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lbgsloan

Join Date 04/2008

+10

LRMs need a real fix

LRM is and always has been the dominant strategy in this game. The reason for this is that massed LRMs counter everything except fighters and heavy cruisers. Mixing in some flak frigates with your LRMs negates the only early counter to LRMs, allowing them to reign supreme for most of the duration of your average game of Sins. The problem IMO has always arising from the fact the LRMs hard counter basic frigates. LRMs already have a number of advantages over basic frigates (outrange turrets, easy to focus fire with, LRMdirt cheap for TEC and Visari, very powerful for Advant), plus they get a huge damage bonus against them. This causes all sorts of problems with the counter system because nobody can use basic frigates past the first 5 minutes of the game. Sinces LRMs also counter defences, this leaves the only options to players as A: try teching to carriers before the LRM mass arrives at your homeworld or B: spam LRMs back. This is boring, and frankly one of the leading reasons while more people don't bother with ICO. Really. Read any post encouraging people to try online play and you will find many people saying they'd rather play vs. the AI instead of fighting mindless spam game after game.

The carriers buff didn't stop LRM spam because carriers are expensive and get crushed by a small number of flak backing up the LRMs. You can't overbuff carriers because then they will become the new spam like a few versions ago. The solution I propose is to change up the counter system. Basic frigates need to win vs. LRMs, while LRMs become more specialized units. They can counter the few things basic frigates are currently good against. Basic frigates rushes wouldn't become the new spam, because one or two turrets totally shut down basic frigates. Comments to this? And not from snarky 'pros' saying 'you CAN counter LRM spam noob'. The amount of LRM spam going on clearly suggests that the current counters are not working well enough.

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I agree for the most part. The build rate penalty to strike craft is too harsh. Because of it the cheep and easy counter is a hand full of flak.

I'm glad you brought up Light Frigates. I would also like to be a little bold and say the Light Frigate is too nerfed against LRM. An LRM is more powerful and has greater range and as long as you have crystal, cheep to build. But then the LF suffers a 25% DPS nerf against LRM while the LRM gets a 50% BUFF!?!?!?!? Is it any wonder few bother with LF. Advent is the only faction where LF take less fleet supply than LRM.

Look at any MP replay and you see few LFs being build other than a handful. The LF get used to clear a few astroids while you wait until the LRM research is done. After that they just don't get built much.

Then there is Single Player. What does the AI do? Spams LF, builds a couple caps and then builds 5 siege frigates each and every time without fail. Guess what I'm going to do? Build LRF. Since the carrier has been nerfed I don't research them any more. Not unless I want bombers. Bombers don't get shreaded by flak.

(If you're new to Sins then find a damage table on the net. You will get beaten badly until you understand all the buffs and nerf that are present in the game but are not covered in the manual.)

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Thats where the the manshooter's diamic battle system shines. The LF have real value and the LRM get put in its long range position but cannot make up the Lf speed and movement. The LF takes close range and fast attack role while the LRM sits back and shoots you. It stops the rock, paper ,sciors game and make it a more of you need certain ships for differnet roles.

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(1.01ent) Well the carrier buff did fix the LRM spam. But people would then spam carriers (noob people) and if they did spam carriaers you coudl easyly stop it with LFs witch would tear through them very eficiently. In that time flak did need a bost.

(1.02ent) Commes out and flak get teh bost they needed. Only problem they went across the board and also nerft he fuck out fo the carriers effectively takking the carriers out of the game. Right now don't bother building carriers to counter LRFs because ti just wont cut it a handfull of flak is enought to comepletely shut them down. And the counter to flak LFs can'T do shit about them.

Basicaly in 1.01 you saw people build lots of difference ships. Every ship had it'S role and job in a fleet. Their was a counter to everything via a differente unit. Now in 1.02 their is only LRFs. We are right back to 1.04sins witch is generaly accepted by the whole of the communaty as being the worst this game had ever been in terms of balance. And it'S clearly visable we are back to that but the DEVs still haven't said fuck shit about it and my inquierie about it on the IRC has gone unanswered for a full days work. IT would be so simply to release a micro path removing completely or reducing the build time penalty to 25%. And that'S all that need to be done to fix this game. Undo a bad nerf and we will be perfect or near perfect again. IMO near perfect is much better then the absolute worst thsi game has ever been. But their not doing shit about it.

Think about it that one line of code in 1 file would take em what 2 minutes to change? Even less. And the DL woudl be what 30seconds long? IT's and easy and small fix. No reason it couldn't be done in 5 minutes from now.

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I find it amusing that people are back to griping about LRMs. People talked like carriers were so OP like it was ruined the game when they could be countered even then. Now its "bring my stronger carriers/fighters back!". I agree that the build penalty was too much. Flak needed the help though because previously it was useless. There is always gonna be something not to everyone's liking. LRMs are the hard counter to light frigates. If you buff or nerf LRF against LF then you are unbalancing things and everyone will spam LF. LF have their advantages but you shouldnt expect to take on LRF with them and win. It isn't all lrm spam now. This is nowhere near 1.05. Just like it wasn't all carrier spam in 1.1. You can't spam one thing to the exclusion of everything else and expect to win against someone that halfway knows what they are doing. After all, if you didnt put some flak in there they would get chewed up by fighters. If things are adjusted again then something else will become slightly more dominant and back we go to the BS spam topic on something else. If things get adjusted again then I will adapt and still manage to win. Learn to play with the cards you are dealt.

[_]-Greyfox

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On second thought, EadTaes and EmpReb are right.

LF counter Carriers hard

LRM counter LF hard

But as of 1.02 and 1.16 Carriers can't counter LRMs anymore. We are missing the hard counter to LRMs. As of now it's a soft one.

I'm hoping the patch that'll be out in the next few days will balance this back out

Anyone care to way in on bombers? Bombers seem to be able to hard counter HCs to me cause flak can't murder them as bad. What are your thoughts?

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fighters chew up bombers. Simple. Or a nice capital ship with magnitize/telepush/flak burst/jam weapons.

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I think the consensus is that LF are quite underpowered currently. Their basic cost:effect ratio is relatively poor compared to other unit types and they only counter carriers.

I personally like the carrier build rate penalty, even if it may have been an overnerf. I'd rather they buff the carrier in another way rather than roll back the change.

The biggest gripe, however, is with the rocks-paper-scissors balancing act we have going right now. With few exceptions, everything seems to be a very hard counter. I agree with people who say that the counter system should be toned down and advantages like speed and range should become the primary attributes of different types of units, rather than some arbitrary damage modifier against specific types of enemies.

I'd like to see more positioning and tactics implemented in the future, phasing out the hard counters. Let's have abilities that help break the classical "stacked fleet" that is a huge amount of units compressed into a small space (the Advent battleball being the most prominent). If fleets were forced to spread out a bit due to area of effect abilities, then this would instantly be a buff to carriers (harder to protect your fleet against mobile strike craft with just a few flaks) and be a long awaited nerf to the Advent battleball. That's the direction I think should be taken.

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Last night i had a 5 v 5 match. I'm a noob....i admit it. Following the advice from the forums..... i asked if the teams could be set evenly. Of course they weren't. So to set the scene we had five noobs ish against 5 reasonable players. To cut a long story short, i was wiped out in less than ten mins by an LRM rush on my home planet. Was i annoyed?..... yes. Should i have seen this coming?....possibly. Was there any enjoyment or point?.....no. I know i have to take my knocks to learn the game but honestly...... this tactic is crap. I would love to play online all the time. I would like to see a really active online community too. But i will not play online anymore because this has happened too many times. i will wait for the next fix and try again to see if it's better. I don't in any way blame the devs for this. they are trying to make a great game and have done an amazing job so far. The problem is the rats online who think destroying a self confesed noob in under ten mins is fun/worth the time/enjoyable.

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My suggestion rather to a fix is enabling real time communciation via microphone instead of typing, whether to team mates or to group at large would be nice. and you could have an option to use your microphone or not

To be honest, LRM real fix needs to be have the missle speed faster than the LRM itself or have the LRM to go slower, and put it in a category such as a kodciak, maybe use the same number of supply

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It would be good to have input on the effect of the upcoming patch on game balance from the developers, especially concerning the Marza issue.

However, the LRM rush is a major worry online- and while small maps reward rushing, larger maps have more risk of drops, plus the inevitable level 6 Marzas, which are far easier to prevent on the small maps. How about making LRMs slightly slower, rather than reducing their effectiveness against LF? That would make them more vulnerable to carriers. Also it would be more rational to have LF have a clear supply advantage over LRM.. all those missiles, or energy beams?

Hopefully missile barrage will soon be revised with a target cap, plus a much smaller area of effect, while retaining range. The ability to destroy all of a planets defences except a starbase, instantly, is just wrong- why use anti-structure ships? Another use of a Level 6 Marza is to level cap ships, as it destroys all of a pirate base at once... A 'barrage' should saturate a small area, not a huge one.

As it is the Marza with missile barrage, is the sole effective TEC response to a 'battleball' in the later game, and the altered ability needs to take this into account, also the difficulty of getting a slow and non-manoeuvrable Marza to level 6 (unless against AI or militia on a large map), whereas the 'battleball' in its various versions can begin to function without any Level 6 capital ships. I'd much prefer to have both an offensive and defensive option, to having only a difficult-to-get and game-breaking offensive option.

A solution might be the upgrading of the high-tech support vessels- Domina, Subverter and Cielo. The Cielo just seems to enhance brute combat offensive abilities at the time that the TEC forces desperately need a high tech type defence, because beams are so much superior to normal missiles. The Subverter could be somewhat restored. If the Cielo developed a defence against beams the Domina could add anti-missile telekinesis to its powers- then it might have a role? Also, perhaps another style of cloud or storm, that affects LRM- a sort of particle field?

Why is the LRM rush considered more effective than the even simpler Egg rush, though? The scaling down of the Marza should be accompanied by reductions to the powers of the rival factions colonisers. The Marauder could exchange Subversion for the Nano ability on the Egg, and the Revelation Clairvoyance for Malice on the Mothership.

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WHIPperSNAPper2008

Join Date 03/2008

+126

Quoting ,

quoting post

This is boring, and frankly one of the leading reasons while more people don't bother with ICO.

This is one of those urban myths that has been repeated so often by single-player advocates that it has almost taken on a life of its own and people tend to assume it's true because it is repeated so often--that the online game lacks strategy and is all about spamming out one type of unit. Perhaps players of lesser skill do that, but the reality is that you need a mix of various units in order to win depending on what your opponents are doing. Sometimes it will make sense to spam out all LRMs and sometimes not. Figuring out when you need to do it and what to build is part of the game's strategy. Based on my reading of these forums, I'm pretty convinced that people who have never played online or who have only played online a couple times really don't know WTF they're talking about.

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Centurion is right not every good person spams lrfs, but basically in any skilled persons fleet lrfs are the backbone. they are cheap, counter lots of ships, and the only real hard counter to them is now HCs because flack was brought up to where it should be, but carriers were nerfed rediculously. The really stupid thing is when people were whining about carriers being OP they were so off. really to destroy carriers you need to build a counter, now carriers can be countered by something they "counter" just by having 5 flack floating around with them. Lrf spamming doesnt take much away from the ICO communtiy (Except for EadTaes) but it is just becoming a one early game stratagy now.

Carriers really need to have the build penalty removed or put to -25%, just because now that flack work as they should have, carriers should as well. Right now they dont.

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I'd much rather keep the strikecraft build penalties and lower Flak dps instead.

They don't need to be able to destroy other frigates and caps, sentinels especially with upgraded Phase Missiles. Why don't Sentinels use wave cannons anyway, too many Vasari ships use Phase Missiles.

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Carriers really need to have the build penalty removed or put to -25%, just because now that flack work as they should have, carriers should as well. Right now they dont.

I agree with this. I have not played online but i can say that even playing against AI that it requires a diversified fleet.

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[quote who="Darvin3" reply="7" id="2231865"]I think the consensus is that LF are quite underpowered currently. Their basic cost:effect ratio is relatively poor compared to other unit types and they only counter carriers.[quote]

Err wrong Light frigates are the biggest counter in this game after HC that are effective againts everything. Here is a list of what counters what.

Scouts: Colonie frigs, LRFs, Scouts
Light Frigates: Carriers, Flak, Support cruisers (ALL), Seige frigates
LRFs: Light frigates (supposed to be their only counter but obviously their more powerfull then that) Caps (sadly)
Flak: Strike craft, scouts, LRFs to some extent (almost none existant)
Carriers Fighters: LRFs, Scouts, Colonie frigs (sadly with the nerf carrier have had it take no time fighters are dead and they dont counter nothing)
Carriers Bombers: HC, Caps, Support cruisers. (bombers are carriers only saving grace)
HC: everything (their the work hourse, or are suposed to be.)

So light frigates are fine. What thye would need a better AI that would allow them to follow a target enemy ship without ever playing the acordion. EI their the fastest next to scouts but when carriers are kitted they often lose range since they travel at high speed get into range and stop. But the carriers keep moving. Their need and AI that will get into range and maintain that range by selecting a slower speed then their top speed. That way that would be able to to toe kitted carriers and slaughter them. But that'S a hard to impliment thing so not expecting it anytime soon.

Before the carrier nerf I had very powerfull and clever LF stratergies. Now they can't work no more. Only have LRFs stratergies again. Meaning it's a texte book when ti coem to playing a game. GET LRFS and get more of them then your enemy. If he'S dumb enougth to get carriers just get a few flak and your fine. And this situation has arised soly because LRFs do not have a counter no more other then more LRFs.

OH and DesConnor get teh fuck out of here with your sthinking Nerf the Marza. I have been MB only twice (my main and smurfs) and all I do to fight it is exactly what i posted in noob tread of theres. Fucking up a Marza is easy as pie. Now if youw nat to lern how to fight it go read what i wrote there and fuck out of here. This is for LRF and Carriers. OR balance of none cap units.

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Light Frigates: Carriers, Flak, Support cruisers (ALL), Seige frigates

In practice, however, many of those don't work. Siege frigates are rarely used at all. Support cruisers and flaks are usually found in the middle of a swarm of LRF, and in practice they can just tank the attacks of LF until the LRF have dispatched them. Flaks and most support cruisers (most notably hoshikos and guardians) are cheap, spammable, and tough enough for this purpose. Carriers are the only unit that LF's will actually kill fast enough to be effective overall.

Light frigates have very poor stats overall. Their only asset is their speed, and they get destroyed by LRF, which are the backbone of most fleets these days.

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Wow, no one ever listens to me. EVER. Scouts will beat long range frigates and they'll beat them HARD. Why is it that no one ever listens to this? The problem most people get is that they don't understand that you need 3 scouts (or 2 if you're vasari) for every illuminator. You need to match him ship slot for ship slot, not ship for ship (1 seeker loses to 1 Illum, but 3 Seekers CRUSH 1 Illuminator) Seriously. IT'S THE COUNTER. The HARD counter. The one that WORKS!

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I did listen and list it in the list. I do also use scouts. However it's not very practical. Since your need to manualy make them join a fleet and manualy make them auto attake.

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Join a fleet? I will admit I didn't read the whole post. I got halfway down and got sick of reading "no counter". I would say the only impractical thing is to make them auto-attack. Countering lrf spams is like countering any other spam. Watch him to see if he's making it, and during the time it takes for him to get to you with decent numbers (and trust me, it will take some time) make scouts with two frig factories and bam, problem solved. He'll be screwed.

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By the way, the counter to flak is light frigates. Flak have heavy armor. Light frigates do anti-heavy damage.

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Quoting Darvin3,

reply 7

I think the consensus is that LF are quite underpowered currently. Their basic cost:effect ratio is relatively poor compared to other unit types and they only counter carriers.

I personally like the carrier build rate penalty, even if it may have been an overnerf. I'd rather they buff the carrier in another way rather than roll back the change.

The biggest gripe, however, is with the rocks-paper-scissors balancing act we have going right now. With few exceptions, everything seems to be a very hard counter. I agree with people who say that the counter system should be toned down and advantages like speed and range should become the primary attributes of different types of units, rather than some arbitrary damage modifier against specific types of enemies.

I'd like to see more positioning and tactics implemented in the future, phasing out the hard counters. Let's have abilities that help break the classical "stacked fleet" that is a huge amount of units compressed into a small space (the Advent battleball being the most prominent). If fleets were forced to spread out a bit due to area of effect abilities, then this would instantly be a buff to carriers (harder to protect your fleet against mobile strike craft with just a few flaks) and be a long awaited nerf to the Advent battleball. That's the direction I think should be taken.

Music to my ears. I've long, long wanted a system where the rock-paper-scissors was taken out... but I was worried this could just be my Total Annihilation instincts talking, given that game had, um, Rock Beats Rock - there were (next to) no special damage modifiers, everything was balanced simply according to its cost, armor, DPS and physics (Range, manouverability, speed etc).

Indeed, it'd be nice to see a game where the reason LFs are a hard counter to support craft is because of their anti-antimatter skills, and the reason LRMs counter LFs is because they outrange a poorly armored unit, and pack anti-swarm technologies (AoE effects).

Y'think it would work if this was actually attempted? The hard-counter system always felt rather 'lazy' to me... 'Why does X counter Y?' 'Um, because we said so. So we gave it double damage.'

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i agree with getting rid of rock paper scissors approach

i was playing World in Conflict recently, and before that, Company of Heros. Both games have somewhat of a RPS (rock paper etc) approach, as in, only Anti-Tank teams or other tanks can destroy enemy tanks etc, while tanks themselves were less effective vs infantry. pretty basic stuff, but one thing both games have is situational damage buffs. for instance, flanking a tank (firing at it from behind) would destroy it faster.

i think the same could (and definitly should) go for Sins. i mean, as it is, and ive said it many times before, you basically have everyone fly into range, line up, and start shooting at each other American Civil War style... how boring. both visually and gameplay wise.

i think, aside from the visual aspect, that flanking a fleet should have actual ramifications. lore wise, we could say attacking a shield from two (opposing) points would drop the shield faster as emergency power has to route to two or more emitters instead of just the one. same goes for armor, repair crews cant be in two places at once. regardless of lore, actual flanking etc manouvers would not only stop spamming extremely light units for frontline combat like so many people like to do, it would introduce more tactics. luring an enemy fleet into an UCGW with a minor fleet, then jumping in a larger fleet to flank him and wipe him out. then there are also the previously mentioned tactics for breaking a compressed fleet formation (Missile Barrage vs an Advent Battleball)

put it this way. in a battle on land, you would have your close range units, infantry, tanks etc, (in the case of Sins, LF, HC, Utility Cruisers) in close or at medium range fighting furiously. then, at longer ranges you have your snipers or artillery pieces (in Sins, LRF's and Carriers) now, usually, snipers and artillery have little or no close range protection. so if you can sneak through or break through enemy lines and position a few HC's or LF's close to the longer range LRF's and Carriers, then good for you, but until you do, they should be pretty untouchable.

so, details aside, i totally agree with this thing, i hate the hard counter system, and people who exploit it (usually on MP because doing it time and time again to AI would get boring) which is why i dont play MP. id much rather out play him because i planned better and out manouvered him, rather than the fact that for some reason, fighters that are the size of a pea in comparison to a LRF somehow do more damage to a shielded target than a bomber can...

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Y'think it would work if this was actually attempted? The hard-counter system always felt rather 'lazy' to me... 'Why does X counter Y?' 'Um, because we said so. So we gave it double damage.'

I would really like the info on ships and counters to be up front and make sense. I think LRMs and LFs would both have their place in REAL strategy. LFs are short range but fast. LRMs have long range and more fire power but take FOREVER to cross a gravity well. This is GREAT!!! So they both have advantages and disadvantages. Why not just leave it at that then? Why must the game be designed with hidden nerfs and buffs in order to make certain units a hard counter? I'm new to this type of strategy game so maybe I'm being naive but I think the game could do without them.

What would be cool is to at least have the option. Okay maybe this means I need to think about a mod. Then I'll see how wrong or right I am. Time to research.

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Oh, it's not naive - there have been several games (Total Annihilation, much of Supreme Commander) that did this, relying on the different cost/benefits to do their work for them. The need for 'hard counters' is something of a C&Cism, when minigunners kill rocketeers, rocketeers killed tanks and tanks killed everything.

Frankly, about the only place you'd really need heavily rigged damages are strike craft - though even then, you could just reduce the HP of strike craft by 1/4 (and drop flak by the same amount, given they currently deal 25% damage vs everything else at the moment), though that'd take some rerigging of anti-fighter abilities to compensate.

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in my OP LFs SHOULD be weaker than most every other ship. They and scouts are the only combat units you can build w/o research. Every other combat ship (minus caps) require extensive research. Why the hell would you upgrade your planets so they support more buildings then build buildings (Labs) then buy research, only to get a ship thats not as good as the one you already had. LMAO

RTS should have phases. Early game should feature early game units (LFs). mid game (longest) your fleets will tend to be LRF swarms supported by flak and maybe followed by carrier gruops also supported by flak. late game HCs come into play. Notice-mid game main unit (LRF) PWNS early game main unit (LFs) and late game main unit (HC) PWNS both early game and mid game unit. This is how it should be.

If LRM were no better than LF then im just going to spam huge amounts of LF and not waste my money on labs and research.

LF, LRM, Carriers (with bombers), and HCs are all assault units. And they should form the backbone of your fleet within their respected 'phases'. Flak, utility cruisers, Carriers (with fighters) should be supporting these.

If i notice LRF spam (supported by a few flaks) then i spam bombers from my carriers and his/her caps and buildings become an easy meal for my carriers. If that spam is headed for me then like Raging Amish said: build a second factory and spam his LRMs with scouts. And maybe try using repair structures (esp if you TECH)

Each unit is counterable in the 'rock-paper-scissors system'. Therefore spam is counterable. But a well balanced and versitle fleet is not counterable. Rather you must beat this fleet by either out producing or out thinking him/her.

I think alot of the complaints of 'i got beat becuase of spam' are really 'i got outproduced'.

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