D, he was microing, not moving around just holding his ships ready to withdraw when they sustained heavy damage. and then repair them back on his planet nextdoor, cobalts do not get the chance to retreat "even if it has 100% hull,shield it'll still die of focuss fire from 9 bombers before it can reach the grav well end and phase jump out..
Well, that is why you lost, aside from you being a little bit light on counter units. It wasn't the cobalts' fault you didn't get kills; it was because he was retreating and repairing and coming back. It is a good tactic, .... to deal with this sometimes I chase em and kill em and come back. Carriers turn and accelerate pretty slow, so you should be able to catch the damaged one in the other gravwell, and he has to make a choice about whether he sends his other carriers back to his side to chase the cobalts or keeps bombing your infrastructure.
If you get in a situation where you are going to lose your fleet because you don't have repair or enough counter units to effectively take out a ship fast enough, fall back and build repair at the edge and try and get more appropriate counters in play.....maybe a hangar bay with fighters if you have time and he is going to attack your next world, etc. It sucks sometimes, but a fleet retreated because it is too small to get decisive kills is a fleet that might make a difference tomorrow.
Cost of 15 Cobalts (5 per m):
$4500 825m = $8625
Cost of 4 Aeria Drone Hosts (5 per m/cr):
$5120 920m 880cr = $14120
Cost of nearby Repair in neighboring gravwell:
Priceless
even repair bays wont be able to hold of carriers, just move the carriers so that the cobalts are forced in leaving its range most of the time they wont even have to, becuase repair bays do not reach far enough to repair a light frigate o nthe grav well edge anyways
chasing the carrier back to the other players grav well would probably not have worked either, i was able to deplete haf of the carriers hitpoints when it bailed out, by then i lost over 10 cobalts, and i ought to lose 2 more during phase jump charge when i finaly get to the other grav well ive got around 3 left nowhere near enoguh to kil 750 hitpoints from a carrier before it can reach its repair bay
i admit i was low on units, went economical (trade ports), and didnt expect him to skip 2 planets take a desert (minimal militia) and start pumping carriers, by the time he invaded i was just about to place trade ports.... wich gives me a dilema, either get tradeports and lose alot of other economical structures, or get more ships but get stuck with low income eventualy getting owned by more and more advent carriers pumping out, either way is a big loss,
if the rush were a simple lrf lf, carrier configuration atleast you'd be able to have multiple different unit types to counter each one, with carriers solely cobalts die to fast lrf is a bad idea, flak just kills squads... and are not good at their task at the start of the game
i really fail to see why carriers "or the squads they carry anyways" havent gotten a nerf yet, as right now whenever i do finaly play a game of sins i always end up getting carriers, since they have no real weakness other then a combination of carrier and flak
light frigates? bomber squdrons
flak frigates? carriers cannot do much vs a bunch of those but flaks arent able to do something vs the carrier either
siege frigates? obviously no chance fighters own those
colony frigates? "laughter at the idea of a colony ship spam" ... fighter squadrons
carrier? combination of fighters and bombers
support cruisers? fighters + bombers
heavy cruisers? bomber squadrons
starbases? bombers
carriers are units that have an effective counter to any unit "except the flak, but carrier stil wins when you micro them" you start with few... and killing goes slow but you keep getting more and more.... eventualy killing anything but a starbase in a single pass
my games always end in who has the most and best carrier + flak combination and it has been a long time since i've actualy had any satisfaction from beating someone / large fights / getting owned (yes that CAN be fun sometimes)..... im starting to miss the LRF spam....
