Counters for specific fleets/Microing

I like to think about it this way.

Heavy Cruisers --> Bombers --> Fighters --> Flak --> Light Frigates --> Long Range Frigates --> Scouts --> Fighters --> Flak --> Light Frigates

The arrow is pointing to its counter.

Subjagators (Assuming you mean the other Advent support cruiser besides the Guardian)
-They're designed as a support cruiser that's designed for use against other support cruisers. They freeze a target for 40 seconds (Caps are immune)

Micromanaging is just taking something off of auto-fire and manually doing it yourself to be more effective. When it comes to fighting, this is just going back in and say selecting 30 ships and telling them to attack what they counter. Then you would hold down shift and click onthe rest of the ship they counter while holding shift. This creates a red line so they'll keep going from target to target.

Doing this with abilities is key. If something has an area of effect, obviously, aim somewhere where that area of effect will...well...be used.

It's best to just give examples. Take the Halcyon. It's the advent carrier. It has that telekinetic bitch slap that it gives to enemy fighters. On auto-fire it will wait for one squadron and fire. Instead, watch for when there's a lot around it and then manually fire it yourself. The results are much better.

A lot of this just has to be learned to be honest.

Are scouts really the counter to lrf?

They technically work, but then you are left with a useless fleet of scouts that will get owned by pretty much anyhitng else in the game.

The counters are not quite that simple. While a scout unit has anti-light armour weaponry and the LRFs have light armour, the DPS change the story.

Take Vasari:
Jikara Scout (anti-light) - DPS vs light - 8.0;
Assailant LRF (anti-medium) - DPS vs light - 13.0;
Fighter Squadron (anti-light) - DPS vs light - 20.4; (but due to flight paths probably less than this)

While the Scout is best used against things with light armour like the LRF, it is not necessarily the best thing to use against it. Also, the LRFs have more armour and shields and do more even damage across the classes to. So if you have a shit load of scouts then point them light armour targets as that's what they're best at killing, but if you have a shit-load of light armour enemies coming your way then there's better things to build than Scouts I reckon.

Personally I still find focus firing the whole fleet in one go at LRFs, light frigates and easy targets gets me the best results. Does anyone else find that?

@Octopus

You're right...except you miss one thing. One Jikara scout ( the worst scout in the game, Vasari really should be making assailants early, not scouts ) is not the equivalent of 1 assailant. 2 are

Ship Slots: 6
DPS:16 vs 13

The story changes. Still, I agree that there are better answers. It really shouldn't be this way, but as the game stands, lrf's are the hardest to counter besides HC's because there's nothing they're really bad against.

Focus firing has worked for me too.

Fighters take too long to kill imo though. There's so much time in between runs. This allows mitigation shields to climb, and that really negates a lot of the damage from fighters. Fighters just don't do the job quickly. Scouts do though, at least kinda. Unfortunately, scouts are so bad against everything besides LRF's that I only make them at the very early parts of the game. There's no incentive to keep making them because LRF's are a better investment once you tech them.

Some other microing that you can learn (by experience) is how to maneuver your ships.

Today, I faced a guy who focus fired on my Akkan while my fleet (mostly LRFs) focus fired on each of his frigates (mostly scouts). I had better numbers and better ships than him, but my Akkan was still losing health quickly. In situations like that sometimes I just have my cap ship leave the fleet and retreat to the next grav well, but that's only for emergencies. What also works is sending my cap ship to move in circles around the local battle area and the other player kept focus firing while my cap ship survived and i killed off every one of his scouts and then his cap ship. So, microoing is definitely about what to attack (focus firing, shift) but also about maneuvering whatever of yours that the enemy decides to focus fire.

Yeah, traditionally it's best to focus fire on the weaker units (like you did) rather than to focus on the bigger ones, but you maximised your win margin even further by canny maneuvers.

Amish - yeah I didn't think of that, but still, you get my point. I agree with you about fighters too. The only really efficent way to use fighters is to have plenty of them so that they have maul the enemy one run or two.

TheStarChild - maneuvering ships are important, good point. Your carriers will lurk at the rear and often will get attacks, so it's wise to lure the enemy fleet around with them while keeping them out of danger (that's against the AI anyway). Also I try and send my fighters off to whichever area has the least flak frigates, and I'm also currently experimenting with keeping all my fighters/bombers docked until the right time, say when I've destroyed the flak frigates, or taken out their fighters. Not sure how this will pan out though, still trying it.

VahnNoa - to expand on what RagingAmish said about abilities: just pick one that you think might be wise to be in control of yourself and turn off the auto-cast for every ship with that ability (eg the above mentioned Halcyon push). Then try and remember to use it in battle, get a feel for how easy to manage/unwieldy it is as well what the gains are from controlling it yourself over auto-casting. See if you want to keep on with it. If not, turn it back on.

Another important thing to think about is where you get hurt the most. If you come out of all battles totally unscathed then don't worry about it. If you find that all your