ship spammers-A Guide to Fighting Back

russiangangsta41

Join Date 02/2008

ship spammers-A Guide to Fighting Back

annoying b*tches

You all know them, and you all hate them. You call them ship spammers. For most of you that word probably has a meaning. But let me explain it to those of you who have never had a game ruined by a spammer. A ship spammer is someone who build a crapload of one type of ship (such as 150 LRMs) and attacks. I am writing this fresh from a particularly stinging defeat at the hands of a ship spammer. It is important to know that these people CAN be beaten, and playing a game with a ship spammer is not the end of the world.

All ship spammers are n00bs, they spam because they know that they will not win any other way. Often, it is easy to make a ship spammer stop spamming simply by telling them that they suck and won't amount to anything.

If that doesn't work it's time to go to Plan B. The whole idea of spamming is to start building ships (the most popular one is the torpedo frigate or it's equivalent), as soon as possible. Therefore, spammers will sometimes not even bother to colonize other worlds. They will build 2 research facilities, research torpedo frigates, and start building. Often times, they will build between 3-4 more frigate facilities to speed up the process. Their greatest weakness is that they spend ALL of their money building ships, so while you're going out there and colonizing worlds, they're sitting in their one little world building more ships. This means that often times when a spammer attacks you, the best strategy is to simply attack his world. They never have more that 3. Spammers send ALL of their ships in for an assualt, leaving none behind for defense. Go around his fleet and attack. Just bomb his planets and he's done.

If that doesn't work, you have to give them a taste of their own medicine. Spam a ship one level above his. If he's spamming light frigates, build torpedo, if he's building torpedo, build flak, and so on. When that's done, there will be nothing left of him, and you can walk all over him.

Please make replies on the Ideas for v1.03 post and tell them that there needs to be a unit cap for individual types of units.

Get admins and hosts of servers to boot spammers and let them know that their n00bey ways are not appreciated.

Beating a spammer is actually easy if you know what to do.

Good luck!

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personaly i dont give a crap what anyone thinks i will spam ship if i chose fight me or die i dont care
you spam me good for you i like a chaleng make me beter thats what i look for
im not gona sit here and cry like some little girl

The thing is, the devs sort of said that if you think like that, you'd lose continually in this game.

Just a question - for the average gamer on here, is a spammer easy to beat? I mean, obviously you play to win in the game, but doing that with spamming should not get you anywhere. Spamming should cause you to lose or have a serious disadvantage - wasn't that the attitude in this game? That rushing and spamming (I realize they're not quite the same) aren't competitors for more strategic thinking?

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No. It's not easy to beat at all, because the way to beat spamming is to spam with slightly less counter-units. If a player doesn't have any bombers, I won't research flak, for example, and then once he shows up with a thousand LRMs I'm caught off guard.

You don't have time to do effective scouting, what you must do is have an initial plan that you start executing as quickly as possible as soon as the game begins (for instance, drop 1 weapons lab, research assailants, and start pumping them ASAP).

Intelligence gathering is the single most important part of any game or any war.

Developers, before release:

I don’t want to be told by some guy on a forum how some lame rush strategy could have “easily” been countered if I had simply followed a 10-step counter strategy that, naturally, required prescient knowledge of the impending rush. A counter strategy should never be more complicated than the original strategy.

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Developers, before release:

I don’t want to be told by some guy on a forum how some lame rush strategy could have “easily” been countered if I had simply followed a 10-step counter strategy that, naturally, required prescient knowledge of the impending rush. A counter strategy should never be more complicated than the original strategy.

That is soooo right!
Rushing and spamming are strategies, but they should be BAD strategies in this game. Not Ok, or passable, just bad.

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Sib, you need to just get the game and actually play. Talking about countering spammers in theory is not the same as talking about it with actual experience to back up your statements.

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I would like to make some points 1.I don't see why there is so much fuss about ship spamming. It is actually not cheating(I'm talking to you people that quit a game because you got ripped apart by someone who used an annoying but still valid strategy). 2. There are ways to counter this strategy. And lastly please realize that when you face a ship spammer don't cry, instead start singing Christmas Carols and have fun with the retarted n00b!

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Sib, you need to just get the game and actually play. Talking about countering spammers in theory is not the same as talking about it with actual experience to back up your statements.

Then I shall! *determined*

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He built more ships than you and then attacked? WOW, thats low!

Seriously? What a lil ...well u know what you are. Thats how the game is won.

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He built more ships than you and then attacked? WOW, thats low!

That's not the point. I'm not saying it's dumb or shouldn't happen. I'm just saying that it should be easy to stop or prevent.
But Aspartic was right - I shouldn't consider my points all that valid if I haven't played the game. I am, however, basing my arguments on what the devs said, and if it turns out that the game is NOT like the devs said it would be (at least in one aspect) then I would like to know why, or if it can be rectified.

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The difficulty of getting multiple ship types contributes directly to this 'spamming' issue. You might cry about spamming LRMs, but there isn't much to build early game except LRMs, Defense vessels and workhorse frigates. Quite frankly, LRMs are strategically better because they destroy capital ships and buildings quickly. Workhorses are more expensive than LRMs, get killed by them, and tend to take up more supply. Defense vessels are ineffective against Buildings and capital ships.

The choice is obvious, LRMs are best.

The LRM is basic element of winning space warfare, not capital ships, workhorses, or any other ship up until heavy crusiers arrive.
Quite frankly, the solution lies in increasing the and availibility of other ships to counter to prevalence of the LRM. If capital ships were cheaper, or perhaps not as vulnerable to LRM fire, then we might see mroe of them.

Also, in reference to rushing, it is almost ridiculuously easy to cripple someone in the early game through a quick, unexpected rush. I think this really contributes to the problem of Sins not 'fulfilling promises". In almost all cases it's impossible to focus 'economy first' or go 'halfway' to defeat someone rushing. This is mainly due to the cost and tech requirements of defense structures- Turrets are generally ineffective in small numbers early game, but simply make too much a difference in the late game.

What sins needs to do is reverse this early trend, The anti-defense countermeasure, LRMS, is simply introduced to the game far too early. What gun turrets and hangers ought to do is be effective against early game vessels, such as LRMs and defense vessels at cost, and pop easily to late game weaponry such as heavy crusiers.

We see the same philosphy in Supreme Commander, where "Tier 1" defenses are extremely effective against early rushes, and defenses powerful in the early and midgames, but fall easily to highly effective lategame units like siegebots and experimental units.

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We see the same philosphy in Supreme Commander, where "Tier 1" defenses are extremely effective against early rushes, and defenses powerful in the early and midgames, but fall easily to highly effective lategame units like siegebots and experimental units.

...which is an extremely effective philosophy, too!

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That's the problem, they ARE the best, but there should NOT be a best.

LRMs have too many advantages and too small disavantages, they are overpowered.
Simply reducing their damage vs. Very Heavy and Capital from 75% to 50%, and increased Light Frigate damage vs. Very Heavy and Capital from 50% to 75% would fix the problem.

LRM would stop being to counter to almost everything, but instead become empowered as a counter to a less useless ship (Light Frigates).
Light Frigate would become the early rush ship, and LRM would become the counter to early rush.

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Well, no, messing around with Workhorse frigates presents a whole new can of worms. What light frigates can and cannot do is frankly irrelevant to the balance of LRMs. The solution would be to reduce the capital damage on LRMs alone, and reserve killing capital ships for late game units such as bombers and heavy cruisers.

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Or, the grand simple solution is to just put the TEC's LRM technology at a higher level(Tier 3 or 4). This means that you get counters(carriers & flaks) on earlier levels or on the same level. Of course, TEC missile technology requires the Javelis to be unlocked, but that problem can be fixed by just removing the prereq.

Presently, LRMs are Tier 2 tech. Flaks are also Tier 2, but they're too much of a niche product that are useless against anything except LRMs and strikecraft, and LRMs can just fly through/around them anyway. Carriers with fighters are Tier 3 for the TEC and Vasari, and even though they are Tier 2 for the Advent, LRMs are simply too fast for a kite-attack to be feasible without a meatshield - and meatshields are Tier 5 technologies(Heavy Cruisers and Repulsion). Scouts do do some considerable damage to LRMs, but they get killed easily and take longer to build en masse(for an equal fleet supply) even if they don't cost more resources.

Level 6 abilities like Cleansing Brilliance and Volatile Nanites crush LRMs, but they are after all Level 6 ultimate abilities, and your battleship would end up dead against LRM spam before it can get that much XP.

We see the same philosophy in Supreme Commander, where "Tier 1" defenses are extremely effective against early rushes, and defenses powerful in the early and midgames, but fall easily to highly effective lategame units like siegebots and experimental units.

This philosophy is implemented in GalCiv 2 as well. Starbase fortifications are amazingly effective against early-game corvette fleets, they gradually get weaker as larger ships come along, and once you have fleets of Huge-hulled dreadnoughts running around with Doom Rays and Blackhole Eruptors, Starbase defenses become useless.

But here, defense turrets can't even shoot at LRMs and hangars get killed by them rather quickly.

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1) We don't need any stupid artificial limits. Mixed fleets should be a good idea because the units' abilities synergize well.

2) I'm not really sure this is a huge issue. Every ship can be countered, every ship has a weakness. Maybe LRMs need to be higher on the tech tree, I don't know..but "Ship spamming" is something that can be solved with good ship balance.

LRM spam is really nothing. A fleet of light frigates in front of some carriers with fighters + a capship in support rips LRMs a new one.

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No, it doesn't, and that's the problem. It rips through the capital ship in thirty seconds. That's the problem, you can counter the ships, but if you have a mixed fleet the ones that are vulnerable get taken out so quickly that it's much more effective to simply counter-spam. If I bring 15 flaks and two caps against your 20 LRM fleet, my caps get shredded to pieces early. I have to just bring 30 flaks instead.

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This is sorta off topic but I find the initial post has done a pretty fine job of posing it's viable strat.

I never send in a fleet en mass unless
A) I have to or

I need to hammer a planet fast.

I find it more economical if I know the make-up of the defenders is to stagger my fleet entry based on stengths vs. weakenesses. Or even to try and bait a certain ship types out to the edge of the well.

It is very possible to flank and stretch a fleet in this game with the options of entry points. You really have two points of entry and you can use this to your advantage. Sure they will 99% be able to see what you are bringing...so be it. Key is knowing your strategy options ahead of time. They can see you coming but not where you are going to pop in. And any time they spend looking at what ship types are coming down the pipe is attention drawn from the fight. Try to bait his fighters and bombers to where you WILL be sending 'anti-air'. Bait is LRMs into a possition where you can flank them easy with your next jump reinforcement.

The key is you typically have two points of entry to work with. You don't HAVE to send all your fleet in, you don't have to send them in the same spot or the same time. Mess with your opponent, distract and frustrate....he is human.

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I used to play this game called Dark Reign 2. At the start of it all it was a pretty good RTS. Lots and lots of strats and such. I stopped playing after about a year.

I loaded it up again some time later - it had diluted in to a sprawling game of crap .. not because the game changed .. it hadn't but people had started putting limitations on what you could and couldn't do

you could only play on one of 3 maps people had made - with all resources in non contested areas (like middle of the map)

you could only attack the front - i mean you couldn't go around the side or behind you had to go in front of there base and attack it where they build all there turrets

you could only play if resources were set to high

there were a list of other stupid crap, which i promptly ignored and steam rolled them all

I already seen this game start down that ally. Like "omg its not on fast??!1!!111one!!eleven" "omg low resorces?"

And now "OMG you built more ships than me no fair your a loser!!1111!!one!!eleven!"

whatever - I will, and can, do anything to win short of exploitations/haxxorz

>.<

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amen edix, i cant stand when people limit a game's dimensions!

actaully, i kind of feel like thi game has done that to itself. there doesnt seem to be THAT MANY different ways to go about wining.

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amen edix, i cant stand when people limit a game's dimensions!

It's just peoples' way of coping with the fact that they can't handle those dimensions, so they decide to take them out of the picture.

That's one thing good about the AI - it doesn't cut things out like that. Stardock has tremendously improved GalCiv 2's AI over time, they can do it here too.

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just so people dont get the wrong idea and actually think that 20 LRM's rip through the two caps.

20 LRM's (not upgraded as in its the first encounter on a really small map) take ~80 to ~93 seconds to kill a level 1 cap ship (80 seconds with a whale that has no abilities added to it and 90+ for caps that have survival abilities or high hull/armour). Thats when the cap doesnt try to move/micro at all.

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I'm aware, that, in my ignorance, I for one am part of that unit of people. Forgive me - I will change! I've gotta play the game first, so hammer me if I try and be sanctimonious again.

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sib my post above was for you, just so you know how long it takes for a level 1 cap ship that isnt microed at all and has no support (in a real game most will be level 3-4 by then and have support) to die to 20 LRM's.

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Thank you, sir. I'll leave it to experience before I take ownership of any more BIG IDEAS

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LRM spam is really nothing. A fleet of light frigates in front of some carriers with fighters + a capship in support rips LRMs a new one.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>

This is precisely wrong. LRMS in equal cost against such a group will probably win, although it does depend on how many carriers you have. You're actually probably better off using scouts instead of light frigates if you intend to bait the LRMS.

Capital ships, in terms of damage, don't contribute to the battle very much, and they have little HP for what they cost in terms of reasearch and levels. The real reason to get them is for their special abilties.

The game needs to change so that a level 1, or 2 capital ship -can- fight against 3000/400/300+1200/150/75 worth of frigates. Capital ship research really -is- a killer, as you can get 15 LRMS for the same cost, which do more damage and require only initial research. Each additional capital ship scales -backwards- from cost to usefulness.

Quite frankly, I'd like to see capital ship research costs rolled into logistics costs- meaning capital ship slots come free with logistics. I don't think that will happen since it means scrapping an entire tech tree, but I think it is a decent solution. Either that or make it so that capital ships CAN actually fight off 20+ frigates and more depending on level.

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certain cap ships can fight off 20 LRM's alone at level 5-6, however I do think cap ships need an increase in survivability in midgame to endgame (over 800 supply used), by possibly:

1- making their shield regen and hull regen go up significantly as they level.
or
2- making it so once caps reach level 5/6 the caps max shield mitigation is 85% not 65% and that things like phase missiles have 10%-15% less chance to phase through the shields.
or
3- maximum allowed shield mitigation goes up with each level up (e.g. 2% per level, so level 10 cap has a maximum mitigation 83%) and the amount of things that can get through the shield goes down (e.g. 1.5% less chance for phase missiles to get through shields for each level which also applies to subverters ability).

well just some ideas, and maybe it could be implemented differently for each race.

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