The Role of HCs

I rarely ever build them, it seems like you get more bang for your buck if you put thee same resources toward LRF and Flacks. But then again I don't play online much.

TEC's Kodiak Heavy Cruiser is one of the best straight-up combat units in the game. If you can afford them, Koadiaks make a formidable part of any TEC fleet. Their slow movement can be reduced a bit with upgrade, too.

For Advent and Vasari... Heavy Cruisers aren't really worth the price. Actually, the Destra Crusader is very powerful, but currently Illuminators are a bit more powerful for their cost. And Skarovas Enforcers are rarely worth using. Their cost is too high and Wave research is too expensive to make them worthwhile in many circumstances.

Dont forget Kodiaks ability to shoot across the gap between Fleets to intercept the enemy before your fleets smash against each other.

As TEC, bring hoshikos of your own.  This will help keep your heavy cruisers alive.  Sounds to me like you lost because you didn't have hoshikos and he did.

No I won the second game, when he went HCs, I just lost the first one when I went HCs.

I play Advent btw, not sure if that's relevant.

Kill the healers first. That will help. HC's are pretty good for Advent when fully upgraded but Illuminators are pretty cheap and really good. Carriers, I think, are the slowest thing besides capital ships. Also bombers wipe the floor with HC so that is probably why you won the second match...not to mention Advent Carriers have a lot of health and shield.

While TEC tends to rely on their heavy crusiers more than other factions, every faction's heavy cruiser is viable.  While there's no questioning that the Advent have very strong alternatives to the destra and the Vasari have a very weak heavy cruiser, that doesn't mean these units go unused.

Carrier cruisers with bombers are THE counter to HC's.  6 Advent carriers are equal to 9 of the other race's carriers, so it is plausible with a bomber load out you destroyed the enemy, though I can't really comment on how he didn't even get one kill...I'd have to see the fight.  A skilled player would have either gotten some kills or immediately pulled back and built some other ships to fight the carriers.

The main purpose of HC's is to shred the smaller frigates and take abuse better, but they are vulnerable to bombers or antimatter abilities that immobilize a single ship.  Everything in Sins has a counter.

Also, HC's really aren't that slow.  They are faster than carriers and support cruisers.  They are even faster than long range frigates, but their acceleration is a bit less.  Only scouts, basic frigs, and flak have higher top speeds.

HCs may be faster than than carriers etc. with a slower acceleration, but they still have to stop to fire.  This means that their acceleration is going to keep coming into play whenever you attack a fleeing target.  Therefore, I could really care less about their "max speed" as they are never going to reach it during a chase and it wouldn't really matter if they did.

You build them because as part of a late game epic scale balanced flee they are useful, and they tend to survive longer than the frigates and cruisers... really they can sort of replace the regular Frigates (everyone calls them LF and for the life of me I can't figure out wtf the L stands for).

Also, the Vasari enforcers can nerf the movement speed of nearby foes... of course, that's pretty damned useless when they are already knocked out from a Subverter anyway, but hey... I'll take it.

-Itharus

LF stands for "Light Frigate", their actual name in the game.

Carriers accelerate slower than HC's and are slower...carriers are pigs, the main difference being they never have to stop moving to do anything.  It is LRM's that have more acceleration but less top speed.  What you say about the ships stopping to shoot is true, but this can be somewhat managed by manually controlling your HC's to stay in range just like the other guy is manually controlling his carriers to stay out of range.  Bottom line, HC's are not the ship to use against running carriers, especially ones with bombers, you will lose your HC's.  Light Frigates are the best counter here.

If he is outbuilding you, it is only because you don't have enough HC's.  If you brought so little fleet capacity of ANY ship to a gravwell, the other guy will outbuild you.  Long Range frigates are often used because they produce the most damage per cost / supply, AND they do the best damage against LF's so they are the least likely to experience the problem you mention.  Most of the skilled players don't rush to HC's because of the very problems you had.  I have won many, many games without building a HC....but at some point if a game drags on and the other guy is using a lot of Long Range Frigates, you start to want more resilient ships to put up front to try and soak up damage, so you start to augment your fleets with HC's.  Used properly and with support, they cut down on the attrition your fleet experiences.

But by all means, if you don't like em, don't use em, but don't fight carriers with bombers with them, that is the hard counter to HC's.

10 scouts+ 38 lums+ lvl5 mothership+ lvl3 radiance+ lvl4rapture +lvl5 halcyon +6 Iconus +5domina +3 carrier cruisers+ 4 defense v.

<

16 Skarovas+ 10 carrier cruisers+ 12 flak+ lvl5 egg+ lvl4Kortul+ lvl1 Skinatra+ 5 subverters.

===============

the only real advantage about HC is you don't have to replace 'em every 5 min.

This is not completely true, particularly in small gravity wells like asteroids.  I find that heavy cruisers can in fact stay within range of carriers and force them to either jump or start taking serious casualties.  Even with bombers you're on the losing side of this exchange.

There are a few things I'd note here.  First, the Advent should be disciple spamming against this fleet.  You have no assailants, so he can counter your carriers, flaks, and subverters with a big swarm of disciples, and then probably turn around to finish the unsupported Skarvoras with ease.  However, he's got three big advantages: first and foremost he has enough illuminators to overpower reintegration, secondly he's got more higher level capital ships, and thirdly he's got repulse.

Unfortunately, presuming a skilled Advent player, this matchup probably respresents an advantage to the Advent, even though it should be a slam-dunk for Vasari.  If the Vasari player had a dozen to two dozen assailants to round out his army, then we might be talking about a distinct Vasari advantage, but a well-played Advent should have a good shot at winning what you've described in spite of the fact that he has all the wrong unit types.  The problem is that the Vasari isn't well equipped to deal with repulse (dominas are on the field, therefor repulse is definitely on the field). 

First of all, the Vasari lacks the subverter presence (only five?) to deal with the iconus guardians.  As a result, the Advent should be able to keep repulse in play until he's out of antimatter.  This will in turn keep the Skarvoras away from dealing damage and all the illuminators will have free reign to attack targets of opportunity.  If the Advent has enough antimatter upgrades, it's entirely possible that he'll be able to wipe out your Skaravos fleet (or worse, several capital ships) before his antimatter runs dry.  He's got six guardians, remember.  With a Halcyon and Progenitor, it's highly unlikely that you'd be able to beat him down with strike craft, leaving you virtually no way to deal damage unless the Advent screws up.  However, for the sake of argument let's presume that you do manage to somehow get past repulse without taking serious casualties.

First thing that's going to happen is those dominas will come into play and disable a third of heavy cruiser force.  Then he's going to either vertigo them with the Rapture or else vengeance their target.  Either way your heavy cruisers due to a whole bunch of debuffs working against them are now likely to lose to long range frigates.  The illuminators will probably focus on the egg, and since you lack healing (Radiance can disable the Skirantra) it will probably die.  I suspect the Advent won't walk away without casualties, but he's got a huge amount of advantages working in his favour here, and I don't see a Vasari winning it if the Advent is skilled.

The Advent could make his fleet far more deadly by adding disciples, which would greatly threaten of your subverters and carriers.  However, the Vasari could have a tremendous advantage if they added assailants to the mix.  Assailants outrange illuminators, meaning that even with repulse in play they can still attack.  However, the illuminators cannot get close enough to use their sidebeams without dropping repulse (and thus enabling your Skaravos to attack).  As a result, it's a straight shootout, and the assailant can actually pull that off with enough phase missile tech upgrades.  Once he starts losing illuminators, the Advent is going to get the hell outta there.

Well, you're assuming quite a bit there darvin... one jump away lay a sizeable force of assailants, the advent player knew that and realized he was being baited. Just because a unit isn't fielded doesn't mean the player doesn't have it. The guardians were the first thing to be taken out by the sc. You assume that the guardians had repulse; the player was attacked just as he was trying to research repulse. 5 subverters was enough to deal with the guardians; in this case a 20 second window was enough to take them out (granted 25sec later there's only one subverter left.) Due to the timing and vector of the attack, the vasari player could rely on having full AM whereas the advent player would have (nearly) empty reserves for the caps when they jumped in. The only real threat within the first three minutes would be the 38 illums, which get taken out by 20+ squads of fighters. After that the advent caps are still struggling to get up to a critical mass of antimatter thanks to the kortuls disruptive strikes, and although all the egg has taken some heavy damage the rotating targeting of ND offsets that. As to WHY the assailants weren't brought in, psychologically the advent player thoguht that he'd posses a huge advantage without them on the field, even if they're presence close by meant he couldn't bring in his lf. What he didn't pay attention to was the upgrades his opponent had for hull and armor.

people don't use the z-axis nearly; enough; it is a critical potential force multiplier.

While this is true, it is equally true that the carriers could just pick off 1 or 2 HC each time with a bomber pass before they jump or run.  Based on the information provided, I wouldn't give the original poster advice to try to chase down bomber carriers with HC's -- bombers are the hard counter.

The way you stated it, I think my presumptions were quite fair.  You made no indication that there were any other factors in play other than the two fleets you described.  As I already stated, the assailants were what the Vasari needed in this case to tilt the scales, so their presence does indeed give Vasari advantage, but you had to specify that.

But it can mean that this unit is not available in the coming battle, which is significant.  This isn't Warcraft or Starcraft where worst-case scenario you can get a unit to cross the entire map in about a minute.  It may take five to ten minutes go from point A to point B even on a moderate-sized map

Then the Advent player wasn't particularly competent.  Guardians take reduced damage from both types of SC (fighter and bomber), and the Advent had both a Progenitor and Halcyon on the field.  He shouldn't have been losing guardians to strike-craft alone, much less early in the battle.  Now, if you had maxed out phase missile research I might believe it (since this would realistically allow you to kill the guardians in spite of shield restore) since the Advent lacked much in the way of flak and fighter support of his own.  However, if you had any less than 20% bypass chance I don't see the guardians dying so long as the progenitor can shield restore.

The guy has dominas, which means he had all the prerequisites necessary for repulse.  If he had five labs, lots of guardians, and an illum-based army I can't think of any good reason not to research repulse.  Frankly if he was competent, he'd already have this ability on the field.

Five subverters against six guardians?  I will say that Vasari definitely have  the opportunity here to outmicro the Advent and get a win that way, but the way it falls there are more guardians than subverters.  You have to wait for the 20 second cooldown to expire before you disable the sixth guardian, by which point (I'm sure we can both agree) you're lucky if you have more than one or two subverter left.  You might get a window of opportunity out of it, but I doubt repulse would be down for a period greater than ten seconds.

Dude, that's HUGE.  That completely changes my analysis.  Frankly I think the Advent was foolish to engage in this situation, as he'd have had a fair fighting chance at full strength, but with minimal antimatter reserves you just have to wait for him to burn through what little is left.

The big thing here was that I was presuming the Halcyon was equipped to deal with the strike craft.  It's very obvious that this Advent fleet has little in the way to combat SC and relies on telekinetic push.  Running out of antimatter would be a death sentence to them.

A lot of people consider z-axis control abusive because of potential exploits.  For instance, the TEC starbase has blindspots directly above and below it, and that's cheese, plain and simple.

Bombers are a counter to HC, not a hard counter.  Compare flaks against fighters to bombers against heavy cruisers and you'll see what I mean.  Generally it's viewed that two flak per (TEC/Vasari) carrier is a sufficient bare-minimum coverage.  That's a counter ratio of about 4:7.  A similar ratio for heavy cruisers to carriers would be 2 carrier to every 5 heavy cruisers.  I'm sure we can agree that this will not cut it, which is why the bomber vs heavy cruiser counter is considered catagorically different from "hard counters" like flak vs fighter.

First, you are splitting hairs -- I'm just telling the guy bombers counter HC's and it isn't a good fight.

Second, more advanced units are more efficient in supply value....well, except for Seeker/Scouts, but that is another 5 threads.

valuing resources at 4.5cr per

Percheron      2117.5 credits   x 2 carriers = 4235 credits
Kodiaks         1265 credits      x 5 HC's   = 6325 credits

If you go by cost, 2 Percherons are more like 3.34 Kodiaks.   Using the cost ratio instead of the supply ratio, you get 12 carriers, 24 bomber squads vs 20 Kodiaks.  If you want to call this "just a counter" so we can be really clear on just how badly flak will whup fighters, that is fine too.

Call it splitting hairs if you will, I find it has significant tactical importance.  With the right backup or advantage in numbers, heavy cruisers are capable and in fact quite competent at killing carriers.  You cannot, regardless of what support is on the field, use fighters to kill flaks.  It just won't work.  For that reason it's categorically different.

So by your definition, there are only 2 hard counters in the whole game?   Flak vs Fighters and Fighters vs Bombers?  Am I missing any?  Just so we can be on the same page and not get into any embarrassing slapfights while we try to help the new players.

rofl, darvin always has to add in his 2 (hundredzillion cents.)

Dick cheney. He's the little-known 3rd hard counter; *BLAM* "Oops! I thought you were big bird!"

rofl, darvin always has to add in his 2 (hundredzillion cents.)

Dick Cheney. He's the little-known 3rd hard counter; *BLAM* "Oops! I thought you were big bird!"

But yeah Darvin, I did leave quite a bit of info out, I guess thats just 'cause I'm lazy and don't really feel like typing out a whole lot unless someone goes "wait, wtf?" Yeah, the vas fleet did have shield bypass, and luck had nothing (okay, maybe a bit, lolz) to do with the subverters taking out those guardians. But unless I'm mistaken, the subverter ability is AOE. At any rate the non-disabled guardians were targetted first. Normally, yeah, the whole largeness of the map affects fleet movement, but not when its a vas player w/ phase gates. And to be a little more clear, the advent player had a little less than half of the max anti-matter reserves; which just goes to show how useful it is to rotate the targeting of a kortul w/ disruptive strikes. That ability is... much better than it used to be.

BUT the main thing that should be realized by players (esp. new comers) is that the Halc. b*tch slap of Doom isn't really all that great against vas. strike craft (esp. if you know how to micro them.)

As to the whole Z-axis thing, well... shite, if people don't want to use it, fine by me. I guess I just got too used to homeworld.

Subverter is AOE but it is a small radius of effect.  There is still some micro to be done to neutralize a majority of a fleet unless they are trying to battleball it up really tightly.  A good advent player can still thwart it but subverters can be rough.

[_]-Greyfox

You might be able to make an argument for flak vs scout or fighter vs scout, but pretty much.  Sins doesn't have that many hard counters, most are either your conventional type counters or soft ones.

I don't mind if you think it's splitting hairs or if it's just semantics, the point I'm making is that heavy cruisers in many circumstances can in fact beat their own counter, and even be good at it.  Hence, it's not a hard counter, just your regular run-of-the-mill counter.

No, I only write big expositions from time to time.  Usually I do keep myself down to a few words.

As I already said, this is huge.  The Advent player had very few good counters to strike craft to begin with, and without telekinetic push they definitely shouldn't have attempted that battle.  The lack of repulse sealed the deal, this was a foolish fight that the Advent should have withdrawn from.

Telekinetic push is very dangerous if microed well, but if he runs out of antimatter then that's that.  Clearly I was running on the presumption that he began with full antimatter and would be able to use it five or six times (at least) before running dry, which should have at least kept his forces fairly safe for the first minute of battle.  Without this, he'd be lucky not to be drowning in strike craft within 30 seconds.

Darvin I would like to see you beat cykur with your mentioned tactic