I see two trends in this game now, and it's quite frankly sickening.

1. Spam Long Range Frigates. Pretty simple. Doesn't work as well with LRM's as much anymore, nor with assailants. This is getting at Illuminators with the 1.04 patch, but it's still annoying. A very good player can have illums up and running about 6-7 minutes into the game. They're easily the strongest LRF and the only effective counter is another LRF spam or Flak. I don't consider the flak a trend though because I VERY rarely see anyone do it. No one does it because once you spam flak, well....you have a fleet of flak. The other counter, and this is what people seem to do nowadays is....

2. Tech straight to HC's. What the hell. If there's one thing that annoys me is the balance of the Heavy Cruiser. Ok, I understand that it's the most expensive cruiser in the game, so it better be damn good, but it has no effective counter. Bombers do the trick fairly well, but one flak will counter 4ish fighter/bomber groups, so that loses effectiveness. The only other thing that has an attack bonus percentage (look it up people) is the HC. Wow. The counter to this is another better implemented HC rush, or my personal favorite, repulse and stall the shit out of him until you can destroy his military labs and build a bigger fleet.

I don't see much else that works. Econ boom will get you rushed before you can effectively respond. Sova rush is effectively repulsed now by a competent player. A scout rush in the beginning will at best stall your opponent so you can rush to lrms yourself.

People don't go for more interesting opening moves because of how easily countered everything is by early lrms, and how dominant late game HC's are. I don't make fleets of Light Frigates because I know they'll be eaten by LRF's. I don't make flak because except for LRM's and fighters, there's not much they are good for, and a lot of the time they get chewed to bits by lrm fleets if I'm not careful (this mainly applies to illums). The fighter cruiser is too easily countered by flak, the support cruisers only make up 10-20% of the fleet, and HC's are what everyone ultimately goes to and spams abusively.

I want diversity. That's all. I just know now when I sit down for a smaller map, it's going to be LRM spams. When I sit down for something 2 v 2 medium random or 3 v 3 large single star, it's going to be HC rush. You're too far away to stop your opponent from doing it and it gives the best punch in the early game stages.

It's just sickening.