For the record, I don't have a problem with the current cost of turrets.  They are not and should not be free and building and placing one remains a matter of strategy.  Sometimes building them makes sense and sometimes it doesn't.

Game duration is a very legitimate and signficant issue with this game.

I HIGHLY disagree with OP.

If you nerf scouts against LRFs, the only counter you have then are Fighters (they are the only other class that hurts light armor).

HOWEVER, fighters are extremely easy to counter, with a host of capital ship abilities that rip them to shread (flak burst and telekinetic push come to mind) and just massing flak frigates.

If you were to nerf scouts, all a player would have to do would be to mass LRFs AND Flak Frigates and they would win the game.  There would be no counter to LRFs if scouts were garbage.  I think they should leave it the way it is.

I will admit that at times I have trouble with scout spam, but only from JJ.   His micro is just too good.  Carrier caps, flak, and SBs work amazing to counter scouts/LFs.

I think the balance is fine as is.

scouts are weak, even in mass numbers.  LFs, flak and caps can all kill them quite easily.  The Advent are the toughest, but that seems fair due to their weak eco and early game bonuses....

On a different note - I do think the defense structure consts should go down (turrents/hangers).  Drop that by 25% and all will be well.

Maybe drop it a little for hangars, not 25%, but 10-15% maybe.  but turrets seem perfectly fair as they are.

Well yeah thats JJ. Everyone has trouble with him. He could make colony frigates dangerous if he had to.

LRFs have a large amount of counters already.  There are masses of flak which do a pretty good job in taking care of LRF and tank the damage.  You can use rock against rock and use LRF to counter LRF which works just fine.  There are HC which counter just about everything.  There are support cruisers including subverters and guardians that could be used.  There are starbases which take a lot of LRF to be taken down if even halfway upgraded.  There are carriers with fighters that take down LRF pretty quickly.  The problem with the scout/LF spam is that you can't open up to the possibilities because you are trying to deal with 40 each of scouts and LF or more and done without having to build labs.  Scout/LF spam doesn't open options, it closes them.  There are lots of ways to deal with LRF spam but there are limited timely ways to deal with scout/LF spam other than spamming LF yourself.  Saying scouts are a necessary thing to have for a counter is BS because there are already lots of ways to deal with LRF.

[_]-Greyfox

Eh, maybe instead of decrease of cost maybe a increase in range. My only grip is that their range seems a bit small. TEC gets a boost thier reserach but still. A slight increase in range for all races. That way your investment in turrets may pay off with their ability to cover a bit more grav well.

Many new players already build enough turrets for us to be confident that cheaper turrets would not slow the game down.  Later in the game they can be destroyed while you siege a planet, or left alone, if you prefer.  Sort of ready-made monuments to your victory.  Static defences can often function like that.

They just need to be made cheaper so that enough can be deployed against the very early rush, if needed.  Otherwise they have no purpose in the game and all the tech tree devoted to them is wasted.  If a player can use the threat of a rush to force another to build static defences that are too expensive, there is a problem with game balance.

Everyone except online beginners plays with maxed speeds, and you have to max all the speeds or leave them all normal in order to avoid altering the game.  It's also very rare to save or even pause an online game.  The single player game helps the player too much against the AI if you can save or pause it, though.  Apart from that, starbases are popular and I've rarely played with quickstart online.  I doubt cheaper turrets would bother anyone, under most circumstances any experienced player will prefer fleet, its just the exceptions that need to be covered.  Single player types are very much the minority on this forum...?

Secondly, saying "support cruisers, HCs, and Starbases" counter LRFs well is a little ridiculous to me.  LRFs can be researched VERY early and mass produced quickly, Cruisers, HCs, and Starbases are a mid-late game tech, and Starbases can't even move so what does that have to do with it?

Fighters are a decent counter to LRFs, but fighters are the easiest countered unit in the game.  Flaks completely rip them apart, other Fighters do a decent job, as well as there are many cap ships that rip Strike Craft to shreds.  Also the amount of fighters you would need to take out mass LRFs is a feat that can only be accomplished mid-late game because of the sheer amount of research and resources you would need to build that many Carrier Caps or Carrier Cruisers.

Therefore, the only realistic solution to LRFs EARLY GAME is Scouts.  All this other mumbo jumbo you have been saying wouldn't even happen in a real game because the person trying to counter the mass LRFs would already be dead.

In may of these topics about balance yes we are minortiy, in the past we been told our opinion doesnt count cuz we dont MP. Though some of us still post.

I still stand by my suggestion to increase the battle potential of turrets so they can be helpful even late game. Instead of decreasing their cost. I rather pay more for something I know will be helpful past a rush.

The illuminators taht are so readily talked about as OP are a tier 3 unit.  All races starbases are unlockable with 3 labs.  Carriers are available then too and so are flak.  The problem with using flak as a counter to scout spam was already mentioned.  LF counter flak EASILY.  A decent amount of LF will cut through a flak fleet like butter.  The scout spam is not the problem.  Scouts themselves are countered by just about anything.  It is when used in combination with LF spam that they are difficult to counter outside of LF spam.  I am repeating myself here so it would be nice if you read what I posted already.

[_]-Greyfox

Where I'm getting lost is why you have a problem with two ships that gel well together. IMO the scout/lf ships are intended so that a player can go eco early and not pay the price. Pushing back a scout/lf spammer is not hard. If he's not investing in upgrades or other ship type expansions to his fleet, he's easy pickins.

Ok, let me give another example of a two ship fleet that is hard to counter. HC's and Fighters. The only hard counter to HC's is bombers. But if there are fighters, those bombers won't do jack. So what's the counter to this fleet? Pure HC's.

This is a game of counters. Know them, and you will succeed.

Flak were never intended as the lrf counter, and against a wise enough lrf spammer, they won't work. Flak shoot 25% of their damage in 4 directions (hence their design as the fighter counter). Ever gone up against an Illum spammer who just used shield regen to negate the damage that you were sending in every direction?

I also hate using fighters as a counter to lrfs purely because for TEC/Vasari they're tier 3 (aka expensive to tech), and if flak are out in sufficient  numbers, the fighters will die quickly.

I also hate saying HC's are a sufficient counter because they just aren't a viable option very early. They're expensive and seriously slow down the economic expansion of an empire.

That leaves scouts as the  VERY VERY early game answer. Scouts are so rarely viable as a fleet after the first 30 minutes that it's not even funny. They die to just about anything. The only time I've ever had 300+ scouts is against someone spamming pure lrfs, and that's rare.

Everyone talks about how LFs and Scouts are such a good combination, well if two people have spent the same amount of money:  One guy spends it half on scouts, half on LFs - the other guy spends it purely on LFs, who is going to win?

Like it or not, Sins is a Rock-Paper-Scissors environment.  You need to know what your opponent is building.  If you aren't scouting his base to see, that's nobody's fault but your own.  When your opponent starts building Scouts, you stop building LRFs OR build Scouts to counter his Scouts.  When your opponent starts building LRFs, you build Scouts.  When your opponent starts massing LFs, you build LRFs.  Rock.  Paper.  Scissors.

So what's the problem?

DING DING DING DING

The lack of I win button.   Supreame Commander spoiled the RTS community with their experemental units.

i think the real problem isnt scouts in general, it is how strong advnent scouts are. You dont see near as many skilled TEC scout LF spammers because they cant compete with advnet ones. Advnet scouts should be nerfed to the lvl of the TEC scout. There is no reason it is almost 1.5x stronger than the others for the exact same price (or less against the Vasari.)

_|~Uber

True, if up to me I'd nerf advent scout health by 100 ish.

Scouts are now up on the PSCF, come cast a vote now.

Other than scouts, LRMs can be countered with your own LRMs, Fighters, and Heavy fighting Cruisers.

So what you're saying is that it turns into a game of scouts and LF spam because no one in their right mind facing an opponent with scout and LF spam would build military labs?  The military labs you would build for your LRMs are the ones you would also use to research other things and to leap up to being able to get carriers and heavy cruisers.  But if you're under an onslaught of light frigates and scouts how can you invest your money in anything but your own light frigates and scouts?

How do you propose to push back the guy with 50 LFs and 100 scouts?  Carriers?  The LFs and fast scouts will hunt down and kill the carriers and he can also make some flaks to protect them.  Heavy Cruisers?  LFs in mass are a counter to HCs.  Capital ships?  LFs in mass can take those down too.  If you could make a big mass of your own LRMs then yeah you could kill that fleet but if you can do that he can probably double the size of his fleet by that point.  You could put up a starbase but starbases don't move and if he's not foolish enough to suicide on your starbase then you've just spent a lot of money on a movement that's stuck at a single gravity well

It's getting to the point where it no longer makes sense to build ANY LRMS at all anymore unless they will be part of a colonizing fleet and not a combat fleet (in which case you could just use LFs anyway).  The secret of using scouts as a counter to LRMs is now very widely known and it along with the increased strength of LFs has transformed the game into one of Scout/LF spam.

First of all, Scouts only counter one thing, and that's LRFs.  LF's counter 4 things, Flaks and 3 Cruisers but even still, with simple LF + Scout spam, you will be extremely weak against capital ships.

LRFs counter not only LFs, but also capital ships, and to a MUCH higher degree than LFs could even dream of.  Do you have any idea how long it takes for even mass LFs to take out a cap ship?  I won't even bring up mass Scout's against caps because it's just pathetic, it takes forever.

The problem with building only a LF+Scout fleet is that you then become very weak against cap ships.  If your opponent gets a few Carrier Caps and some LRFs, he will be able to kill your caps faster than you can even escape with bombers.  Sure, you may kill some of his LRFs too but what's more important, taking out caps or killing LRFs?

As has been said many times before, Scouts scale very poorly into late game.  They are easily countered by the same things LRFs are countered by, including other Scouts, and everything else you mentioned.  However, Scout spam is also countered by Flak, something that LRFs don't even have to worry about.

I agree with everyone here that Advent Scouts need a nerf, but holy crap, with how broken Illuminators are right now - it doesn't even matter.  I would much rather take Illuminator spam over Scout spam anyday with the DPS these things can put out now.

I disagree.  The Advent scout has remained unchanged since the game shipped, but no one has said jack about it until recently.  So leave the Advent scout alone, and go find the real problem.

People haven't started using scouts as a mainstream combat unit until recently, and the strength of the Advent scout has been an issue since scout-based strategies took off.  While it took second place to other issues in our discussions in the last patch, it was discussed in the previous patch-stats change forum.  However, the issue was glossed over at the time because there were others that were more pressing.