Staving off the inevitable Vasari Assailant rush

If you're expecting an Assailant rush when TEC, I'd recommend Fighters. For the first Capital ship, build either a Sova with two Fighters or an Akkan for colonizing purposes. Try to first colonize inner worlds.

Instead of trying to immediately build Carriers, though, try to focus on defense. Your outer worlds can be defended with a few Hanger Defenses with Fighters until you can build up a Carrier spam. Reinforce the Carriers with LRMs to counter Flak and Lights.

...Or alternatively, build the Marza, get it to level 6, and use Missile Barrage.

It seems that the only two strategies I see nowadays are either:

1) Space Egg + Assailaint rush + flak

2) Progen + Illum + flak

The hard counter to lrms is fighters, but once they've got flak cover that no longers works effectively...  some will say "just go light frig the flaks, DUH" but then the hardcounter to lights is bloody LRMS!  How does a person compete with either of these tactics (without resorting to using it himself?)

a couple carriers with fighters will shred assailants in no time

I suppose the best way to go is to scout to see how far you can colonize before needing to build up a fleet and then wait for them to attack you. Use your carriers to kill of as many assailants as possible. You'll just have to micro your fighters to go around the flak and kill the lrfs. Absolutely do not lose any carriers. This will hopefully give you enough of an advantage to win from there. My problem with this is that, with TEC, you won't have colonized very fast and will be be behind in planets. Oh well, I'll have to give this a try online sometime.

Yes, the assailant rush with death egg is problematic unless you know how to handle it (and even then, its STILL problematic).  Acutally, I think Advent have a harder time with it than TEC.  Advent can't get illums without dropping 3 mil labs.  And if they drop 2 mil labs to get drone hosts, my GOD those things are expensive as hell, take up huge fleet cap, build SLOW, and are hard to turn out before you have assailants and death egg knocking on your door.

One problem I see with the potential strats you've outlined is that there is too much eco and research.  Against a good assailant rusher, YOU DON'T HAVE TIME.  So, do not upgrade your home planet, do not research any eco, do not drop civ labs unless absolutely necessary to take an ice or volcano, and for God's sake don't get trade ports.  The other problem I see with your strats is you are waiting way to long to build a fleet.  This in fact must start the instant the game starts!  From the get-go you must focus on one thing and one thing only - getting as many ships out as you possibly can as quickly as possible.  So here are some things to try.

The simplest thing would probably be an lrm spam.  At start of game instantly drop 2 mil labs and a second frig factory.  Then drop your mining while resarching lrm.  Then start double pumping lrm continuously.  Of course it goes without saying that you should be out there with your cap and a colony frig taking roids or whatever while your lrm is coming online.

Something crazy and outrageous to try is drop a couple extra frig factories from the outset, research nothing, and just double or triple pump scouts continuously.  Get 40 or 50 of them, or just as many as you possibly can.  Believe it or not a mass of scouts will counter assailants.  The problem is, all he has to do is mix in a couple of skirmishers and all your scouts go bye-bye.

A third thing would be to attempt to rush to heavy cruisers.  Without quick start (entrenchment), this isn't plausible because there is no way you can drop 5 mil labs before you have 30-40 assailants crashing down your door.  But with quick start (which is how they all play nowadays, unfortunately) you can get 5 mil labs down pretty quick.  I've had it work before and I've had it fail before.  Just depends on how good a rusher they are, how close they start to you, how good you are at rolling it out (practice it against the AI first and get your build orders tight), and last but not least, how good of a start you have vs. how good of a start they have (it always seems you are covered in volcano worlds while they have easy access to 4 or 5 roids, doesn't it?).

As far as capship choices go, I have never figured out how to counter that damn OP egg.  The thing is brutal.  I don't think Kol with adaptive forcefield will work because the nano-dissassembler on the death egg goes right through the shields.  I think the best thing you can do is simply run your capship away in any confrontation INSTANTLY or it will die.  It means his cap will be there to support his fleet and yours won't, but at least you won't lose yours, and hell you might be able to get his.

Post back here and let us know what your results are.  And remember, TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE.  No dilly-dallying around.  You gotta drop labs, an extra frig factory, and pump continuously.

The best way to counter the evacuator (at least as TEC) is Hoshikos.  Dunov with EMP also works wonders.  That won't help you stop a rush, however, so you usually are trapped in a battle of attrician.  I've actually started getting Sova as my first cap against Vasari.  I can kite and just take advantage of strike craft and its missile turrets without making myself too vulnerable.  With most other capital ships, you're retreating from battle because of nanos anyways.  With Sova, it's not a big deal since you can actually prowl just out of assailant range and still take full advantage of your cap choice.

Another good way to analyze this would be to see what is the build order for a good Vasari Assailant rush. If we know that, we can figure what they sacrifice to be able to rush. It would also tell you approximately how long you have until they reach you. This way, measures you take to counter the rush won't bite you in the butt in the long run.

It is just a habit for me, but I have a hard time sacrificing all econ for military--if it keeps you from losing though, it is worth it. Another question would be, when you start out all military, at what point (if ever) do you go do econ?

Getting the Sova first is a very interesting idea. Rapid Manufacturing is not a very good lvl 6 ability though.

Not particularly, but maxed out embargo is better than a lot of level 6 abilities.  It's really the economic version of missile barrage.  Absolutely insane if you hit early enough in the game where homeworlds do make up a huge chunk of the overall economy.

You've come to the right place :-)  I've done assailant rush enough times, and faced them enough times to do them in my sleep.

Typical build order is quite simple:  1 mil lab, all mines (notice that the mil lab is dropped BEFORE the mines).  That's it for the typical build.  You might drop a second frig factory too, but I've seen quite good rushers not do that.  No economy, and no civils unless needed for volcano or ice.  As far as reseach goes, assailants are of course a given.  After that, depending on cash flow you sometimes research the first level of hull upgrades and phase missle upgrades while on the way to the victim.  Roids and what not would be colonized on the way to the victim.  Sometimes, "forward basing" is also necessary, i.e. get a roid or something close to the opponent, drop a few frig factories, etc.

Note that no cash or resources is ever allowed to build up.  You pretty much sit there with a finger on the "buy frigate" button from the minute the game starts, and you hit it every couple of seconds - the instant enough cash comes for another frigate.  Generally, you "fleet" the cap, then rally everything to it, so while the cap is on the way to the victim, a stream of assailants is flowing behind it.

I'm sure that for a TEC player, it cuts against the grain :-)  But you must do it - there is simply no way around it.

Depends on the map, depends on the situation, but quite often the answer is "never."  If you are talking a 1v1 on a small rush map, there's a 65% chance you'll never get around to any eco whatsoever, and maybe a 35% chance you can tech 1 or 2 mineral upgrades (if you happened to drop civil labs to get volcano/ice).  If those are ever teched, it would be during a "lull" in the action where you've driven off and survived his initial rush, and during the fighting some cash built up, and since you can only queue up so many replacements at once, you might want to drop some cash on minimal eco.  On a bigger map - say 2v2 - it tends to go the same way.  However, on 3v3 or 4v4 you have a chance to wind up in the "pocket" instead of on a "frontline," and then there is ample opportunity for eco-whoring.  However, if you end up on a front line there is little to no opportunity.  You go eco, your dead.

A quick synopsis of a 3 hour game I just finished.  It was a 4v4.  There were a couple of "pros" in the game.  I selected Advent, wound up in the "front" position surrounded by vasaris.  I selected the radiance battleship cap (NOT the mothership), and I did this for the express purpose of attempting to counter the egg.  It actually seemed to work pretty well, I am amazed to say.  I literally killed 7 or 8 capships in the entire game (about 3 were level 6 eggs).  I never once had a chance to eco in the game, as I was rushed by all 3 vasari on my side.  I was able to beat back the rushes, with help from a teammate who came from somewhat far away to assist.  I am pleased to report that in addition to destroying multiple death eggs, I also got revenge on a "pro" player who I lost to pretty badly a couple of months ago - hadn't seen him again until today.

Try Darvin's suggestions on hoshiko/dunov/sova, although I would like for him to extrapolate on this sova thing.  Is it really fast enough to kite assailants?

if you're econ is decent you can counter with Percherons (fighter squadrons please, not bombers).

if you're lagging behind in econ you can play defensively and use Hangar Defense as your source of fighters, though this obviously doesn't work if you're trying to expand into an enemy that is trying to fight you back with Assailants. it is however quite effective at repelling an attacking fleet of Assailants from your territory, which might be good enough. 

alternatively you can just fight fire with fire. you can do reasonably well by just building a bunch of your own LRMs. they're cheaper (though somewhat less effective on an individual ship basis) so you can build enough of them to mutually annhilate fleets. its a good deterrent if nothing else and will buy you time to add some better ships to your fleet like Percherons and Hoshikos. 

If you are truly being Assailant rushed, you can use scouts as a cheap spammable counter.  3 scouts kill 1 Assailant.  This should give you time to move to fighters / flak / hoshikos...whatever more complex strategy you want to employ.  Advent have the easiest time countering Assailants because they have tough scouts and only need 2 labs to get carriers out.

TEC are good at defense early game.  Use this to your advantage.  If you are next to a Vasari player, assume you are going to get rushed, and drop 2 mil labs.  Tech up repair and put 2-3 repair bays down.  Tech up LRMs, and build a crap ton.  Tech upgrade to repair bays.  If you can, build 3 mil lab and then tech hoshikos, or, if you can't get the 3rd lab because your constructors are dead by now, rech 2nd upgrade to repair.  Then tech up hanger bays so when your constructor ship is alive again, you can get some fighter coverage.

in the early game you have to make a choice between repair bays or hangar defense since you've only got 5 tactical slots on a new colony. the exception to this are volcanic worlds, which are way easier to defend because of the extra tac slots. advent is kinda extra screwed because of their 6 slot hangar, cannot be built at most places unless you've upgraded tactical slots. makes things rough for advent trying to counter LRF rushes.

on the other hand advent get their carrier at tier 2 so you can just build an Aeria at about the same time your opponent starts attacking with LRFs. 1 Aeria with fighters can take out like 5 or 6 LRFs pretty easily (thought it will take a couple of minutes). actually it can take out alot more than that given enough time. you can do this with the other carriers too of course, you can just do it better with an Aeria since you get it sooner and it supplies more squadrons in less time, since they show up in chunks of 3 rather than 2.

LRFs move at the same speed as carriers so they can't ever catch a carrier that is kiting them. you can kill an infinite number of LRFs given enough time. its more like you're racing the clock until your opponents Flak frigate reinforcements show up. then you're in the real squeeze and really have to just escalate to the next military tier or else you'll die outright to the LRF's + Flaks.

Tested this out and it seems that building lrfs from the get-go will work. It is by no means an easy battle though. An interesting I saw was for the Vasari player to start building carriers with bombers--flak don't seem to work as well against them. I probably should have built fighters the minute I saw that happening.

Vasari strikecraft are a lot less prone to flak due to their high HP/ammor.  Flak work incredibly well against Advent and with TEC.  When you see Vasari show up with carriers, you better have Hoshikos and flak ready to go.  I'm surpised he built bombers, but perhaps we was targeting your structures (i.e., mil labs and frigate factories are high priorites in rush situations)?

The mantra is that Bombers eat frigates and fighters eat bombers, so extra fighters will eat frigates, too.  I'm not so thoroughly convinced.  I only play vasari, but vasari fighters eat fighters faster than fighters eat vasari bombers.  If I build 3-4 bombers per fighter, i don't notice my bombers dying too fast to shred ships.  The swarm kills ships in 1/2 the time as the all fighter swarm, and that makes it hard to justify an all fighter swarm.

ffighters are actually far better against frigates than bombers.....except flack

the data tables point to fighters being better than bombers versus colony, siege, and lrm frigates only.  Lrms being the only one you see en masse, I'm not seeing the evidence that fighters are better than bombers vs frigates.

let me put it this way...fighters do several times as much damage as bombers to frigates (except flack obviously).

How?  As we said in the 80s, "Explain this thing to me."

Doesn't this presuppose you are putting an all fighter fleet against an all bomber fleet?  I'm failing to see the generalizability of that.

fighters actually do more outright damage per pass than bombers against frigates. try it with a carrier cap when you grab your initial colonies. first try, with all bombers, second try with all fighters. once again, flaks are the exception. bombers do better against those.

just because the bomber has heavy weapons doesn't mean it does more damage.

Interesting!

Bombers out damaged fighters against a temple of harmony, a drone host, and a constructor thingy.  It was the same against a disciple vessel.

Perhaps you need an update!

can guarantee that fighters do far more damage to sieges & LRMs than bombers. think also colony caps. Flak have high resistance to fighters. LF's are also fairly resistant to SC.