A simple solution (and one I always pursue when facing Advent) is to build about one sentinel for evey five-ten of your ships total - generally around 40 for a 300 ship fleet (my late-game norm) - and to make you cap ship SC 4/5 fighters.  This usually solves any Advent problems.

also, he (your opponet - I assume it was a "he") was wrong.  Vasari, once researched, pwns Advent.  mainly bcuz of phase missiles.  (kills advent ships b4 their shields fail )

also, it's a good idea to research the sentinels anyway, as you'll only get 3-4 in all ur RA'ing.  that, and also the Subverter/Overseer cruisers.  Ideal fleet comp 4 me (b4 RA) is 1/2 Sentinels, 1/2 Skirmishers, a Devastator (jam weapons mainly upgraded), and an egg.  with some research in phase missiles.

also, use the flee button.  it usually works quite well, and keeps you centered on the battle

AOK - you REALLY need to get over this 3-4 carrier thing.

FACT

1) There were 4 of them.

2) They were Advent - they cost 50% more and have 50% more squads. Again  -4 Advent = 6 TEC or Vassari carriers for squad numbers.

3) They were all fighters which as stated do greater then 100% damage to a LRM.

4) He had enough that if he microd them on one ship at a time, they could pop it before shield mitigation got high enough (as Astax said).

Other things to consider

1) You have now told us you gambled on fast teching to RA (a tactic that hardly anyone uses since they changed it from a AM based ability to a resouce base one and upped the time factor). He killed your fleet before you got that ability up and running and are now complaining about how you were better in econ etc... and should have won. He was better in fleet composition and you ignored the ship that would protect your ships (flak) and protect your ships and attack his (carriers outfitted with fighters).

2) The illums MAY have had the cloning ability, which means your ships were targetting fake ones and were being killed while not killing anything

3) Malice was almost certainly in play applying additional damage accross your ships (Lvl 3 would be enough to hit almost all the ships you had in the grav well if they were close enough

4) The illums shields were being repaired

Also, did he just sit them over the top of your ships and tell them to hold position???

Post us the replay. I bet you lost 3-4 assailants before his fleet even got to you because the fighters made some passes. If you can'd do that - maybe you can record it and post it on youtube???

Ships CAN die quickly in Sins if you are off doing other stuff... That is why players like Cykur are so good - they are able to move back and forth keeping tabs on things... It is called situational awareness....

One last thing - read up on Advent Battle Ball techniques. This is a partial implementation of this tactic that you faced... It just didn't have the other caps and guardians in it....

Whatever the final result of all these analysis, I must say that I am learning a couple things myself.

cheers,

M

By the way, I have, ahem, a couple newbie questions:

1. where is the "flee" button?

2. how do you earn/give karma in this forum?

M

1. there is none edit: I am actualy not sure, I have not seen it though, orodum said something about a flee button, was not sure if he is joking.

2. See that thumbs up button below other people's posts, click that, you earn them being helpful, polite, or being funny, etc.

"flee" button is under fleet management.  the angled white flag above create fleet, I believe.  hitting this will make all selected ships to flee to the nearest gravity well. (I think.  it says it goes to allied wells only, but I've had it go to enemy wells b4.  but it's been a few updates since the last time I used it, tho. I generally win my fleet battles, or little survives)

Oh yeah now, I remember tha, have used yet, had to withdraw my fleets on the occasion though, barely lost many ships though, tough luck on stuff.

True

flee button attempts to path a course to the closest friendly grav well. sometimes it goes through enemy g-wells to get there, which is often not a very good decision. best to plot your retreat path manually so you don't jump into a minefield or starbase by accident. 

also, pretty sure default key binding for retreat is "shift+r", in case any of you feel that saving 2-3 seconds from a retreat command is worth your time. 

on a more general point regarding balance of units and their counter units:

the game is more or less set up such that hard counters will beat back their countered unit on a 2-to-1 basis. thats 2 to 1 in terms of fleet logistics, not cost. sometimes the costs balance that way too but not nearly as reliably. thats also the "efficient counter" level where you'll take minimal losses while destroying nearly all of the enemy. the "inefficient counter" level is mutual destruction and that ratio is more like 3-to-1. 

the ratios can be seen very clearly in a straightforward situation like Javelis vs. Disciples. can definitely use 4 Javelis to wipe out 8 Disciples and probably lose none or only 1 Javelis to do so. the situation with carriers is more complicated because carriers are countered by 2 different units. the squadrons are countered by flaks, which really 2 counter squadrons on a 2-to-1 basis pretty reliably. the carriers themselves are taken out by light frigates but they don't match the 2-to-1 ratio because carriers don't shoot back.

you can use a small group of lights (5 or 6) to go punch up some carriers if you can somehow prevent those lights from dying to something else as they chase the carriers around. thats the challenge, making sure the lights don't get picked off as they chase the carriers around. they'll be so far behind your main fleet while chasing the carriers that they won't benefit from cap ship or support cruiser abilities so they're very much on their own and likely to to be forced into a kill zone as they chase the carriers around. 

thxs!

Just to clarify a point for me, Agent of Kharma - were you aware of your opponent's fleet composition that he could use to reinforce when you jumped your fleet into his empty gravity well?

No.  However, it is irrelevant to my point.  My point simply has to do with the length of time it takes for a small group of fighters to take out vast numbers of the thing they counter.  That's the point whether I played well or sucky, was aware of fleet composition or unaware, etc.

Most of the posts here haven't been responding to the point.

I have at this point made the assumption that it was malice that did the damage, and thus fighers are not OP.  But I will keep a leery eye out for such things in the future.

If the advent lrm's were properly micro it would significantly increase their damage  compared the peoplethat just let them attack from max range like the average joe does, .  A progenitor using  malice instead of the shield restore/colonize combo wouldalso account fora dps increase unaccustomed. You also had the counter unit from the most powerful on a 1:1 ratio in the grav well with the fighters.

I pieced that together to form how you were moppedthe floor with allbecause of this thread.

Again. There were 15 squadrons of fighters. When your cap ship jumped out that is almost 1:1 sqauds to LRM plus the LRMs he had was almost 1:1 with you.

15 fighters squads is not a few and will eithe get you air supremacy or at least put up a fight in many scenarios.

I can also only count 6 fighter squads in the pic your cap is jumping out in. Are the other 10 flying around or is that all of them in the red blue over your fleet? If so, you had 10 fighters squads in hold position sitting on top of you!!!!

A further observation to make without knowing if they did any damage. When you jumped in there was a turret 1/2 built. When your cap is jumping out it there are 4 completed ones. No idea if they did anything in the game, but they could also have been a factor.

8 of your assailants are showing as under attack. Since it is hard to count from the picture - is that all of them in the picture, or are some off screen???

15?  Are you sure?  12 would be from the carriers... where are the other 3 coming from?

Not sure which pic you are looking at, but I think my screenshots show my whole fleet, so if you can't see all of them it could be that some are stacked on top of each other?

The point is simply that the assailants evaporated the time it took me to grab my cap, scroll out, right click on a planet, shift right click on another planet (in case the illums followed), then scroll back in to get my assailants.  When I scrolled back in nothing was there.  I thought I had inadvertently send them somewhere else by mistake.  28 assailants is nothing to sneeze at at the stage of the game we were in.  This was still relatively early game.

I recounted - my bad.

13. The Prog must have only had 1 squad.

You still haven't posted the reply and told us WHEN malice was cast on your fleet. It could well have applied just as you were scrolling and then applied again before you got back and fleet has gone pop.

You haven't told us if the fighters were balled up over your fleet (hard to tell from the picture). They can rip apart LRM this way much quicker as they don't make strafing runs. The downside to this is they are more prone to dieing from flak/other fighters, which wasn't an issue in this engagement.

We could continue to debate something based on 2 screen shots that are a little blury or you could post the replay!!! Stop arguing that something is OP without the proof we have asked for. You asked for an explanation. Many people including one of the most recognised elite players in Cykur have given you a rational hypothsis but you continue to cry foul. It could not have been cheating otherwise you would get a desync. So it must be game mechanics. If it isn't, someone has found an exploit that no one else knows about. I find this unlikely, so come back to the conclusion that it must be malice combined with the weight of numbers.

couldnt have said that better >.>

illuminators are tier 3  and assailants are tier 1

that + carriers housing 13 fighter squadrons totaly owned your assailants,

your capital ship running was a fair choice,  it wouldve taken medium damage otherwise, you either shouldve ran with the assailants also, or scout b4 jumping in

(oh and a tip,  to scroll out and in faster  use caps lock.. instant zoom-in and zoom-out)

Haven't I said that I have accepted Cykur's hypothesis for the time being, and thus fighters are not OP?  I have stated it at least twice here I believe.

how bout you post the DAMN REPLAY SO WE CAN SEE!

ignore this....

Ive heard this somewhere....