (for cost), and think this balances things. Well, it does, but only on superficial level. It leads to problems like this, spamming..
Reply #131 from Sins Forums Top
...noobish question...
hi...WTF is a zergler.?...and whats a Zergler rush??.have seen the term a few times,but dont know what it means...
thanks..8-)
Reply #132 from Sins Forums Top
Starcraft has a team called Zerg. The most basic combat unit you can train is a Zergling. The reason zergling rushes were so effective is because they moved so fast, hence you could attack the enemy base before they could get to you. And they were very effective at close range, which means basically the Terran get pwnt untill they can get Firebats.

The Protos are even more vulnerable in some regards, the key is to get some Ion Cannons up quickly.
Reply #133 from Sins Forums Top
I think two new ships should be added to replace fighters and bombers. Well, not "replace" but offer an alternative. As it is, fighters are the only thing that really seem to "own" long range missle ships and bombers are the only ship that really "own" heavy cruisers. Fighters and bombers are great and all, but it is extremely easy to stop them with a few flak. A few flak tossed in to a blob of long range ships or heavy cruisers will completely tear apart strike craft. The counter to flak would be light frigates, but they don't seem to tear apart the flak like the flak do strike craft.

What this means, is that the counters to long range ships and heavy cruisers are more easily countered than the counter to the counter. I think there should be a new type of ship added that can be the counter to long range ships but that is not completely destoryed by its counter like strike craft are by flak. Perhaps a ship that has a chance to detonate missles coming towards it? Something like 35%. So it doesn't counter the enemy by doing massive amounts of damage to it, it counters it by taking less damage itself. For heavy cruisers, well I don't know, I'm sure something could be thought up.

This would mean that there are multiple possibilities for countering the most common "spam." Strike craft would still remain usefull for attacking quickly and out of range(carrier out of range at least). Carriers are very usefull in the suns grav wells because of that speed. Adding new ships can't be too hard, it'd just be 3-6 new models and a few extra icons for the build menus.
Reply #134 from Sins Forums Top
Yes, let them spam and ruin our games.
They are free to do as they please.
But all is cool: How about if I come to visit you and deficate on your rug, sorceresss. No policing right.
How else are you going to win but to spam back.
Also if you don't know yet that your opponent is going to using this strategy
which you won't till its to late you're going to be screwed.

I have been wondering if I could like this game and whether or no it's worth pursuing and judging by the numerous posts I've read here it seems I'm not going to bother.

I have the game and have played very little, it looks like its just another multiplayer RTS (which I find boring and a waste of time) games where people play just to win against other human players. Using quick easy tactics like spamming and gamey strategies which exploit the inherent weaknesses of the game.

I don't want to play against human players. They're all punks and they all ruin the game making it a big rush to win.

Now if the AI was good enough to beat experienced human players now and again then I'd
consider it but from what I read its no galactic civilizations II but rather a game with a skirmish mode only good enough to train you for the quick, dumb and boring multiplayer matches.
Reply #135 from Sins Forums Top
But yes lets get some ideas here that would render useless the spamming strategy.
Maybe something could be worked into the game.
Reply #136 from Sins Forums Top
@Clearstar, I don't know how long you've been doing this, but I guarantee you that any messageboard for any new strategy game is going to be filled with the exact same Spam Newb Rush Lulz comments, just with the name of the game changed. Sins is actually getting off pretty light compared to any major title in the last few years, come to think of it.

Reply #137 from Sins Forums Top
you are getting too emotionally attached to your capital ships.
Sure it was fun to conquer a system of AI with a few capital ships and imagine you are the captain of it.

But why the heck does it matter if a fleet of anti capital ship frigates can kill one of your capital ships in the late game? you build a replacement and pay for upgrading it and thats it. If the enemy had a fleet of LRM I will kill his fleet and take his planets, maybe loose a capital, and just rebuild it. At the end I will be doing the winning.

Some people here just like to whine and whine... building a larger fleet then yours and then attacking is very different then walking a tank into a construction yard in total annihilation triggering a bug that renders that construction yard inoperative.
Reply #138 from Sins Forums Top
I don't mean that capital ships ought to be more survivable at higher levels, they ought to be survivable -right- out of the box. A level 1 capital ship -should- be able to defeat 3000/400/300 worth of LRM right out of the box, and more. They should pretty much counter every unit out there effectively except bombers and heavy crusiers.

Quite frankly, they cost well enough to justify effectiveness, and they would limit so called "LRM spamming" making frigates a -supplement- to capital ships rather then the other way around. They cost tons of logistics, require extra research, and have -entirely- seperate tech trees to improve them, such as cap turning, the advent exp research, and Vasari weapon techs.

I wouldn't say the game would take a bad turn if it made it so that capital ship 'spam' (That is, restraining from building frigates to build capital ships instead) was more viable then simple frigates, simply allowing frigates to fill in the 'empty space' left over from building capital ships.

At the very least, capital ships ought to be much more effective up front, and be able to take enough damage that focus firing on them is an inefficient solution. Perhaps raise shield mitigation to 80% or something drastic.
Reply #139 from Sins Forums Top

Some people here just like to whine and whine... building a larger fleet then yours and then attacking is very different then walking a tank into a construction yard in total annihilation triggering a bug that renders that construction yard inoperative.
>>>>>

This statement is endemic of the misunderstanding we have here. While certainly the OP's newbness shows, the size of this thread indicates that we have a serious problem. Capital ships, originally the game's focus, as can be seen by the -numerous- resource techs and support structures and gameplay mechanisms around them, are not at all useful for their cost.

There are 16 slots for capital ships- Fleet capacity regularly gets filled in a long game, but going beyond 3 capital ships is a complete joke. This is completely ass backward. -super weapons- are more effective than multiple capital ships. And as the game goes on, making new capital ships and investing in research to improve them becomes -less- effective as fleets get bigger and are able to focus fire more effectively.

How sad is that, a mechanism that has nearly half a game to support it -useless-? Building 16 capital ships ought to be a viable option, something long off and sought for- not something that cripples your fleet, wastes your logistics and makes you a complete joke.



Reply #140 from Sins Forums Top
All ship spammers are n00bs, they spam because they know that they will not win any other way. Often, it is easy to make a ship spammer stop spamming simply by telling them that they suck and won't amount to anything.
End of quote




the designers of Soase must have known the ultimate way to kill a rusher ( make it take a long time to get to the opponent)


ship spammer must be the newest term for this style of play.. however since Warcraft II we have fondly called them rushers... People who believe building 1000 of the cheapest unit is an actual strategy...


What are the common characteristics of a rusher?

1. no sex life... anyone that wants to end a STRATEGY game in 5 minutes or less is probably a 2 minute man in bed.

2. no friends... another problem with rushers... They have no grasp on the word commitment. this ties into characteristic #1...

3. no comprehensive understanding of the word strategy... The science and art of using [all the forces of a nation to execute approved plans as effectively as possible during peace or war. - defined.
Apparently they believe buying as many of the cheapest unit is a strategy. But according to the official definition unit rushing cannot even be considered a strategy by definition.

4. I am 12 years old and need to feel dominant over someone at something - This is a common inferiority complex problem that almost every rusher has..... Remember its not a strategy its just a way to ensure you win all the time (until Soase came out)

5. Last but not least.. mom and daddy only allow me to play the computer from 7 pm to 9pm i want to get in at least 5 good games before bedtime.. 2 hours / 5 games = 24 minutes per game... i cant employ a real strategy in this time.. ill just have to rush them.



unfortunately when they played their first Soase game they found out that in 24 minutes --

a) you cant even reach the opponent in 24 minutes

b) when you do reach your opponent.. he/she has enough defenses and/or ships to obliterate your 1 dimensional fleet - and soon after comes directly after you with no defense and no infrastructure.. oops!!



rushing aka ship spamming is really stupid and not an effective strategy in Soase... However im sure some 15 year old is working on a mod that the only way to win it is ship rushing.. Thankfully its been eliminated from the actual game :-)
Reply #141 from Sins Forums Top
So I've read that spamming will be dealt with and LRM's will likely be nerfed. That, quite frankly, sucks. I think it would be much better to increase the amount of resources required for an LRM and Illuminator. Illuminators in particular get rather annoying how they shoot out their sides giving them 3 effective gun ports. They're still easy for me to handle though. I don't see why they need to be changed except for maybe the price going up a little. I just never seem to have problems dealing with spam fleets and I normally don't spam back. Someone a few days ago called 10 LRM's spamming. 10! If you think 10 is spamming, you need a reality check. People are so quick to freak out because the see the same icon so many times that it's extremely annoying and detrimental to the enjoyment of the game. I personally consider how big a fleet is before I make a judgment on spamming. If you all want to see real spamming, which Sins doesn't have, then you can sit down for a game of Starcraft with some of my friends and pound your keyboard as they send hundreds of zerglings, carriers, or marines + medics. Every single battle in that game resulted in spamming. I have never seen anything anywhere near as bad as that inside of Sins.

Btw, if you play Advent, taking out LRM's is particularly easy with a Progenitor Mothership. It can also be done easily with a Rapture, but that one needs to level up a bit.

...noobish question... hi...WTF is a zergler.?...and whats a Zergler rush??.have seen the term a few times,but dont know what it means... thanks..8-)
End of quote

It's actually Zergling, and this is one of the things that made Starcraft the crap that it is. To put it into perspective, imagine having 100 LRM's come rushing at you with no way to counter them effectively. Sins has ways to handle that kind of spam, but Starcraft does not. Every Starcraft game I've ever played boils down to who can mass and rush the most units the fastest. The same thing happens in Warcraft. Blizzard RTS games are by far the worst RTS games I've ever played. I would much rather play C&C 3 than Starcraft 2. The hype is already sickening.
Reply #142 from Sins Forums Top
starcraft sucked....



and i agree.. blizzard hasnt done a very good job addressing the rush issue in any of its games... but especially the starcraft title...
Reply #143 from Sins Forums Top
How sad is that, a mechanism that has nearly half a game to support it -useless-? Building 16 capital ships ought to be a viable option, something long off and sought for- not something that cripples your fleet, wastes your logistics and makes you a complete joke.
End of quote




really?? 16 capital ships isnt near enough for my games.. In fact we've had to modify the game to allow up to 500 capital ships and 50000 supply points

ive easily built 16 cap ships in a game and it not be enough for all the jobs i had to have my fleet..

thankfully in the 1.03 version i hear there is going to be a logistics adjustment ability... Which will make the lengthy games much more fun and viable...


i have a question for you TarISS

have you ever played a RTS game that lasted more than a single 3 hour session?

the fact is and always has been in any real combat environment

the defender always has the advantage

I see that a lot in this game... a rusher goes in for his first attack (about the 35 minute mark) and gets annihilated by my defenses on the first system he finds... only to be surprised shocked and scared to see the fleet ive built is 4 times the size of his rush fleet and much more technologically advanced... Rushers get toasted in about 2 hours of my games.. which is a quick kill... Ive got several games that are now in their 15th to 20th hours.. and the strategy of how to use your fleet is becoming a big issue... it cant be everywhere all the time and splitting it up is suicide in a 4 or more player(s) game

if you have any questions please refer to my previous 2 posts

Reply #144 from Sins Forums Top
The people saying that Supreme Commander has no spam and has counters for everything are incorrect. ASF spam is a large problem late game and t1 spam is the most used tactic early game/small maps. Also, in both those cases the only effective counter is to do the same, except do it better ;)
Reply #145 from Sins Forums Top
All ship spammers are n00bs, they spam because they know that they will not win any other way. *various insults*
End of quote


Wow, someone's insecure about themselves. LOL VIRGIN 12 YEAR OLDS W/ NO LIEF W/ NO FRIENDS cliche of insulting got old a long time ago, and tends to signify more about the poster than those he's attacking.

I went up against a guy that just produced LRMs. That was it. He had a 43 LRM fleet in one star and another one..couldn't move my caps anywhere or they'd get fried, countered with flaks but it'd stalemate out and he'd just make more LRMs. I probably could have won but it would have taken way too much effort when he could just slam the button as many times as he wanted. And not to mention the fact that we were both technically spamming.

Bombing his planets did nothing as they were in two separate star systems - by the time one was wiped out, the other would get recolonized.
Reply #146 from Sins Forums Top
Bombing his planets did nothing as they were in two separate star systems - by the time one was wiped out, the other would get recolonized.
End of quote





you didnt colonize the bombed planet and build defense ??? all you had to do was wait for him to come back to take the second planet.. with a couple of fighter defense bays and whatever capital ship you had at the time im sure his 43 LRM's wouldnt have done him much good

p.s. the 12 year old virgin thing was a sarcasm joke , some of us have children that age.. which was part of the joke also responsible parents dont let their children stay on the computer more than a couple hours a day.

back on topic... this game has eliminated the effectiveness of a spam strategy... i wonder how many other game companies will step up..
Reply #147 from Sins Forums Top
It's hilarious how people assume that sub-optimal play takes more smarts and skills than actually winning. "Oh those noob spammers, they don't know anything, I just chose to lose to them to assuage their tiny egos. They never would have defeated my fast-16-cap strategy if I was really trying." If people don't want to play competitively, fine; and it would be nice if Ironclad added a 'peace treaty' option to please that crowd. However, demeaning people for actually trying to win (shock!) in a multiplayer game is just childish.

Seems like the main problem with balance now is that the counters are not sufficiently cost-effective. Teching is extremely expensive in this game and is almost a death sentence unless you're Vasari and teching to RA. Teching is supposed to be like an investment that will pay back big later, but here it feels more like a liability (because of the cost of the tech itself and all the research stations.) If Flak frigates were a harder counter to LRMs and if teching was a bit cheaper, that would probably go a long ways towards deepening the early-game experience.
Reply #148 from Sins Forums Top
back on topic... this game has eliminated the effectiveness of a spam strategy... i wonder how many other game companies will step up..
End of quote


I don't mean to say this with any offense, but people like you undermine efforts to balance the game. Inferring from your posts, it sounds like you think you're a high level player. Perhaps you've only played games on huge massive multi star maps where rushing obviously makes little sense if you start in separate star systems. However, in small maps, LRM rushing is really the only thing you can do. Carriers take too long to get fighters and are counter by flak. Flak doesn't deal much damage to lrms (although lrms can't really kill them), nor does it deal much damage to anything. The result? LRM units are the only units capable of launching a strong offensive strike early game. Hence LRM rushes; hence lrm spamming.

You also say that ship spammers have little skill against your large planet defenses and fleet. I think it's more accurate to say that you've simply had little experience against good players. From my experience, the less skilled players generally play huge huge maps, because of the large time buffer it gives them to tech up and bolster a fleet.

If you're able to turtle for so long, your opponent is terrible for not scouting you and not applying pressure. Don't use your own experience against poor players to conclude that a tactic is "noob".
Reply #149 from Sins Forums Top
But my main question is: what is actually wrong with the idea of a percentage fleet cap? Everyone I've seen (forgive me if I've missed one) just stated that the percentage cap is a bad idea, but no one actually says why. I can't see anything wrong with it - it worked very well in Homeworld 2 (although there it's an absolute limit and not a percentage limit).
End of quote


The reason that a percentage cap is a bad idea is simple; it is an arbitrary limit on what the player can do. Restricting the players freedom reduces the strategic options and variety of gameplay. As it is right now, Sins is balances enough that there is no one strategy that guarantees victory. Any spam can be countered, the biggest fleet doesn't always win. The key is knowing what your opponent is doing and learning how to counter different tactics. Every ship has strengths and weaknesses.
Reply #150 from Sins Forums Top
mean that capital ships ought to be more survivable at higher levels, they ought to be survivable -right- out of the box. A level 1 capital ship -should- be able to defeat 3000/400/300 worth of LRM right out of the box, and more. They should pretty much counter every unit out there effectively except bombers and heavy crusiers.
End of quote


Thats the scrub talking "a capital ship should be able to defeat..." bull!

The 20 LRM cost SEVERAL TIMES what the capital ship cost, they are doing capital ship killing damage (ie, they are weak against most things but strong against caps), and they are taking up almost twice the logistics.

The 20 LRM are MEANT to beat a single capital ship... you just decided you want your capital ships to be gods despite what the game is intended as.