How does one counter an embargo rush?

Well, as of Patch 1.4, I believe the Embargo skill no longer stacks up to the ridiculous numbers it used to give; so the construction delays should be a minor haggle as opposed to a serious consequence. Still, early on, you really want to get that Sova carrier out of the way before your lack of income destroys your military spending power.

Early on, the best way to handle cap ship rushes on your home world would be to construct 1-2 hangers and stuff them with bombers. You'll also need flak frigates to easily take out the fighters that the Sova'll most likely have; but it's rare for players to acquire that tech really early on in the game (since they're useless against everything besides strike craft, and no NPC pirate ships use that). While hangers w/ bombers + flak frigates are the best way to handle a Sova, using a capital ship to knock out a Sova's shields would probably be enough of a threat for the player to pull out.

The mass lrms tactic is a completely different animal though, and put those two together = pretty solid strategy. If that were the case, simply have the bombers take out the lrms's before turning over to the Sova (and any ships you have built so far). Unless your strategy is purely focused on establishing a strong military, you will probably be at a big disadvantage. The hangers + cap ship + extra fighters all at your homeworld may be enough to balance it all out.

How do you counter an Embargo rush? Menu --> Quit Game

They'll be too pissed to try it again.

If done early enough, there is no real counter for the Embargo rush. If you don't have your own capital ship yet, because you played a preset map and your opponent built the cap factory first, queued up the ship, and headed straight for you, there isn't really a counter available. So in that case, I'd actually have half a mind to quit.

If you have your own capital ship out, and it has some form of damage ability, you should be able to beat the carrier down, or chase if off.

Otherwise, see the first line of my post.

Wrong.

A couple notes:
Fighters beat lrms, not bombers.

You won't have flak researched by the time sova hits, nor will you have hangers (and hangers without flak are useless since the sova fighters will kill them all).

There's multiple counters. Let me give the easy one first:
Radiance counters embargo flat. If you suspect the Tec of embargo rushing you and you're Advent, just take the Radiance.

If you're not Advent, the easiest thing to do is have your cap blow crap at it while sending light frigates around hitting it.

10 light frigates will take it down pretty quickly.

A Radiance and some Defense Vessels is the best counter I've seen for it.

In a straight up fight, the Radiance will wipe the floor with the Sova, but if the Sova is orbiting the gravity well, you can pull out Detonate Antimatter and literally prevent your opponent from using the ability while you pummel the Sova. The Defense Vessels may be needed to sit around your structures just to be safe in case they try to take them down, but a couple strikecraft wings take a nice bit of time to down any real structure, so they might just be used to defend the Radiance from too much damage. Flaks still appear to be decent counters to the LRMs (for Advent at least before you can get Illuminators) and still have a good amount of hit points, so they should be able to counter an LRM escort of the Sova or reasonable size.

Done right, this leaves your opponent with a wounded capital that is generally inferior to yours in a straight up fight (as opposed to a Kol) and you have a bit more room to expand while it is out of the picture. There are a couple downsides though.

The first one is that you can't do a Progenitor Mothership early due to this risk, which allow for faster expanding and really pretty superior fleet support capabilities. Although ultimately the Radiance is a strong opening capital, and the longer you have it on the field the more experience it will have, and the closer you can be to your ultimate prize, Cleansing Brilliance, an argument can really be made for either as your opening Capital, it just requires a change in strategies.

The more significant one to me is that your Capital cannot expand with your fleet and support it (support is the key to an Advent fleet, after all) until the Sova is repelled. TEC's LRMs and Cobalts can much more easily stand alone early game, and although Illuminators seem to be pretty respectable now, you likely won't be able to match their strength early game, particularly without the support of your capital.

So I think you can basically counter a Sova rush as Advent and come out even. Not ideal, it would be nice if crushing a Sova rush would be the end of the TEC's game, but since it can be done fairly easily and the Sova can usually escape without too much difficulty, they can continue the fight with or without it's success.

Right. So the radiance dominates the sova. Getting light frigates to chase the thing around wont work against the lrms, though. You'll still lose.

I like TheRedMaw's comment about getting a ton of defense vessels + the radiance.

The only problem there is that all I would need to do is retreat and start pumping cobalt light frigates. The advent's counter to cobalts is what.. illuminators?.. they are a pretty weak counter if I still have enough lrms to take them down, but of course advent's only other option would be to get drone hosts with bombers, which wont be effective enough in small numbers to take out cobalts.. especially with lrm escorts.

Even if the sova rush is thwarted, the TEC will still dominate advent early game due to their cobalt light frigates, it would seem, until the illuminator is drastically improved in 1.04.

What about counters for the other 2 races that don't involve getting crap light frigates that'll get owned by lrms. Would it be fair to make a Kol + lrms to counter the sova?.. would that be enough to stop it?

What if you started with the progenitor and didn't see the sova comming?

As vas: use Kol, 1 Mil lab then mass LRM. A sova with cobalt support can't match the LRM blob. It takes TEC 1 more Mil lab than vas for LRM so you've a temporary advantage, plus local frig factory has a huge advantage over a factory 2-3 jumps away.

Scouting is key. Hanger defense, not so much. Some players refuse to scout first so they lose to bum rushed 10 different ways, but that's their own fault.

Well, Vasari and Advent both have an easy answer. As Hunting X said, the Radiance has the antimatter bomb, and the Vasari Devastator has an anti-matter depleting ability too.

I don't know of a TEC cap ships that has such an ability though. Then again, if you're TEC a Kol will do the job just fine. Sova's are too weak at Level 1 with just lasers.

Advent:

If you're econ, you're fucked. Of course, you're fucked anyway for going econ as Advent, so whatever.

If you're military, try steal antimatter. That's about really all you can do (esp if you went Mothership). Benefit is that if it's early game you'll usually have a large Disciple fleet anyway.

Redmaw,

Why would you take defense vessels? They don't do enough damage to caps, cobalts or lrms. I would rather take drone hosts at least they will be able to do some damage.

You aren't going to have steal AM by the time someone hits with embargo rushes... what the hell.

Jesus if you don't know strategy why do you post on the strategy forum? You're confusing newbies.

Not really necessary because of how impractical it is early game, but Steal Antimatter doesn't even work on enemy Capitals. It can only steal from Frigate/Cruiser class ships and structures, although it can give to any class of friendly ship, as well as structures. So even if you have the time, tech and resources to try it, it wouldn't be effective at stopping the Sova from using Embargo.

And I would do Defense Vessels (in limited numbers) because they're still are respectable, although not great, against LRMs, can counter the prowling fighter/bomber wings that the Sova will deploy, and are notably cheaper than the Drone Host. Drone Hosts fall into obsolescence very fast and easily, for the cost of teching to them and producing them they are very easy to counter next to the Illuminator just one tier higher.

The Defense Vessel retains some use, especially because the Sova will almost certainly escape, so you know there will be at least some fighter/bomber wings at your subsequent battles for the Defense Vessels to make themselves useful, as well as their decent performance in battle against LRMs. The Radiance can easily enough counter the Sova head on and keep it tied up, so you don't have to worry about them not damaging the Sova enough. The only real problem is if Cobalts come, because Advent will always lack the very early Cobalt counter due to the tier and expense of the Illuminator and the mediocrity of the Disciple.

I would rather sink the resources into an extra Temple of Hostility and do Illuminators than spend time with Drone Hosts. They just cost too much and do too little damage to repel any real attack before a Sova arrives.

But to each his own, I guess.

Heres one fun tactic against a sova rusher (For someone to really rush you with sova and not meet your lrm/assailants/mass-units, you have to be like within 3-4 jumps max of each other's HW right?)...

When you start, if their that close to you (and your scouts see a sova)...Make like 3 light frigs along with the colony ship..Send those to clear out the asteroid near you. Send YOUR cap ship (Marza works great here for example) to their asteroid. Pump your cash into upgrading the asteroids with extractors/etc. Once your cap kills his asteroid, colonize it and get extractors there too.

If his sova is in your homeworld? IGNORE IT! If its level 1-2, its a 30% drain and the asteroid economy very much offsets any of that loss...If you have HIS roid too, you have better economy (just use the black market effectively)... If his sova is level 3, he bought levels and wasted a ton of cash on that too. It will be a long time before the 30% to 70% sova ability "jump" pays for that level-buying.

While his sova is probably demolishing your factory at your HW, your cap is done with his roid and going to HIS homeworld to kill his factory/labs. By then your 3 light frigs can go support your cap too. So now you go and upgrade one roid, making a frigate factory and maybe military labs to get LRM if your tec...whatever works depending on race. Make units at the roid, get enough forces together, go kick sova out of your homeworld.

I've beaten a number of sova rushers this way before, not that hard. Sure, having the RIGHT capital ship helps alot here... Marza is good at taking their roid fast, vasari evacuator is great at killing his stuff with DOT's and can colonize fast (plus no colony frig woot!)...If your advent, going with HuntingX's method stops their embargo cold with proper micro too (radiance).

This is a method to stop VERY fast sova rushing. Before they have LRF class ships, etc. If they wait till they have LRM/etc before going in with sova, you should have enough units to scare off the cap ship by then too... Or you should be the one being aggressive and attack him first...Kinda hard to use embargo on defense .

Hope this helped a bit.

-Drexion

Thanks Drex. I was the poster here (changed my forum name).

This was more a matter of curiosity.. I have only been embargo rushed once.

In any event, most of the points made so far have been valid.

Honestly mass assailants works if you intercept the sova. Mass assailants + a devastator really crushes it. These are what I used. But if I fear a sova rush (from you Drexion? ) in the future and am playing as advent or tec, what has been mentioned above sounds good.

Its a tough issue, Arc . Sova embargo is definitely a pain to stop when someone is only a few jumps away, specially if they know what their doing. If nothing else, someone with sova can simply use it as a "harassment" while they expand their economy and make LRM. This gives them an economic advantage certainly, which if they use properly, is a pain to beat if your opponent is of equal skill.

I just posted that thing above as a possible "sova rush counter" because I find many sova rushers ignore their economic expansion(roids, etc) in their efforts to finish you off...and its possible that you can exploit that.

I also think you like rushing asteroids with your evacuator drex, you do it almost every game i've seen you play as vasari. lol. It's a great strategy, especially if you're getting double teamed or embargo rushed. The best defense is a good offense, especially against a sova that will probably retreat before you could kill it.

NO, don't take his 'roid. Waste of time. Seige the homeworld. Kill like 150 people, and he's screwed monetarily too. People take awhile to regen. Then you can take your capital back to your own world.

You do it your way, cscoles...I'll do it mine .

Are you sure? He still has income from your world and he can bomb your home world too if there is no one to defend.

Good points. Maybe the best solution is to build a radience with anti-matter combust. The battlecruiser outmatches a carrier, and the anti-matter combust ruins embargo.

Marza will probably do a bit better. It's frontal arc is much stronger than the Kol's frontal arc, giving it something of an advantage in 1v1 capital ship duels.

That's true but the Kol has that rail gun ability.

Maybe the Akkan with ion bolt and some lrms would kill the thing faster though.

You need to realize that unless your have -antimatter abilities on a cap (radiance), its useless to try and get the sova out of your HW until you have significant "forces" there to harass it. Even if they only manage to stay in your HW and dodge for 5+ minutes before running to recharge, thats a nice economic benefit AND forces you to waste resources on cobalts/etc while they get the much more cost efficient LRM.

Which is why I leave the sova alone at my HW in those situations .

Actually disciples will beat cobalts cost per cost and supply per supply pretty much..
Especially since that sova is weaker in combat and is going to be crippled by the powerful Radiance shooting it.

And it's not as if you can't have your radiance draining the sova's am and killing it while you send disciples to stop javs from getting out. (depends on jump distance there.)

Theres lots of things you can do.

Alright guys so i've done a couple of tests in-game.

Kortul devastator mana burn is worthless, but the radiance works well. Assailants counter it but critically this ability depends on number of jumps the sova has to make to get to you. Also, assailants don't work nearly as well in 1.04 since the sova is actually faster than them now.

Really?

Kortuls mana burn is the only thing that gives me much trouble with Antorak, so i guess i expected it to work fine against Embargo.

It might not stop the first embargo, but it should drain it from doing 2nd and more.