Light Frigates vs Carriers

Carriers are probably being slowing down and I'm voting for moving the LF's to around 200%.

Yes, carriers needs to be slower, now you can run araund with them all day long,

Running araund means that 5 carriers vs 20 LF's will go on for good 15 minutes...

Dunno, I don't have many problems killing carriers with LF's.  The thing you have to remember is LF's are very cheap and carriers are very expensive, so you need more LF's than carriers to see a significant effect.  LF's are already faster than carriers, they don't have a problem killing them...the ships with the problems are most everything else...you know...the only ships people build.

Wow!  Carrier kite Blair just a little bit, and the next thing you know Carrier speed gets nerfed!  Honestly, they should move slower.  Just remember, this makes them more vulnerable to everything, so additional balance checks against them are probably not necessary.

The other thing I have seen that makes carriers powerful is that Flak has a hard time shooting down fighters....not because it CAN'T, but because all of the enemy ships near the flak have a tendency of absorbing damage that could be going towards the strikecraft.

What is the best way to use flak anyway?

- Force fire on each strike-craft individually?

- Sit your flaks in the area where the most strike-craft are and have them auto-target?

- Something else?

Carriers are already slower than LF's. How is making them slower going to help? Making them vulnerable to LRF's? Or just HC's?

It the LF's can't position themselves right to keep firing in pursuit maybe that requires attention instead.

And how about increasing LF overall DPS/survivability instead of pushing them further down the one trick pony road? They're already pointless to build for the most part.

I'd be dissapointed with that fix. The best game experience would be if LF's chased down carriers at close range. They should not stop until they are right on top of the carriers. If LF's were able to do this there would be no reason to balance anything else because nothing else would be affected. Quick simple solution.

By changing a stat you're affecting everything in the game and will have to continue tweaking. The problem here is a behaviour problem in attack functions. Fix that!

Best way to use it is to congregate it near where the strikecraft are flying (or attacking) and let it auto target.  The problem is when there are enemy ships in the area.  The enemy ships have a tendency to absorb a lot of the damage that you would rather have going towards the strikecraft.  Because flaks fire in all directions, and the damage doesn't do much against other armors, a lot of that damage is wasted.

This is why carriers need to move slower, they are very hard for ships other than LF's to deal with by running around the gravwell in circles.  LRF's are the same speed as carriers, and (other than Illuminator) they have a hard time shooting and chasing.  LF's are just fine at chasing down and killing carriers.

I agree with this...I think LF could use a small across the board buff rather than becoming even more powerful toward heavy armor.  And I want to stress, LF already is effective towards carriers for the cost.

I find LF's are also good at killing seige ships and flak frigates.

Blair is a big troll tbh.... so am i

You always have the option to build LF's to hunt down carriers. You don't need to tech them and you can build them even if all your military labs get wiped out - this counter will always be there.

If LRF's and HC's become just as effective at hunting down carriers it just makes LF's even more obsolete. That's why I'm not 100% behind making them equally vulnerable to everything.

As the way it stands I've been nailing carrier flts with lf's. Just ask the Anti-Wiggin. Thing is their seems to be a target it likes better than carriers. So I have to shift target all the carriers individually. Personally I think 200% would be op in the same way lums got in 1.5. Also I would not slow the carriers down. If speed is the issue add some excel to the lf's and maybe a small amout of speed. IMO the carriers are too slow and clumbsy. The fact that you can try to move them out of harms way makes it more interesting and forces the enemy to counter them. Or die.

This is after Blair was exposed to carriers grav running and his lums barely keeping up and having a hard time destroying them

I would not effect the speed. This would make them more vulnerable to HCs and LRMS and we dont need that tbh , since carriers strikecraft counter those two units. Altering just the vs Heavy , means the HCs and LRMs dont change in their synergy with Carriers.

Now there are two other units that are not balanced...

Flak Frigates

Siege Frigates ( Do we still need dumbed-down sieges to protect sp noobs from losing their planets )

P5yy

On the balance of the flak it now has a role. Which is protecting lrm's from fighters. Idk if you have noticed, but fighters peel lrm's without protection. Be it fighter bourne or flak. This is the role that the flak excells. Because your fighters are tagging bombers. Unless you micro it. I'm a little happier with it. If not totally.

On the Siege Frigs. The only use I've found is in a rushing situation. Where you lose your cap and need a planent bomber. Otherwise there almost totally useless, because of the flt supply they eat up. You come out better with going head and making caps for bombing purposes. They level and have multiple uses.

From all the 1.1's i've played so far, lots of people are still spamming LRMS, so to kill them i just pop out carriers and destroy their fleets, but they don't bother to produce flak frigates. I'd wait a couple of weeks for people to change their strategies before making any tweaks. 

A combination of flak frigs and LR's should be able to take out the equal amount of resources in carriers.

Flaks certainly seem to prioritize strikecraft, but I'm not sure if they are switching target when they have acquired another??  It is hard for me to tell exactly what is going on, but I am certain other ships are absorbing some of the flak's firepower.  Flaks have several small guns, and if some of them are shooting at other ships because they were more readily available, some of that firepower is not ready to be used on a strikecraft as it flies by...  I've noticed when the flak has no enemy ships around it, it does a much better job of cleaning up strikecraft.

I have always recommended building LF to take out carriers.  And your second point is a very good one.  I also agree with your first post about the danger of LF becoming a one trick pony, i think LF could stand to be just a little stronger across the board.  The problem with running carriers is that it makes them almost invincible to LRF's and HC's.  You might lose a few carriers in the turns, but they will destroy a fleet during that time if they have the right strikecraft deployed. 

All I know is if LF's go to 200%, carriers don't need to be slowed down, but I agree, if carriers are instead slowed down, LF's run the risk of being unnecessary again.

I guess we will see what happens.  I kind of like carriers, but a couple tweaks and they could go to being easily counterable again.

Using the developer build, you can turn on lines that show who all its targets are (Entity Info->Show Target Lines). See if you notice them wasting dps on other stuff.

Ok, I'll continue to look into this when I get back from the Holidays.  Based on some testing I did, I found that Flak was performing extremely well under controlled conditions, it just didn't seem to be doing well in actual open battles, and I'm trying to figure out why.

Do all the carriers of different factions have the same speed and acceleration? In a game last night Advent drone hosts got hunted down by HC's and illums easily enough.

Yep, they are the same, but not all chasing ships are created equal.  Illuminators are actually the one LRF that can effectively chase carriers because they fire when moving in addition to their good range.  Other ships have smaller ranges (HC's) or don't fire when moving (LRM/Assailant).   They have less opportunities to deal damage -- mainly when the carrier is in the midst of executing a turn and getting back up to cruising speed.  Carriers are pretty sluggish when it comes to acceleration.

In your fight, your micro could simply have been better, or your numbers adequate to quickly deal with the drone hosts.  Or maybe he wasn't using his strikecraft effectively.  If you run into a carrier pilot with good micro, you will see what a pain it is to chase them while your chasers are getting picked off one by one.  This is why LF's are useful...they are faster, have anti-matter crippling abilities, can fire while moving, have optimal damage vs heavy armor, and are non-optimal targets for both fighters and bombers.

Actualy, all ship fire when moving.

The thing is, that they fire when moving when you order them to move in location X, and there is a ship in firing range...

I noticed this weird behavior in chaising ships: They do not always fire on enemy target, if they were ordered to move to localtion X and at the moment were not in range to fire on enemy ship. After you renew the order, ships begin to fire at enemy that is in the range, but not before!

Blair, can you say a word abaut this behavior? Its odd, annoying and makes me micro my stuff more, wich gives the advantage to the fleeing carriers.

This is certainly how it works for every ship, except Assailants and LRM's.  They seem to fire a little bit when moving, but I think it is just when they stop for a split second to stay in formation, or because they have caught up a bit with their target.  The missile based ships can fire when "coasting" to a stop.  They seem to only not fire when accelerating due to a move or attack order.  This is the main reason why Illuminators are so powerful when micro-managed, they don't have this issue.