Cheap, easy LRM counter

Have you tried this online D-spoon? I am a little skeptical but always open to new ideas!

That will only work if the LRM spamming player is stupid enough to attack the scouts, while scouts are only useful at killing LRMs.
If you have an equal amount of resources invested into scouts, the LRM players will just ignore the scouts and kill cap ships, light frigates & buildings, then switch to building everything but LRMs making your army of scouts just as useful as those dead LRMs.
If you don't invest into a lot of scouts, the LRM will easily kill the rest of the defense then with their number advantage will be able to defeat the scouts.

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I'm sorry but...
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Or you could just build flak.

Yup.

Scouts do awesome DPS to LRMs for their cost, LRMs aren't sturdy enough to just blow through them and kill everything.


Must be researched, far inferior DPS/cost

Flak is better because it has another purpose and it survives vs other type of frigate, where scout doe snot. Also I only use scouts with Advent. Other 2 are not practical :/

Scouts make nice counters to LRM's in addition to their ability to also destroy structures. That being said, I prefer flaks not only because they hurt LRMs, but because they obviously annihilate fighters (which make mincemeat of scouts)/bombers. When you look at the ability of flaks to deal with the aforementioned enemies in addition to their multitargeting and heavy armor, they are more than worth their small research cost and are superior to scouts.

I like how this response completely neglects to consider that the strategy of ignoring threats to your LRMs is probably about as effective as an ostrich sticking it's head in the sand: your LRMs can try to ignore the scouts, but you can be damned sure the scouts won't ignore your LRMs.

"Hey, where'd my LRMs go?!"

...maybe you should've paid more attention to those scouts, hm?

*Edit*

Cassie's Dad: Um, the point about teching to Flak isn't the cost. The point is the TIME it will take for you to tech to Flak. The extra lab and research required gives them that much more time to build a horde of LRMs. It's a race against the clock, not the bank.

Demonic Spoon, did you used to post over at the Company of Heroes forums? Your name looks familier...

Just thinking about having an army of scouts is well, comical. I've been hearing they are good against LRM's though, but even with 200% damamge, which would be double damage(100%=normal, 200%=an extra 100%=double) scouts would only be doing 8 damage(Vasari) and the other races would be doing even less. Light frigates do only 75% damage, so 75% of 10(Skrimisher I think) would be 7.5. So yes scouts would do more damage, but Skrimishers can also be upgraded to have Reintigration which can be usefull. All scouts can do is fly around quciker than the opposition. I also think scouts have poor range.

I'll have to try it next game, its bound to be worth a laugh(maybe not from my team mate though). Ussually though I just build lots of carriers. A good 15 fighters or so can take out an LRM in one pass, not to mentiont he massive swarm is sweet looking as you add more and more fighters to the mass. Fighters are also good on maps where the enemy might have to go through a sun's grav well(Fulcrum) because while everythign else can hardly move, fighters can still catch them and fire away. You can even swap out those fighters for bombers when heavy cruisers come into play, so your carriers are good the entire game. Unfortunatly, if the enemy starts spamming flak your in trouble. So far I haven't faced anyone who got an entire force of flak, they ussually only get 4-6 and think it'll be enough, but it isin't. I can keep the fighters away untill the flaks are eliminated. Remember, you can have your fighters dock inside your carriers with a push of a button.

ahahahahahahahaha

dude, you were sane back in MBII, but not here. scouts are crap.

hmm...Looked over the stats for flak frigs, those might work well too. Again, though, you don't need to research scouts. As pointed out above, it's about the time to get them.

if you are going to research shit to get to them...I'd just get carriers with fighters. Again, it's a cheap, effective, early-game solution.

Edit*Cassie's Dad: Um, the point about teching to Flak isn't the cost. The point is the TIME it will take for you to tech to Flak. The extra lab and research required gives them that much more time to build a horde of LRMs. It's a race against the clock, not the bank.[/quote]


Both LRM and Flak require 2 military labs iirc, so by researching flak, you don't lose any real time to your LRM using opponent. Point of this discussion is to validate scouts as a cheap counter to LRMs. As it stands, I can't agree with the OP. The limited nature of the scout doesn't make it a viable counter irrespective of the zero research that it takes to obtain a number of them. They still cost more than half the credits of a flak without half the utility or survivability. Furthermore, how many scouts does it take to counter a blob of LRMs? Factoring in shield mitigation and scout attrition you would probably need close to 2:1 odds just to stop an unescorted blob of LRMs. In the end you would be diverting credits that could be put to better use in military research just to field a limited use scout task force.

Like Astax says.
Only really works with advent, and not THAT well.

Scouts kill LRMS 1:1 basically. So really to do well against the lrms you need 3 per LRM, and even then you'll lose alot of them.

Flaks are better as they can tank well, you won't lose many, 1 flak will use less supply than 3 scouts, etc etc etc.

Adding in a few scouts is good as they do more damage(not just per cost, but more damage period. 6dps against lrm's vs. the 5.5 of defense vessals), but your main lrm counter is flaks.

Scouts die easy to a lot of things, flaks will tank pretty much anything except heavy cruisers.

Wow less dps/cost, because those are the only two factors in deciding what an effective counter is, nevermind the damage taken is less, nevermind that they have more health to begin with by far, never mind that the ratio flak kills LRMs puts them well above scouts in cost effective scenarios, never mind that with any sort of micro flak become even better than scouts which can still be one-volleyed by most lrm spams. Whereas flak cannot.

And honestly yea inno, I'd go so far as to say they tank even HC's decently. Flaks are just great tanking units, they take forever to die, are cheap both in cost and fleet supply, and are low tech.

I hope you weren't referring to me when you said "Wow less dps/cost, because those are the only two factors in deciding what an effective counter is"

No they don't really tank HC's easily.
But everything but HC's, yes, they tank pretty good.

Enforcers do 25dps against them. Composite damage is 125% ontop of an already high 18-20 dps.

Get back on PCoH spoon!

4 fleet cost, and no it was to the foolish person suggesting scouts are better even though they get taken out almost instantly.

For that 4 fleet cost they have an exceptional amount of health and armor regardless of the damage HCs do. Per fleet nothing really does a lot of DPS to flak.

Vasari LRM's (Assailants) are at tier 1.

Just because Assailants are tier 1 just means you get 2-3 less flaks.



Yes. I tend to make a lot of flak as vasari or advent.
Advents are only 3 supply, vasari's are 5(which is low for vasari) and get well over 1k hp with upgrades along with 3.5 armor.

With most things doing 25%-75% damage to all their armor and hp, they're extremely effective.

Defense vessals do great when you have them meleeing and hitting 3-4 targets and you malice them to spread that all over, and they make your fleet just look so large and intimidating because you can have soooooo many of them for low fleet supply and pretty low cost.


But Sentinels are not as good as flak or defense vessals early game. They cost to much and to much supply to counter lrms.. Vasari's best counter is more lrms than the enemy and better micro.

LRM's (Assailants) are at tier 1.[/quote]



I wasn't aware of that as I don't play Vasari. I stand corrected. However, that doesn't do anything to bolster the argument for using scouts as LRM counters.

This is an interesting point. It's a last ditch strategy IMO...you're caught with your pants down and you don't have the resources or tech to make flak vs LRMs, scouts can save you.

Factor in the quick build time and you have yourself a pretty cool last-ditch counter. Interesting.

Sentinels are still effective vs LRM's, despite their high cost.

I ran a test using un-upgraded ships, 8 Sentinels vs 10 LRM's (40 cap per side)

The LRM's killed ALMOST 2 Sentinels...so close, we'll call it 2, before expiring. This is 4:1 killing efficiency making Sentinels a bargain against mass LRM's.

While Advent Defense ships are easier to kill, they can be massed easier, and do higher dps than a Sentinel -- they are a great ship.

The only scout designed for combat is the Advent Seeker Vessel. They are considerably more durable than the other scouts, and easily more durable than the Disciple when it comes to taking LRM fire. They also do as much damage to LRMs as Disciples do, and for half the supply cost.

2 Seeker Vessels:-

Cash: 400(200 each)
Metal: 0
Crystal: 0
Supply: 4(2 each)
Labs Required: 0

Shields: 850(425 each)
Hull: 800(400 each)
Armor: 2 Light

DPS vs. Light Armor: 12( 3*2 = 6 each )

1 Javelis LRM Frigate:-

Cash: 275
Metal: 50
Crystal: 25
Supply: 4
Labs Required: 2

Shields: 280
Hull: 500
Armor: 1 Light

DPS vs. Light Armor: 11

PS: I tried this and it doesn't work. Like at all.

Gameplay exp > spreadsheet navel-gazing.

Yes, it works. I've seen it done quite well in 1.02 even.

we actually discussed this over a month ago and theres numerous replays that I made across the forum, the one scout that does excel above the rest is the seeker. However if it isnt an early rush(first ~15-~30 minutes), flaks/fighters are a better option.