I posted this in another thread and wanted to give it a bit more attention to see what others think of it.
If your enemy has a whole lot of LRF in the early-middle game (100+ supply worth, which isn't uncommon), is it still worth building any LF if they'll only survive for a few seconds each on the battlefield? Or, so that they would survive long enough to deal some damage against enemy heavy armor frigates, would it be worth building more than a few, meaning that a greater proportion of your fleet is more easily destroyed by the enemy?
Assuming that the game hasn't progressed to the stage where lots of heavy cruisers and carriers can be produced...
I think what really matters in this consideration is whether the enemy has heavy armor frigates that definitely can and should be taken out pretty quickly at the beginning of the battle, such as repair cruisers and Subverters. Everything else with heavy armor (like flak) I don't think is worth building light frigates for, at least if (while) your enemy has a lot of LRF still in the fray, because your LF would die too easily and wouldn't do all that much to reduce the enemy fleet's damage potential. I especially don't like building LF to counter flak in particular because flak frigates are cheap and have a whole lot of durability: your fleet would be better off focusing on more fragile, damage-dealing targets like LRF using LRF of your own.
In comparison to LRF, using your LF to kill those (repair and Subverter) enemy frigates gives those LF a double damage bonus (LRF do 75% damage compared to 150% damage done by LF) while only suffering a moderate reduction in defense (enemy LRF would stop targeting your LRF (100% modifier) and would start targeting your LF ([edit:]133% modifier)). Another slight advantage is that LF for all races are somewhat cheaper (per supply) for each point of shield/armor they provide. (the increased cost comes almost entirely from the crystal that LRF cost).
So, maybe I should use only just enough LF to ensure all of those high-priority heavy armor targets are dead. The more LF than that I have, the more the enemy fleet has a damage bonus against my fleet (with me gaining less in return, if I'm on to killing flak - large hulls, and not quite as important to kill). The more I can keep their LRF's damage advantage to 100% instead of [edit:]133%, the better.
To give an example: if the enemy comes at me with a cap, 30 LRM, 5 Hoshikos and a few flak, I would counter with my own cap, maybe 20 LRM, a few Hoshikos, and then 10ish LF, while sending in reinforcements of probably all LRM once my units start to die.
This is just something I've been thinking about recently - I haven't been quite focused enough to try it out in an actual game yet. It sounds like a decent idea theoretically, I think, but despite playing a good number of games against experienced players, I haven't yet seen anyone use this tactic against me.
Thoughts?
