More Questions

1. I could be wrong, but I don't think anti strikecraft abilities have target caps. I've seen a lvl 10 Kol do some amazing damage against what seemed like an entire fleet of strikecraft.

2. Their are a lot of tactics for small maps, but most involve going for a quick win, so macroing and low level techs are usually what are used. Carriers and fighters do indeed counter LRMs, though they work best if they don't have much flak. And light frigates are the best unit to counter massed carriers (again preferably with flak support).

3. It all depends, but usually you want to focus fire with almost everything against enemy capital ships. If it is just frigates, your ships should automatically target the unit they do best against (though some ships that are good against a lot of different ship types like LF might not attack the one you want them to, so being able to macro is always a good thing).

4. Flak are good against strikecraft, as that's their role. I'm thinking your problem here was that you didn't macro your strikecraft very well. First, fighters don't do very well against HCs, you need bombers to do good damage against them. Second, your fighters will probably spend a lot of time chasing his bombers or fighters when you need to do damage against his HC to stand a chance. Added that they are flying around his flak means that you will be losing Strike craft very quickly.

5. Advent Capital ships are best known for thier "synergies", as almost all of them have abilities that can be comboed with abilities from other ships. For example, their are at least two versions of the "holy trinity", the one I know is to cast Vengence on a Radiance, have the Radiance use aminosity, and then cast malice one the ships that attack the Radiance. This causes Vengence to do a lot of damage to the attacking ships, which malice then amplifies by inflicting the same damage again. The hard part about this is that it requires three different capital ships (Radiance, Rapture and Mothership). The Halycon is also popular with the mothership, as shield regeneration keeps the illums alive while the Halycon protects against strikecraft and most importantly increases the Illums damage with energy weapon cooldown (Very hard to stop this combo early enough if the Halycon is at least level 2 or 3).

Hope that helps.

1. There is no target cap on TK Push and Flak Burst, so use it when there's as many strikecraft within the area of effect as you think there will ever be (don't leave it on autocast, otherwise it will cast as soon as one squadron enters range).

5. On top of those combos, add this classic: Malice + Cleansing Brilliance. CB will do 2000 damage (if it lasts the maximum 8 seconds) to all targets within the affected area (which is basically a cone in front of the Radiance) and Malice will re-deal 30% of the damage accumulated by all those ships. Timing is important for this combo as CB will be active for 8 seconds (takes 2 seconds for the beam to charge) and Malice lasts 10 seconds. You should pick a target for CB that can withstand the initial 2k damage (basically capitals), otherwise you lose out on more damage if the target dies part-way through.

1) Flak Burst and Telekinetic Push have no target limit.  They are exceedingly powerful, and for obvious reasons you do not want to fly your entire bomber fleet overhead.

2) Yes, it's possible to counter a LRM rush with fighters.  The response is either flaks or light frigates (flaks kill the fighters, light frigates kill the carriers).  It should be noted that scouts have the same damage type as fighters, and can be used as a LRM counter as well.  In general, a battle of attrition favours LRM.

3) Focus fire typically is your best course of action.  Be sensible, though, if you have 100 fighters you don't need to focus all of them on 1 LRM.  Split them up into reasonably-sized groups.

4) Flaks are great against fighters and decent against bombers.  Bombers in reasonable numbers will easily kill capital ships and heavy cruisers before the flaks take them down, so you will need fighters of your own in this case.  Fighters, on the other hand, get ripped to shreds by flaks.  Avoid dense flak formations with your fighters.  Remember that fighters are much faster than flaks, so use this maneuverability to your advantage.

5) The thread regarding Advent being weak is over a year old.  The comments in the first few pages there are no longer relevent to the current version of the game.  In general, the consensus is that Advent > TEC > Vasari, but it's close enough that the layout of the map can easily be more influential.

ye that seems to be the problem that a lot of threads are old, and one of the reasons why im asking so many questions. i cant figure out what the CURRENT consensus and style of play is. then again, i also should open more threads. one of the stickied threads very well described all the cap ships abilities. very handy.

one more question, is ressurection worth getting on the progenitor?

Resurrection will only be useful if a high-leveled capital is destroyed. Probably one of the least used abilities out there, if not the least.

Ressurection is a god like ability in long, very late game. Just have one level 6 mothership chill at your home world and whenever one of your high level cap ships gets destroyed, you can replace it as soon as you can build it. Of course, getting a level 6 mothership to spare is rare, but if you can do it, aggresive attacks always headed by level 10 cap ships will probably ensure you'll win the war eventually, sense you opponent will have no chance of keeping his capital ships at high level (as you should be using cleancing brilliance liberally on his caps).

ye i figured that ability was more or less worthless overall

how about that clone shit that the skirantra does? any good?

Depends on the situation.  If you lost a high level (4 or higher) capital ship, definitely select this ability.  This will enable you to promote any new capital ship of the same type to the same level of the old one.  I once lost my level 7 Progenitor early game (I didn't pick ressurrection at the time because there was nothing to ressurrect).  I then built a new Progenitor and raised it to level 6.  Once level 6, I selected ressurrection and built a second Progenitor to promote it to level 7.  Unless my enemy kills both Progenitors, I can "restore" my lost capital ship.

This ability can be useless at times, particularly since the Progenitor is usually chosen as a first capital ship and therefor there is little to ressurrect when it initially reaches level 6.  Later on, however, this ability can become one of the most powerful in the game.

It can also be used as an expensive re-spec tool.  If you scuttle a capital ship and create a new one, you can use ressurrection to promote it to the old one's level and then pick a new set of skills.  Rarely used, but viable.

Depends on what you're cloning and whether you need that antimatter for healing.  I've often replicated flaks in an emergency to great effects; heavy cruisers are obviously good targets just because they're expensive.  Carriers are double-edged.  They're great and powerful units, but their strike craft aren't replicated with them.  In other words, much of their limited duration will actually be spent creating their strike craft.

The bottom line is that this is a good ability with lots of tactical use, but use it in a smart fashion.

allright thanks a lot everyone.

but fear not, ill be back with more questions soon

Spam diciples,  Have them focus on carriers first then flak.  When those are destroyed have carriers with bombers ready.   If his carrires contained only fighters. You can do mostly diciples and some flak.  If his carrires contained bombers, then go mostly diciples and bombers.  Bombers should target hc, while diciples against get carriers then flak.

If you want to use your capital ships the have 2 halycon and progen.  Keep all ship from in a hold movement.  Get lots lums (50+), and about 10 gardians (have repulse research).  If his carriers are just bombers dont get flak have a few carriers to get his bombers. Flak if he has fighters. Use 1 repulse at a time until it runs out of anti matter and basically push his hc out of range as you use lums to target his hc.

Note his fleet is against someone who spams lots of lrms/scouts,

You can not and should not stick to one strategy. U have to adapt and not rely on one fleet formation.

JJ is right and you must scout to know what to build.For instance if your opponent is spamming sb then he doesnt have as much fleet as you and ilums will not be handy against a sb so you must adapt for situation.Sometimes it is best for bombers(which I prefer) and sometimes antisb ships.

ye i dont play entrenchment right now (trying to buy exp. pack but failing), but i understand the principle of countering the enemy's units. in fact, this is the first game where countering units is so damn important. SC and WC3 if u were good u could  get away with using a combo of just a few units, no real counters were needed (except ofcourse anti air if needed) but this game is so much more complicated when it comes to that (rise of nations is the only thing that comes close to rivaling sins in terms of strategy, and maybe AoE2).

Oh, those games had counters, it's just that unless you were of very similar skill level most of those counters could be overcome with the right micro.  In theory grunts as basic melee counter crypt fiends as basic ranged.  However, in practice any undead player will have a death knight that increases unit move speed and enable the fiends to just dance around while your grunts fail to do any serious damage.  In a real scenrio, you need to use special abilities to pin down the fiends so you can slaughter them with melee like you're supposed to.  It is a counter (and a pretty vicious one at that) if pulled off correctly, but just having the right units on its own isn't enough in that game.

The thing in Sins is that you don't have these silly techniques.  If you're stuck with the wrong unit mix, simply outplaying the opponent often isn't enough to change the outcome.

You could even use the example of UD vs humans. UD tries to go for mass skeletons, which fails because priests kill aoe summons for breakfast.

but im just saying that micro in that game is more important than strategy and counterpicking units