An interesting and well rounded argument. Much better than some of the rants that I have seen on this forum.

I do agree with the repulse fix and buff to Vasari Scout. Scouts grouped with fighters would actually be much more effective and you might not even need a nerf to the Illums.

really? sounds like we are balancing vasari's paper against that of the other to races. i'd say the neutral cap ability makes them stronger. maybe...mix in some assailants with your scouts?

If they were named anything other than scouts this would not be the case. If for instant they were called Specialist Assault Ships, they would fill that niche and people would not complain, it's just the prejudice associated with the scout class that is stopping you from taking them seriously as an actual attack vessel.

Like say if the TEC scout was called the Foreign Espionage Unit (since it has timed explosives as its speciality) or the Advent Seeker Vessel was named the Vessel of Everlasting Hope because of the martyr ability. It's just a matter of putting yourself past the knee jerk 'scouts should not fight' mentality.

Ok, Scouts is a good tactic to use agiesnt lrms, however if You put it into a commen sense sceniro, scouts cnnot be able to do that. But hey, I dont really care, I either use them or dont, I always find another way round.

And to the Advent Part

I am geting sick and itred of people saying nerf illums and guardians. The fact is people have to buid 3 miltary labs as it is and ASSILANTS only need ONE miltary Lab. So in theory you should have a bigger fleet then people who played advent.

Ok Maybe the repulse is a little powerful, but how mnay times have I seen idiots not attacking my guardians? they have a fleet of mass bombers and fighters, but still they choose to igonre them, even expervcianced players. If ur just gonna work into an advent fleet with HCs, then what do  u expect us to do?

People need to understand going ahead agiesnt illums is not a good idea. but using something in the fornt of ur fleet like gardas and sentinals will help to withstand most of the punshment, while ur irms from range take them out. Thats what I tested and it works.

All this is an Vasari player moaning about how OP repulse and illums is pissing himoff, well I dont like the Vasari SB becuase that is also very OP.

One day Quar attacked me with scouts and annihilated my assailant fleet. I saw their power first hand. So I saved the replay and figured out why I lost. Now I know what to do, and since, haven't been beaten down by a scout fleet.

Amen. Scouts are NOT just for scouting, and anyone who believes this misses the point of them. The devs included abilities for them for OTHER purposes, don't you think they included the buff against light armor for that very SAME reason?

I beat a fleet of 50+ scouts and 3 caps  vs my 22 illums, 25 seekers, 6 disciples and mothership. How? I had better fleet balance and did a slightly better job micromanaging. Its that easy.

BUILD SOMETHING OTHER THAN LRFS to fight off scouts, you could even throw 10-15 scouts in WITH your LRFS and come out much better. Had I just built illuminators, I would have probably lost, but guess what! I didn't, I built scouts and a few disciples and it made all the difference.

Scout frigates are still frigates, tier 0, and it just so happens one of their worst enemies, the light frigate is also tier 0. It's not like you need a higher tier research unit to beat them (like lrfs and carriers, or lfs and lrfs).

Personally I like the fact that scouts have forced early game diversification in fleets. It's better than just building a bunch of LRFS til you can build support frigates. I think people just need to respect the scout as a frigate, and not just some unit that you send off to its inevitable doom at some point.

Scouts are meant to be included in fleets, I think the devs made that pretty clear with the inclusion of mines and abilities that give them greater purpose. What Amish has done is show what they're capable of.

Agreed. If you want we can take a real life scenario: Anyone heard of those little unmanned aircraft US troops are using overseas (Predator UAVs)? They began as a simple scouting tool, now they have weapons and can both scout and attack. Some are now armed with missiles that can destroy armored vehicles. A lightly armored, cheap (comparative to other aircraft), unit thats serves as reconaissance and can destroy specific unit types. That sounds familiar, why is it so hard to believe?

As for late game scout fleets: If the backbone of your fleet is LRF, then it only makes sense that the backbone of your opponents fleet is scouts (especially since carriers can't do their job as well now). If you didn't have LRFS as your primary damage dealer, then you wouldn't have a problem. It has been discussed and agreed upon that reducing the carrier nerf will cut down on late game scout fleets. But until that point that comes, your lrfs are going to be targetted by something that does the job better.

Change your strategy, we've all had to do it many times, this is no different.

Really, TEC dont have many options at this point besides scouts and HCs.

Scout rushing is BS.  I have said as much on other threads.  They are meant to scout and have the odd secondary abilities of limited use.  They are not meant to be a large part of your fleet.  They are meant to scout.  The fact that they have an ability to make mines targetable does not mean you should use them as your primary attacking unit.  I have never talked about scout spam being a late game tactic because that is suicide.  It is a very early game tactic that one has to correspondingly build scout spam crap to counter.  If you research at all with an enemy thats within 3 jumps hw to hw then you are behind in spam because they have that many more scouts to hit you with.    You don't get much of an opportunity to research anything or you will be behind the 8 ball in fighting it back.  If you don't want to fight rock with rock then by all means build fighters.  That at least isn't such a cheezy tactic.  If you argue that fighters don't work then carriers/fighters need some of their mojo back still.  Just because it is something you came up with/made famous doesn't mean its a good thing to do and should be protected. 

[_]-Greyfox

True Azrak, however, of those ships listed, only Kodiaks and Ogrovs are offensive.  The rest are support.  Carriers are not offensive any more.  Fighters dont work vs. LRMs that well because of flak being so powerful.  Bombers really dont counter HCs anymore, since the HC is faster than the carrier.  Flak isnt offensive really, except vs. lrms and as a meatshield, so it's basically defensive. Hoshis are defensive, tho their special ability is arguably offensive.... Cielos are support.  Ogrovs only wok vs. structures, so you cant really count them.

Thus my statement, HCs and scouts are pretty much all TEC has atm.  Basically, if you play TEC, you have to play defensively and turtle until mid to late game.  Without scouts, TEC will lose to basically EVERY decent rush.  TEC is the whipping boy of Sins...thus the reason VERY few decent players use them.  Sad outcome really.

i find it funny how it seems like only advent players are complaining about scouts....

guess they just cant handle having the unit that just kills everything else actually get destroyed

but seriously, if you lose to scout spam it is your fault, you are the one who spammed a ship that is countered by scouts. 1 vasari LF was in a battle against 40+ scouts with a repair bay (15 hp healed per sec) my supporting 6 or 7 LFs killed all of the scouts. they never killed that 1 LF. now if you are complainging that scouts are OP maybe you should stop spamming the unit that is countered by them.

thats my rant for the day.

I wish you were in the game I played the other day. My ally was totaly ignorant and got pissed at me because I had scouts in my fleet aginst my Ilum spaming enemy. I told him their good aginst Ilums and you know what he told me? "spam asailants!"

Amish, I have played against you in the past where you have rushed me with scouts.  You had 20 or 30 scouts headed for me before I had 2 or 3 illums built when the bit of fleet I had built already was mostly disciples to clear militia.  That wasn't responding to any sort of spam of illums on my part.  That was rushing me with scouts spam plain and simple.  You can deny it if you like but that doesn't make it any less true.  I didn't say it was uncounterable because it can be beaten but it isnt all that easy.  I have seen 150 scouts take down a SB pretty handily(unupgraded of course).  I say that scouts are scouts and shouldn't be the main component of a battling fleet.  If people are using scouts as the main component of their fleet on a regular basis(as is being done a lot now) then something is dreadfully wrong with that state of the game, in my opinion.

[_]-Greyfox

Codan--great reference to "the last starfighter" 

The point being made was you said you built scouts in response to spam.  There was no spam of illums at that point.  There was a shitload of scouts made by you thus scout spam rushing.  The way that game played out was you killed my labs with time bombs and ran the scouts around my hw well forcing me to chase you.  You didn't attack the few illums I had up.  You used the superior speed to slow down my killing of scouts.  I rebuilt labs on my roid and other world that i had and built some drone hosts after exasperatingly chasing you around with scouts, discs, and illums and trying to block the scouts path with my ships.  The fighters killed the scouts(after the game I questioned why you never built flak to counter the fighters).  The game ended shortly thereafter due to teammates losing but it wasn't decided between me and you.  The point being that you were spamming scouts before you knew there was a spam to counter and you saying you only spammed in response to LRF spam.   So whoever accused of you scout spamming is quite believeable at least from my point of view because you have done so to me.

[_]-Greyfox