How do you counter LRM+Flak?

Not sure if it would work well, but you could send scouts against the LRM (scouts are anti-light armor) along your Light Frigates. Just don't forget to set the scouts to auto attack mode.

Foraven, you're a genius.

This came up before and I dismissed it as pure lunacy, but now that I've gotten into running tests with Galaxy forge I thought I'de try something a little different.

It turns out that at a 2:1 ratio, scouts pwn, and i mean PWN!! LRMs...

they even do pretty will at a 3:2 ratio. as in, they will win... but take significant losses.

Add to this the fact that a scout cost less than half an LRM, and builds in less than half the time... and by god we've found our solution.

What will they think of next?! Perhaps they will think of not publishing misleading counter tables. And emphasize the scout>LRM>light>scout rock paper scissors issue, thus removing flaks fromt heir currently very very awkward position as a counter to LRMs.


Be careful though... because the Light>scout counter is MUCH stronger that the scout>LRM. So if he's got lights and LRMs, you need Scouts and LRMs, Scouts and Lights will not cut it.



So here's the counter table.

He builds: | To pwn You Build:

LRMs + Lights | LRMs + Scouts

Scouts + Lights | LRMs + Lights

Scouts + LRMs | Scouts + Lights? (or fighters)



This third one is the only one I'm not sure about because I can't test it against the AI. It's the only one where both sides have scaouts and the AI won't make scouts auto-attack.

Scouts blow up LRMs pretty quickly, but LRMs might blow up lights even more quickly. Might... In either case, this combo (Scouts+LRMs) is just begging to be swamred by fighters. So you build fighters, he builds flak, and then you build scouts and pwn his LRMs. But even if that's the case, we've actually got a game going now. So it's good.

IT'S GOOD! Like everything else in this game, when I dig deep enough I find fantastic and exciting answers. I just wish Ironclad would've done more to make these answers more accessible.

Kodiak Cruisers.

sorry Dafeaz,

good luck getting a critical mass of kodiaks out before facing this combo.

It was meant to be sarcastic.

He asked how to counter LRM and Flak frigates. Kodiaks will counter them.  

The counter to LRM+flak is LRM+flak+better unit control.

Better unit control comes from being better organised with your units , formation , targeting , retreating , engagement , reinforcing ..etc , heck even resource management to get your units.

Some call it micro but then ill get accused of saying a naughty word.

Infact , have better control of anything and you essentially control your opponent.

Lets use rock paper scissors as an example.

With good unit control , if my opponent builds rock ,I should try to counter with rock+better unit control. Thus my rock beats his rock. Because ive beaten his rock , I can anticipate that he will try to get out some paper , so I get out some scissors by the time he has paper. He's completely countered.

Now the expert and the newb will comment differently on this situation...

The newb will say "welldone, your counter of scissors to kill my paper won you the game"
The expert will say however "wrong , what won was my intial unit control to beat your rock"

So to summarise , althought its vital to know what counters what , its important to control your opponent, forcing him to react with a counter , and allowing you to anticipate with the counter's counter.

just a lot of lrms should work fine, especially with support cruisers.

A good counter should be something cheaper or faster to get up and running. If your counter require more research or investment, it's not a good counter.

That remind me an old argument i had on the Homeworld (the first one) forum. Capital ships could be countered with lots of bombers, but you ended up pumping more resources building those fragile, easy to kill fighters than the cost of the ship you wanted gone...

hence scouts!!

Or do what i just done in a game..

In theory the attacker will have LRM's Lights and a cap ship.

If your advent the easy solution is Mothership+Malice and Illums... target the cap ship, set of malice and watch the LRMS pop

Granted might be hard as TEC have better economy and Advent need 3stations to get Illums and there pricy but if you can do it it works wonders..

I just done it in a end game,Carrier + Mothership+Malice@25% and 100Illums against 3capships 80+ LRMS and 30+ lights, target his Capship get in range for Malice, set it off on auto cast and target his caps one at a time.. his fleet died in 20seconds.

Mehoo I've really enjoyed your previous analysis, but Forge results don't quite apply in this case.

Rushing to Heavy Cruisers per Dafeaz works in multiplay against LRM/Flak and most other things right up until support abilities become viable. It's not always practical and can be risky, depending on map, faction, and opponent, but can't be dismissed as a strategy.

Scouts as a counter to LRM, on the other hand, is really good on paper. I've never seen it work in the wild. If someone can actually produce a game replay which shows scouts being used to any effect against LRM I'd love to see it, because it's been tossed around since the beginning but never really made the cut.

I think the reason for this is that scouts are very weak against everything but LRMs, so your opponent can adapt to your scout swarm by producing *any* other unit. He doesn't have this option against cruisers. It seems strange to talk about tactical counters without taking into consideration the larger game. Yes, scouts are cheap and cruisers are expensive compared to LRMs. But on a strategic level building enough scouts to defeat your opponent's current fleet of LRMs almost certainly dooms you, whereas building enough HCs to defeat your opponent's current fleet will defeat his next fleet too and position you nicely for obtaining support ships.

If you want to defeat a numerically superior LRM/Flak fleet in 1.04 some options other than the simple and easy light frigate+flak are to start the game with the following goals-

1) techrush Heavy Cruisers as TEC (unless against Advent Illum/Malice, then you need Hoshinkos too)

2) techrush Subverter Distortion Field or HC as Vasari, (almost default at this point, since unteched assailants are pretty crap for their price)

3) Illum/Malice or techrush Guardian Repulsion as Advent.

As tactical counters none of these are cheap in time or resources, strategically they are far more cost-effective than certain alternatives.

scouts dont counter lrms I tried it and got slaughtered my scouts were getting poped.

on the otherhand laserfrigates dont seem to do that badly agasint them as long as they dont get critical numbers..

problem beig for TEC its 5 pop to counter a 4pop lrm

The real problem is the damage they do to capital ships and the tiny ammount of damage capitalships do to them.
Just boost the damage caps do to flak/lrm frigates

The rock/scisor/paper aspect of the game should be reworked so using the wrong type of ships against a certain target just make you at disadvantage, not make you lose for sure no matter the odds.

Heavy cruisers are a solution to everything, once you have them they remain the main combat unit until the end game since they can kill about everything and are tough enough to survive most engagements. In my games against the AI, my HCs generally survive several fights in a row given some support while most of my frigates need to be replaced on a regular basis...

Ke5trel, i think you're absolutely right forge results don't cut it for formulating strategies in the wild.



This is an excellent point...



However the fact (which i have proven in forge) that scouts ARE good against LRMs, is still relevant to the game, and I hesitate to dismiss it as at least an option.


Against a mixed fleet, no scouts will not function well at all against his LRMs because his other units will trash them. That's what fighters are for.


But if he has exclusively large amounts of LRMs and flaks, which I've seen before in a real game, i think scouts will be the simplest and quicket solution. Yes he will adapt to your scout swarm by building *any* other unit. But not until your scout swarm have obliterated his LRMs, then he has to react to whatever YOU build next, not the other way around.

Scouts build very quickly, and in just a 3:2 ration will cream LRMs. So you can have a fleet that completely nerfs his, for half the price (remember you don't have to counter the flaks at all), and immensely fast. Faster than he can do anything about it.



Will scouts neutralize LRMs in any and all circumstances? Absolutely not, I make no argument that they will. Is the fact that scouts are good against LRMs significant to the game, and will it come in handy in certain circumstances? This I will argue. And if my friend is stupid enough to push LRMs+flaks again after reading this thread (which i know he has) i will gladly post a replay.

To be fair, whoever you faced should have had at least 150 lrms with hashikos backing them up. I'll never understand how Tec players will send a vastly inferior force into battle and hten complain about how they get destroyed in seconds...They have a better economy, INHERENTLY, and their lrms are 1/2 price and 2/3 crew supply, so why...WHY??

Mehoo,

I'm the last person to argue in absolutes.

Under certain circumstances scouts can be incredibly useful (see JinxOfSIn and Angry Amish's discussion @ https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/308726/page/2).

As commandos they excel. As a main fleet in a game with such a fragile fog of war I can't see it. Let us know how it works out though, and I'll keep an open mind.

This may seem stupid but why not just send a fleet of 3+ cap ships with Long range ships and carriers seems like that would work....

Just thought I'de ressurrect this to see if anybody has any fresh ideas.

It seems to be less of an issue in recent games because somebody is always ahead in something. For example, he went LRMs so I went carriers, then he went flaks, but since I had a headstart on him, I was able to kill most of the LRMs before he got critical mass of flaks. By the time he did, the LRMs weren't a threat anymore.

So the pacing, tempo, economy, and many many other factors seem much more important than the precise counter. But dollar for dollar, fighters or scouts are the best counter to LRMs. If there are flaks, use scouts.


Another use for scouts: They really do function like giant fighters. I recently got nailed by a group of seige frigates. Carriers/Hangar bays and thus fighters were nowhere near the direction I was headed at the time. So I built some scouts at my nearby frigate factory. They built quickly and cleaned up the seige threat before there was too much of a problem.

stay balanced from the begining.
when you are sending an assault fleet into enemy territory it better as heck be more than 2 or 3 different ship types.
use everything
bring flaks, lrms, and LFs. And cap of course
HC wen avaialable are effective at most anything
and support wen available (both)
also as tec...compliment a kol with a dunnov (always)

so what do you guys think of the advent scouts with the suicide attack?