Heavy Cruisers vs Light Frigates

I believe that you can't use one type. Especially with advent, the ship combos are very important. Have a bit of everything.

any fleet dominated too heavily by a single ship type will be countered easily by a fleet with numerous ships of the appropriate counter type. a fleet of heavy cruisers is countered by a fleet of carrier cruisers with bombers. a fleet of light frigates is countered by a fleet of LRM frigates.

generally you need to cover your weakness. heavy cruisers + flak frigates is a hard to counter combo. it gets even better with repair cruisers around as they are extremely effective at supporting the already durable heavies and flaks. similarly a fleet based on light frigates will need something to cover their weakness. lights are very weak against LRMs so its a good idea to include a natural counter to LRMs in your fleet such as carrier cruisers with fighters. considering that lights are already a good answer to flaks this combo should be fairly difficult to counter as well.

at a certain point you have to consider the overall effectiveness of your fleet and your tech and your tactics, not just do a number crunch based on unit counters. i think most of the time the heavy cruisers + flaks + support cruisers will turn out to be the best late game fleet simply because those heavies are so hard to stop and so good at pounding enemy frigates and keeping them away from your critically important support cruisers.

Light Frigates only deal decent damage to ships with Heavy Armor (Flak Frigate and Carrier & Support Cruisers).

The early game is dominated by the do it all LRMs, which are also a hard counter to Light Frigates.
The late game is dominated by the do it all Heavy Cruisers, which only take 50% damage from Light Frigates, and the Heavy Cruisers, being equaly good against Heavy Armor, eclipse a large part of the Light Frigate's already very limited usefulness.

The combination of average stats, extremely limited usefulness and extreme vulnerability to hard counters makes the Light Frigate a very poor strategical investment.

A Heavy Cruiser Will deal more equal or greater damage against all possible target armors than 2 light frigates (using TEC, here). It is also roughly the same durability as the two light frigates. The Heavy is cheaper in credits and metal but more expensive in crystal than the two light frigates.

The Light frigate's main two advantages once you research the heavy cruiser are its special abilities, and its speed, if you're not building them for one of those two reasons, you're probably better off building heavy cruisers.

I usually use heavy cruisers in a support role in the middle-late game and in the late game itself, I replace my light frigates with heavy cruisers entirely (by then I've researched their special ability upgrades and the like). The only case in which I don't do this is when Advent are involved - if I'm fighting them, then the TEC and Vasari light frigate special abilities help counter the steal antimatter ability and if I'm playing Advent, I want to get a good amount of use out of stealing antimatter.

Most support abilities work on an individual ship basis. Even if we agree that two light frigates are the equivalent of one heavy cruiser (which is not completely true), we can agree that we'd rather have our support cruisers using their abilities once rather than twice.

There are also some nasty abilities that can damage several ships at once (Cleansing Brilliance, Phase Missile Swarm, exploding LRM frigate missiles). In the case of heavy cruisers, they can usually tough these out pretty well. Light frigates can really get nailed badly by these kinds of attacks.

If combat was quicker in Sins (i.e. if ships had less health), I think light cruisers would have more long-term use. Being able to chase down enemies and the like would be great if there was only a good chance you could kill them before they managed to jump away. As it is, fighters and bombers are plenty fast for those types of situations, and most other ships just stay put and fire at one another. Sure there are some uses for strategic repositioning, but there's little if any constant movement.

I will sometimes build light frigates in the late game as a "rapid response" force backed up by other frigates. These small teams can get from place to place faster than a force encumbered by slower-moving cruisers and capital ships, so they're good for adding a little extra defense to planetary defenses if you're strung a little thin.

They do 125%. Heavy Cruisers also do 125%. These 2 are in fact the best against Heavy Armor.



The Advent's Destra Crusader uses Plasma weapons, so yes, you do have to research a completely different(and very expensive) tech branch for them. It's the same thing for the Vasari's Skarovas Enforcer heavy cruiser - it uses Wave weapons instead of the standard Phase Missiles & Pulse Guns/Beams used on other Vasari ships.

But Wave weaponry isn't as expensive to research as Plasma weaponry, and both give a 25% buff to direct damage. But the Plasma weapon line's final tech gives a big cool-down bonus, and if researched, it gives the Crusader unmatched DPS and takes it beyond the Enforcer to become the strongest heavy cruiser, that too, for only 10 supply each(unlike 12 for the Enforcer).

IMO, in late game, Light Frigates take up a niche role. Their antimatter-killing abilities combined with their high speed and AntiHeavy weapons make them perfect in killing support/carrier cruisers. They can flank or rush through a defensive wall of slower Heavy Cruisers and knock-out/kill the support cruisers before they get killed themselves, and then make a frantic run for their lives when they are targeted. For direct combat, Heavy Cruisers take over.

Having some light frigates in your fleet for their abilities is a good idea tough, especially as advent or TEC.
Advent disciples drain/give back antimatter and the TEC frigates prevent enemy ships from using anti matter abilities.

The Cobalt's Sabotage Reactor ability doesn't stop the enemy from using abilities, but it makes them take damage if they try to use them. Good for killing support cruisers faster.

The Disciple steals antimatter from enemies and transfers it to friendlies, this is well known.

The Vasari's Ravastra Skirmisher light frigate has two abilities: Interference and Reintegration. Interference causes the enemy ship's abilities to go crazy - using 2x antimatter and cooling down half as quickly as normal. Reintegration repairs the Skirmisher automatically for free, for up to 720 damage over 40 seconds(18/second).

the biggest problem with light frigates is that LRM and company utterly decimate them in very very rapid order. One of the highest dps/cost ships in the game does 1.5x damage to the medium armor on them. That alone makes them EXTREMELY bad for the backbone of a fleet. They are excellent for a specialized role, but any more than that and you are setting yourself up for failure.

I've found as Advent one of the most insanely effective combinations is huge amounts of Heavy cruisers and Halcyon carriers and defense ships. Halcyon carriers nothing but bombers and their (at level 3) +22% weapon damage cool off, combined with the Destra's already insane DPS = Short work of everything.

I find that the best fleet to use should have about 3/4 cap ships. about 12/13 carriers and about 15 frigates and 10 heavy cruisers. I find that that fleet destroys all but the most powerful fleets. Oh but this is on singleplayer,not multiplayer.

I like to use both long range frigates and heavy cruisers. Heavies come close quickly and get all the beating while LRMs shoot from far away without getting touched.

I even sometimes jump my heavies first to make them get all the attention. And only after they are shot at, jump in with my frigates. This way they remain extra safe.

My advent fleets look more like this

4-5 capital ships (at least one progenator and one halcyon) 250 pt
20+ heavy cruisers 200+ points
5 guardians 35 points
15 flak 45 points
22 carriers 132 points

The carriers are primo for taking out enemy capital ships, i found that i lose too many heavy cruisers to mass lrms while trying to take out a capital ship with them, so i sic all the bombers on a capital ship, and use the guardians in groups of 10 to burn down lrm's and enemy carriers, the flak also function very well for burning down lrm's.