LRM, the Siege Frigate of 1.02+?

Got bad news for ya man. The Range of LRM type ships is increasing, but so is the cost, but not by much at all.

1.03 seems to actually make them tougher (at least for vasari and advent) but slightly more expensive. The lrm balance issue remains

+30% range in fact, but about +30% the cost too from what I can tell. If only flaks could target incomming missiles, that would be interesting. But they say they've been playtesting non-stop, so surely they know something we don't about the patch and it's implications.

Try playing Advent against it and you're in for a whole world of fun.

Personally, I more worry about when they TEC LRMs start showing up with upgrades, since those upgrades end with the Novalith. I've had a mean game a couple days ago where I was competing with LRM spam (my ally held him off and then I did Heavy Cruisers to help hold them). Things were going alright, we lost an important planet but still were doing alright, getting ready for the next push when the I got the lovely "An ominous force disrupts the balance of the galaxy" message and it came from one of his worlds. I raided with my Heavy Cruisers and we drug it out another half an hour, but it was more or less over when I didn't match his T2 LRMs until I was using T5 Heavy Cruisers.

I know I could have done flak, but flaks are so inflexible and a good player doesn't let you circle them with flaks, and it's easy enough to throw out some Heavy Cruisers or a Capital Ship or two to swat the flaks.

I wouldn't expect this problem to be resolved soon though. Siege Frigates have gotten a lot of attention not just because they were annoying, but because the AI used/abused them, and the vast majority of people only play the AI (of the 200,000 or so copies sold, you get on and see, what, 300 to 400 people online?). The AI doesn't spam LRM's the way people do, so the vast majority of people don't encounter this problem, aren't frustrated by it, and don't go looking to have it fixed.

OMG NERF LOSING PLEASE! I CANNOT BARE THE LOSING!

Flaks targeting incoming missiles is a stupid and imbalancing idea.

TEC Missile weapons are used not only by LRMs, but also by Marzas, Dunovs, and Bombers, and in case of Vasari Phase Missiles, they are used not only by Assailants but also by Sentinels(flaks), Fighters, Bombers, Defense Platforms, Devastators, Desolators, Marauders, and Skirantra Carriers.

Are these units ALL imbalanced? Then making flak shoot missiles would be nerfing ALL these units.

Have you guys considered getting carriers?

Flaks have been nurfed so that carriers can be more effective!

I play mostly TEC, and have found a decent fleet with a couple Capital battle ships along with a pair or 3 carriers dispatches frigates pretty quickly. They also take a huge amount of punishment - especially if you throw in 5-6 repair cruisers. With 3 developed carriers you have 15 fighter wings. You can even afford to go hunt that enemy frigate fleet.

It takes time to build this fleet, but it works for me..

How do you know this, considering the patch isn't out yet?



Rubbish. Cap will explode in the first thirty seconds, any decent player will then take a couple of the LRMs to go blow up the carriers. I've had 8+ carriers with fighters and have yet to beat a LRM fleet over 10 ships or so. And carrier cruisers are much more expensive iirc.



I'm pretty sure you were the clan guy that kept dropping in our 3v7 game today. that ended up building a 40+ LRM fleet (along with your friend) and beating down two of my teammates with it. Obviously someone has more of a vested interest in LRMs being imbalanced than the OP.

You're right. A lot more time than it takes to get a pile of LRM's on the field.

My only real answer would be Progenitor + Halcyon (ideally x2) on Advent.
Shield Aura + Malice + LOTS of strikecraft.

But then that's way too slow to counter early LRM attacks.

I'm guessing it had something to do with the full 1.03 changelog they posted.

Somehow I feel that if we changed LRM targeting priorty to orbital structures and replaced everything about siege frigates with LRMS in the AI code, we'd have an identical problem to what we did in 1.02

Would replays help? How about if everyone started posting replays of those 40+ LRM fleets?

Luckily for us, Sins balance system allows for things to be changed in multiple ways. It sounds like what we need is either

1) a more effective counter to LRM's (since flak dont have the firing arcs to appropriately deal with them). Raising flak damage vs Light wouldnt work since bombers are also classified as light. Maybe their should be a race specific tech uprade for flaks (like what we have for light frigates etc). Could be something that makes them more effective vs other frigates or something. Or perhaps put strikecraft and bombers into their own seperate armor types so that flak damage to lrms can be adjusted better.

or 2) raise the cost in terms of resources and fleet supply of LRMs. At least the same cost as flaks. Make Tec Lrm's be 275 credits and take 5 supply.

or 3) reduce their health.

or 4) reduce their damage vs Medium armor to 125% and vs Capital armor to 50%. Their counter to basic assault is reduced but still strong, while they are also less of a cap ship vaporizer. This also makes it so that only heavy cruisers, structures, bombers, and capital ships do 75% or more damage to capital armor. LRM's doing 75% to caps right now is a little out of sorts IMHO. This idea makes the most sense to me.

I mainly play against the AI but even there I know that LRMs are insanely effective for their cost. The only choices for opposing players are to build a bunch as well and/or survive until they can get heavy cruisers (unlikely).

Where are your defenses and defensive ships? I cannot understand how this is even possible. LRM's last mere seconds when they encounter my defenses, and if they get through there's always defensive ships and sometimes a fleet sitting nearby. I don't see how the problem you're describing is even possible when you've got a good defense in addition to that offense. All it takes to counter 40 LRM's is 10 or so light frigates and a solid defensive grid paired with one or more repair stations. Repair stations are absolutely critical to the longevity planetary structures.

Everytime I deploy a fleet, the LRM's are always the first ones to go down. They are quite vulnerable on the field.

But no Advent units, which don't use missiles.

The Unity approves of this idea wholeheartedly.



And where would THAT be, since I ran a search and nothing turned up.

https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/post.aspx?postid=303642

Posted last night.

its right on this sub forum...

I primarily play the AI so LRM spam isn't really an issue for me, but a simple remedy would be to put LRM's into a higher tech tier. Put them in the HC/Cielo tier (#5) and peoples priorities might change when confronted with the high investment in logistics and commodities required to acquire them.

Thank you. I saw it when I came back. Don't know why the search didn't find it.

Well, I made a rebalance mod. The problem is all frigrates have too many hitpoints. I reduced them dramatically so they are still useful but much more frgaile.

Did a lot of other rebalancing to, but no one seemed to even try my mod.

If you're waiting for the devs to balance things don't hold your breath - I just do not think theya re capable.

you don't think the devs can balance their own game? I might wait for a few more patches before I say that, but that's just me.

I will agree that frigs need to be a tad bit weaker, or cap ships need to be buffed. I just don't know how I feel when my cap ship o death can't kill something with all his weapons in one go.

Well have faith in the devs, it takes a while to balance these things. Anyway, I agree wholeheartedly with one of the following as posted by WileyCoyote. We need either:

1) a more effective counter to LRM's (since flak dont have the firing arcs to appropriately deal with them). Raising flak damage vs Light wouldnt work since bombers are also classified as light. Maybe their should be a race specific tech uprade for flaks (like what we have for light frigates etc). Could be something that makes them more effective vs other frigates or something. Or perhaps put strikecraft and bombers into their own seperate armor types so that flak damage to lrms can be adjusted better.

or 2) raise the cost in terms of resources and fleet supply of LRMs. At least the same cost as flaks. Make Tec Lrm's be 275 credits and take 5 supply.

or 3) reduce their health.

or 4) reduce their damage vs Medium armor to 125% and vs Capital armor to 50%. Their counter to basic assault is reduced but still strong, while they are also less of a cap ship vaporizer. This also makes it so that only heavy cruisers, structures, bombers, and capital ships do 75% or more damage to capital armor. LRM's doing 75% to caps right now is a little out of sorts IMHO. This idea makes the most sense to me.