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Light Frigates

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Light Frigates

from Sins Forums

So the red-headed stepchild of the Sins unit roster.  It gets hard countered or breaks even with just about everything in the game, and is particularly crap with Visari in the game since they can hard counter it with one lab.  What is it good against?  Er, supports that anything can beat and with the current flak nerf, flak; except no one will spam flak anymore.  With corvettes now in the game and considered viable unit, what exactly is the point of LFs anymore?  Corvettes do a better job of cheap cannon fodder, do NOT lose to equal costs of LRFs, and lose to units LFs would have lost to as well.

 

Problems with LFs:

-Corvettes have similar damage output for less cost.

-They get hard countered by LRFs, a commonly spammed early game unit.

-They get hard countered by HCs, a commonly spammed late game unit.

-They get hard countered by turrets.  TURRETS!

-The don't do much to cap ships, a unit that is at the peak of its power during the early game when LFs would normally see the most use.

-While they 'win' against flak, LFs low DPS means they still take eons to actually win that fight.  As an option to try and quickly eliminate enemy flak to minimize damage to your strike craft, they fail.

-Likewise their low DPS gives them similar issues against carriers.  They can kill the carriers...eventually.  But killing said carriers before the strike craft vaporize the rest of your fleet?  They fail.  If I need flak to survive the strike craft, why not just use those flak to kill the defenceless carriers afterwards too?

 

Some possible solutions (not suggesting ALL OF THEM AT ONCE):

-Their damage needs to scale better with upgrades.

-They need increased damage modifiers vs the units they are supposed to counter so they are better hard counters to flak and kill carriers faster.

-Visari one isn't in Rebellion yet, but I hope that thing is getting major buffs.  It was losing to scout spam it was so cost ineffective.

-They need better base stats so it isn't clearly better to skip them in favour of corvettes for early neutral clearing.

-Give them a new late-game tech option that gives them a significant improvement; not enough to fight units that counter them but enough that they will easily stomp the units they should be beating.

38,588 views 35 replies
Reply #26 from Sins Forums Top

If LFs are going to become support units they need to be a bit stronger. I wouldn't even make it a late-game upgrade, I'd just bump up their HP/armor.

Reply #27 from Sins Forums Top

Then you run the severe risk of turning them into a rush unit.

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Reply #28 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Volt_Cruelerz, reply 27
Then you run the severe risk of turning them into a rush unit.
End of Volt_Cruelerz's quote

Then I'd say that, yeah, LFs have a bit of an identity crisis going on at the moment. It's too bad this game never made use of different damage/armor types.

Reply #29 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Eilarais, reply 28
Then I'd say that, yeah, LFs have a bit of an identity crisis going on at the moment. It's too bad this game never made use of different damage/armor types.
End of Eilarais's quote

Sure it does. Check out the Gameplay.constants file.

Reply #30 from Sins Forums Top

actually, the way i'd phrase it is they are anti-support. Their job is to minimize the effect of the opponents' fleet support.

bumping up their hp/armor wont do alot on its own.... you already get hp/armor upgrades and they still die rather quickly in the late game. going even further wont change that on it's own. the targeting priorities mean it will be taking lots of damage, and larger HP just means it'll be a bit longer, but they'll still be the #1 most dying ship.

I mean, as tough as flak is, if you swapped the targeting priorities of everything to put flak where LF is and LF where flak is, im pretty sure flak would then be completely useless due to the casuality numbers they would sustain.

This is independent of whether or not someone FFs. If someone FFs, they are probably not FF'n on LF and so the LF will last longer and then there's no issue for LF. but there's always the possibility that not all of the guns can FF on the desired target all of the time and so more stray shots will be aimed at LF than any other target.

Reply #31 from Sins Forums Top

Makes sense..  At the same time, it makes sense why they are the primary target.  Not targeting them would allow them to absolutely wreak havoc on fleets.  They'd honestly probably shred cruisers if HC's for instance were given highest target priority.  They really are powerful, but they just get wiped out by everything.

Reply #32 from Sins Forums Top

could be true, but it also means that counters in general are more important and effective. I think it would also be much more noticible when you have more of a particular ship than you need... though, it'd be nice to try it out and see how things are for sure

Reply #33 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting ZombiesRus5, reply 29
Sure it does. Check out the Gameplay.constants file.
End of ZombiesRus5's quote

Ooh. There's definitely some room to give the LF a late-game boost if this is set up right. I'm playing with this as soon as we get Vasari units.

Reply #34 from Sins Forums Top

I'd mod it for testing purposes, but Idk what file to change.  I didn't see anything about it in Gameplay.constants

Reply #35 from Sins Forums Top

LF late game are support counters.  They either can steal am, disable abilities, or lengthen ability time.

 

A pack of 40-50 can take down caps fast and are easy and cheap to make.