How to combat the LRM?

get close, those ships go POP faster than anything in the game, other than scouts =p

Bombers. Just make sure there are no flak frigates around. Also if you scout around and see he has a bunch of LRM frigates try and manuever it so he's meeting you at a spot instead of the other way around.

actually, iirc it is fighters that deal bonus dmg to lrms. you might wanna try that and see if its any better.

or upgrade the shield ships, to be using the push ability.... he can't kill you if he can't get close enough...

LRM's do capital damage, that means they are anti CAPITAL ships, so when he masses LRM's counter with light frigates.

No... LRMs do normal damage. Its assailants that do anti-capitol damage. Unless they changed something in release?

Thanks for the reply's one said to get in close, that was one of the biggest problems i was having is not being able to get close due to the shear damage and range they have.
as for upgrading my shield i had max shield upgrades researched i assumed the push ability was for fighters/bombers not LRM's.
i lead hes fleet to a planet i had defended by 18bombers (hangers) in defence then the bombers i had from the cap ships but still had no chance.

Checking the .entity file, LRMs do ANTIMEDIUM. But, yeah. Fighters > LRMs (they do 2x damage vs them, whereas bombers only do 0.5x).

Frigate spam in general is a much better strategy then lots of capitol ships, I agree particularly with LRM's as that is usually my main strategy, mass them and nobody really stands in the way...never seen someone use advanced tactics to beat it.

I think cap ships need more love though, maybe a boost in hp or shields. Well balancing is the hardest thing to do in a strat game.

ah thanks for that correction, thought they were anti capital.

Is there any in-game way to see what type of damage a ship does or will we have to compile a cheatsheet for it?

Spamming only one type of ship should be fixed
Its just not fun when I encounter others spamming early ships from beginning to end in MP.

well it's quite easy to counter a spam fleet of frigs... at least as advent..

just get those cruisers that can push enemies away... much more fun.... and it can push an entire fleet of frigs all over the place... about 8 of them, should be enough to hold down over 200 frigs...

Currently, you have to look in the .entity files (which are bit annoying to check in their current binary format) for the armor/damage types and compare that to the damage values listed in Gameplay.constants. Can't do it tonight, but I could probably throw together a list on Sunday.

Devs are working on a patch to deal with that.

i think spamming is one of the "stupidest"(i cant say what i really want to say) tactics in the game. it takes away from the whole idea of tactics if everyone spams this is gonna become just like every other stradegy game. USE TACTICS!!!! for god's sake even the AI uses tactics, so come on its not rocket science, or is it? idont know or care but think thats why u have brains.

sorry about the rant if u cant understand wat i was getting at, my point was "use tactics, spamming is wussy and takes away from the game any idiot can spam. dont be that idiot."

People spam ships because it's the path of least resistance to a victory. This creates a situation where players are forced to spam, to counter the spam, that is used because it's the easier way to win.

It's not something the players should have to fix, they are well within their rights to use the best/easiest strategy to win. You have two choices: Start your own "tactics only, no spam" league with rules about how many of each ship you can create...or suggest a decent fix that IronClad can do at the gameplay level to stop it. Maybe a special game type that only allows X types of Y ship in Z amount of time.

I have to agree... Most games people use the same damn strategy - spam missile frigates and bum rush your opponent. How boring is that. It becomes a click-fest but I'm sure there's gotta be a strategy to win. Maybe ironclad can nerf these missile frigates a bit so they become easily destroyable and require lots of support to be effective, then that would stop the spam tactics.

???? So they nerf LRM and what will happen? People will spam Cobalts again! LRM is used to counter all the Cobalt spammers. Don't try to nerf it dude.

just 2 let u all know..

lrms suck.... i dont know how u try to counter them but i've only lost once to a massed lrm fleet.

what to do vs massed LRM's

when your oponent uses massed lrm's the rules of combat change, get as CLOSE as posible and hit those dammed lrm's 1 by 1, ignore his capital ship and retreat your capital when shields are down (happens pretty fast)

since lrm do bonus damage vs small frigates (cobalt etc.) do not mass those (no more then 25 in a medium fleet, no more then 50 in a large fleet)

best way to counter is with Kodiak classed Cruisers, altough u probably dont have the tech at that time.... if u do, its your way victory.

if you dont, do the following:
get around 25 cobalt classed friagtes, and 10, preferably 15 lrm's (cobalt are to distract your enemy and do pretty neat damage vs lrm's)
if posible get a 2e capital operational
this wil take some building time (specialy 4 the Vasari) but it all happens way faster with a second friagte factory.

once your ships are combined n ready 2 be moved do not attack your enemies planet in order to destroy the lrm's
he'll probably have some defenses wich do even more damage, and may cost you the battle

wait for him to attack you, or surprise his fleet while it's jumping to an undefended system


once u found some good conditions to attack your enemy face him head/on. theres a chance he'll try to take out your capital,
in order to use this to your advantage move the capital behind your fleet, if the LRM's follow, move away further,
in the meantime your cobalts and LRM's should popping some enemy LRM's, greatly reducing there fleets firepower


short said, micro your capital ship, dont bother about the enemy's capital, and focus al firepower to those pesky LRM's since they pop rly fast,
should he ever try to run away with his lrm's change target to his capital ship, he'll either return with his lrm's or flee with his fleet
should he return with his LRM's continue popping those as mentioned b4.
last little help. do not micro YOUR cobalt and lrm's , if they become the target they'll die anyway regardless if theyre at full shield & HP, let them keep firing at the enemy, or you'll just spill an extra shot





there
that's all i have 2 offer.... hope it's readable 'n all that stuff
this always works 4 me, you might lose your capital, but he'll be missing around 30 lrms


dont forget to read the ships discription....
i heard people talking about lrm's being good vs capital...
this is not true
kodiak classed cruisers are the only ships (+ bombers) wich do bonus damage vs capitals
lrm do bonus damage vs cobalt classed friagtes

The simplest fix is to cap the maximum number of each ship type you're allowed to have, forcing players to have multiple ship types in their fleet.

Another good fix is to take Rise of Nation's idea of "raising the cost of the same unit type" allowing people to diversify their fleets to save resources, while the rushers will be penalized by paying more for spamming the same unit.

both good ideas, 1) hard cap (let player choose x, where x is the limit), 2) the stick (penalty for too many of one type, in cost or effectiveness or both, let player choose X where X is when the penalty begins to apply). X should perhaps be a percentage rather than a hard number, so that it auto-scales w/fleet size/map size.

Another, third option would be the carrot: 3) combined arms bonuses. 3.5) or perhaps a d&d style 'favored enemy' choice in the tech tree (you get to pick 1 specific ship per enemy race to get bonuses against, which of course would automatically be of more and more use the more your enemy favors that one ship.). 3.7) or a new unit type or defense structure or research ability that gives accumulated bonuses for killing the same ship type consecutively (resets to zero bonus once that unit kills a different type). The more they kill ship type Z, the better they get at it sort of thing.

Here's a thought for fixing spamming (though I doubt it will be popular). Make some ships just totally ineffective against each other.

Think of it like this: if you attacked a mass of unarmed humans with a tank (no supporting units) in the open and up close (assuming that all the people are completely unable to panic or feel fear, so they aren't running away from the tank), the tank wouldn't really be effective at killing the people but neither would the people be effective at destroying the tank.

So you could make, say, LRMs good at killing capital ships but horrible at killing others. Or they continue to be good at killing other frigates but horrible at killing capital ships.

Like I said, just a thought and one people probably won't like but hey, different ideas can only help

Hasn't it been beaten to the hilt in other threads, that fighters shred LRM? Why are people calling nerf anyway?

Another options, less onerous to most I imagine, would be point defenses. Make capital ships capable of shooting down incoming missiles (or have a new ship that provides point defense).

Doesn't totally change the mechanics of the game, just gives you a method to counter the effectiveness of LRMs. Have the point defenses be within a radius of the ship so that cap ships can shepherd ships within that protective field, allowing them to try and close on the LRMs.