I seem to be doing OK with a mixed Vassari fleet vs all carriers!!!!

I thought it was only one of the the later betas that went with 25%, because I was dissapointed that the 1.1 was back up to 43%.

I think the carrier should be the center peice, which it is, but it needs some tweaking.  I mixed fleet should be able to take out a group of mainly carriers, but that just does not seem to happen.

The TEC and Vasari do have a defence against the strike craft. The TEC have Flak Burst and the Vasari have Jam Weapons.

If they focus on those two abilities they should be able to take on carrier spam.

Totally right.

I think a lot of people online have forgotten about counters. Follow Lord Dark Cloud's 4 step workout guide and you got it!

personally find all of this pretty funny. vasari/advent can duke it out in the air for all i care. i play tec and we're left behind in the air war. the nice thing is, our carriers are cheap, and our ships are cheap. tec is designed to lose ships as fodder and replace em faster than they can be lost.

that doesnt mean spam though mind you. i build X number of carriers depending on what my enemies are doing. if they are spamming carriers, i find out if its bombers or fighters. bombers, i'll mass all fighters and build some extra carriers than normal to help kill off the carriers as soon as the bombers are shredded. if the enemy masses fighters, i build enough to counter, plus a few more if its advent just to keep their fighters busy while i rush in for the kill with lrf, lf, and hc, not to mention missle barrage and slew of other abilities thrown in to help mop up. i have more difficulty against a mixed fleet than i do against a spam. unless its an illum. spam, then i'll just lower myself to their level and spam carriers to add injury to insult.

i've won games and lost games online. i've come to learn that the person who has the better skills, better strats, and better micromanagement will come out on top. every time. thats why its called strategy. not shoot em up.

Not True!  Exhaustive Combat Tests have shown that 10 out of 10 TEC Fleets using the HOSHIKO(TM) absolutely wtfpwn enemy fleets and have a HUGE reduction in combat losses, crew injuries, and property insurance claims!  HOSHIKO(TM) isn't just great in your fleet, it is CHEAP too!  We can send you your first HOSHIKO(TM) today for the low cost of 19.95 Trillion Credits!   But WAIT!  We are so CONFIDENT about the HOSHIKO(TM), we'll let you build your own HOSHIKO(TM) at any participating Level 3 Military Lab.    So what are you WAITING for?  Try HOSHIKO(TM) -- don't wait, call TODAY!

                                                Product Disclaimer

• Level 3 Military Lab must conduct appropriate research to build Hoshiko(TM).
• Hoshiko(TM) occasionally chase things around the gravwell while your ships are destroyed.
• All Combat Tests were conducted by people named "Cykur" against people not named "Cykur".
• Hoshiko(TM) may not help you wtfpwn anything.

Um, I noticed some people saying that they are having their "balanced" fleets mopped up by all-carrier fleets. Well, if your opponent is using a completely linear strategy, surprise: the appropriate counter-strategy will be linear as well. There doesn't seem to be a "best" strategy as far as fleet composition in 1.12, as far as I can see. It all depends on what your opponent is doing. Listen, have you ever seen how little damage bombers and fighters do to light frigates? You'd be surprised... You can still kill SOME, but you have to focus ALL of your damage onto the LF's in order to make any progress. Meanwhile, light frigates are RAPING carriers very quickly (20 advent LF's can kill an advent carrier in less than 20 seconds on normal ship speed game setting), which by the way are much more expensive and not to mention cantankerous to replace. Consider that building squadrons takes not only an excessive amount of resources, but additional time thereafter as well (it takes some time for carriers to build their squadrons fresh out of the factory, especially as the Advent), and it's obvious that carriers only dominate when you catch your opponent without enough LF's. Of course, making your whole fleet consist of only LF's is quite boring, but you do what you have to in order to win. Example: if i roll up on the computer with mostly advent carriers (say 10 or so) and less than 10 illuminators, and he has 30 or more light frigates, there's only one smart thing to do: run. I can't afford to lose even a couple of carriers when all he has to do is pump out a few more light frigates every time I kill one, while in the meantime I'm losing a carrier every 20 seconds. Also, LF's are fast, and can get to the heat of battle quickly, whereas carriers are as slow as capitals. Even if you are able to get a carrier into battle immediately, it's useless for about a minute (as the advent anyway, vasari can get their squadrons online more quickly). 

And no, I really dont think that Advent strike craft are overpowered compared to the other factions. It seems to work this way: the more members per squadron, the harder the squadron is to rebuild. For instance, Vasari members are replaced almost as quickly as Advent members, but each member can absorb and deal more damage. Yes, Advent squadrons overall can deal more damage per unit time (because of their greater numbers). What this means in terms of game balance is that Advent, with its massive numbers advantage, can in fact deal more damage at the start of a fight, but has a harder time recovering it's squad members after taking losses when compared to TEC squads and especially those of the Vasari.

What I think most people are refering to when they claim there is an imbalance is this: when the Advent roll in with mostly carriers on your "balanced" fleet, their fighters can quickly kill your LRM's and bombers, their bombers can wipe your capitals and HC's, and if you don't have many LF's in your fleet, you have nothing left to deal a significant amount of damage to either the bombers (flak/defense vessels don't do much to bombers) or their respective carriers. Basically, the first punch from an Advent all-carrier fleet really, really hurts. But if you have a 3-to-1 ratio of LF's to their carriers (unless you're vasari, then I think about 2-to-1 can do the trick), while they are killing your big damage dealers, your LF's are quickly eliminating the source of the problem. And meanwhile, you don't need fighters to kill their bombers, or defense/flak to kill their fighters, because neither one of the squad types can really do much to the LF's medium armor. Yes, you do lose your more expensive fleet members, but on the other hand, if you are constantly scouting and know that your enemy is coming with all carriers, all you need is LF's. YOU DONT NEED ANYTHING ELSE. End of story. They will die under the cruel hammer of your low-tech, extremely inexpensive and dumbed-down strategy. And the bottom line is, your strategy costs less and takes less research to implement: just do a tier one upgrade on damage and hull (and shield as the advent), and that's that. You can spend a bit more of your resources on economic research and development (giving YOU a numbers advantage as the battle drags on), while he's blowing his wad building expensive carriers and hoping that he can knock you out with the first punch.

omg whydontwehavemorepeepslikeu

i dont bother carries having 2 squads each,   im jsut confused why theyve got over 1200 health,  theyve got more health then a heavy cruiser and even with amassed light frig u cant do much to em, fighters n bombers kil those to easily i also think they should be slower,  as long as u maneuver em across the grav-well squads pretty much kil everything, whilst carriers themsleves barly take hits.... theyre slow already... but they should be made even slower, theyre a support ships carrying fighters after all, i would think that with 2 squads you dont have alot of room for engines,  and with all that health, u eed a pretty big engine to get it moving anyways -. -   so speed will be o.k. if health is drasticly reduced

T E C 4 LIFE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

If I order now, will it also come with a free set of Ginsu knives?

Vasari players can't spam scouts to counter LF. Advent and TEC ones can, but Vasari can't (not effective in terms of cost, unfortunately)

And btw, this multi fleet, Carriers + LRFs are best things you can have and there is little counter to it. You notice that This combination basically counter EVERYTHING. Only thing can effectively counter this is BIGGER Carrier + LRFs or go for Heavy cruisers if he does not have enough bombers. You can go pure fighter carriers, but you will find out they are lackluster to anything other than LRFs and fighters (well, not really if you have a lot of them.)

You can put some flavor by putting some repair vessels, support ones but you must have MOAR carriers and LRFs to counter the combination.

According to armour and attack kinds of frigates and cruiers, the counter to Carriers + LRFs should be Light frigates + Flaks.

Oh well, Suppose FLaks would kill strikecrafts while dealing some heavy damages to LRFs, Light Frigates then chase carriers to kill them off.

This does not work because Light Frigates have too few HP, too expensive and Flaks are completely useless other than surpressing strikecrafts.

This is more of balance problem, and solutions are incredibly easy.

Change flak frigate's attack type to light (get rid of that silly very light anyway)

Buff light type attack against very light: 100% to 150%.

Slightly increase HP and shields of light frigates (or cost reduction)

Done. It should be tested and maybe some number adjustment needed.

Only side effects are fighters killing each other more faster (so faster game progress!) and a bit slower in colonization (being neutral frigates being tougher)

Now, because base damage is reduced, flak won't do much about anything else, but it will kill off LRFs so hard that it will Advent players cry (well, those like to spam illums.)

It also will 'surpress' fighters and bombers like current state, so light frigates can close and kill of carriers off, if they didn't die to LRFs...

So, let's see completed food chain.

Carriers > LRFs (fighters can kill off LRFs quickly thanks to 200% damage)

Light frigates > carriers (due to lack of medium damage from fighters/bombers, and LF does 150% to carriers)

Light frigates > flaks (again, 150% to flaks, and cheaper)

LRFs > Light frigates (due to incredible base damage, and 150% damage to medium, while LF only does 75% to LRFs)

Flaks > LRFs (200% damage, while LRFs do 75% to flaks)

Flaks >/= Carriers (they surely surpress strikecrafts in general. But not able to kill carriers themselves)

With this, no unit has definitive advantages, slightly favor to light frigates and flaks.

With this we can FINALLY see the mixed army of light, long-range, flak and carriers til mid game.

There would be other solutions, but it seems this is the one bring the least changes in values, yet proper affects on current games.