I guess that's where we differ.

I will admit I think the strategy is simple, but that's where the beauty of it is. The simplest fleet in the beginning is the best fleet, and with the pace of online play being hardcore rushing, this strategy shouldn't e a surprise.

It doesn't bother me because while it is an extremely early tier (0) fleet, the fact is there is a tier 0 response.

Also all I think it's going to take for this trend to go away is for people (like myself) to actually beat these said exploiters. Most people who do this tend to think they've found the holy grail of strats and will keep using it till they lose with it.

If you're opponent is half decent he'll see the light frig spam you're doing to counter and he'll figure "Ok, better go lrf" at which point you should have the upper hand.

I don't care what tier units are doing the fighting, as long as they're winning the battle for me. While the first step to countering a lf/scout spam isn't above tier 0, eventually you're fleet will go there.

Unless you played someone who teched martyrdom I'm hard pressed to believe this.

let's say 50 disciples, 100 seekers (not an unlikely fleet)

50 * 8 *.5 (50% multiplier) = 200 dps

100 * 3 * .5 (50% multiplier) = 150 dps

vs 60 lrms and 40 flak

60 * 11 * .75 = 495

40 * .25 (only aims front 25% of dps) * .5 (50% multiplier) * 15 = 75

HOWEVER THOSE NUMBERS LIE

Have you ever watched scouts/lfs going after moving targets? They shoot, stop, chase it again, get in position and fire again. They lose some dps because they don't constantly fire (like lrfs do.....no wonder people who like the "kill cap first" strategy are bitching").

But let's say I was targeting you with that fleet, and I was targeting your cap. I'm taking you down twice as slow as a lrf spammer would, meaning you actually have time to get it away and to a repair bay. Unlike lrfs scouts/lfs aren't good pursuit units.

Fortifying from the start gets you killed online

Raiding but not actually taking planets gets you killed too. That's what's implied by raiding. Hitting in many places at once doing it hit and run tactics, but in this game if you aren't taking planets, you're probably losing. Also, add to this the fact that I ignore like 2-3 random ships. I barely acknowlege pirate raids (2-5 turrets and the raid is handled). Why? THEY DO JACK SHIT. Destroy a building....ooooooo.....i can't reuild that. Meanwhile I send my fleet to where you're actually seiging and the raiding tactic just went out the window.

This third point I actually agree with. Kinda. Fighters aren't assault units in any shape or form. They are specialty units that pave the way for other assault units. By this I mean they can kill (provided there's no kol/halcyon/flak around) bombers/long range frigs, scouts, colony frigs, seige frigs, and assault cruisers, but they can't actually destroy buildings, so they don't qualify as an assault unit. So you're mindset's in the right ilk, ut that's not exactly how it folds out in implementation.

Some of this is just senseless. Regardless, I'll try to elaborate.

How is 'it's the best way to exploit these races' a bad argument? Exploiting race strengths and weaknesses are an important strategic aspect in any strategy game, no? I don't follow your logic here. It's not saying that if I'm TEC on a small map and I discover my Vasari opponent going for some insane early trade port strategy that I'll insist on fortifying and building trade of my own. It's only saying that the three races' tech trees are gearing towards a certain approach by default. You are not going to claim siege frigates are made available to the various races at different tech levels by random chance either, are you? Vasari have two (2!) new ship types made available at lvl 1 military tech. The TEC have none. The Vasari's first empire upgrades are geared towards an aggressive approach and guerilla warfare with options for fleet detection and bounty collection to name two. The TEC's are much more defensive, all geared towards economy. To me this suggests volumes about how the races will most likely be played.

Moving on, do you really feel scouts would have to be completely unarmed to be a 'non-combat' unit? Is the colony ships then a 'combat unit' also? Also, don't you feel their armor/shields are powerful enough already? Last I looked a Seeker basically equals a Disciple which is rather insane.

The talk about how 'they have an armor type they counter' is particularly illogical. What would be the alternative, having no weapon type? If we can for one second assume I'm correct and that scout were never intended for combat, wouldn't it make perfect sense if the devs simply applied one of the exisiting damage types to the scout/colony ship rather than invent an entirely new one, for simplicity's sake? In this case, it would only be reasonable to make the damage type on these light vessels 'light'. 'Composite' damage would on the other hand have looked very odd and precisely have suggested a combat role. Anti-light suggests none or almost none. It's pew pew at a passing enemy colony ship, not constructing hordes of these to be used as a primary weapon sledgehammer. Scout sledgehammer! One must wonder what Team Fortress 2 gameplay would look like if scouts were packing the Heavy's beloved minigun! Which, in fact, is what we see happening on SOASE.

Moreover, isn't it a bit odd that the game's very own AI (which undoubtedly was programmed to simulate a real player's actions, regardless of how awful it is) never uses scouts for combat purposes if they are 'combat ships' and such an all important counter to LRF? The AI's earliest game is LF, LF and more LF. Scouts are solely doing reconnaisance.

To summarize, I'd say your claim scouts are combat units is just as much a 'belief' as you'd say my claim they are (nigh) non-combat units is. The difference is if you look at things from the former perspective you are left with a completely unintuitive scout sledgehammer rush game where defensive races trumph the aggressive combat-wise whereas from the latter perspective the game mechanisms make much better sense, the AI's actions make sense and the race lore is reflected in the game. Take your pick.

Again, Amish, I'm posting my view on how I believe the developers were INTENDING game balance. The fact that it plays out much differently online I attribute to oversights such as the abuse of scouts. They simply weren't prepared for this.

It's a fact that defensive emplacements play only a tiny role in online play. Should we conclude that this is intentional, that gun emplacements were 'meant' to be a near-redundant never-to-be-used unit? I doubt so.

I'm not saying don't exploit their strengths.  And i didn't say it was a bad argument, it's just a bit overused and therefore obviously not strong enough because it hasn't detered anyone.  I agree that they have their strongpoints, and you listed them well enough.  But i don't think the devs necessarily had that particular play-path in mind.  I need better evidence to be convinced.

I didn't say it was a GOOD idea to use scouts offensively, only that they are viable.  And as for your argument about making a new weapon type, that's exactly what they would have done if scouts were not meant to be a counter.  There's no reason not to, since it would have taken maybe an hour's worth of programming to do, basing it off the others.  (I'm being VERY lenient on this time assumption.  It would be a basic cut-paste scenario where they removed damage modifiers.)

On a side note, are colony frigs strong against anything?  I assume they use the same damage type as scouts so probably yes, but i don't know.

You know what. I like the kind of logic you bring up. Unfortunately it's been thrown under the bus (partially my fault).

Here's a part of the problem now. Scouts are the only counter to mines, meaning the guns on scouts can't be taken away, otherwise there won't be an adequate enough counter to mines. I just want the balance of the game to be playable. That's what matters to me.

Well, the game is playable, for sure. Just nowhere near how the developers envisoned it. Which is why it's so odd they're so reluctant to put some decent armor on those fighters, a simple change that would fix so many problems.

On a side note, the developers are recommending using flak for clearing mines, not the scouts themselves.

Well, you need the scout to see the mines, but yeah, the flak is awesome for clearing.  Just group a couple flak with a couple scouts and make sure the scout is the fleet leader, put the scout on auto attack, and you can totally ignore them for a while..come back and a huge minefield will be gone.  (obviously not if there is still fighting going on in the gravwell though....)

But we digress.....scouts ARE combat capable...I would just argue they are a bit OP right now, not in stats, but in how cheap they are to build and maintain via supply points.  If the developers intended a tier 0 fleet of scouts and LF to counter all of the other ships, I just have to scratch my head.  If you DO get a mature fleet built with a lot of capabilities, yes, you can fight a scout / LF fleet...I hope!!!  But from my experiences last month playing against some very good smurfs, you won't get that fleet built unless the map you are playing on makes it impossible to rush. 

If that is the way the game is meant to be played, so be it...assuming I want to play anymore, I'll just start playing Advent or maybe TEC exclusively until there is some new "killer" strategy.

Lets look at the three strategies that qualify as a 0T ier rush.

They build just scouts, LFs will kill them

They build just LFs, LRM will kill them

They build a mixture, LFs will kill them

See, all these strategies have an easy counter. Even if you're Advent and will find it hard to get your LRM, you can just fight Rock with Rock and build LF to counter LF (hint, Disciples are the best LF anyway)

Now, look at those counters I suggested. If your enemy is stupid, you win with your selected counter. If not, he will build the apropriate counter to you. Once that happens, you both HAVE to tech up! You're going to need your Hoshiko or Ilum to stay alive.

So, we've established there's nothing wrong with an easily killable tier 0 rush.

Scouts are the only counter to LRM. Nerf them, LRM come back into full power and the game becomes rubbish. At least this way people use more than one unit (and Heavy Cruisers, Turrets and Capital Ships counter all three of them!!!). If you want to talk about "what the Gods intentioned", I'd rather believe it was this current state rather than the JOKE it would be if Scouts were removed!

One thing I would say is that currently, the Vasari are worthless early game. Worst Scout (too expensive, weak and too much fleet supply) Worst Frigate (again, too expensive, weak and too much supply!) I'd even go as far as to say worst LRM, in terms of price, armour and damage. So they could use some fixing to make them viable.

I could very easily accept them being the "late game boomer" faction that sucks early... provided that there is in fact a late game "boom!"  But it seems all their "boom" comes too little, too late.

Seriouly I personally use soucts as cannon fodder, while my fortress ships takes out the other ones

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That's a really good post with some strong arguments. Let me show you where you are wrong.

Your point about 'nothing wrong with early rush option': Approved. No disagreements here. Gameplay hurts if every round degenerates into a spamfest with no real strategy, but balance is in order.

Your point about 'scouts being only counter to LRF': An absolute, resounding 'nay'! We're only resorting to the *reconnaisance* vessel because the proper LRF counter, the fighter-bearing carrier, isn't doing its job. DO NOT accept this imbalance and instead plead the developers to correct the fighter balance so we can play this space combat game with military ships and not freaking scouts.

'SOASE: Real-time Strategy. Unrivalled scale. Massive clashes of reconnaissance ships.'

See the problem?

Balancing the fighter is where it's all really at, and it shouldn't be too difficulty (although over the course of the game's by-now long history, they STILL haven't been able to? Whaa?)

To balance the fighter, you'd have to do something along the lines of

-drastically lower damage output of flak on fighters, either by a/ lowering raw damage or b/ lowering accuracy (leaving rest of balance untouched)

-refine fighter auto-attack targetting logic so that 50 squadrons will no longer be attacking the same unit and completely disregard enemy LRF if even a single bomber is spotted. This new targetting script can even be ported to the rest of the units and autoattacking will suddenly be a whole lot more truly automatized and I'll no longer have to shift-queue my targets. Presto!

That's it, really. It can't be that hard!

Your third point about Vasari being weak early, well... I can only reinstate what I said in my earlier post about Vasari being meant to dominate militarily early. Again, it just goes to show something is off - badly.

'Would you rather play the TEC with the best economic options from the getgo and an efficient military or the Vasari with poor economic options and a useless fleet, sir?' <--- something wrong here, no?