Quoting SageWon,
reply 27
IMO, Its wrong that a lower tier ship - for example: Corvettes, so effectively counters a higher tier ship - LRF (long range frigates).
In complete agreement.
Most smaller ships are not build for their power levels, but for their specific counters and abilities. You have to keep that in mind, before passing judgement.
The LRM of TEC is a weak ship with paper thin armor..... but it packs enormous firepower at extreme range.
It is not supposed to enter the fray..... it is meant to be in the backyard softening up hostile targets of importance.
If you take 50 LRMs against a mid level Titan... they will die.
But if you keep that mid level Titan busy with some other stuff and then sneak in the LRMs, it goes right from weak to devastating. Because even if you only have 20 LRMs now, because you diversified your fleet, those DPS are the very last ting that the enemy titans needs at the moment.
Or take the anti strike craft ships. Heavy armor but their weapons dont do much against anything but fighers, corvetttes and bombers. Does that make them worthless? Not really, they make sure that those enemy corvettes dont do to much to your ships.
Frankly, I don't understand the corvettes. What is their purpose in the game? Why are they even here? Seems even the game itself is confused: Strong vs. frigates, cruisers, capital ships, strike craft and titans. Well, genius description, you just listed every category of unit. What is this tier 1 'strong-vs-everything' unit doing in the game?
You have to understand, that that merely means that they do descent damage against the things mentioned.
That does not make them overpowered in any way, because as you might have noticed, their armor is basically nonexistant. And their damage output isnt very high.
I also think that you should try playing online a few times, the days of LRM spam are long gone.The only faction who can still use LRM Spam with some changes of success are the Advent Loyalists - because the Coronatas devastationg Unity Mass ability does compensate for the Illuminators poor focus fire power.
A diverse fleet with corvette support is a major threat..... a fleet consisting of only corvettes is not.
So in reality the corvettes arent really strong against that many things.
The developers designed the corvettes as "larger as strike crafts but smaller than normal ships". That makes them very vulnerable to flak and things that can target multiple enemies at once.
Actually the illuminator does descent against corvette swarms because of that.
Which is fine, because there isnt that much other stuff for which illuminators are still usefull.
Fighters die too hard to flak, effectively removing one part of the food pyramid from the unit counter chart and allowing bombers to become much too powerful (which in turn creates all sorts of other problems, such as heavy cruisers not being used), but instead of then solving the problem by boosting fighters or making flak less effective (which would solve the LRM supremacy problem by allowing carrier cruisers to counter them as intended as well as solving the bomber problem), the Corvette is introduced as an anti-strike craft and anti-LRM vessel. The game then still has useless fighters that can't suppress bombers like they were meant to and now also introduces a new problem in the form of a tier 1 craft that is 'strong vs everything'. Go Rebellion!
I dont think that there is a reason to throw civility over board, is there?
Fighters VS bombers have only one big issue and this is where I partially agree with you.
Extensive testing revealed that fighers do in fact hard counter bombers.
forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/438860/
They are just doing so too slowly, respectivly... the bombers rebuild to quick.
If you have 100 fighter wings and your enemy has 100 bomber wings, the fighers win.... in the end.
But usually your important ships have died long ago against the enemies bombers by that time.
The most elegant solution here, is imho quadrupling the time needed to construct a bomber wing. That way fighter superiority would be not so worthless, right now you are actually better off if you build bombers yourself.
While bomber spamming is indeed a certain balancing problem, it is not the only reason why Heavy Cruisers dont shine.
While Heavy cruisers are good against most things, there are just a bit to many things that are awesome against heavy cruisers, too.
Heavy cruisers are loosing to:
TEC Starbase.... Big Red Button anyone?
Advent Starbase.... Mass Disorientation + Meteor Storm makes sure that you cannot really put in in danger.
Vasari Starbase..... when slightly supported unless you have insane numbers..... and then you still take severe losses.
Most Titans have little trouble decimating large fleets of heavy cruisers, egven the Anklyon can hold the line against them.
And they cost money.... losses cost money..... with carriers... all your strikecraft just died? Just wait 2 minutes and they are all back for free.
If somebody would care to shed some light on how the corvettes are good for the game and were better than simply boosting fighters, I'd like to hear. Also, if somebody has the armor type counter chart for the corvette (the one with HC: 150% damage vs light armor etc) I'd like to see that too.
Corvettes
- can hunt down fleeing capital ships without relying on slow and expensive carriers.
- can cripple Titans
- make an excellent early game unit
- are cheap allowing you to field large numbers in no time
- Are very fast and can be used to stop harrassing units who otherwise would do a lot of damage (Ogrovs squads)
- at least partially counter bombers and help you divide the enemy firepower away from your important ships in late game.
I also think that you should try playing online a few times, the days of LRM spam are long gone.The only faction who can still use LRM Spam with some changes of success are the Advent Loyalists - because the Coronatas devastationg Unity Mass ability does compensate for the Illuminators poor focus fire power.
And you are wrong about LRM supremacy.... those days are long gone.
In fact, the LRM has become somewhat of an uncommon sight on the battlefield. You dont need fighters to counter LRMs.... there are plenty of other things in the game who will do that just fine... limiting the LRMs usefulness.
They are good because it gives another option of what to build early game, and counters long range well, not forcing you to build your own long range frigates (or flak). Corvettes are easily countered by light frigates and flak frigates, and fighters, and illuminators too (last one is a bit strange though)
The Illuminator never ever got back its past glory when a bug made it do composite damage, steamrolling everything.
Its lack of focused fire power means that any reasonable amount of illuminators can be stopped by singular hard targets (Titans, starbases, heavy defense in general)
For example, a single unsupported Orky can decimate Illuminator fleets in excess of 150 ships without trouble.
Only with Unity Mass on the Coronata and the hefty damage increase from Advent Loyalists, they become somewhat viaable.
If you make them do terrible against corvettes, too, you will never see a single illuminator again, instead you will face flak and flak and more flak, should you decide lean heavily on corvettes in the earlier stages of the game.
I don't agree with regard to how they are good for the game. What is happening isn't that we've been 'given another option' as much as its StarClad still not fixing the carrier/fighter to fill the anti-LRM role it should have had for literally years now (it's a core Sins flaw that has gone unfixed since the very release of the original game!). Essentially, I'm just reiterating the point from my post above here: They didn't fix the fighter, instead they just threw in a new ship that wasn't needed and doesn't fit in. Senseless - and what a waste of time, they could have just buffed the fighter and: problem solved! You don't improve the game by ignoring an obviously flawed unit (fighter) and just patching it up by adding a new unit that completely screws over the general balance (as SageWon pointed out, the corvette counters LRM at tech 1 when it should have been 2/3 in the form of the fighter).
So basically, the game should have been:
Light Frigate < LRM < Carrier < Flak < Light Frigate
Instead, they've gone with:
-screw carriers! OK, you can bomb stuff but that's it.
Light Frigate < LRM < Corvette < Flak < Light Frigate
- So as we see, there actually aren't any options added, they just substituted a system that was perfectly fine (but broken due to a missing link) with this mish-mash unit.
You are incorrect in your asumptions:
Corvettes have been very good for this game..... they made the early game a lot more diverse and interesting.
You see.... LF expansion does have advantages over corvette expansion... but it has disadvantages too.
You know have to decide.... to pre assess what your nearest enemy is doing....and if the risk of choosing either is worth the possible benefits.
Before Rebellion, it was pretty much
1. Build a few LFs for initial expansion
2. Spam LRM
3. End of game.
Corvettes are viable combat units in the early game and remain useful in late game, for their abilities and firepower drawing numbers.
But by no means, they are overpowered.
They did not broke the system, they made it at least partialy work.Otherwise the only unit you would ever face in combat is the Carrier.... because its bombers happen to counter enemy titans.
