Massive amounts of bombers

fighters destroy bombers

or

hundreds of cobalts w/ anti-reactor ability

or better

a combination of the two

KOL with max flak bust is another alternative

The Kol would certainly be the cap to use...but even a Kol will go down to that many bombers, though it could absorb some damage in the meantime.

The real problem here is you need something to kill the carriers, or the problem never ends.  The cobalts are pretty handy to chase down the carriers.

I never build cobalts...even early game they seem to go down easy. Am I making a mistake? Is that anti-reactor ability useful?

a Lvl10 Kol will go down in a single pass, no chance there. And Flak Burst doesn't do quite enough to -that- many bombers anyway.

We're talking about 250+ squads (so at least 250*7 bombers, which is of course 1750+ bombers O.O) of bombers/host with relevant maxed Advent tech (he goes for that first, every time)

Literally, the ship will turn into light, that many start attacking...the marks on the shield don't even dissapate before it's gone.

If I tried to match fighters to bombers, I would have a problem getting enough out anyway.

Cobalts might be an option, though...I'll have to try that, although the next game would likely be with starbases, if that says anything.

I play Vasari almost exclusively... so excuse me if I'm wrong... but doesn't a Kol have an amazingly annoying shield ability that would allow it to get off a few flak bursts, even against that many bombers?

-Itharus

Another question, does the Vasari L. Frig antimatter ability even do anything to carriers? Since they use anitmatter to build fighters its not an ability and has no cooldown to effect! I dont even see how a Colbalt's ability can be effective.

The shield ability is not going to do much to save 1 Kol, which is why I didn't even mention it in my first post.

Of course, in all fairness, you can have 16 Kol's plus another 800 supply of frigates.  If the Kols kept close and had overlapping fields of flak, they probably could do fairly well, without too many losses

Cobalts get chewed up by most things.....but do fairly well against fighters and bombers because they have medium armor.  That combined with their speed and anti-heavy damage type makes them ideal to survive long enough to chase down carriers.  Yeah, you are gonna lose a lot of them, but you can have 3-4 per enemy carrier.  As a side note, I'm actually not sure how useful the cobalt and skirmisher anti-antimatter abilities are against carriers.....probably not so much now that I think about it, but it is probably worth somebody testing it out -- Disciples have an advantage over their counterparts here.

Fighters maul bombers..you don't have to match numbers.  If you can even get 1:4 ratio, it should make a huge difference in cutting down the bomber numbers.

The main thing to remember when fighting tons of carriers is that when they run out of bombers and want to leave the system to recharge, you have to chase them.   Killing the bombers is only a strategy to deal with the carriers, but it is a useless one if you can't kill any carriers.  If the enemy can come and go as they please, they will just hit and run you to death.  When they run the carriers, it is because they are out of bombers and antimatter.  You have to give chase and make them pay....OR, you should have built something like 5 phase disrupters to keep them from running.

Keep in mind that the TEC have a decent flak-frigate. With lots of armor and ballistic upgrades the auto-cannons will rip both the bombers and the drone frigates apart.

Also it is essential to put a scout or two every few minutes 1 or 2 systems ahed into enemy territory. Well, IF he/she is that insane to start an attack run to ruin a choke system, well. Then you should simply have 40-50 flak frigates ready and a bunch of LRM frigates or Battleships at the phase-jumping location of the system behind your choke point.

The flak frigates can eat the bombers. Once they are wasted, jump in the LRM frigates and CHASE your enemy

Evan a level 3 flak burst wouldn't save the Kol. It's gone as soon as the bombers see it. Nothing could stand up to that many bombers. Fighters take too much time. You need something cheap, numerous, and with a wide firing arc... Go with a metric butt-load of FLAK.

I've fought some bomber heavy fleets. Jump in with FLAK first, engage his bombers, then jump in your anti-carrier ships. FLAK is cheap compared to carriers.  This works in two ways. First, they can't insta-kill your caps. Second, once the bombers are gone, it still takes some time to rebuild new ones. FLAK frigates can close on the carriers and start poping them once the bombers are cleared. FLAK frigates don't do much, but in huge packs can be damn scary. 

The problem with a bomber heavy fleet is that they need numbers to really work well. Two carriers is just stupid. Ten carriers isn't that scary. Twenty is getting pretty good. Thirty is about where you want to be. But, one FLAK frigate can remove all of a single carriers bombers... and FLAK is cheap. Even if you put all your fleet cap into bombers, you'd end up getting pwned since the enemy could produce a counter for much less.

1.  Thes OP appears to be playing 1.09 or later based on his description of the carriers

2.  Flak is not the answer, but by all means, go try it for yourself

They should make "Create Strike Craft" an ability on teh carrier so L. Frigs abilities can be used againt the carriers

From what I understand, Flak frigates are nerfed a bit in the 1.09 beta. I haven't played it, so I can't say for sure, but combined with the more powerful carriers and you might have a bit of a problem. Of course, they might have made other balance changes to counter that, so we'll see what happens.

Not against that many bombers.  The Kol would need to get off two flak bursts for this to work.  level 3 flak burst will insta kill all advent interceptors within range, but it takes two shots to put down the bombers.

The problem with using Cobalts and other light frigates to counter carriers is that light frigates are too easily destroyed.  In an environment with even a small number of LRFs (and Advent Illuminators in particular), your Cobalts will get shredded before they can do much damage to any carriers.  There is no good way to protect your Cobalts from LRFs.  The only possibility is interceptors, and you *cannot* task interceptors to strafing LRFs when you've got that many bombers starting you in the face.  The carriers themselves are pretty hard to destroy, even for a ship with a weapon that specifically targets carrier's armor type.

Seriously, in any significant battle, I find light frigate's life expectancy being measured in seconds instead of minutes.  If you have heavy cruisers, they *might* take out enough LRFs to give your light frigates a fighting chance, but again, heavy cruisers are dead meat before that many bombers.

The only way to beat LRF + bomber spam is LRF + fighter spam.

  With that many fighters/bombers i think i would have to cheat a little bit,   

If you take the Domination ability from the Advent, and use it in the Tech ships, doesnt matter, or the Vasari, and tweak it so that it will attack not only frigates, but also capitals and planets and fighters... also you would have to turn down the antimatter cost and the cooldown time, say to 0.  Oh, and of course, change the level 6 activation to 0 to get it right off the bat. 

You would have non-stop 'capture' of the fighters.

On a side note, with or without the Domination tweak, you could up the restore rate on the hull and shields without touching the antimatter, or even the weapons. When you do that the restore rate is so high, say 25 and above, that even massive hits dont do more than momentarily drop the top end. For that many fighters though you would have to set the restore rate up over 70 or 80 percent is my guess. In normal combat when i set it at 12 i dont even drop. It sits top end all the time.

Anyway, you were probably thinking ov 'valid' responses to that many fighters, so im probably out of bounds with this. 

But it would be fun to test out wouldn't it? 

-Teal

Oh... forgot, what about TEC or Vasari fighters/bombers with Missile Launchers instead of just guns or beams?

-T

The OP question was not how to beat LRF + bomber spam, it was how to beat pure bomber spam.  You'll note, I also suggested fighter spam to combat bomber spam right from the beginning.

If the opponent is too stupid to make any fighters instead of all bombers, you could actually make pure LRF spam to kill the carriers too, thought they have a little more trouble chasing the carriers around.

Anyhow, if an opponent with pure carriers starts making LRF's to deal with your BA frigs, yes, you in fact use your fighters to kill his LRFs.  Did you think you were going to kill 80 carriers without losing ships? 

The OP just wanted ideas on how to beat bomber spam...I stand by the fact cobalts can kill carriers cost effectively.  Of course the cobalts can be countered.  Everything in the game can be countered.  If someone is stupid enough to attack a mixed LRF / Carrier fleet with cobalts, not my problem.

And yes, I have actually won games against people using cobalts in my fleet.  It is kind of rare, but if someone is so obsessed with carriers and has almost no LRF escorts, it becomes simple to kill all the LRF's first and then hunt down the carriers.  Yes...with cobalts, though they would be backed up by carriers of my own, since I wouldn't really want to field a fleet of ONLY cobalts either.

Sure it would be fun, if you like modding the game so you can win.  Or you could just skip the whole game and go jack off.

Quote... of... the... day!

LOL!

Hah funny reply.

Anyway i'd recommend the fighter spam as you wont need half the fighters or maybe even quarter the fighters to counter bomber spam with LRF. Also would be worth building some LRF of your own to take out his carriers and in case he starts building flak to counter your fighters. Also I wouldnt build flak as they are only really any use at protecting against fighters, they can do bombers but they arent great.

Not really a necessary answer, the language is not really appropriate for a public forum.

-T

Really, just changing out the 'guns' or upping the weapon damage in the fighters/bombers can be done without being cheating too much. A modest increase gives the ship an edge, not necessarily an all-out win everything edge.

But if we look at this realistically, with no changes at all, the best counter for fighters/bombers, is anit-fighters, and fighters themselves that take out the bombers. So that would mean if i face a super-carrier with 200+ squadrons of fighter/bombers, then i would need to counter with perhaps 25?  50 anti-fighters? And maybe 50 fighters? At this point i am only making guess-ta-mates, because i haven't done it in the game to see. But it can be tested.

-Teal

If we're operating under the assumption that you have the More Hanger Space Mod and Death From Above 1.0 mods on, then the best defense would be 5 Hanger Defense platforms maxed out with Fighters, which would give you 50 Fighter squadrons. Assuming that the enemy has 250 Bomber squadrons, this should be more then enough for defense against the bombers, even assuming that you didn't have any ships there (which is a good strategy, get a couple of Heavy Cruisers and Light Carriers and they should be able to slow the enemy down at a choke point).

If you're attacking, protect your Carriers with a couple of Kols or Radiances, they will stop any Cobalts, LRFs, and some capital ships cold. Or buy some Fighters too.

A cheater is always a cheater no matter what.

BTW, can you cheat in MP ? I never tried.