UPDATE 2/24/09 __11:40

Ok I'm actually going to go into details even though I said I was not. First update will be later today On how to use Capital ships FOR GREAT JUSTICE against SC.

I will also Be adding a Basics of the Basics  section on how to limit micro and how to micro combat against SC.

ps: I probably won't be fixing spelling errors so don't pm about those unless they confuse the hell out of you.

UPDATE 2/24/09__1:11

Added basics and Light micro mini-guides going to lunch and will post capital ship guide later.

Up-note: If your looking to play a teaching game with me I'd be happy to help I'm usually on From about 6:00- 9:00 in the morning to 8:00- 1:00 at night thats U.S eastern time(yes I only get 5 hours of sleep). Apprentice positions all full so no more asking that.

I will also include an abrevaition index at the end if requested.

this is In no way a very detailed guide but its should work in helping out people who for some reason have problems with carriers.

Introduction: Stuff I'm going to say (read at your own doom)

Hi I'm spiralblitz the unofficial intermediatary consultant to stuff on sins. (lulz just joking around but give me some Kharma so I can redeem them for godmode like annatar.)((lulz just joking again serious about the kharma though I need to make tyr jealous.))(((anti-lulz joking again. these Addition parenthesis must be making you angry i will stop now.)))

Right well I hear that the carrier is overpowered and difficult to counter even with other carriers but i'm here to tell you that it is possible, but highly situational.

Its easy to beat so stop whining

Carrier spam alone is just plain easy to beat, but what is really causing you the problem is catching and killing the carriers and the units around to support them.

Carriers are like capships in the sense that large focused attack will bring them down. How do you bring something down that is running away and is faster then all your ships. Well I will say use the cheapest fastest ship in the game that the carrier just happens to be weak against. What is this you ask. IT'S THE LIGHT FRIGATE.

Carriers are weak against light frigrates and since the light frigrate buff.(they still need another buff) they are highly resistant to strike craft. A smart player however will bring Long-Range Frigates to counter your Light frigates. This in itself is a huge problem for you see how do you stop carriers with a large number of the stuff that kills the thing that kills carriers in your way. That my friends is why I am writing this mini-guide.

The Basics: How to get on your way to obtaining Air superiority

YOUR ULTIMATE GOAL SHOULD BE AIR  SUPERIORITY. What is air superiority? well that is when your enemy has SC but they are so feable and beat up by your awesome carrier countering that 5 carriers full of fighters can mop them up like an old nickel hooker in mexico city.

Not simply beating back SC. Get it out of your mind that you don’t need carriers to counter carriers. You will always need the same type of ship your enemy has to be on even footing. From an even stance its your knowledge and skill at the game that determines who wins and who loses.

Players are worried more about Eliminating SC then the thing that creates them. This is a problem but with these basics you should have no worries. You will be able to defend against strike craft of any size giving you enough time to get at the carriers and kill them.  5-10 carriers is enough

Step1: Build 2-3 Light frigates for every carrier your enemy has

EX.:: Enemy 1 has 10 carriers you should have 20 -30 light frigates. (Seriously though You probably will only need 15 -20)

Step2: Build enough to fight back 10-15 flak and 5- 10 carriers (4-9 for advent) with fighters only, this is the most basic anti SC set up you can have.

Step3: If fighting on your own planet build a phase jump inhibitor to provent Carriers from leaving (because they will run once you have air superiority)

Congratulations with these 3 steps your on your way to obtain air superiority.

Light Micro Management: For dummies

Now On to light micro which is very easy even beginners have some knowledge of light micro. Please don’t confuse all micro as heavy micro cause that’s just plain weird. Being as heavy micro can induce orgasms.

Now Now I know big daddy blitz just dropped the mega dues on you big O big OOOO o.0 (what not anime fans? Brief interlude for a story conducted in game on sins chat. True convo you can skip it it’s not really important but funny and kind of obvious)

Tec general: Micro you say what this “micro” is

Spiralblitz: it’s the stuff I’m doing to your mom right now with my index and middle finger in one hole, thumb on the cruise control button, and pinky in the stinky.

Tec general: lol, you know my mom?

Spiralblitz: yeah, let’s go with that?

Sykia: lol, he means how he’s managing his fleet to kill your carriers with LFs while using Hoshi’s to repair his flak that’s being chased by your LRFs which is protecting his LFs from your SC. All while using his Kol to flak burst your SC to pieces and Donuv’s magnetize to cause SC to collide into your LRFs

Tec general: Oh you mean the stuff that you’re doing that’s pwning my fleet.

Spiralblitz: No, this is still your mom where talking about here

Sykia: lol

Badakas: lol

Tec general:

Tec general: really now I don’t see anything? Is that what you’re making your fleet do or is that what its doing automatically

Spiralblitz: that’s what I set them to do. It’s kinda like setting the alarm clock to do something and leaving and coming back before it rings so you can set it again.

Tec general: what?

Spiralblitz: *sigh* just use The alt button to select ships of the same type in the grav well the use the Shift button to give them a long line of targets and orders to do. Comeback before it’s finished and ensure the success of said tasks then set them to do something else.

Sykia: that’s pretty much what micro is

Tec general: why didn’t you say so that sounds easy as folk?

Spiralblitz: *gasp* I know

Badakas: how have you been playing without micro?

Don’t be intimidated by MICRO. It’s really easy.

The ALT button selects all ships of a certain type. Be sure to do this on the overview or else you might not get all the ships in the grav well unless that’s what you want.

EX.:: Select all of a group of ships like flak, fighters, or what ever you have in the grave well ( *gasp*best used when you need to counter a ship and you have that counter.)

SHIFT key ques up orders. So hold it down and select lots of targets.

EX.:: set a long list of attack orders for your LFs to target all the carriers individually or as a group.

Press the M key the Move button to have ships follow other ships

EX.:: Have your flak follow the ships that are getting attacked by SC

Congratulations you just learned micro

I’m not going to go into fleet commands and ability order linking unless someone request that I do. That’s not light micro. That’s the orgasm inducing heavy micro.

C-C-C-C-CCombo Breaker!!!!!

Breaking the TEC Carrier Combos:

The TEC Carrier combos are the Deadliest ones you can have the displeasure of facing. First TEC can Spam LRFS(Long-Range-Frigates) for a rather cheap amount. Then they have their repair ships The HR(Hoshiko repairship) that can easily support and repair both Carriers and Longrange frigrates. This combo Is easily countered by the stupidity of the person using the carrier itself and one of the most basic rules of the carrier commander. Run the carrier around the grav well to aviod it being destroyed.

The countering begins the moment you bring a large number of LF (light-frigates) to battle. The smart Carrier user will protect his carriers from your LFs with his LRFs and start making his carriers run. Bingo! LF are the fastest ship in the game and if you brought Flak which is a medium Vessel slightly resistant to LRFS you are in the winning zone.

How you ask? well have your Flak follow your LFs to protect them from fighters(the fighters wont eat up your LFs since they are a bit resistant but they are pretty damaging). Since LFs are fast they will outrun the LRF almost immediately but it is a given that some will be slaughtered. its a given that on each strifing pass that strike craft make they will swarm behind the group they are attacking Right untop of the waiting flak that is following the LF and since the LRF can't catch up to the LF they begin to attack the Flak which are closer to them and slightly resistant to LRFs. Bingo! again you are in the win! Since your large group of LFs are Making pincushions out of the Carriers and they will be reducing the number of strikecraft being rebuilt if they have the appropraite LF ability researched.(most likely if you are playing TEC fighting a TEC you will upgrade Defense and Laser research as much as possible to improve the damage and survivablility of your LFs facing carriers). from this point on it gets even better for you if you throw in carriers and support ships to even the odds. Remeber knowing your races advantages against certain ships is essential. This is just a basic guide to countering a very basic spam setup.

OK, this is where it gets tricky. When a TEC player is using the hoshi repair and carrier spam. REGARDLESS you will need to build A large number of LFs and some carriers (not with bombers) yourself. Make sure to include the same flak strategy above and better yet when the opposing player sends his LRF's to kill your Carriers(which is a really stupid idea if he is not playing advent) you have some time to close in on his carriers and Hoshi repair to shread them. Why does that seem simple because strike craft will always attack strike craft first. unless the Enemy manually targets the ships with the strike craft this is a given. use your flak wisely and you will come through this in win since Hoshiko Repair ships and Carriers are both weak agains *gasp* (you guessed it) LFs!!!! Even better if you use the appropraite abilities, upgrades and support ships.

Breaking the advent combo:

Wow your facing an advent carrier spammer. All I have to say is build True to the Strategy and pray he doesnt know the Deus ex Guardian strategy cause that will make it godly hard to counter. I will say this is highly overpowered but can be countered with some dedication.

Breif interlude to tell a story (you can skip the parts in Quotation marks if you just wanna know how to kill advent carrier spam) all about how I faced an advent Carrier spammer with 118 carriers (plus the holy trinity advnet capships) with just 40 LFs, 25 LRFs, 10 overseers, 15 flak, 10 carriers and 3 capships (Vassari evacuator, carrier, and Kortul.) and this was all done on my enemys planet with all his 7 repairs 2 frigate factories and 5 hangar stations.

"If you did the math and know how many strike craft im dealing and said bullshit on how I beat him. then you have probably been beaten alot by carrier spammers and can't believe a balanced fleet will always win. This took a hella amount of micro but I managed to do it in the process losing all my capships and having to rebuild them yet I still won with more of my fleet intact and his completely destroyed. using the same strategy against TEC with Advent, but Vasari is sorta geared toward killing carrier spammers and thats why I won to tell the truth (vasari carrier capship has the ability to make its strike craft in the vicinity slip into phase space and aviod damage making it easier to keep them alive against 118 carriers).

Any way I digressed enough. That guy was easy to beat cause he used only carriers and I appropraitely countered by using overseers to buff my LFs hullpoints and flak to keep them alive while I used all 40 to shread his carriers(the vasari LF has an ability to make carrier spammers shit their pants I suggest always using it when dealing with Repair ships and carriers.) honestly there is more to it than that and an impressive amount of micro but lets just keep it short for now."

Ok to counter the basic advent Carrier player you will need to use Flak and LF's in the same manner as you would do with a TEC carrier player. Advent may have more strike craft but they are weaker and their carriers can produce them relatively faster than any other race so you will need the LFs ability to drain or disable antimatter use if you want to succeed. This is as easy as its gonna get vs Advent. Their carriers cost so much that if they are pure carrier they have very little of anything else to defend them

Now a smart advent Carrier fighter will do the the Deus ex Guardian strategy and rape your immortal soul by the power of the UNITY!!! yes thats right you heard me the advent ships work best together *gasp* yeah really. the synergy of Advent ships is astounding you have to give Ironclad props for that but its also an incredible pain in the arse when fighting. The basic part of this strategy is carriers, guardians, LFs, and some LRFs thrown in for good measure. The advent player will be using the gaurdians to great effect by pushing your LFs away everytime they get close giving their LFs time to grab your ships antimatter and using the illums broadsiding ability to move back and fourth wreaking havoc in your fleet. The progenitor capship will be restoring shields (pray to god they don't have the holy trinity or you will be losing alot of ships). This can be beaten even though it seems impossible. The smart advent player might not be lured into chasing after you and just let his strike craft eat you up before coming in to finish you off but try to break apart there fleet as much as you can. If your playing tec the LRMS cluster bomb ability will either get rid of the Advent LFs for you or do enough splash damage to make him spread his fleet. Getting at the carriers is gonna be the hardes part with the guardians mitigating the damage done and the illums broadsiding you. yet, it can be done Guardians Are medium level ships that just happen to be weak against LFs and strike craft so go to town on them first before taking on the carriers. make sure you use the proper Support ships preferably anything that can disable the guardians so you can get at the carriers even for a moment.

An experienced advent player will run once they start losing guardians so make sure you have a ship to either disable their away jump or a phase inhibitor. Remeber support your ships and manage them well cause the Deus ex carrier strategy is one of the hardest to beat. it may not be able to be a nuasance as the TEC overpowered combos but in any scale encounter in a game a battle with this strat will be devastating. YOU ARE Guarenteed to lose almost your entire fleet.

end note here practice makes perfect. Practice taking on large AI fleets with a smaller fleet. I personally owned an AI fleet of 50 ships with only 21. if you can do shit like that you will have no problems.

Breaking the Vasari combo:

Oh god its vasari. If your lucky enough not be rushed in the pregame /early game moments then you will be in a good position and will see a vasari player with some amount of carriers. However, I find most vasari players are reserved in the amount of carriers they build. I'm pretty hard set on finding a vasari carrier player but the ones I did find were pure genius.

what you have to do is counter the same way with all basic carrier attacks. use flak to protect your huge amount of LFs (cause vasari ships have good deal of unpgraded defense and hull points). your main worry with a vasari player is the LRFs. You will need carriers of your own to counter the LRFs (remeber when countering LRFs use fighters). Vasari players with heavy cruisers are known to be a problem cause more often then not they use the heavy cruisers abilities to keep the LFs from getting to close to the carriers. This is a pain cause the HCs will rape your LFs. but again you can work around that by arming your carriers with bombers and having your LRFS focus fire on the Heavies.

honestly I really don't have much info on vasari carrier fighters cause they are a rare breed. But the Vasari carrier capital ship and heavy cruisers can make it difficult for someone trying to get past Strike craft and get at the carriers. Just be cautious and make a steady aproach. Remeber if Advent is stationary combat then Vasari is all about mobility. More often then not the vasari fleet will be broken up and easy to tear apart with their respective counters.

TL;DR

Lol I lied so this isn't a mini guide its huge as folk but you get the picture. happy hunting.