Heavy Cruiser Rush

pretty much the counter to any single type of ship rush is a well balenced fleet. you need support ships capital ships long range frigates and all of the other types of ships. and there is almost no defece for a well balenced fleet.

Bombers.

Kill their military labs!!!

Or try counter rushing HC

scout and attack early.

I can't even imagine the economy needed to support "rushing" 5 military labs, the research, and then actually building the ships, which take 50+ seconds each to make.

Thx for the replies =D

I ask cause of course I had this happen to me.

I did scout out the rush, I did take down a few mil labs but he also had enough LRMs to repell my attack, I did build bombers....thats when he brought in flaks =[

And when I saw the first HC I rushed to mine =\. Guess I was just to far behind.

Guess next time I've goto be quicker on the countering

It's an HC rush if that's the first thing you see besides scouts or basic assault frigates. Best answer IMO is an absolutely huge amount of long range frigates that can destroy them before they have HC's in decent numbers.

They have the huge major drawback of not having an economy of any kind, and they used purely planet resources to tech straight to HC's. If you can flank them and take a planet that's probably the most lethal. Once the labs are down they can't make any more.

Bombers do well enough, but they can only do it in a support role. The Heavy Cruiser can chase down a lone carrier and destroy it before the bombers it supports would kill it's pursuer.

Honestly, Illuminators with Guradians can do it. Vasari Assailants and TEC LRMS can't really do it, so you either need to get Heavy Cruisers yourself, destroy the labs before he makes them, or destroy his HC's the second you see he's actually starting to make them.

Build a swarm of LRM's and light carriers and go for his labs and frig constructors...ignore everything else. Go after them fast and hard. Jump from system to system with your scouts on auto to keep you apprised of where he's building them.

This will have a twofold effect. First, he'll be expending massive resources trying to rebuild labs and on the kodiaks themselves...they aren't cheap. They'll also take a long time to build, compartively. This allows for the secondary effect...usually an abandoning of the rush.

You're flying in fast LRM's and light carriers, so you can ususally use your bombers and LRM's to take out his labs and frig yards before he has a chance to counter. While doing that, you can have a forward frig yard or two replenishing the few losses you take while leaving you ample resources to work on your main strat.

The benefit of having a large fleet of LRM's and light carriers is seen at the choke points./.. even if he's got a large fleet too, and even if he's got a PJI, you can take that out fast and jump out while on the run and have minimal losses, leaving your harassment fleet with enough numbers to do damage in his back yard.

The key is ignore everything but your target. If he's working towards an HC rush, chances are his fleet size is minimal and his static defenses aren't much better simply due to the overall resource and credit cost of trying to HC rush. If it's specifically a Kodiak rush, he's likely got Trade osts up....likely multiples. If you have the time and/or are not opposed at that planet, make those secondary targets. Destroy his economy and he'll have no choice but to at least temporarily abandon his tactic...while you've already had the chance to build on yours while he's been trying to fend you off.

It's all part of the hit fast, hit early, and hit often tactic. But with this one, you're trying to get to his back yard and take out his support system, ignoring his border fleets and heavily defended positions where he likely doesn't have his HC rush infrastructure.

YMMV, of course...

a newbies question here.. what is LRMs?

Long Range missile frigate. Variously means TEC's Javelis Long Range Missile frigate, Advent's Illuminator Vessel, and Vasari's Kanrak Assailant.

I see. Thanks.