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P5YY, why choose a counter-strategy that costs equal as cmpared to a counter fleet that costs significantly less? It's only a mistake if you're wrong and the opponent is not massing LRM's. The only danger is building too many scouts, which are useless against anything else. but a mixed force of LRM's and scouts is far superior to an opponent's LRM force in this early game scenario.
of course, if he's just got a bigger economy, than you need to work on strategies for ramping that up quicker.
20-30 LRMs early game should be no problem. scout ahead so you know that's what opponent is building. then build 35-50 scouts, and turn them on auto-attack. the scouts will win, cost you less, and be faster to build. then counterattack with LRM's of your own or focus on economic expansion.
Fair enough, LRM's are much more versatile, it's true. they would work as a counter only if taking out the LRM's was in and of itself going to be a big victory. because after they're gone the remaining scouts don't allow you to press the attack.
so... just doing the math on the excel charts, let's take advent for example: advent seeker vessels cost $200. Illuminators cost $380 + 60 + 55 = minimum $600-700 cost in terms of pure cash. So a 3-1 ratio is a reasonable conservative comparison. fleet supply = 2 for seekers, 6 for illuminators Seeker's do 3 X 2 = 6 DPS to illmunators, while illuminators do 18 X 1 = 18, so evenly matched on total damage. Each seeker has 400 hull, 425 shields, so 3x that is 1
OK but curious to hear a good counterargument from more experienced players that explains why scouts are a poor counter to this.
I suppose you must be playing large size maps, but at least on the 1v1's in smaller maps i'm finding scouts work very well against LRMS. (once you turn on auto-attack) they're super-cheap, fast to produce, fast to deploy, immune to anti-flack, take very little fleet supply. If someone moves on me early with LRM's that's the obvious counter. Then opponent needs to bring light frigates or other units to counter the scouts, so the counter-fighting goes on from there... i
