Counters for Neinzul youngster waves

[Martyn van Buren]

Just started a game and I'm facing a Neinzul Youngster AI for the first time.  Any advice on a mix of ships/turrets to counter their waves?  They include (if you don't recall) all the Neinzul ship types in every wave and the waves are very large, so I'm having trouble figuring out how to deal with them efficiently.  So far I've been relying mostly on gravity and long-range turrets, plus a bit of tractor, so they can attrition themselves down while I whittle away at the mob, but I'm still needing to use more of my fleet on defense than I'd like.

Over the long run, is there an effective way to counter all of the Neinzul, except slowing them down?  That wouldn't be so bad, I guess; once I have a whipping boy I can whack in groups of lightning, tractor, and gravity turrets under forcefields and let them waste their fire on that while medium-range turrets get their numbers down.  Plus Riot IIs, I guess.  I do also have maws and sniper bonus ships, which seems like a pretty great pair to use with gravity.

One more question --- are maws effective under forcefields?

[keith.lamothe]

One more question --- are maws effective under forcefields?

Very.

If I were facing what you're talking about I might try a combination of "boxing" in the wormhole with forcefields; not covering it such that they pop outside of it, but so they have to fight their way out to even move. Throwing a bunch of cheap ships (younglings if ya got em, enclave drones; fighters are an ok fallback) into the chipper shredder may help extend the time they take to get through the ff-cordon.  Combined with grav turrets and/or logistics stations, you should be able to counter their main advantage (blazing, blazing speed) and capitalize on their main disadvantage (self-attrition).

Missile turrets are probably particularly good, do to outranging them and the "retarget" behavior where the missiles will switch to another target on the firing unit's target list if the current target dies.  Helpful when dealing with swarm types.  On the minus side, it takes an uncomfortable number of seconds for the first missile salvo to even reach the enemy from max range.

[Martyn van Buren]

Sweet, that sounds like a plan. Two more questions:

How fast do maws eat ships? I can't find that anywhere.

Also, does missile retargeting work for frigates too?

[Mánagarmr]

Stuff excessively effective against Younglings? Lightning Turrets. Lots and lots of lightning turrets. Oh the joy of watching entire waves evaporate.

[keith.lamothe]

How fast do maws eat ships? I can't find that anywhere.

I dunno if the game shows ability recharge times.  In this case it's 6 - mark, or 5/4/3/2/1 seconds per vacuum (fear Core Maws).

Also, does missile retargeting work for frigates too?

Yup.  Anything that looks like an actual missile, iirc; including MLRS-type things.

And yea, piles of lightning turrets are a beautiful thing.

[TechSY730]

Stall them, stall them like your life depends on it! With plenty of tractor and grav turrets, and maybe a well placed forcefield, you can potentially stall most of them long enough to have them self attrition to like half HP before they get to something you care about, at which point they should be much easier to finish off.

Easier said than done of course.

And yes, missile retargeting does work for missile frigates. Missile turrets, mrls turrets, and mrls ships as well. Basically, if it is a missile, it gets the retargeting logic.

[Martyn van Buren]

Re: Maws, one ship per gulp, right? So one every 5 s for Mk 1, etc?

And tight.  I've got show unexplored worlds off and am playing realistic so I have no idea when I'm going to be able to build a whipping boy, but it's going to be a beaut.