To MindEye,

Regarding the advent fighters im totally with you, I've been frustrated many times by those drone host.  I exclusivly play as TEC and unfortunately its just not worth it, matching his carriers/squads count to yours because for some reason it Tec will fail.  Once advent takes half of your fighters your carriers already useless. So heres the order of assult as tec

Dont make all carriers to match but instead use resource on 20 to 30 Lights cobalts  wwith laser upgrades as far as econ can afford. then enemy will make Illums to counter you but i would will switch from cobalts to more carriers and spam LRMs to counter his counter. once you lessen his carriers at this point flanks is an option but if you micro ur cobalts correctly and killed half of his carriers flanks are not required as you will have more fighters and air superiority and only then you can control the sky.

For me tho. the unfairness is with illum stacks, with   40+ stacked illums divided into 2 squads both doing focus fire on two targets @ same time is too effective mid game   Caps will get destroyed ASAP no doubt so a lvl6 marza is pointless.   I never tried this but if ever i see another 40illums stacked up, would upgrade on LRM's AOE be a good choice as far countering illums numbers?

Those that would say build a hc, well thats just like the cap problem as not having enough fire power to lessen illums number in time before hc can be focused fired by illums massive numbers and destroyed just like a cap ship would. And econ cant really handle mass HC against cost effectiveness of illum stack.

Is there an effective solution for this problem? Ive seen good set of battle balls recently and would that be an option for illum situation?  I really dont do battle balls at all so those with exp on that type of setup let me hear what you think. Looking for answer from skilled player or from those PUG community   DT and [_] community, teirs 1-5 rofl jp.  anyone i dont care

ToroRosso PUT THE HAMMER DOWN

F1 SEASON COMING UP   SOON.

Not wanting to hijack the anti fighter thread....but ..um...you use FIGHTERS to kill Illuminators!  If they have more fighters & flak than you AND more Illuminators than you have other ships...well...then they are probably going to kick your butt. 

But the main problem with dismantler is that their is no counter. Unless your fighting in your own system and have the repair bays you can't match our out repair the 30 dps to hull. And even vasary cannot neglect the -6 armor point with its support ship. And for each point of armor lost that means roughly 5% more damage done to target. So lvl1 -2 armor emans +10% dmg, lvl2 -4 armor means +20% dmg, lvl3 -6 armor means +30%dmg. Now combine that with phase missile that will ignore mitigation you end up with a shit load of damage from just 1 abilaty that has no counter to it otehr then to killt he cap.

So nerfing the nano dissambler and uppping the Vulkoras lvl6 Disintigration would amke sence in that it make and ultimate abilaty more valuable then a standard one, makes other vasary caps valuable and its actuly now possible to defend counter the abilaty wich makes for a greater balance.

1200 damage, cutting through armor mitigation, can end up being over 3000 "real" damage. That's more deadly than the Kol's gauss cannon, by a long shot.

Kol does 800 damage, but the mitigation afterwards goes up to 57%. So the second shot will do 344 damage (if instantly fired w/o cooldown), but the first shot will do 680 damage (factoring in 15% mitigation).

get a radiance....problem solve

Cykur... Initial fleet of 15 lrf and the egg can decimate ur cap even if you have 15 ilums I dont think you could match it. Level 2 or 3 egg is EXTREMELY dangerouse with that many assailants. Its hard to even run away. If they show up you might as well get your cap out instantly or say bye. I dont play vasari so I dont know what level it is but when it does -4 armor is really bad. Even if your tech you dont have hoshikos in the begining and even if you do my cap barely survives to run away by that point in game. I mostly play advent and its the same thing because advent has no repair ships till late. It just really makes the game not fun when all you can do is run and keep your caps away from the battle.

Sorry I fail at quoting, but...

If you are playing as Advent you use drone hosts (yes, I know they are expensive as hell) who sit at the edge of grav well. Each one holds 3 squads, which you should put fighters in. Those things dont play around, and the numbers stack- 50 of those will kill an illuminator in 2 passes (thats something around 1.6k damage, you can number crunch). Yes, they cost 1.2k credits and atleast 225 of both metal and crystal, but if you want to kill assialants it is your best bet as advent. Sorry TEC fans, I've been playing Advent once I noticed the late-game strike-craft numbers.

P.S. Don't forget to micro!!

I got to thinking, as a side note, this is not entirely correct.  The Kol shot is armor piercing -- no armor mitigation, only shield.   

I never leave this on, btw...I only micro it.  If you use it as an alpha strike on ships that haven't taken damage yet, you are only getting 15% mitigation, so you are applying closer to 680 damage rather than the the most pessimistic viewpoint.  I also have used this to take a huge chunk out of structures which have no mitigation, especially helpful with the rapid 6 second cycling time.  Not trying to say it is a great ability, it isn't, just trying to give some pointers on how to get more mileage out of it.

I don't want to get farther off-thread, but lets just say each race has some ships with more powerful abilities, and there has never been a direct balance between the ships...ultimately, they are best for their utility abilities.

At endgame, I don't even dare put my Evacuator in combat most of the time, it is so easy to kill ...it is much more valuable as a world siege ship.

Cykur:

Thanks for the anti armor thing but that still doesnt help much. I am using the 57% mitigation sicne that is what you will face msot fo the time not to mention that the egg your be shototign at will be lvl3 by then and that mitigation will actuly be higher. Also I know fo the trick you mention and do use them. I was onyl using the gauss as a coparation sicne it was brought up by someone else.

Also i would point out that the dissasembler is better at taking out structures then the gauss gun. 1200 dmg vs 800 in adition to smaller armor mitigation for you fleet thats shooting at it.

To Astax why would you get rail gun? Because even thou flak is more valuableand that rail gun is very weak, is that when you use the gun right it's not half bad and if you ahve say like 4-5 kols with rail guns you can cause alot fo damage. But the damage is roughtly equal to what 1 egg would do with 1 shot from lvl3 dissasembler.

As for end game you shouldnt worry about losng your evacuator. In end game i notice lost fo people have very bad target calling capabilaties. They all focus on your caps and if your econed your self properly you can afford to lose the caps and keep replacing them. The result is that your taking only cap loses while him he losing his fleet. I've been a few bad players that way they just don't get that by killing my cap spam their not eliminating the real treat. But that is for and other tread.

Indeed