Drone swarm?

a somewhat-noob question... never played online.

So I haven't ever done online play, but in single-player mode as the Advent I can beat the comp on hard (yeh I kinda suck :'( ) building an offensive fleet completely based around drones.  With the correct ballance of Interceptors and Bombers with some support frigs/cruisers to target the enemy flak frigates I can crush pretty much any opposing fleet in a relatively short time. Does this kind of strategy still work when playing online?

4,077 views 3 replies
Reply #1 Top

No.  Nothing you do against the AI will work against a typical online opponent.

Reply #2 Top

Quoting Agent, reply 1
No.  Nothing you do against the AI will work against a typical online opponent.
End of Agent's quote

What he means is that human players will A. bring much more powerful forces against you and B. will see in advanced that you are spamming carriers and thus build lots of flak and light frigates and possibly capital ships with anti strike craft abilities. Not to say that such a strategy can't work, and in fact I think carriers are among the more difficult ships to counter, as they can produce either fighters or bombers, which are countered by different ships, but it will be much harder to do on human players.

As to a fighter/bomber ratio, it used to be that you need to have air supremecy with fighters, but that doesn't seem to be true anymore, especially if you have flaks with your bombers. Ultimately it depends on what your opponent has. If he has a lot of strikecraft/LRMs/Light frigates, go fighters. If his main strength is capital ships, heavy cruisers, or if he has plenty of flak support, go bombers.

Reply #3 Top

The difference between human and AI opponents is quite significant.  First of all, the AI doesn't actually counter your fleet, it just keeps on building the same unit types.  Hence, if you find a fleet they cannot counter (large swarms of carriers work) they really can't do anything about it.  A human player will counter you and produce a much greater challenge.  The AI also has a problem with getting its units killed and on hard or lower it has significant trouble keeping its fleet at peak efficiency, so often it's fighting key battles at 80% strength, not to mention having given you lots of free capital ship experience.